Thursday, August 18, 2005

Media Burying Able Danger Scandal

Early in 2001, a high ranking Justice Department official disseminated a memo creating a barrier between those agencies charged with investigating criminals and those searching for foreign intelligence. The goal was to protect the civil liberties of foreign born residents, whether they were associated with terrorism or not. A special forces operation uncovered a terrorist cell and thought it appropriate that the cell be taken out, but that non-legal barrier kept them from sharing that information with the FBI. Members of that terrorist cell, some of which were identified by name, were among the 19 hijackers that flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing approximately 3000 Americans and launching the United States into a war in Afghanistan. That same high ranking Justice Department official then served on an 'independent' commission charged with an investigation of the terrorist attacks on America. More specifically, they were supposed to find out what went wrong in the defense of the country. That commission omitted any reference to the special forces operation which could have saved America from the worst foreign attack on its home soil in 185 years.

The above paragraph is not true. If it were, the main stream media would be climbing all over itself to destroy President Bush. A true scandal, the likes of which have not been seen since Karl Rove…I mean the Watergate scandal, would have unfolded. Shame on the partisan American press for burying perhaps the nastiest scandal in American history on the back pages of their publications. That’s what happens when the 'wrong' president is in office at the time of the offense.

Had the Bush administration been in office, we would have full fledged media warfare on our hands. As it stands, we have nothing but some frustrated ‘right wing’ bloggers moaning about the affair.

Pentagon Investigates Able Danger Work

The Sept. 11 commission failed to pursue information that a secret military unit had identified two cells involved in the 2001 terrorist strikes more than a year before the attacks, an Army intelligence officer contends.

I realize that the readers on this site are fairly well informed and already know the story. The story itself is maddening. The lack of attention it is receiving is depressing.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said that in January 2004, the commission declined to take up his offer of assistance.

"I just walked away shocked that they would kind of change their mind, but I figured someone with equal or better knowledge ... probably came and talked to them, so they must've taken care of it,"

Negative Colonel. It didn’t fit the template. Jamie Gorelick was on that panel. Whether that has anything to do with this or not no longer matters. The Commission was tainted. It was a colossal waste of taxpayer funding.

A statement Friday by former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said the commission did not obtain enough information on the operation to consider it historically significant.

I smell a cover-up. Where are Woodward and Bernstien when you need them!

Shaffer said Able Danger identified Atta and three other Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000. But, he said, military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI out of concerns about the legality of gathering and sharing information on people in the U.S.

And that is all that anyone really needs to know. We have endured four full years of Democrats blaming Bush for 9/11. We already knew that Clinton let Osama go. We now know that he and his subordinates let Atta and the gang escape as well. Anyone who still doesn’t believe that Democrats make us weaker is living in a dream world.

Where are you MSM? We need you now.

.