Republican Rep. Says Pentagon Stopped Atta Investigation

by **proldic** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:10 pm

From AP: Congressman: 9/11 Hijackers Were Monitored By KIMBERLY HEFLING Sept. 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers were identified by defense intelligence officials more than a year before the attacks, but information about possible al-Qaida connections never was sent to law enforcement, Rep. Curt Weldon said Tuesday. Weldon, R-Pa. and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said the hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger," which determined they could be members of an al-Qaida cell. Weldon said that in September 2000 the unit recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists," Weldon said in an interview. However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally. "In fact, I'll tell you how stupid it was, they put stickies on the faces of Mohammed Atta on the chart that the military intelligence unit had completed and they said you can't talk to Atta because he's here" legally, Weldon said. He did not provide details on how the intelligence officials first identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell. The congressman, considered something of a maverick on Capitol Hill, initially made his allegations in a floor speech in June that garnered little attention. His talk came at the end of a legislative day during a period described under House rules as "special orders" — a time slot for lawmakers to get up and speak on issues of their choosing. The issue resurfaced Monday in a story by the bimonthly Government Security News, which covers national security matters. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he was unaware of the intelligence until the latest reports surfaced. But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the 9/11 commission looked into the matter during its investigation into government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report. Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, confirmed that the panel's investigators had been aware of Able Danger but said they "don't recall any mention of Mohammed Atta" or of cell. The Sept. 11 commission's final report, issued last year, recounted numerous government mistakes that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Among them was a failure to share intelligence within and among agencies... Inspector General Glenn Fine called it "a significant failure" that hindered the FBI's chances of preventing the attacks.

by **dbeach** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:18 pm

good post watch as the fingers get pointed at everybody but the boy/god /buddha bush 'what me worry?" BTW Anybody seen waldo bin bush lately..where is the most wanted fugitive in US history OS AMA come home!

by **robertdreed** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 8:18 pm

Hmm...could it be that Dan Hopsicker is on to something? If the Republican congressman has one of "several" who have legitimately wrapped his mind around the idea of questioning George W. Bush, rather than running limited-hangout interference for him, there a prospect of current events in politics getting some interest in the fall. Caveat- Funny part: if you buy into the "conspiracy theory" that the Atta operation was tracked by US intelligence, but warned off of the case as part of an effort to enable him to establish a base in the U.S.A, Bill Clinton's administration is implicated as well as that of George W. Bush. For partisans of either personality, that political conundrum resembles what is known in chess as a "fork." Fortunately, if you've gotten far enough to know that Bill Clinton is 1) corrupt; and 2) in agreement with, or at acquiesent to, the Bush foreign policy agenda, then you can bring yourself to consider the question of collusion. Which may or may not have taken place- even given the points above, Clinton may still be off the hook as far as direct personal responsibility for the mAtta cases's mysterious obstruction of- well- what the American citizenry expect in terms of our national defense (what's now been split off into "homeland security.) Because that was nothing, if not a legitimate investigation. The orders for the specific "cold-storage" of the Atta case had to have originated with a person in authority giving orders, which were passed down a chain of command by other human beings, and were delivered to the investigating agents by yet another human being. A record is supposed to exist. But just becuase something happens during someone's administration, that doesn't mean they've given the orders, or even maintain an interest in the subject. Being the President of the USA iis a demanding job, there are other priorities than some guy in Florida named "Mohammed Atta." But someone gave those countremanding orders, warning off of an investigation of Mohammed Atta. Perhaps with treasonous malice aforethought, perhaps from gross negligence. ( If you knew how much time, money, and effort that multiple Federal agencies have used in order to bust hydroponic indoor marijuana businesses over the years... ) Worst-case scenario- the matter is ultimately designed to be manipulated to sound like Bill Clinton's personal fault for being "lackadaisical on terror", in order to justify continued incursions into American civil liberties. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 8/9/05 7:08 pm

by **maggrwaggr** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:31 am

is that it's just another distraction tactic, a way to take the heat off of Bush and put it onto -- egad -- Clinton again. I'm actually surprised anyone's getting excited about this. Over at DailyKos there's a thread with 400 some-odd responses so far .... I dunno .... call me jaded ....... but we've got plenty of evidence for MIHOP outside of this new story, and I don't see the 9/11 Commission getting excited about any of THAT. But suddenly everybody's going into high gear over this? Give me a frikkin break

by **seemslikeadream** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:39 am

He is the one that stopped this from reaching the commission Weldon just said on MSNBC that he will hold hearings on this.

by **proldic** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:41 pm

Where's Dayton these days/in all this?

by **proldic** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:22 am

From American Prospect: Curt Weldon's Deep Throat The Pennsylvania Republican’s freelance spying has once again brought a discredited arms dealer's fabrications to the CIA. By Laura Rozen Countdown to Terror, Representative Curt Weldon's sensationalistic new book about his personal struggle to combat the Iranian terrorism threat despite the alleged resistance of the CIA...will be released next week by Regnery Publishing... ...in an exclusive interview with The American Prospect, Weldon's "Ali" -- who was identified in an April article by me and Jeet Heer as Fereidoun Mahdavi, a frail, elderly former minister of commerce in the shah’s government and a longtime business associate of Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar -- said he was stunned and perplexed to learn that Weldon had used his information to write a book, emphasizing that Weldon never even told him about the book. Mahdavi also said that the bulk of the information that he had provided to Weldon was originally sourced from none other than Ghorbanifar, the subject of a rare CIA “burn notice” after the agency found him to be a "fabricator" more than two decades ago during the Iran-Contra affair... Although Mahdavi expresses understanding of the motives of his old pal and business partner Ghorbanifar, he says he is utterly baffled by Weldon’s decision to use his information as the foundation of a book that the congressman never once mentioned to him... “Someone is using me for their purposes,” he raged. “How is it possible that something like that book comes out and the people who publish it don’t inform me?...But this is now, I am sure,...a fight between all these [U.S. government] organizations, and they are using this issue and using me.” Among those who agree is the former senior CIA official who met with Mahdavi in response to Weldon’s pressure on the agency to accept the Mahdavi/Ghorbanifar information. The tale of "Ali" suggests that the agency is assiduously seeking to weed out another fabricator like Ghorbanifar (or Iraqi fabulist Ahmad Chalabi) from corrupting U.S. intelligence information on Iran. Bill Murray, a former CIA station chief in Paris, met with me on June 9 at a northern Virginia shopping mall to talk about Weldon's assault on the agency. Still doing contract work for the CIA since his recent retirement, Murray chose to speak up about the agency’s role in vetting and determining “Ali’s” information to be fabrications -- “émigré babble" -- because Weldon has publicly savaged the CIA in his book. By speaking with reporters, Murray believes he could be risking his contract work, but he’s outraged over what he considers disingenuous attacks by the Pennsylvania congressman. “Someone’s got to stand up,” Murray said. “I spent 35 years doing this job, mainly in the Middle East. My guideline is well-sourced intelligence to help shape policy. That’s what I did; that’s what my people did. That is my standard, the integrity standard. And this man [Weldon] is attacking our integrity. And I’m not going to sit back and ignore it.” ... “I don’t feed sensationalistic garbage to American political leaders,” Murray said, “without some reason to believe that it is well-sourced or true. . . My generation is not risk-averse. We are just averse to feeding garbage into the system.”... Murray also indicated that Mahdavi repeatedly requested U.S. government payment of approximately $150,000 so that he could pay his debts in Iran and help institute political changes there. Despite Weldon's constant urgings, the CIA was unwilling to provide any such payment. Moreover, said Murray, Weldon himself violated U.S. government protocol by failing to report his encounters with Mahdavi in France to the U.S. ambassador when asked whether he planned any meetings there while being hosted by the embassy in April 2004. According to Murray, Weldon denied he had planned any meetings -- and then proceeded to meet with both Mahdavi and Ghorbanifar, the subject of the CIA burn notice, at the Sofitel hotel around the corner from the U.S. Embassy. Murray added that Weldon now plans to have his new book translated into Farsi and smuggled into Iran, as well as having it broadcast into Iran on the Los Angeles-based Iranian diaspora radio stations. This curious behavior raises questions about Weldon’s motives. Is he a naïf getting taken in by two geopolitical hucksters? Or is his treatment of Mahdavi a kind of political opportunism all its own? Apparently Weldon has treated his allies as poorly as his new enemies at the CIA. In March, his spokesman told the Prospect that Weldon’s book was being co-written by a former CIA analyst and longtime Weldon congressional staffer named Peter Vincent Pry. Indeed, Pry is the named recipient of several of the Mahdavi memos published in Weldon’s book, and Mahdavi acknowledges meeting with Pry and Weldon. But when copies of Weldon’s book appeared this week, Pry’s name was nowhere to be found in the author credits. Meanwhile another book on Iran and terrorism by Kenneth Timmerman, a right-leaning journalist long interested in Mideast affairs, is due to be published by Crown next week as Countdown to Crisis, a title almost identical to that of Weldon’s book. Timmerman told the Prospect that Regnery changed Weldon’s title to imitate Timmerman’s after publicity materials about the Timmerman book appeared on Crown’s Web site... “Most of us [CIA officers] have been consumed with preventing real terrorist threats to the U.S. for the past four years,” he said with a fierce squint. “And virtually everything Ghorbanifar and his people come up with diverts us. I have hard-working people working for me, and they don’t have time for this bullshit.” Laura Rozen reports on national-security and foreign-policy issues from Washington, D.C., for The American Prospect, The Nation, and other publications. Her first article on Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi, “The Front,” co-authored with Jeet Heer, appeared in the Prospect’s April edition.

by **proldic** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:56 am

" William Regnery was one of the founders of the American Security Council, he was later replaced by his son Henry. Regnery and two other [pro-Nazi isolationists] began broadcasting Human Events, and in 1947 started the Regnery publishing business... ...the first two titles published by Regnery were critical of the Nuremberg Trials. The third book Regnery published was another pro-Nazi book attacking the allies air campaign... In 1954, Regnery published two books for the John Birch Society. He was also the publisher behind Buckley’s God and Man at Yale. In light of the publishing of the pro-Nazi books, it is interesting to note that Regnery Publishing was subsidized by the CIA according to Howard Hunt... Henry Regnery along with Bunker Hunt funded Western Goals an organization that is now dead. Western Goals was another group that reportedly compiled list of people they deemed subversive. In 1986, Reagan appointed Alfred Regnery to help dismantle the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice. In the 1990s the Regnery publishing house has been the publisher of numerous [books] attacking Clinton." Immediately after 9/11, Regnery published Bill Gertzs' "Breakdown", an early example of the limited hangout. William Regnery II, son of Henry Regnery, Sr., is one of the founders (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism)">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism)</a> of the American fascist movement. Regnery is a "leading advocate of white supremacy and was a principal player in his father's company which published Swift Boat Vets John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi's Unfit for Command in a campaign smear against Senator John Kerry.[1] (<a href="http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=252)...">www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=252)...</a> "Promoting white nationalism is nothing new for Regnery — or his family. His grandfather, William I, signed incorporation papers for the America First Committee, an organization that opposed fighting Nazi Germany in World War II. His father, Henry, created Regnery Publishing, one of the major purveyors of books by right-wing attack dogs like Ann Coulter and G. Gordon Liddy. The American Security Council had a large degree of influence on the Reagan administration as well as many of the more hotly debated issues between the 1950s and the 1980s...it has been established that the ACS rose from the remnants of three pro-fascists groups of the thirties and pursued a path of promoting the fascist agenda..."

Republican Rep. Says Pentagon Stopped Atta Investigation

Republican Rep. Says Pentagon Stopped Atta Investigation

Re: Republican Rep. Says Pentagon Stopped Atta Investigation

Re: Republican Rep. Says Pentagon Stopped Atta Investigation

My first reaction to this story

Re: Philip D. Zelikow

Weldon + Dayton?

CIA Defends Its "Honor" vs Weldon's Deep Throat

Regnery Publishing

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