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October 26, 2005

Didn't have anything to do with 9/11?

Slade Gorton claims to already know the results of the Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. He says they will agree with him. All along, he has been saying that Able Danger was historically insignificant. Now he says it "didn't have anything to do with 9/11"! Let's hope Mr. Gorton is in for a rude awakening. If not, it begs the question, how does he know so much about classified proceedings in the Senate that the American public has not been allowed to hear for ourselves?

From Lou Dobbs last night:

DOBBS: Congressman Curt Weldon claims a secret Pentagon project known as Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a member of a New York-based al Qaeda cell a year before the September 11th terrorist attacks. There was no mention of Able Danger in the commission's report on 9/11. I'm joined now by former Senator Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission. Good to have you here, but, in fact was Able Danger omitted from your initial 9/11 Commission report with a purpose?

SLADE GORTON, FORMER 9/11 COMMISSIONER: No, Able Danger was omitted -- omitted from our report because it didn't have anything to do with 9/11. We learned about Able Danger from Colonel Shaffer, who briefed four of our staffers on it in Kabul, Afghanistan eight or nine months before our report came out. We immediately followed up on it, and we got all of the Able Danger materials from the Department of Defense, and they had nothing to do with Mohammed Atta or with any of the other conspirators. So Able Danger was -- got very interesting. It didn't identify Mohammed Atta a year beforehand. Unfortunately, no one identified Mohammed Atta beforehand. Able Danger was simply irrelevant to our report, and still is.

DOBBS: Irrelevant, you say, and at the same time, you're saying that Colonel -- Lieutenant Colonel Terry (sic) Shaffer, Congressman Curt Weldon have their facts entirely wrong. Is that correct?

GORTON: No, not entirely wrong. Colonel Shaffer told us about Able Danger. And he was the first person who did so. He also claimed later that he told us about Mohammed Atta. He didn't do that. We had four people in on that meeting, all of whom were fascinated by Mohammed Atta, who of course at that point we knew to be the leader of the conspirators. He was never mentioned.

Congressman Weldon said he turned over Mohammed Atta's name to Steve -- to Steve -- what's his name -- the deputy head of the National Security Agency in the White House. He didn't do so. He never told us about it. He never told his own congressional investigating committee about it. Never mentioned it until he got to his book about three or four months ago. Unfortunately, he's just mistaken. He may have talked about some of the elements of 9/11, but they didn't include Mohammed Atta.

DOBBS: Congressman Weldon, as you know, has called for an investigation. I take it you feel that that's unnecessary at this point?

GORTON: Oh, no. That investigation has already taken place. It's taken place by the Senate Intelligence Committee. That investigation will report, I hope, within the next week, and it will agree with the 9/11 Commission.

DOBBS: The fact that the intelligence community has not followed up on the recommendations that you and the rest of the commission put forward, and you focus greatly on the FBI. Do you have any sense that there is going to be a movement toward fulfilling the recommendations, the remaining recommendations of the commission?

GORTON: Well, let's divide it. Congress did a very good job in creating a new direction of national intelligence and a National Counterterrorism Center. We had more faith in the FBI I think at the time in which we reported a year ago, because we really liked Bob Mueller and what he was trying to do. But he's being defeated by the FBI itself, which just won't change its culture to provide the kind of activity on internal security here in the United States that we think is necessary. We're very troubled by that.

DOBBS: Senator Slade Gorton, we thank you for being here as we continue to follow this story and to follow the recommendations that are followed and not followed by the administration. We thank you for being here.

Posted by Mike at October 26, 2005 08:15 PM

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