Able Danger?Back to the Future

By Bill West

This past week has seen the revelation by Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon that a formerly secret military intelligence unit called �Able Danger� had identified Mohamed Atta and three other of the 9/11 hijackers as US-linked al-Qaeda operatives as early as 2000, and due to skittishness on the part of Defense Department lawyers, the information was never passed to the FBI or other US law enforcement agencies. Also, it was revealed the 9/11 Commission may have known about this matter, but for reasons still not clear, chose not to include it in their final report.

I have some special personal/professional interest in all this. To explain requires just a bit of extrapolation...but only a bit.

If the news about the DoD intelligence is true, that infamous intelligence "wall" truly did create a huge missed opportunity in this...along with what was then the Clinton Administration�s generally fouled-up Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), where I served in the Investigations Division for 25 years.

The INS Headquarters National Security Unit (NSU), which was created in the late 1990s in spite of considerable obstacles generated by the INS High Command, was one of the few and small success stories within the INS. The INS/NSU, circa 1999-2000, tried to post a liaison officer to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) specifically to tap into DoD intelligence on counter-terrorism matters. The NSU Director at the time approved it and DIA bought off on the plan...but INS senior management above the NSU Director nixed it so it never happened. When I was on the job, I dealt with the NSU folks regularly...at times almost daily...on various operational matters.

Consider for one moment if that NSU liaison officer had been in place...and/or if otherwise that DoD Intel had been passed along to law enforcement as it legally could and should have been (those alien suspects were NONIMMIGRANT aliens, they were not �protected� US persons). The INS/NSU would have learned of the matter at least via liaison with FBI Headquarters because NSU had several INS liaison agents posted to the FBI HQ International Terrorism Operations Section. Through routine analysis and processing, the Atta information would have sorted out that he was hanging out in south Florida at the time...he was using his real name, not even trying to hide.

I ran the INS National Security Section in south Florida working with the FBI back then, and we worked exceptionally well with the Bureau on counter-terrorism and other national security matters. We (INS Miami District) also had the best District Counsel in the agency for national security cases then; he was aggressive and progressive and willing to push the envelope to make a viable deportation case.

If we had gotten that DoD Intel about Atta and crew in 2000/early 2001, lead information about al-Qaeda operatives in our backyard in south Florida, it�s virtually certain that between Miami INS and Miami FBI, we would have worked up a plan and found a way to take those thugs into custody. I know there are "what ifs" in this...but knowing how we operated back then, if we had gotten that Intel, in all likelihood Atta, and probably others, would have been popped, minimally on deportation charges and we quite possibly would have made some kind of criminal case, as in felony immigration fraud violations if nothing else, as we had done in plenty of other cases�cases like Hakki Cemal Aksoy and Imran Mandhai�and think search warrants in that part, too, and what that process might have discovered. Yes, there are �what ifs� in all this, and it still remains to be seen if these Able Danger reports are indeed accurate, but if so �what if� only that information had been passed...

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