The phone call the negligent 9-11 Commission staff should have made
We have said that the 9-11 Commission staff was negligent in not following up on Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer’s information on Atta and Able Danger, when doing so required only one phone call. Here’s what they would have learned in July 2004, if they had had the initiative to spend two minutes doing so, via the NYT, which conducted:
an interview on Monday with a former employee of a defense contractor who said he had helped create a chart in 2000 for the intelligence program that included Mr. Atta’s photograph and name.
The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that Mr. Atta’s name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart until last year and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs.
In its final report last year, the Sept. 11 commission said that American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks.
The 9-11 Commission was made aware of Mr. Smith no later than July 2004, as we have previously reported, from their second meeting with Lt. Colonel Shaffer (the following is from the Commission’s own press release):
The crack staff of the 9-11 Commission couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and call Smith, the apparent “DOD contractor” — instead they did nothing, and made up a bunch of reasons why they did nothing for their CYA press release. Meanwhile, three people have now gone on the record all with the same Atta/Able Danger story. So now we have Shaffer, Captain Scott Philpott, and defense contractor James D. Smith all telling us the same information about Atta and Able Danger. And yet we have the Pentagon continuing to issue squirrelly non-denial denials, this via AFP, via TKS:
A Pentagon review has so far found no evidence that a secret intelligence operation identified Mohammad Atta as a member of a US-based Al-Qaeda cell before the September 11, 2001 attacks, a spokesman said.
What level of confidence do you have that such charts or memos that are found by the Commission staff or the Pentagon will live to see the light of day. No evidence. Bah.