Thursday, August 11, 2005

More on Atta

Last night Kristen Breitweiser was on Fox News, talking about the news that Mohammed Atta was identified and left alone under the Clinton administration (my comments from last night here). But I've been too distracted by work and ordering textbooks for my daughter's first semester of college (can textbooks get any more expensive?) to really get into the meat of this issue.

Lucky for me, Michelle Malkin is on top of it (her latest post on this here).

She quotes Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, who says of the 9/11 Commission's recent acknowledgment that they knew about Atta's having been identified but ignored that information:

So what did the Commission do? It ignored those facts which did not fit within its predetermined conclusions. It never bothered to mention Able Danger even one time in its final report, even though that absolutely refuted the notion that the government had no awareness that Atta constituted a terrorist threat. It endorsed the idea of data mining (which would die in Congress as the Total Information Awareness program) without ever explaining why. And while the Clinton policy of enforcing a quarantine between law enforcement and intelligence operations came under general criticism, their report never included the fact that the "wall" for which Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick had so much responsibility specifically contributed to Atta's ability to come and go as he pleased, building the teams that would kill almost 3,000 Americans. [emphasis added]

So Kristen Breitweiser and others of her viewpoint claim that before President Bush came along, any mistakes were only made by individuals and weren't systemic. But the 9/11 Commission finally admits otherwise.

Keep checking in with Michelle Malkin for her continuing updates on this and other issues.

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