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Needed: a 9/11 Commission Commission
The 9/11 Commission’s job was to investigate the government’s failure to gather and evaluate information that would have enabled it to stop the 9/11 hijackers. In 2000 a secret military intelligence group called Able Danger identified Muhammad Atta and two others as likely Al Qaeda agents present in this country. Able Danger did not pass this intelligence to the FBI, because of their excessive, PC-driven obedience to the “Wall” that the Clinton administration had erected between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. [Correction: as discussed in the New York Post, the Able Danger group tried repeatedly to meet with FBI agents, but were stopped each time by Pentagon lawyers concerned about the “Wall.”] The purpose of the “Wall,” according to its author, Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, was to avoid the possible appearance of impropriety in the event that evidence gathered by means of national-security wire-tapping powers ended up being used in ordinary criminal cases. A further purpose of the “Wall” was undoubtedly to avoid the appearance of being too tough on Muslims, since Muslims would overwhelmingly be the ones targeted by terrorist investigations; and President Clinton in the 1990s, and presidential candidate Bush in 2000, went to extraordinary lengths to placate Muslim constituents on this score. A further twist is that the “Wall” was meant to prevent intelligence being passed to law enforcement agencies concerning citizens and legal immigrants; but the Able Danger crew did even more than the “Wall” required, refusing to tell the F.B.I. about Atta and his co-fiends even though they were only visitors to the U.S. Now, such a gross failure to transmit vitally important information is exactly the kind of information that the Commission was supposed to be investigating, right? Yet the Commission did not include the Able Danger episode in its final report. Furthermore, in the past week, the Commission initially denied that it had received any information on Able Danger, until Rep. Curt Weldon showed that the Commission had been presented with this information on two occasions. Thus the Commission perfectly replicated the very behaviors it was supposed to be investigating. The people in Able Danger had important information that they should have given to the FBI, but they declined to do so. The 9/11 Commission had important information about the Able Danger episode that they should have published and discussed in their final report, but they declined to do so. In the first instance, part of the underlying motive was (this is at least a reasonable inference) the politically correct desire to avoid being perceived as singling out Muslims; in the second instance, the motive was the politically correct desire to cover up the fact that the politically correct protection of Muslims allowed the 9/11 attack to occur. In this connection, it should also be remembered that the Commission assiduously avoided any discussion of the role that Clinton/Bush anti-racial-profiling policies played in paralyzing law enforcement in the period leading up to 9/11.
If the fact that the author of the “Wall,” Jamie Gorelick, was a member of the Commission did not sufficiently demonstrate that the Commission was part of the problem it was investigating, perhaps the Able Danger story will drive the point home. But probably not, because, in the Age of Inclusion, all critical thought has ceased. Email entry |