Atta was identified in the U.S. over a year before the attack

In summer 2000 a secret military intelligence unit identified Mohammad Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers as likely Al Qaeda agents operating in the United States. According to an article in the August 9 New York Times, the unit did not pass this information to the FBI, because, even though they were not forbidden by the Intelligence/Law enforcement “Wall” erected by the Clinton administration to share such information about visa holders as distinct from green card holders, they nevertheless chose to act within the spirit of the Wall, and give mere visa holders the same protection from scrutiny as the Wall gave to green card holders.

Try to take this in. This intelligence unit had identified by name four individuals in the U.S. whom they suspected of being Al Qaeda agents, but out of an excessive adherence to the spirit of the ultra liberal regulations of the Clinton Justice Department which forbade intelligence agencies from sharing information about suspected criminals with law enforcement agencies (supposedly because this would somehow endanger the criminals’ rights?), they held onto this information. Human beings are sheep. And human beings living in modern liberal bureaucratic states are ultra-sheep.

Not only that, but Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, who learned about the episode shortly after the 9/11 attack, told then deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley about it in October 2001. Weldon now says he was surprised that the information was not included in the 9/11 Commission report.

It’s shocking but not surprising. The chief function of the 9/11 Commission was not to get at the truth of how and why the U.S. government had failed to stop the 9/11 attack, but rather, as I’ve written, to cover up that truth, so as, first, to protect government leaders from being held to account for their (at best) negligent failure to defend this country, and, second, to protect the prevailing liberal orthodoxy that those leaders were enforcing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 09, 2005 04:06 PM | Send