Pentagon suspicious of Atta prior to 9/11

[echarcha]

I had mentioned about Able Danger in some thread. Now read this.

Pentagon suspicious of Atta prior to 9/11



FBI not alerted to what Able Danger learned in 2000
JOHN CREWDSON AND ANDREW ZAJAC
Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - Four years after the nation's deadliest terror attack, evidence is accumulating that a super-secret Pentagon intelligence unit identified the organizer of the Sept. 11 hijackings, Mohamed Atta, as an al-Qaida operative months before he entered the United States.

The many investigations of Sept. 11, 2001, have turned up a half-dozen instances in which government agencies possessed information that might have led investigators to some part of the terrorist plot, although in most cases not in time to stop it.

But none of those leads likely would have taken them directly to Atta, the Egyptian architecture student who moved to the United States from Germany to take flying lessons and later served as al-Qaida's U.S. field commander for the attacks.

Had the FBI been alerted to what the Pentagon purportedly knew in early 2000, Atta's name could have been placed on a list that would have tagged him as someone to be watched the moment he stepped off a plane in Newark, N.J., in June of that year.

Physical and electronic surveillance of Atta, who lived openly in Florida for more than a year, and who acquired a driver's license and even an FAA pilot's license in his true name, might well have made it possible for the FBI to expose the Sept. 11 plot before the fact.

Atta is presumed to have been at the controls of American Airlines Flight 11 when it struck the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The FBI has reviewed the voluminous records of its extensive Sept. 11 investigation and can find no mention of Atta before Sept. 11, a senior FBI official said. If the Pentagon knew about Atta in 2000 and failed to tell the FBI, the official said, "It could be a problem."

Anthony Shaffer, a civilian Pentagon employee, says he was asked in the summer of 2000 by a Navy captain, Scott J. Phillpott, to arrange a meeting between the FBI and representatives of the Pentagon intelligence program, code-named Able Danger.

But he said the meeting was canceled after Pentagon lawyers concluded that information on suspected al-Qaida operatives with ties to the United States might violate Pentagon prohibitions on retaining information on "U.S. persons," a term that includes U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens.

The Washington-based FBI agent who served as Shaffer's liaison has recalled, in interviews with her superiors, that Shaffer told her his group had unearthed important information on suspected al-Qaida operatives with links to the United States, but without mentioning Atta's name.

When Shaffer, who is also a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, asked to whom at the FBI that information should be communicated, the agent gave him the name and phone number of an official at FBI headquarters, according to the senior FBI official.

Shaffer explained in a telephone interview that although Able Danger never had knowledge of Atta's whereabouts, it had linked him and several other al-Qaida suspects to an Egyptian terrorist, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who had been linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later was convicted for conspiring to attack the United States. Atta arrived in the United States some seven years after that bombing. But Shaffer and his attorney, Mark Zaid, emphasize that Able Danger never knew where Atta was, only that he was connected to Abdel-Rahman and al-Qaida.

"Not to say they were physically here, but the data led us to believe there was some activity related to the original World Trade Center bombing that these guys were somehow affiliated with," Shaffer said.

Asked by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at a hearing last week whether Atta, who lived for 15 months in Florida under a temporary student visa, was a "U.S. person," a senior Pentagon official answered, "No, he was not."

The official, William Dugan, was asked why the Pentagon had not simply given the Able Danger data to the FBI.

"We're a lot smarter now than we were in 1999 and 2000," replied Dugan, who testified that the Pentagon instead destroyed the huge volume of material gathered by Able Danger, which was disbanded in late 2000.

Erik Kleinsmith, a former Army major who worked with Able Danger, testified at the hearing that he continued to wonder whether, if Able Danger "had not been shut down, (whether) we would have been able to assist the United States in some way" to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.

Zaid, who also represents James D. Smith, a private contractor employed by the Pentagon to work on Able Danger, said that until last summer Smith had kept on his office wall a copy of a chart of al-Qaida suspects, produced more than a year before Sept. 11, that contained Atta's name and photograph.

Link

[Agastya]

Is America or UK wiser today? 1000s of muslims are posting articles on websites and ranting in chatrooms asking for destruction of USA. Is FBI trailing all of them? what if some of them are found involved in next mega attack. Shall we say "FBI didnt react though abu-al-harami had given enough hints of his intentions "

Still many petrodollar funded groups are shouting that frisking members of a targeted minority (they know that 'Muslims' no longer get sympathy of anybody so they have started using concoted terms) in west is racism .

I have an interesting scenario --Suppose tomorrow Indian Parliamant is really blown up and we find that Geelani was involved in second plot too (both have very high probability) and comman man is shokced to realise that plotter has shouted his intentions in front of camera in courtroom but still we kept him paying from taxpayers money until he executed his plot. What will bad-pussy arundhati roy say when asked to react ?
any guess?