Former Congressman Curt Weldon says his long career in Washington was derailed for a single reason: he insisted the September 11 terrorist attacks were not only foreseeable, but preventable.
Weldon, 79, a Pennsylvania Republican who served ten terms in the House, alleges that a covert CIA initiative known as Able Danger had identified and monitored lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and what he describes as Atta’s notorious “Brooklyn cell” for more than a year before 9/11.
According to Weldon, analysts attached to the program believed Atta was moving toward a catastrophic operation and repeatedly sought to alert other agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Justice. Those warnings, he claims, were consistently prevented from reaching the right people.
Yet when the 9/11 Commission released its sweeping report in 2004, Weldon says, the alleged Able Danger intelligence was absent from the official account.
“America’s got to realize that 9/11 is not what we’re led to believe… I want the story to come out,” Weldon told Our News Outlet ahead of the September 22 release of his new book, Able Danger: What The 9/11 Commission Never Told You, on September 22.
After the 9/11 Commission Report was made public, Weldon openly said he intended to use his anticipated chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee to dig into what he believed had been left out of the official investigation.
That role would have placed him in one of Congress’s most influential national security positions, with the authority to issue subpoenas, convene public hearings and bring into the open information he says had remained hidden behind closed doors.
But three weeks before he was expected to win re-election in 2006, federal agents raided his daughter’s home as part of a Justice Department inquiry into allegations involving improper connections to Russian businesses. Neither Weldon nor his daughter was ever charged with a crime. He now argues the episode was part of a “deep state” effort to force him from office before he could expose intelligence failures he believes preceded the 9/11 attacks.
As the United States marks the 25th anniversary of September 11, and after intelligence agencies have previously sought to dismiss or minimize his claims, Weldon says he is determined to tell his version of events publicly.
Former Congressman Curt Weldon alleges that a secret CIA program called Able Danger identified and tracked several future 9/11 hijackers for more than a year before the attacks, but that its warnings were suppressed
Weldon claims efforts to pass critical pre-9/11 intelligence between federal agencies were blocked in the months before the attacks
In the immediate aftermath of the hijacked planes striking the Twin Towers 25 years ago, President George W. Bush said he did not yet know who was responsible. It would be nine days before Bush publicly identified Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as being behind the attacks.
But Weldon claims that within US intelligence, a small number of officials knew instantly who was behind it – because they were already tracking several of the hijackers.
Despite being a covert program, Able Danger was far from a small effort. As Weldon describes it, the project was an ‘innovative, multiservice, multiagency intelligence program’ that involved a large team utilizing incredibly expansive tracking software.
‘Simply explained, Able Danger used supercomputers to mine and monitor the world’s internet worked databases – representing by volume and quality a treasure trove of unclassified intelligence unprecedented in history, a virtual world library, readable by supercomputers virtually instantaneously,’ he writes in his book.
Able Danger allegedly identified Mohamed Atta and his Brooklyn cell over a year before the 9/11 attacks, and analysts were terrified that plans for a major catastrophe were being hatched.
Weldon alleges that members of the Able Danger team attempted to pass this information to the FBI at least three times by late 2000, but claims that a ‘wall’ of bureaucracy and military lawyers blocked the transfer of the data.
When Weldon first came forward with his claims about Able Danger, the Pentagon said it was unable to verify his allegations, and Defense Department spokesman Larry Di Rita said the project found ‘mostly general references to terrorist cells’ without directly naming Atta.
In 2006, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said that agents who claimed to see Atta on pre-9/11 intelligence charts were ‘mistaken.’
But Weldon – who at the time was serving as vice-chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the Homeland Security Committee – says he still believes claims about Able Danger’s findings.
He claims that his position in Congress led intelligence analysts to warn him about the Able Danger findings in the aftermath of 9/11, but those involved were ‘harassed, shut down and lied about.
Witnesses flee for their lives as the World Trade Center collapses on September 11, 2001
Weldon seen behind then-President George W Bush in March 2006
Weldon’s daughter’s home was raided by authorities in 2006, a few weeks before his re-election. He lost that election, and now says it was part of a plot to stop him from obtaining a committee chairmanship he would have used to expose allegations about 9/11
Weldon spoke with Our News Outlet ahead of the release of his tell-all book, Able Danger: What The 9/11 Commission Never Told You
In 2006, Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, testified to the House Armed Services Committee that there were no verified formal requests for Able Danger information before 9/11, and no evidence showed intelligence sharing had been prohibited.
But Weldon alleges in his upcoming book that those within the program told him they did exactly this, but faced a ‘wall’ of bureacracy and secrecy that prevented them.
While the motives for the alleged information blocking remain shrouded in mystery, the former congressman blames a 1995 memo written by the Clinton administration’s Justice Department, known as the ‘Firewall Memo’, for standing in the way.
The memo’s author, DOJ official Jamie Gorelick, intended for it to set procedures for information sharing into the investigation into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to prevent intelligence gathered via secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants – which did not require criminal probable cause – from being involved in criminal prosecutions.
While this was ostensibly to protect the civil liberties of defendants, Weldon claims it became clear to him in his Congressional investigations that the memo acted as a bureaucratic ‘wall’ that prevented the CIA from freely sharing information with the FBI and other domestic agencies.
He claims that on at least three occasions, Able Danger team members allegedly tried to share intel with the DOJ that Atta and his Brooklyn cell were hatching a devastating plot in New York, but they were forced to cancel scheduled meetings each time.
‘Thus, the Able Danger team was prevented from fingering Mohamed Atta to the FBI, sacrificing the best chance to stop the September 11 catastrophe – and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – on the altar of political correctness,’ Weldon claims.
Weldon said his claims have been dismissed as ‘crazy’ in the past, but his upcoming book has since been endorsed by a number of officials, including Jim Gilmore, the former Governor of Virginia, and Erik Kleinsman, the former Chief of Intelligence in the US Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA).
Speaking with Our News Outlet this week, Weldon said he has been left haunted by the knowledge that the greatest tragedy in American history could have been thwarted if this project’s alleged findings were not ‘blocked’
The intelligence focus on potential Islamic terrorism within the United States was ignited in 1993, when Pakistani terrorist Ramzi Yousef detonated a truck bomb in the parking garage of the North Tower. A memorial to that bombing is shown among the rubble of 9/11
The intelligence focus on potential Islamic terrorism within the United States was ignited in 1993, when Pakistani terrorist Ramzi Yousef detonated a truck bomb in the parking garage of the North Tower.
Despite killing six people and injuring over 1,000, the attack was largely overshadowed by September 11. Within the intelligence apparatus, however, analysts knew it would not be an anomaly.
In 1996, Weldon became chairman of the Research and Development Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, a role that gave him oversight of upwards of $60 billion in defense spending.
He funded intelligence technology databases that grew into the Able Danger task force, which was led by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to plan against transnational terrorism.
The World Trade Center collapses in lower Manhattan, New York on September 11, 2001
Speaking with Our News Outlet this week, Weldon said he has been left haunted by the knowledge that the greatest tragedy in American history could have been thwarted if this project’s alleged findings were not ‘blocked.’
He says he remains furious that his efforts to expose what Able Danger allegedly knew decades ago have gone unheeded, and accused intelligence circles of ‘manipulating people to make anyone questioning it look like they’re crazy.’
Weldon is now calling for a new presidential commission on 9/11, with similar efforts already gaining traction in the halls of power as Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has backed plans to pursue new hearings.
‘I want a commission that has integrity,’ Weldon said. ‘Let a commission thoroughly investigate this and look at everything.’
Our News Outlet has contacted the FBI, CIA and Department of Defense for comment on Weldon’s allegations about significant intelligence failures in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks.
