The Commission on "Connecting the Dots" Didn't

The more we learn about the 9-11 Commission and its failure to pursue evidence that didn't fit its preconceived notions, the more it looks as though the Commission was really just another means to "get Bush", rather than be the distiller of fact it was intended to be. That some of the 9-11 hijackers were identified as possible "terrorists" as much as two years before they carried out their carnage speaks well for certain aspects of intelligence gathering at the time. However, the Clinton Administration's fanatical desire to treat terrorism as a legal matter may be the underlying reason over 3,000 died on our shores four years ago. That Jamie Gorelick -- the Assistant Attorney General who devised the "wall of separation" which kept intelligence gatherers from sharing information with law enforcement and vice-versa -- was allowed to be a member of the Commission and not a key witness in front of it, still smells like a festering swamp.

Democrats were allowed to choose half of the Commission's members, as were the Republicans. But the question that is begging to be answered is this: who suggested Gorelick for the Commission? Why not someone not so closely aligned with the previous administration's efforts to deal with terrorism?

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon went public with information that a defense intelligence unit had identified Atta and other future hijackers months before 9-11. Weldon said a year prior to the attacks on New York and Washington, the intelligence unit recommended the information be given to the FBI so Atta's terrorist cell could be neutralized before it could inflict serious harm. He said lawyers for the Department of Defense said the intelligence couldn't be shared because Atta and his associates were "in the country legally". Weldon said he was told the 9-11 Commission had been briefed on two occasions of the information collected by the intelligence group known as "Able Danger".

Wednesday, panel members and staff down-played the "Able Danger" report, saying they had never been told of it. Weldon wrote to Commission co-chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean:

"The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9/11 commission staff that the commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger. The 9/11 commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter.

"The commission's refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose."

After denying it, Commission mouthpieces then said they had been aware of the information, but they discarded it because it didn't fit with the findings in their report! Confirmation the Commission was not the non-partisan finder of truth which it was supposed to be.

What, in fact, was the reason for leaving out this important piece of information? Protecting Gorelick? Protecting Clinton? Which brings up another point? Could the information about Able Danger's findings have been in those papers stolen from the National Archives by Sandy Burglar (er...uh...) Berger? Hmmm?

UPDATE: (Thursday, 8/11/05 at 11:45pm) The NY Times in Friday's edition confirms this bizarre failure of the Commission to "connect" its own dots!