Able Danger

Related: Commission Coverup?

"Able Danger", a classified military intelligence unit, identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as al-Qaeda cell members more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.

The unit recommended to the military's Special Ops Command that the information be shared with the FBI. The recommendation was rejected. You see, there was a "wall of separation".

Nothing about Able Danger was included in the 9/11 Commission Report, even though commission staffers were briefed on July 12, 2004. Atta was identified at that briefing meeting.

Captain Ed asks:

Why didn't the Commission press harder for military intelligence, and if the Times' source has told the truth, why did they ignore the Able Danger operation in their deliberations? It would emphasize that the problem was not primarily operational, as the Commission made it seem, but primarily political -- and that the biggest problem was the enforced separation between law enforcement and intelligence operations upon which the Clinton Department of Justice insisted. The hatchet person for that policy sat on the Commission itself: Jamie S. Gorelick.

Michelle Malkin has more.

-- LynZee

Update:
Just One Minute: Although I assume Able Danger did not offer any specific projections about hijacking planes, if Atta had been put under closer surveillance, the 9/11 plot might have been disrupted.

TKS: If this checks out, a lot of folks left, right and center are going to have to ask hard questions about what the heck Jamie Gorelick was doing on that Commission instead of answering questions to it.....Sandy Berger stuffing his socks has always looked like a deliberate coverup.....

Update 2:
The intelligence about Atta recently was disclosed by Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. The Pennsylvania Republican is angry that the intelligence never was forwarded by the military establishment to the FBI.

According to Weldon, a classified military intelligence unit called "Able Danger" identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn, N.Y. Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the unit's recommendation that the information be turned over to the FBI in 2000.