MY GOD, Where was Klinton? Getting blow jobs?

August 09, 2005 Mohammed Atta Was Identified as Al Qaeda in 2000

This did not make it into the 9/11 Commission report.

More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.

And what did the Clinton Defense Department do with this information? The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because [of]...a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency. Read the whole thing. Aside from showing the lackadaisical nature of the government bureacracy, apparently except for the uniformed military, this article demonstrates the efficacy of and need for powerful data-mining software to identify patterns and pick needles out of haystacks. Unfortunately, the privacy zealots prefer dead Americans to data mining.

Wow! I hope so. The job's hard enough when you have a hostile House and Senate uninterested in terror attacks! Thank God Boy George was right on top of things when he took his first month-long vacation in August! <laughing>

Miles 'Simple Pleasures' Long

At the beginning of 2000, Condi Rice wrote an article in Foreign Affairs outlining the sort of foreign and national security policy America should pursue. It was published as part of the journal's treatment of the 2000 election and in the article Rice was identified as one of then-candidate George W. Bush's foreign policy advisors. The article was intended to be a quasi-official statement of Bush's policies for the foreign policy elite

President Clinton urged Congress Tuesday to act swiftly in developing anti-terrorism legislation before its August recess.

'We need to keep this country together right now. We need to focus on this terrorism issue,' Clinton said during a White House news conference.

But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, doubted that the Senate would rush to action before they recess this weekend. The Senate

needs to study all the options, he said, and trying to get it done in the next three days would be tough.

One key GOP senator was more critical, calling a proposed study of chemical markers in explosives 'a phony issue.'

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emerged from the meeting and said, 'These are very controversial provisions that the White House wants. Some they're not going to get.'

Hatch called Clinton's proposed study of taggants