Who Ya Gonna Believe?

albert champion points to a nice perspective on the Able Danger revelations.

We knew the terrorists of 9/11 were waltzing around the country doing things like going to strip joints and throwing wild parties, but aside from the kinds of things a righteous Dominionist would disapprove of, the main$tream media has been really quiet about exactly what they were doing and who they were partying with.

Time sez:

Just how damning are allegations by Congressman Curt Weldon that a secret Pentagon intelligence operation pegged hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat nearly two years before he led the 9/11 attacks? When Weldon first made the charge in a new book and in a June speech on the House floor, it met with little attention, but perhaps due to the August heat or the approaching fourth anniversary of the attacks, the accusation ignited controversy last week.

The question is whether it has any substance. Weldon says a data-mining exercise, called Able Danger, spotted Atta and other hijackers in 1999, but Pentagon lawyers in September 2000 blocked officials running the program from handing the tip to the FBI. Weldon’s further allegation that the 9/11 commission was alerted to the alleged oversight but ignored it prompted the defunct panel to conduct an investigation last week before issuing a statement late Friday saying members had received only an 11th-hour mention of Atta that “was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation"...

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Hopsicker asks :

Upon what basis did the 9.11 Commission conclude that the FBI’s timeline was correct and that an elite Army Intel unit was mistaken in saying they were tracking Mohamed Atta roaming freely across America during 1999 and 2000?

And why exactly is this important?

Calling unwelcome attention to the massive inaccuracies in the FBI’s timeline was probably not Republican Curt Weldon’s purpose when he brought the story to light...But if his efforts to implicate Clinton Administration officials results in highlighting the FBI's incomplete and corrupt investigation, we think he get some kind of medal, maybe called the Inadvertent 'Dumb-Ass' Hero Award.

We suspect his Republican friends would much prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. Because it isn’t just one elite Army Intel unit that’s saying it... In the aftermath of the 9.11 attack numerous eyewitnesses came forward to attest to Atta’s presence in the U.S. before June of 2000.

Their number even includes a U.S. Government official with a signed and dated loan application from Mohamed Atta his-ownself.

In interviews with major news organizations Johnelle Bryant, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that Atta and three other September 11th terrorists visited her Florida office seeking a government loan.

ABC’s Brian Ross reported: “Johnelle Bryant is the USDA loan officer in Homestead, Florida, who Atta approached in May of 2000, long before al-Qaeda and bin Laden were household words.”

Mr. Atta swung by in May, 2000, and Ms. Bryant remembers quite a bit about it.

"At first," she says, "he refused to speak with me," on the grounds that she was, in his words, "but a female."

"I told him that if he was interested in getting a farm-service agency loan in my servicing area, then he would need to deal with me."

Ms. Bryant says the applicant was asking for $650,000 to start a crop-dusting business. His plan was to buy a six-seater twin-prop and then remove the seats. "He wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."

Here’s the kicker, or rather, the smoking gun: Before Atta left her office he filled out a loan application.

Loan applications are dated, aren’t they? That’s why Johnelle Bryant knows exactly when Atta was in her office. so, without even referencing any of the other numerous indicators of Atta’s presence in the U.S., one thing that can be said with absolute certainty:

The FBI’s timeline, their chronology of events, the essential tool of any homicide investigation, is wrong. And not wrong by accident, either.

Wrong on purpose. Wrong by design.

By the way: don’t try dropping by Bryant’s Homestead office to confirm the details with her, as we did...She’s no longer there.

She’s (presumably) been airlifted to the Island of Lost Witnesses...

There's lots more to ponder. The gist is there are some major inconsistencies in the timeline the FBI published with the 9/11 commission. But as to what the truth is... only the Players know.