Pentagon seems to have withheld information from 9/11 panel

[mburbank]

9/11 Panel Members Ask Congress to Learn if Pentagon Withheld Files on Hijackers in 2000
By Philip Shenon and Douglas Jehl
The New York Times

Wednesday 10 August 2005l

Washington - Members of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terror attacks called on Congress to determine whether the Pentagon withheld intelligence information showing that a secret American military unit had identified Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as potential threats more than a year before the attacks.

The former commission members said the information, if true, could rewrite an important chapter of the history of the intelligence failures before Sept. 11, 2001.

"I think this is a big deal," said John F. Lehman, a Republican member of the commission who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration. "The issue is whether there was in fact surveillance before 9/11 of Atta and, if so, why weren't we told about it? Who made the decision not to brief the commission's staff or the commissioners?"

Mr. Lehman and other commissioners said that because the panel had been formally disbanded for a year, the investigation would need to be taken up by Congress, possibly by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

"If this is true, somebody should be looking into it," said Thomas H. Kean, the commission chairman and a former Republican governor of New Jersey.

Detailed accounts about the findings of the secret operation, known as Able Danger, were offered this week by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and by a former defense intelligence official.

Their comments are the first assertion by current or former officials that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who was the lead hijacker, had been identified as a potential terrorist before the attacks.

Spokesmen for the commission members said this week that although the staff was informed by the Pentagon in late 2003 about the existence of a so-called data-mining operation called Able Danger, the panel was never told that it had identified Mr. Atta and the others as threats.

[Zero Signal]

I think we will be finding things out like this for the next 10 years, unfortunately.

[mburbank]

Depends on who are next president is. Buckets of info on the Reagan adminsitration were supposed to be unsealed and one of the very first executive acts W took upon attaining the presidency was to extend the seals.