Senators Accuse Pentagon of Obstructing Inquiry on Sept. 11 Plot

By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: September 22, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - Senators from both parties accused the Defense Department on Wednesday of obstructing an investigation into whether a highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger did indeed identify Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers as potential threats well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday. The only testimony provided by the Defense Department came from a senior official who would say only that he did not know whether the claims were true.

But members of the panel, led by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican who heads the committee, said they regarded as credible assertions by current and former officers who took part in the program. The officers have said they were prevented by Pentagon lawyers from sharing information about Mr. Atta and others with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The senators said they would demand that the Pentagon provide more information and they left the door open for more hearings.

"I think the Department of Defense owes the American people an explanation as to what went on here," Mr. Specter said.

A Pentagon spokesman had said the decision to limit testimony in the matter was based on concerns about disclosing classified information, but Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said he believed the reason was a concern "that they'll just have egg on their face."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, accused the Pentagon of "a cover-up" and said, "I don't get why people aren't coming forward and saying, 'Here's the deal, here's what happened.' "

The Pentagon said this month that its own investigation into Able Danger had been inconclusive, partly because some information the program collected had been destroyed, apparently under rules that limit the kinds of information that the Defense Department can collect and preserve.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that at least five members of Able Danger have said they recall a chart produced in 2000 that identified Mr. Atta, who became the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot, as a potential terrorist, but they have said that others with knowledge of the project do not remember that.

William Dugan, an acting assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for intelligence oversight, did not allude to that investigation in his public testimony before the committee on Wednesday. "Did we have information that identified Mohamed Atta?" Mr. Dugan said at one point, restating a question put to him. "I've heard the testimony presented, but I don't know."

Among those who testified about Able Danger was Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has mounted an aggressive campaign to call public attention to the program, which used computers to sift through volumes of unclassified data in an effort to identify people with links to Al Qaeda.

Another witness, Mark S. Zaid, a Washington lawyer, testified on behalf of two clients whom the Pentagon barred from speaking at the hearing. Both of Mr. Zaid's clients, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army Reserve officer, and J. D. Smith, a former contractor on the project, sat in the front row of the audience.

Erik Kleinsmith, a former Army major who was involved in early stages of Able Danger, told the committee that, by April 2000, the program had collected "an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map Al Qaeda as a worldwide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States." Mr. Kleinsmith said that his affiliation with the project ended about that time and that he had no recollection of information that identified Mr. Atta.

But Mr. Kleinsmith told the committee that he had been "forced to destroy all the data, charts and other analytical product" in compliance with Army regulations that prohibit keeping data related to American citizens and others, including permanent residents who have legal protections, unless the data falls under one of several restrictive categories.

The hearing broke little new ground on Able Danger. The disclosure of the program over the summer prompted intense discomfort within the Pentagon and among members and staff of the Sept. 11 commission, whose final report in 2004 did not mention Able Danger.

In a letter to Mr. Specter on Tuesday, Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington who served on the Sept. 11 commission, said the panel was "open to new information that will help the American people to understand better the 9/11 story."

But Mr. Gorton also questioned whether the recollections by Colonel Shaffer and others could be accurate, saying "memories are faulty."

Link Here