Able Danger adds twist to 9/11 9/11 Ringleader connected to secret Pe

[Guest guest]

r

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:21:03 -0400

Able Danger adds twist to 9/11 9/11 Ringleader connected to

secret Pe

 

 

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle & code=20050827 & article\

Id=867

 

Able Danger adds twist to 9/11

9/11 Ringleader connected to secret Pentagon operation

Dr. Daniele Ganser, GlobalResearch.ca

 

 

August 27, 2005

ISN Security Watch

 

 

We bring to the attention of our readers this important analysis of

Dr. Daniele Ganser of the Zurich Polytechnic published by the

International Relations and Security Network (ISN). Dr Ganser's study

is based on official US documents and reports. It identifies the role

of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and 3 other hijackers in a secret

Pentagon operation. It largely refutes the official US government

narrative as presented by the 9/11 Commission.

 

Four years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, the

revelation of a top secret Pentagon operation adds a new twist to a

story about which we still know very little.

 

For the past four years, we have been told by the administration of

George Bush and by the official 9/11 Commission report of Chairman

Thomas Kean and Executive Director Philip Zelikow that Egyptian

extremist Mohammed Atta was the key player in the 11 September 2001

terrorist attacks. Atta, according to the Kean report, was the

" tactical leader of the 9/11 plot " . He was the pilot who on that

dreadful morning flew the first plane, American Airlines 11, into the

North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. It was Atta's face,

on television and in newspapers across the world, that became the

symbol of Islamic terrorism. And it was Atta's name - not the names of

any of the 18 other hijackers allegedly lead by Atta on that day -

that was cited by international security researchers. Atta was, as the

Kean report stresses, " the tactical commander of the operation in the

United States " . According to both the Bush administration and the

official 9/11 Commission report, he was working on the orders of Osama

Bin Laden who, from remote Afghanistan, controlled the entire operation.

 

Now, almost exactly four years after 9/11, the facts appear to have

been turned upside down. We now learn that Atta was also connected to

a top secret operation of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command

(SOCOM) in the US. According to Army reserve Lieutenant-Colonel

Anthony Shaffer, a top secret Pentagon project code-named Able Danger

had identified Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of an

al-Qaida cell more than a year before the attacks.

 

Able Danger was an 18-month highly classified operation tasked,

according to Shaffer, with " developing targeting information for

al-Qaida on a global scale " , and used data-mining techniques to look

for " patterns, associations, and linkages " . He said he himself had

first encountered the names of the four hijackers in mid-2000.

 

Schaffer himself was fully aware of the delicacy of his revelations.

As such, he chose to first speak to US lawmaker and Speaker of the

House Dennis Hastert (Republican, Illinois) and House Intelligence

Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (Republican, Michigan). Schaffer

said the two had assured him that exposing the secret " was the right

thing to do " . " I was given assurances we would not suffer any adverse

consequences for bringing this to the attention of the public, " he said.

 

The conversations with Hastert and Hoekstra took place before Schaffer

anonymously leaked the information to the media on 8 August in the

offices of Republican Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, the vice chairman

of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees who also

supported the exposure of this secret.

 

Schaffer's decision to expose Operation Able Danger has given rise to

some difficult questions, not the least of which concerns the role of

Atta in the top secret operation. It also raises the question of

whether anyone in the Pentagon knew in advance what Atta was planning

on 9/11.

 

For now, though, the questions are likely to go unanswered, as the

Pentagon claims there is no evidence to support allegations that it

had had military intelligence on a 9/11 bomber a year before the

attack. The Pentagon has acknowledged the existence of Operation Able

Danger, but denies claims that it had identified Atta and three others

as early as 1999.

 

When the " official " facts are turned upside down, we need to go back

to the sources and ask: What do we really know about 9/11? Our most

important source, Atta himself, is dead. So for now, there is only

Schaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, who worked for the

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington at the time of the

9/11 attacks and had insights into the Pentagon's top secret

operation. According to Schaffer, when he informed the FBI and urged

them to arrest Atta, the Pentagon's lawyers intervened and protected

Atta for reasons that remain unclear.

 

The official 9/11 Commission report, which according to its own

declaration aimed " to provide the fullest possible account of the

events surrounding 9/11 " in its 567-page report, fails to mention

Operation Able Danger or any other US-based SOCOM operations. On the

contrary, in its recommendations as to how the US could be better

protected from " terrorists " in the future, the Kean report on page 415

suggests that SOCOM be given larger powers to carry out covert action

operations, previously a domain controlled by the CIA.

 

The Kean commission also recommended better oversight in order " to

combat the secrecy and complexity " . Yet, at the same time, we learn

from Schaffer that the Kean commission did not provide the full story

on 9/11, and specifically on Able Danger. Schaffer, according to his

own testimony, had personally informed Zelikow about Able Danger. Yet

Zelikow covered up this piece of the puzzle and, to Schaffer's

frustration and disbelief, decided not to include this data on the

pretext that it was " not historically relevant " .

 

If it is true that Zelikow declined to include the information on Able

Danger in the Kean report, and if it is true, as Zelikow wrote, that

Atta was the " tactical leader of the 9/11 plot " , and if it is

furthermore true, as Schaffer publicly explained, that SOCOM protected

Atta prior to his deadly attack on the US, which claimed 3,000 lives,

then the account as provided by the official 9/11 report is

discredited, and we are faced with a sea of lies and cover-ups.

 

Four years after 9/11, we are presented with facts that are

diametrically opposed to the official narrative. While the biggest

questions remain unanswered and there is a possibility that they will

never be answered, the media would do well by the public to be

diligent enough to keep the issue alive and not allow it to be swept

under the rug in the face of confusion and complexity.

 

 

Dr. Daniele Ganser specializes in secret warfare and is a Senior

Researcher at the Center for Security Studies. The opinions contained

in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of the

International Relations and Security Network (ISN).

The opinions contained in this commentary do not necessarily reflect

those of the ISN.

 

 

 

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle & code=20050827 & article\

Id=867