国会记录：2005年11月8日（房屋）Page H10012-H10013 Stonewalling Congress Popper Pro Tempore（Fortenberry先生）。根据房子的先前订单，来自宾夕法尼亚州的绅士（Weldon先生）被认可了5分钟。宾夕法尼亚州韦尔蒙先生。首先，发言者先生让我感谢我的朋友和同事让我在1小时之前拿到这5分钟的特殊订单。扬声器先生，我会简短，但我对我来说是一个严重关心的问题。作为在本国会致力于努力捍卫和安全问题的人，目前为武装部队和家乡保安委员会副主席致力于努力工作，我必须向我的同事报告继续努力，试图找出乐动冠军9之前发生的事情/ 11，不幸的是，必须报告我们正在挖掘。事实上，扬声器先生，我不能使用任何其他术语，而是掩盖的外观。只是几个时刻前，我质疑委员会9/11委员会委员会的一席之地，为什么委员会尚未回复我将于今年8月10日发送给他们的一封信，我将进入在这一点记录。2005年8月10日。 Thomas H. Kean, Chairman, Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman, 9/11 Public Discourse Project, One DuPont Circle, NW., Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton: I am contacting you to discuss an important issue that concerns the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and our country's efforts to ensure that such a calamity is never again allowed to occur. Your bipartisan work on The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States shed light on much that was unclear in the minds of the American people regarding what happened that fateful day, however there appears to be more to the story than the public has been told. I bring this before you because of my respect for you both, and for the 9-11 Commission's service to America. Almost seven years ago, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 established the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, otherwise known as the Gilmore Commission. The Gilmore Commission reached many of the same conclusions as your panel, and in December of 2000 called for the creation of a ``National Office for Combating Terrorism.'' I mention this because prior to 9/11, Congress was aware of many of the institutional obstacles to preventing a terrorist attack, and was actively attempting to address them. I know this because I authored the language establishing the Gilmore Commission. In the 1990's, as chairman of the congressional subcommittee that oversaw research and development for the Department of Defense, I paid special attention to the activities of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Ft. Belvoir. During that time, I led a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress to Vienna, Austria to meet with members of the Russian parliament, or Duma. Before leaving, I received a brief from the CIA on a Serbian individual that would be attending the meeting. The CIA provided me with a single paragraph of information. On the other hand, representatives of LIWA gave me five pages of far more in-depth analysis. This was cause for concern, but my debriefing with the CIA and FBI following the trip was cause for outright alarm: neither had ever heard of LIWA or the data mining capability it possessed. As a result of experiences such as these, I introduced language into three successive Defense Authorization bills calling for the creation of an intelligence fusion center which I called NOAH, or National Operations and Analysis Hub. The NOAH concept is certainly familiar now, and is one of several recommendations made by your commission that has a basis in earlier acts of Congress. Despite my repeated efforts to establish NOAH, the CIA insisted that it would not be practical. Fortunately, this bureaucratic intransigence was overcome when Congress and President Bush acted in 2003 to create the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (now the National Counterterrorism Center). Unfortunately, it took the deaths of 3,000 people to bring us to the point where we could make this happen. Now, I am confident that under the able leadership of John Negroponte, the days of toleration for intelligence agencies that refuse to share information with each other are behind us. The 9-11 Commission produced a book-length account of its findings, that the American people might educate themselves on the challenges facing our national effort to resist and defeat terrorism. Though under different circumstances, I eventually decided to do the same. I recently published a book critical of our intelligence agencies because even after 9/11, they were not getting the message. After failing to win the bureaucratic battle inside the Beltway, I decided to take my case to the American people. In recent years, a reliable source that I refer to as ``Ali'' began providing me with detailed inside information on Iran's role in supporting terror and undermining the United States' global effort to eradicate it. I have forwarded literally hundreds of pages of information from Ali to the CIA, FBI, and DIA, as well as the appropriate congressional oversight committees. The response from our intelligence agencies has been [[Page H10013]] underwhelming, to put it mildly. Worse, I have documented occasions where the CIA has outright lied to me. While the mid-level bureaucrats at Langley may not be interested in what I have to say, their new boss is. Porter Goss has all of the information I have gathered, and I know he is ready to do what it takes to challenge the circle-the-wagons culture of the CIA. And Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is energized as well. Director Goss and Chairman Hoekstra are both outstanding leaders that know each other well from their work together in the House of Representatives, and I will continue to strongly support their efforts at reform. All of this background leads to the reason I am writing to you today. Yesterday the national news media began in-depth coverage of a story that is not new. In fact, I have been talking about it for some time. From 1998 to 2001, Army Intelligence and Special Operations Command spearheaded an effort called Able Danger that was intended to map out al Qaeda. According to individuals that were part of the project, Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before 9/11. Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of Administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI. These details are understandably of great interest to the American people, thus the recent media frenzy. However I have spoken on this topic for some time, in the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, on the floor of the House on June 27, 2005, and at various speaking engagements. The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9-11 Commission staff that the Commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger. The 9-11 Commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter. Furthermore, commissioners never returned calls from a defense intelligence official that had made contact with them to discuss this issue as a follow on to a previous meeting. In retrospect, it appears that my own suggestions to the Commission might have directed investigators in the direction of Able Danger, had they been heeded. I personally reached out to members of the Commission several times with information on the need for a national collaborative capability, of which Able Danger was a prototype. In the context of those discussions, I referenced LIWA and the work it had been doing prior to 9/11. My chief of staff physically handed a package containing this information to one of the commissioners at your Commission's appearance on April 13, 2004 in the Hart Senate Office Building. I have spoken with Governor Kean by phone on this subject, and my office delivered a package with this information to the 9-11 Commission staff via courier. When the Commission briefed Congress with their findings on July 22, 2004, I asked the very first question in exasperation: ``Why didn't you let Members of Congress who were involved in these issues testify before, or meet with, the Commission?'' The 9-11 Commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house. Therefore it is no small irony that the Commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention. The Commission's refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the Commission worked to expose. Questions remain to be answered. The first: What lawyers in the Department of Defense made the decision in late 2000 not to pass the information from Able Danger to the FBI? And second: Why did the 9-11 Commission staff not find it necessary to pass this information to the Commissioners, and why did the 9-11 Commission staff not request full documentation of Able Danger from the team member that volunteered the information? Answering these questions is the work of the commissioners now, and fear of tarnishing the Commission's legacy cannot be allowed to override the truth. The American people are counting on you not to ``go native'' by succumbing to the very temptations your Commission was assembled to indict. In the meantime, I have shared all that I know on this topic with the congressional committee chairmen that have oversight over the Department of Defense, the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of our intelligence gathering and analyzing agencies. You can rest assured that Congress will share your interest in how it is that this critical information is only now seeing the light of day. Sincerely, Curt Weldon, Member of Congress. This letter asks significant questions about a Top Secret intelligence unit in the military that identified Mohammed Atta and three associates in a Brooklyn cell 1 year before 9/11. Mr. Speaker, these individuals are still in the military, and they have offered to testify publicly, but this administration is gagging them. This administration is not allowing these military officers to speak, and in fact, the Defense Intelligence Agency is in the midst of destroying the career of a 23-year Bronze Star recipient, a lieutenant colonel in the Army, for doing one thing, for telling the truth. Mr. Speaker, there are bureaucrats in this administration, in the previous administration who do not want the story of Able Danger to come forward. Even though this secret intelligence unit was ordered by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, carried out by Special Forces Command, and we now know had information 2 days before the attack on the Cole that could have prevented 17 sailors from losing their lives; and in January of 2000, identified Mohammed Atta and, in September of 2000, tried to transfer that information to the FBI on three occasions. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 Commission did not mention Able Danger at all. When they were asked about it by the New York Times in August of this year, they said, Well, it was historically insignificant. Mr. Speaker, Louis Freeh, the FBI Director during the time of 9/11, was interviewed on national news by Tim Russert on ``Meet the Press'' 2 weeks ago, and when he was asked about his role in the information on 9/11, he said, Well, you know, if we would have had the information from the Able Danger team, and I quote, ``that is the kind of tactical intelligence that would have made a difference in stopping the hijacking.'' Louis Freeh says it could have stopped the hijacking, and the 9/11 Commission now says it is historically insignificant. Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong in the Beltway. Tomorrow, at 12:30 in the House gallery, I will unveil additional new information on Able Danger. I will unveil an enhanced set of investigations because, Mr. Speaker, in the end, the families of the 3,000 victims, the families of the 17 sailors, the people in this country deserve to know the truth. What happened before 9/11? Why is information being held in secret? Why are military officers being gagged? Why can the truth not be told? Mr. Speaker, we must in this body demand the truth publicly. ____________________