Sept. 11 panel probes reports on hijacker IDs

WASHINGTON – Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission are investigating allegations from a GOP congressman that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had been identified as a potential threat by a highly classified Defense Department program a year or more before the attacks occurred.

Commission officials confirmed a report in Thursday’s New York Times that two staff members interviewed a uniformed military officer, who claimed in July 2004 that a secret program called “Able Danger” had identified Atta as a potential terrorist threat in 1999 or early 2000.

Panel investigators viewed the claim as unlikely in part because Atta was not recruited as an al-Qaida operative until a trip to Afghanistan in 2000 and did not enter the United States until June of that year, officials said.

The interview of the military officer is among several related allegations made by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., vice chairman of the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, who has in recent weeks sought to publicize the claims of a former defense intelligence official about the Able Danger program.

The former intelligence official – according to interviews with Government Security News and other news organizations – has offered a version of events that is similar to, but more expansive than, the claims made by the military officer. The former intelligence official has said that he briefed Sept. 11 commission staffers on the Able Danger program during a trip in South Asia in October 2003.

The official said he told commission staffers during the trip that the program had identified Atta and three other future hijackers as part of an al-Qaida cell located in Brooklyn, N.Y., according to Weldon and news reports. The official and Weldon have also said Pentagon lawyers blocked sharing of the information on the suspected cell with the FBI or other U.S. agencies.

Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said this week that none of the four commission staffers who were present during the Asia trip briefing recall any mention of Atta or a terrorist cell. Felzenberg said the 2003 briefing focused generally on Able Danger, which officials have said relied heavily on computerized analysis of public data.

“The name ‘Atta’ or a terrorist cell would have gone to the top of the radar screen if it had been mentioned,” he said.

Felzenberg declined to comment Thursday on the July 2004 interview with the military officer, citing an ongoing commission investigation of the allegations that could be completed as early as today.

Weldon, who has championed the use of data mining as a valuable intelligence tool, first alleged that the Pentagon had identified Atta before the hijackings in a little-noticed speech on the House floor in June. He wrote in a letter to the Sept. 11 panel on Wednesday that its failure to fully investigate the claims “brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose.”

Weldon recently published a book alleging that Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim country, is hiding Osama bin Laden, is preparing terrorist attacks against the United States and is the chief sponsor of the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq. Many of the allegations are based on information from a source who has been discounted by the CIA as a fabricator.