"A classified military intelligence unit called 'Able Danger' identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in New York City."
At first, the commission denied that it knew anything about "Able Danger": "The Sept. 11 Commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," insisted Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair. "Had we learned of it, obviously, it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
But within 48 hours this version was non-operative. As the AP subsequently reported: "The Sept. 11 Commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday."
So, far from being a "major focus" that they just happened to miss -- coulda happened to anyone -- it turns out they knew about it but "decided not to include" it.
How'd that happen? Well, as Felzenberg says so disarmingly, "this information was not meshing with the other information.'' As a glimpse into the mindset of the commission, that's astonishing. Sept. 11 happened, in part, because the various federal bureaucracies involved were unable to process information that didn't "mesh" with conventional wisdom. Now we find that the official commission intended to identify those problems and ensure they don't recur is, in fact, guilty of the very same fatal flaw. The new information didn't "mesh" with the old information, so they disregarded it.
Sept. 11 was a total government fiasco: CIA, FBI, INS, FAA, all the hot shot acronyms failed spectacularly. But appoint an official commission and let them issue an official report and suddenly everyone says, oh, well, this is the official version of 9/11; if they say something didn't happen, it can't possibly have happened.
Readers may recall that I never cared for the commission. There were too many showboating partisan hacks -- Richard ben Veniste, Bob Kerrey -- who seemed more interested in playing to the rhythms of election season. There was at least one person with an outrageous conflict of interest: Clinton Justice Department honcho Jamie Gorelick, who shouldn't have been on the commission but instead a key witness appearing in front of it. And there were far too many areas where the members appeared to be interested only in facts that supported a predetermined outcome.
Maybe we need a 9/11 Commission Commission to investigate the 9/11 Commission. A body intended to reassure Americans that the lessons of that terrible day had been learned instead engaged in what at best was transparent politicking and collusion in posterior-covering and at worst was something a whole lot darker and more disturbing.
These investigative commissions are mostly about public relations and not fact finding. It’s very rare that real independent minded people get on these commissions. Instead it’s a bunch of insiders that agree to do the things necessary to present enough information so that the problem will go away. I thought the 911 commission was nonsense when I saw the Commission members grilling witnesses while a studio audience applauded the gotcha lines. How is truth every going to be found in that setting?
Richard Feynman has a great story in one of his books about appearing on the Challenger Commission and how he would get into trouble for field investigation while the chairman wanted to sit in a conference room and banter. Feynman is famous for demonstrating the tile problem with a cup of ice water, but as he tells in the story it was hardly a dramatic moment at the time. After he finished the demo, without a gasp or a hooray, they moved onto the next commission member. History has treated it as a pivotal moment, especially since he was proved correct, but it was ignored by commission members at the time that were more interested in the cameras and posturing. Feynman couldn't get his overall analysis of the problems with NASA culture into the official report, because they were deemed too controversial. His thoughts wound up as an appendix that he includes in the same book.
Today we think of Feynman when we think of that commission, and therefore, those commissions do all they can to eliminate independent minded people like him. For as bad as the press may be in their leftward leanings, at least their version of events can be countered by a conservative one somewhere else. The problem with official government findings is that we’re too ready to believe them and move on and that’s why they exist. Hopefully, stories like this will discredit the commission enough that it will cease being accepted as the official story.
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