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H. Thomas Hayden
recently concluded over 35 years of service,
which included the Agency for International
Development, the Marine Corps, defense industry
and the Pentagon. His specialties are Intelligence,
Counterinsurgency Operations, Counter-terrorism,
and Joint Concepts Development and Experimentation.
His Marine Corps assignments have included
command of two separate battalions; AC/S G-2,
4th MARDIV & AC/S G-2 FMFEurope; Branch Head,
HQMC, Special Operations and Low Intensity
Conflict (SO/LIC); Special Assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for SO/LIC;
and, Senior Program Analysts at HQMC with
the Joint Staff and DoD at the Pentagon. Overseas
assignments included Vietnam, Japan & Okinawa,
Europe, Central America, Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, Somalia, Singapore, Philippines, and
Colombia. He has an MBA (Pepperdine) and an
MA in International Relations (University
of Southern California). He has written two
books and is working on a third.
Thomas
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August 29, 2005
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Fox News has now reported that a third person has come forward to verify claims made by members of a U.S. military intelligence unit. These claims state that a year before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the intelligence unit had information that showed lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and other terrorists were identified as being in the United States, and posed a potential terrorist danger to the US.
Fox identified a Mr. J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who claims he worked on the technical side of a unit code-named "Able Danger." Smith told reporters Friday that he helped gather open-source information, reported on government spending, and helped generate charts associated with the unit's work. Able Danger was set up in the 1990s to track worldwide Al Qaeda activity.
"I am absolutely positive that he [Atta] was on our chart, among other pictures and ties that we were doing -- mainly based upon [terror] cells in New York City," Smith said.
Gary Palmer, in a column for the Alabama Policy Institute, wrote that the recent disclosure of the fact that the covert military intelligence unit code named Able Danger had information about four of the 9/11 terrorists and might therefore have prevented the attacks, has raised serious questions about the work of the 9/11 Commission and the much-heralded report the Commission issued last year.
The highly politicized 9/11 Commission was supposed to have spent several months investigating the events that led to the disastrous terrorist incidents that took place in New York City, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania. When the Commission finally published its report, it basically concluded that while there were intelligence and law enforcement lapses by both the Clinton and Bush administrations, they could not identify any connection with intelligence reports and the 9/11 terrorists.
However, that inaccurate conclusion should change after the claims about Able Danger are now verified.
According to Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, U.S. Army, had the 9/11 Commission thoroughly investigated the findings of Able Danger, the commission report would have focused on the legal obstacles put in place by the Clinton Administration that prevented the FBI, the CIA, and the U.S. military intelligence agencies from exchanging information that could possibly have prevented the deaths of almost 3,000 people.
Someone in the Clinton Administration had created internal legal barriers, now referred to as “The Wall,” which kept the FBI, the CIA, and the U.S. military from exchanging information related to domestic intelligence. Not surprisingly, the FBI almost never informs the CIA about the reports from field agents -- particularly those who had raised suspicions about the 9/11 terrorists taking lessons to learn how to take off and fly a jet liners but not how to land.
Critics of the Commission contend that the problems created by “The Wall” were never fully investigated by the 9/11 Commission, and no one involved in the process was ever called as a witness.
Some have reported that there may be other information in Able Danger that could
have significant ramifications in regard to the war in Iraq. Specifically, there was speculation that Able Danger links the 9/11 hijackers and Osama bin Laden to Iraq. Reportedly, Able Danger supports information from the Czech Republic's intelligence service that Atta met with the Iraqi ambassador at the Prague airport on April 9, 2001. Of course, the CIA of George Tenant disputes the Czech intelligence report.
Regardless, Czech intelligence informed the U.S. about this meeting shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Also, other intelligence documents indicate that two of the four terrorists that piloted the hijacked airliners were in Germany from late 2000 to early 2001. It
was during that time that German authorities arrested two Iraqi agents on charges of spying against Germany. One of the hijacker pilots, Ziad Jarrah, left Germany the same week that the Germans arrested the two Iraqi agents.
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At the same time, the Paris-based Islamic newspaper Al-Watan Al-Arabi linked Iraq to radical Islamic groups and Osama bin Laden. The paper reported that the Iraqi agents were part of an Iraqi operation to form a network of terrorist alliances to strike U.S. targets.
Would it surprise anyone to know that this information is also not in the Commission report?
If the 9/11 Commission acknowledged that the Able Danger information linked the hijackers to Iraq, the war in Iraq could have been completely vindicated.
If the Able Danger information proves to be accurate in any manner, the fact that it is not even mentioned by the Commission will seriously undermine the 9/11 Commission Report and should discredit the Commission. It should be evident to the U.S. public that the 9/11 Commission was compromised from the beginning by politics, and was not a non-partisan investigation as it was supposed to be.
Mr. J. D. Smith, Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer and Navy Captain Scott Philpott have gone on the record, saying they were discouraged from looking further into Atta, and their attempts to share their information with the FBI were thwarted because Atta was a legal foreign visitor at the time, according to the Immigration authorities.
Congressman Curt Weldon, R-PA, has told Fox News that at least five people on the federal payroll will testify under oath about the validity of the Able Danger intelligence.
"When this is over, the Sept. 11 Commission is going to have egg all over their face," Weldon said.
Obviously not all the information on Able Danger is in, but this story needs to be followed very carefully to see who wants to cover it up or plug the leaks.
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© 2005 H. Thomas Hayden. All opinions
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