 A secret US military intelligence team identified the September 11 hijack leader Mohammed Atta and three of his accomplices as probable al-Qa'eda terrorists a year before the attacks.
| I'm not real confident about the veracity of this story, for what the story's worth. It sounds like somebody's being fed a line of bull... |
But its suspicions were never shared with the FBI because the military was nervous about breaking restrictions on spying on US territory imposed after the Watergate scandal.
| I think this guy's seen one too many movies where rogue elements within the government set up their own illegal operations and unfairly target the nice-looking young guy who doesn't know what's going on but they do terrible things and that cheeses him off so that he turns into a killing machine and many car chases and explosions follow. |
| But he and the bottle blonde always figure it out at the end ... |
Until yesterday it was believed that Atta was never identified as a threat before leading the 19-man suicide squads which hit New York and Washington in 2001. However, according to an intelligence official, a Pentagon team, Able Danger, named Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi as members of an al-Qa'eda squad which it dubbed the "Brooklyn cell" a year earlier.
| "Able Danger"? Oh, yes. I recall it well. It was a sub-project within "Frightening Claw." |
"We knew these were bad guys and we wanted to do something about them," the intelligence officer told the New York Times.
| "We tried to enlist the A-Team, but their car blew up. Again." |
The officer took the information to the Special Operations command headquarters in Florida with a recommendation that it be passed to the FBI. It was not.
| "Bob, I've got a report here from some operation called 'Able Danger.' Can I use your shredder?" |
Able Danger, which used computers to throw up links in information from unclassified sources, had another purpose. "Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision-makers options for taking out al-Qa'eda targets," the officer said.
| Maybe I should just rename Rantburg as "Able Danger" and submit a budget request for next fiscal year... |
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