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August 11, 2005

End of the 9/11 Commission?

The work began by the Jersey Girls ended at 7:10 p.m. this evening, when the Associated Press confirmed, according to John Podhoretz, that the "9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts. And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta."

This is bad for the Commission, and especially for Commission member Jamie Gorelick:

This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.

If the September 11 Commission wants to maintain its credibility, it will demote Gorelick from commission member to commission witness. I'm not blaming her for September 11 - only those who carried out the attack are responsible for the atrocities. It's clear, though, that Gorelick had a very large role to play in the formulation of policies that helped Mohammed Atta and his co-conspirators go unnoticed by law enforcement and for that reason, she should not be part of the group studying what went wrong.

If this is reported fairly (which, in this media climate, is never a guarantee) it will be a big story. If not, I think it will still be a big story - the MSM has competition these days, after all.

Phinn, a poster to Ace's site, breaks the story down in a way that makes it understandable:

A. A SOCOM unit, run by Gen. Shelton himself, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, identifies Atta and the Brooklyn cell as a threat as early as 1999. (It doesn't hurt that the unit has a cool sounding name, too.)

B. A year before 9/11, they recommend that that the FBI close down the cell. (Who was president a year before 9/11 again?)

C. DOD lawyers (lawyers!) overrule this recommendation, and refuse to allow the Able Danger guys to pass this information on to the FBI, because Atta has a legal immigration status, and they are worried about political fallout after Waco. They put Post-It notes over Atta's face so that all reference to him is kept secret (a nice touch, dont' you think?).

D. The 9/11 Commission chose to omit any reference to it or investigate. This is inexcusible, regardless of how accurate the story is. It clearly deserves to be addressed and the facts explored, to be proved or disproved.

Thanks to Ace, who doesn't know I steal stuff like this from his site.

The left is going to go batcrap crazy over this, and claim Republicans are just trying to 'shift blame' for September 11 from Chimpy McBushitler and the eeeeeevil Karl Rove President Bush to President Clinton. But if the facts of the story are correct, then it calls the Clinton administration's policies and the September 11 Commission's judgment into question.

Did the commission play partisan games to protect the Clintons, or were they just so tied to their narrative of September 11 that they were unwilling to look at other facts? Neither question reflects well on the Commission and its members.

Posted by slublog at August 11, 2005 09:41 PM

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