Panel to consider pre-9/11 intelligence

WASHINGTON – It’s a tale of intrigue that percolated for much of the summer: A congressman claims the Pentagon squelched crucial information about the man who became the lead 9/11 terrorist, then destroyed related documents while the 9/11 Commission turned a blind eye.

The trouble is that neither Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., nor those who support his claims have been able to document their central allegation: that a secret Pentagon program dubbed Able Danger turned up valuable information on al-Qaida ringleader Mohammed Atta more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.

Inquiries into the validity of the charges have raised more questions than they have answered.

This morning, the allegations, a hot topic of discussion on cable television and the Internet over the past six weeks, will get their most prominent airing to date when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds the first public hearing on the matter. The session will examine, among other things, whether the Pentagon failed to give the FBI information about Atta that it allegedly turned up as early as 1999.

Able Danger, a classified program developed by the Defense Department in 1998, used high-powered computers to tap public sources of information and classified records – a process known as data mining – in an effort to discover links among potential al-Qaida operatives.

Questions that have fueled the suspicions of those who think the government has something to hide include:

“What information did the Pentagon develop about al-Qaida prior to 9/11? Did Pentagon lawyers block military officers who worked on the Able Danger project from sharing information about Atta with the FBI, as one of the officers claims?

“What happened to documents that allegedly included Atta’s name, which some former Pentagon officials who worked on the Able Danger project insist that they saw?

“Did former officers from the Able Danger project give the 9/11 Commission staff credible evidence that the Pentagon had identified Atta well in advance of the 2001 attacks, and did the 9/11 Commission fail to take that evidence seriously enough?

“Did the Pentagon give the 9/11 Commission every document it had on Able Danger, or was key information destroyed, including documents that identified Atta?

Some intelligence professionals believe that few, if any, of these allegations will be resolved at today’s hearing.

“I’ve got a whole cadre of people,” Weldon said. “I will prove on the record with all the people who worked on Able Danger” that the program developed early information about Atta’s link to al-Qaida, that Pentagon lawyers prevented Able Danger staffers from passing that information to the FBI, and that the 9/11 Commission failed to follow up on these allegations.

Weldon has charged that the Pentagon destroyed the documents that would prove his allegations. The Pentagon said any destruction of Able Danger documents was in accordance with federal regulations.