9/11 Commission Disregarded Key Report

Well, the 9/11 Commission, charged with investigating our intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, had some intelligence failures of its own. Evidently they had access to, and disregarded, a report that the Army had identified Mohammed Atta and a couple other terrorists a year before the attack, and recommended deporting them. They of course weren't deported, and the reason seems to be that there were political barriers between intelligence bodies and law enforcemnt dudes. Why didn't the commission discuss this Army report? It turns out it didn't agree with some other details they thought the commision thought it had in the bag. Mighty inconvient, facts. Maybe next time (they are reopening the commission) they will see what the facts tell them rather than seeing how the evidence fits into their own conclusions. Michelle Malkin has more:

The 9/11 Commission was supposed to give the America people a complete, unbiased story of the government failures that led up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. But the Commission now admits its acclaimed Final Report ignored key information provided by a U.S. Army data mining project, Able Danger, which identified Mohammed Atta and several other hijackers as potential terrorists prior to the September 11 attacks. The Able Danger team recommended that Atta and the other suspected terrorists be deported. That recommendation, however, was not shared with law enforcement officials, presumably because of the "wall" between intelligence activities and domestic law enforcement.

According to the New York Times, the 9/11 Commission officials said that Able Danger had not been included in their report because some of the information sounded inconsistent with what they thought they knew about Atta.

In other words, the Commission staffers were told about the project but ignored it because it didn't fit their pre-conceived conclusions.

See also Charles Johnson's post on the matter.