Thursday, December 08, 2005

Able Danger and its Inconvenient Facts (as Ignored by the 9-11 Commission) **UPDATED**

[Scroll down for updated analysis*]

Andrew McCarthy has an excellent article today in the National Review Online on , and how the 9-11 Commission utterly failed in its investigation. In fact, this article outlines what certainly appears to be a cover-up of the findings of Able Danger by the 9-11 commission.

Here is an especially pointed excerpt:

Consider for a moment the dimensions of this omission by reference to another current controversy. The Bush administration is being accused by Democrats of lying about intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. One of the key allegations involves the purported suppression of State Department dissent from the conclusion that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

But the objections lodged by State's intelligence shop were not suppressed. They are set forth in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, although relegated to the footnotes. Essentially, the administration is said by Democrats to have "lied" because, even though it did acknowledge the dissenting information, it purportedly minimized the dissent's significance.

The 9/11 Commission, by contrast, did not do even that with Able Danger. It didn't report the dissent at all. Not in the text, not in the footnotes, not anywhere. It tried, Pravda-like, to erase completely from historical memory any version of events but its own.

Think about that. The commission's mandate was to conduct a thorough investigation and tell us exactly what it found. Its job was not to produce a carefully marketed narrative so media-starved commissioners would have a best-selling launch-pad from which to score sugary interviews. This panel was not supposed to have a vested interest in a single, definitive, air-brushed version of events. It was supposed to give us the facts as it found them, including on disputed issues it could not resolve. Why on earth did it decide to kill Able Danger?
*Many questions remain remain unanswered in the Able Danger story, as Mr. McCarthy so elequently writes in his column. The main issue seems to be the potential coverup by the 9-11 Commission and its staff over the allegations made by the Able Danger operation. Many questioned the inclusion of Jamie Gorelick as a commissioner, given that she was the author of the infamous "wall" between domestic and international intelligence gathering and analysis operations.

A thorough investigation of the Able Danger project and its findings must be conducted commencing immediately, as well as a thorough investigation of the 9-11 commission and staff to determine if they acted properly, especially given the clear conflict of interest of at least one commissioner, and lat least part of the commission staff. The safety of our country and our children may be at stake.


Previous posts:

Able Danger and the 9-11 Commission
Able Danger: A Third Source Corroborates Initial Claims
Able Danger Getting Uglier by the Day
Able Danger: Were the 9/11 Hijackers Known to the US Government As Early As 1999? ***UPDATE***



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