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THE TALK SHOW AMERICAN: 9/11 panel hammered for ignoring Atta intel

Thursday, August 11, 2005

9/11 panel hammered for ignoring Atta intel

Staff dismissed info about ID'ing of hijackers, ex-Bill Clinton aide Jamie Gorelick fingered

Online commentators are taking aim at the 9/11 commission for its failure to include in its report that intelligence officials reportedly ID'd hijack ringleader Mohamed Atta as part of an al-Qaida cell in the U.S. over a year before the September 11 tragedy, saying the panel was acting politically instead of factually.

One commentator specifically points his finger at former Clinton staffer Jamie Gorelick, a member of the panel who has been accused in the past of acting to protect her ex-boss from any political fallout of the commission's work.

"� [W]hy did [the commission] ignore the Able Danger operation in their deliberations?" asked Captain's Quarters blogger Ed Morrissey, as highlighted by columnist Michelle Malkin. "It would emphasize that the problem was not primarily operational, as the commission made it seem, but primarily political � and that the biggest problem was the enforced separation between law enforcement and intelligence operations upon which the Clinton Department of Justice insisted. The hatchet person for that policy sat on the Commission itself: Jamie S. Gorelick."

Members of the commission now are calling for a review of the matter, saying they knew nothing about a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identifying Atta and three of his accomplices in 1999. The information was shared publicly this week by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa. vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

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