The "policy guidance" that kept intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement officials from exchanging information had been promulgated in 1995 by Jamie Gorelick, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and later a member of the Sept. 11 Commission. Would passing the intelligence on the Atta cell to the FBI have prevented the Sept. 11 attack?
Congressman Curt Weldon, R-Pa., thinks so. After learning of the Able Danger unit, he said, 'If we had taken out that cell, Sept. 11 would not have occurred, and certainly, taking out these three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America."
Whether the Congressman is correct, we will never know. But we do know that when the Sept. 11 Commission was holding its hearings and preparing its report -- they did not include the Able Danger information. Last week, a commission spokesman at first denied knowing anything about Able Danger and later the chairman and vice-chairman of the commission, Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton, said it was not "historically significant."
Now, they claim that the commission didn't receive enough information on the Able Danger unit from the Pentagon. But Lt. Col. Shaffer says that in 2003, while in Afghanistan, he told commission staff members about efforts to pass the Atta cell information to the FBI. He also told me that he offered to brief the commission more fully in January 2004 after he had returned to the U.S. but that "the offer was declined."
Unfortunately for the Sept. 11 Commission, Able Danger isn't the only embarrassing recent revelation. Newly declassified documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act show that in the summer of 1996, intelligence analysts at the State Department warned the Clinton administration that Osama bin Laden's "prolonged stay in Afghanistan -- where hundreds of 'Arab mujahidin' receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate -- could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum." A year earlier the Clinton administration rejected a Sudanese offer to have bin Laden detained.
And then there is the strange case of Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger -- who earlier this year plead guilty to removing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives pertaining to terror threats on U.S. soil. The crimes were committed as Mr. Berger was preparing to testify before the Sept. 11 Commission.
Did the Sept. 11 Commission choose not to hear from the Able Danger officers because Jamie Gorelick was a member of the body? Were the commissioners aware of the State Department's 1996 warnings on Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan? Were copies of the documents shredded by Sandy Berger ever placed before the commission?
All of these questions need to be answered for the Sept. 11 Commission to be considered as something other than a whitewash for the Clinton administration. Most importantly -- has the Bush administration solved the "communications problems" evident in the Able Danger case? If not, then we have learned nothing from the murders of Sept. 11.