Nearly four years, several investigations and realignments, and one in-the-books blue ribbon investigatory panel later, it seems that we may have known all about Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 conspirators a full year before the event.
Presumably, Congressman Weldon was having a beer with one of the members of the “Able Danger” team last week when he mentioned Mohammed Atta in passing…
“Mohammed Atta… Mohammed Atta..” the Pentagon operative must have mused. “Oh, wait, you mean Mohammed Atta. We were tracking a guy named that back in 2000! Thought he might be planning a terrorist attack here on US soil and thought about recommending that the FBI pick him up.”
“Really?” Rep. Weldon probably asked.
“Uh huh. Say, you don’t think he’s maybe related to the Mohammed Atta that took out the World Trade Center, do you?”
“Could be.”
“Hmm. Don’t know why I never made the connection before. Live and learn. Hey, the next round’s on me.”
Not plausible? How about this, then: We know that members of the 9/11 Commission met with “Able Danger” guys in Afghanistan in 2003, and that they claim to have told the commission about the whole “Atta” thing, and that the commissioners don’t remember the name ever being mentioned. So… we have Philip Zelikow, staff director of the 9/11 Commission, out in the hills near Tora Bora, gazing into the sunrise and talking with an Able Danger operative…
“Among other things, we knew that Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers were in the country and plotting, and we recommended-”
“Excuse me,” Zelikow might have interjected. “Did you say ‘Mohammed Atta?’”
“Yes.”
“The movie actor whose ability to create ‘everyman’ characters who are frequently suprised by their own hidden abilities has catapulted him to the upper echelons of Hollywood superstardom?”
“No,” the A.D. operative probably said. “I think that you’re thinking of ‘Matt Damon’ there.”
“Oh, oh yes,” Zelikow must have replied. “Matt Damon. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Silly of me. Anyway, what do you think the chances are that ‘Ocean’s 12′ is going to measure up to its stylish predecessor?”
No? Well then, what’s left? As a guy who was living in New York on 9/11, I feel entitled to at least one hearty “What the fuck!?” Is this incompetence, bizarre secrecy, understandable discretion, or simple ass-covering? And nearly four years, multiple investigations, and thousands of corpses later, should any of those explanations hold water? Or is this just one of Rep. Weldon’s famous practical jokes, just like the time he superglued Barney Frank’s tie to his desk while he was napping?
You can provide your own answers below. They’ll be at least as reliable as anything we’ve gotten from our government so far.
Fanny Roborat
15 comments
ice weasel
August 10, 2005 at 6:15 pm
1I can’t help but think this is some kind of setup for Patriot2 (fill in your own subtitle here). It just smacks of the, “see what we could have done…” that was used to justify the neutering of many of our constitutional rights.
Of course, it doesn’t surprise. I mean, if it were true, I wouldn’t blink.
The really sad part is, I’m willing bet some of my favorite stuff (I don’t have a lot of money) that things haven’t changed much, if at all. And this type of intelligence coordination is what we should be focused on, not wasting lives and billions in Iraq, not huffing and puffing over Iran.
But hey Adam, at least the DoD is putting on a cool Clint Black concert to “celebrate” 9/11.
You know, given what the criminals in DC have done in the last few years was it doesn’t surprise me in the least they want to celebrate september eleventh.
I think it would be more appropriate though if it was known as the “Freedom Walk To Support The Bush Administration Brought To You By Halliburton”.
Bob
August 10, 2005 at 6:42 pm
2One of the Able Danger team members explains:
“A few of us were reviewing a written report with our contact in the Pentagon. At one point he asked our team leader, ‘You keep mentioning M. Atta. What’s M. Atta?’ Our team leader, who’s a bit of a wag, said, ‘Beats me. What’s a matta with you?’ We laughed for a few minutes, then moved on to the next topic.”
“Later, of course, we all felt a little sheepish”
Pete IVDL
August 10, 2005 at 7:06 pm
3Let’s see. Incompetence? Yep. Bizarre secrecy? Nah, not important enough. Understandable discretion? Uh-uhh, not in congress! Arse covering (as opposed to “ass covering” which would appear to be a kind of donkey blanket)? Remember, ‘congress’ is an old latin term for ‘ass/arse covering’.
Should the explanations hold water? Yep. Do they? No waaay, duuude!
So, Congressmen were in the know re: Moh ‘the Blow’. (Sorry, terrible alliteration). But that’s OK now? How? It’s almost like there’s some sort of ‘liability limit’ in politics - if it happened more than a year ago, well, shucks, sue me! This is exactly the same kind of logic we discard in puberty. “Oh, dad, you know when the car caught fire in the snowstorm when I was six? Yeah, well, see, I was camping in the backseat at the time, toasting marshmallows, when…”
Pete IVDL
August 10, 2005 at 7:08 pm
4Damn, that sounded so good in my head. I think I’ll go back to Lurking School for a while. Blup. Blup. Blup…
Mojo
August 10, 2005 at 7:30 pm
5Let’s see. There is absolutely no documented evidence. It completely contradicts everything else that we know. It strains credibility. All the people who are claiming it’s real are Republicans. And it just happens to claim that the most critical error leading to 9/11 occurred during President Clinton’s term of office. Surely it must be true.
Auros
August 10, 2005 at 7:58 pm
6Eric Umansky has cast some pretty serious doubts on Weldon’s credibility. The summary is:
[W]hat we have in the NYT are allegations by a congressman known to make wildly dubious claims, and one former defense official who backs up the congressman but for some reason declines to put his good name to the … facts. On the other side, you have—as the Times mentions up high but only details in, oh, the 29th paragraph—the 9/11 commission insisting that they did look into the program and found nothing.
Auros
August 10, 2005 at 8:01 pm
7I suppose the only thing left is to ask Judith Miller — if she finds the Able Danger story credible, we can conclude with near-certainty that it’s all BS.
tim
August 10, 2005 at 10:17 pm
8Curt Weldon is my, er, Representative (note the capital R, and that’s only because the GOP runs this county and he’s the designated stooge. He certainly would never get the small r). As Auros notes, Curt’s so-called intelligence has been de-bunked before. Curt is basically a small-town volunteer fireman with serious delusions of grandeur. He thinks he has a direct pipeline to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Il, neither of whom would be able to pick Curt out if he were the only human being standing amid a room full of Lhasa Apsos. Curt’s other claim to fame is ramming through the funding of Boeing’s Osprey, the bizarrely unnecessary helo-plane which has only killed 30 people (so far) during testing. Keep doing us proud, Curt!
hedera
August 10, 2005 at 11:17 pm
9I don’t know, Pete, I was quite charmed by the mental vision of a small boy with a marshmallow on a stick, crouched over a campfire, in the back seat of a car, in a snowstorm…
It’s certainly more pleasant to contemplate than the subject this actual sequence is about. At this point, let’s be honest, we’ll never know. We can’t go back and run the tape again, and freeze the frame to get the details. Anyone who really knows anything (a) has already spoken and been ignored, or (b) is keeping mum for fear of reprisals. I generally assume that anything like the bungling that led up to 9/11 was caused by simple incompetence, because I’m convinced that the U.S. government is incapable of any kind of structured action at all, except in response to fiscal inducements from lobbyists.
Isaac b2
August 11, 2005 at 1:14 am
10:^o
Ken... Just Ken
August 11, 2005 at 1:08 pm
11Well, Mohammed Atta…
That’s like John Smith over there in Muslim land… how could we know which one it is?
cooper
August 11, 2005 at 9:58 pm
12I saw a movie back in the 1970’s with George C. Scott & Marlon Brando named “The Formula” about how, at the end of WWII, the Nazi’s had come up with a way of making an alternative fuel product for their vehicles that did not use fossil fuels at all. It was cheap and plentiful and would completely by-pass the oil cartels. At the end of the war, the formula for this product disappeared, along with the scientists that worked on the project. Scott was an investigative reporter who ferreted out the story, found a copy of the procedure, & immediately found that his life was in danger. The normal cloak & dagger, murder and mayhem ensued and as the evildoers were closing in & failure looked like the only option, Scott turns to a well respected red, white & blue American businessman (Brando) he knew, with all the proper political connections, who could get the formula to certain government officials, so that America & the world could benefit from this knowledge. Of course, what Brando did with the formula was to strike a bargain with the sheiks, to bury the formula for 30 years for $2 billion (1970) dollars. It took one phone call and about 15 seconds to seal the deal. A little paranoia fo’ ya.
I know this little rant is more appropriately submitted to the previous Blog about the energy bill, but I wrote a long, gut splittingly hilarious story last night and when I hit the reply button to submit, I was Hashcashed and the sum’bitch was gone, lost forever to the ether. So, I’m just going to put this wherever I damn well please. As a matter of fact, this spot right here looks GREAT!!!
cooper
August 11, 2005 at 10:01 pm
13BTW, Curt Weldon is whack! - But fun to have around, don’t you think?
Josh Narins
August 12, 2005 at 6:25 pm
14I swear I was thinking of leaving a comment yesterday, or the day before, when I first read this post, that blamed the whole thing on Sandy Berger smuggling those documents out of the national archives.
I simply couldn’t make it funny enough.
But that didn’t stop J Geraghty at National Review Online from saying the same thing… but he is pretending to be serious!
Murray
August 12, 2005 at 11:37 pm
15Bob,
Back in the 60’s I had a friend Rocky who went to a college in Frostbite Falls MN named Watts M.Atta U.