It was in October of 2003 that Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives and destroyed some. Mr. Berger allegedly was studying documents in the archives to help prepare Clinton officials to testify before the September 11 Commission. Was he removing references to Able Danger? Someone should ask him before he is sentenced next month.
After having first denied that staff had been briefed on Able Danger, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said no reference was made to it in the final report because "it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks," the AP reported.
The only dispute over Atta's whereabouts is whether he was in Prague on April 9, 2001, to meet with Samir al Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer.
Czech intelligence insists he was. Able Danger, apparently, had information supporting the Czechs.
The CIA, and the September 11 Commission, say Atta wasn't in Prague April 9, because his cell phone was used in Florida that day. But there is no evidence of who used the phone. Atta could have lent it to a confederate. (It wouldn't have worked in Europe anyway.)
But acknowledging that possibility would leave open the likelihood that Saddam's regime was involved in, or at least had foreknowledge of, the
September 11 attacks. And that would have been as uncomfortable for Democrats as the revelation that September 11 could have been prevented if it hadn't been for the Clinton administration's wall of separation.
The September 11 Commission wrote history as it wanted it to be, not as it was. The real history of what happened that terrible September day has yet to be written. |