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by Devlin Barrett
Associated Press
September 15, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Former members of the Sept. 11 commission
yesterday dismissed assertions that a Pentagon intelligence unit
identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of Al Qaeda long before
the 2001 attacks.
The former commissioners also criticized the government
for not putting in place changes recommended last year in homeland
security and emergency response. They pointed most notably to the failure
to improve communication systems, which they said might have saved lives
after Hurricane Katrina.
Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania,
had accused the commission of ignoring intelligence about Atta while it
investigated the attacks. The commission's former chairman, Thomas Kean,
said there was no evidence anyone in the government knew about Atta before
Sept. 11, 2001.
Two military officers, Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony
Shaffer and Navy Captain Scott Phillpott, contended that a classified
military intelligence unit, known as ''Able Danger," identified Atta
before the attacks. Shaffer has said three other hijackers were
identified, too.
Kean said the recollections of the intelligence officers
cannot be verified by any document.
"Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the
conclusion of all 10 of us," said a former commissioner, former senator
Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington.
Pentagon officials said this month that they could find
no documents to back up the allegations.
According to Weldon, members of ''Able Danger"
identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of
a terrorist cell in New York City. Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected
the unit's recommendation that the information be turned over to the FBI
in 2000.
Weldon's spokesman, John Tomaszewski, said no
commissioners have met with anyone from Able Danger, ''yet they choose to
speak with some form of certainty without firsthand knowledge."
Separately, the former commissioners criticized
Congress, saying it has not updated communications rules to help police,
fire, and rescue personnel in a crisis such as Katrina. ''It is a scandal
in our minds," Kean said.
The commissioners also faulted state, local, and federal
authorities responding to Katrina, contending that they did not have a
clear chain of command, leading to some of the same confusion that plagued
the Sept. 11 rescue effort.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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