September 11 panel received no Pentagon data on key hijacker: ex-chairman
AFP
Date: 08-21-05
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The panel investigating the September 11 attacks in the United States was not given details of a Pentagon program that allegedly marked suspected ringleader Mohammed Atta as an Al-Qaeda member a year before the attacks, the commission's ex-chairman said.
The top secret Pentagon monitoring program, codenamed "Able Danger", allegedly tagged Atta, an Egyptian citizen, and three other future September 11 hijackers in mid-2000 as Al-Qaeda members.
Time Magazine Sunday quoted former September 11 commission chairman Thomas Kean as saying the Pentagon's information was never given to the panel during its deliberations.
"I'm offended because people say, 'Well, why didn't you do anything?'" Kean told Time, adding: "This information was not given to us."
The commission has been accused in recent weeks of failing to heed warnings from military officers that its report on the attacks would be incomplete without mention of Able Danger.
Critics of the panel, led by Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, have accused it of irresponsibility -- refusing to acknowledge the importance of the Able Danger project, and feigning ignorance of the program's conclusions.
In the Time interview, Kean also said the White House should confirm whether, immediately after the attacks, Weldon handed then Deputy National Security Advisor Steven Hadley a 1999 Pentagon chart fingering Atta as a member of Al-Qaeda.
The US Defense Department said August 10 that it had provided the September 11 commission with information on its intelligence operation, but a spokesman said at the time that it remained uncertain what level of detail was provided.
The panel investigated the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Atta was one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks and the likely pilot of the jet which slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, according to media reports.
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