'Able Danger' specialist:
I briefed 9-11 staff

A military intelligence specialist who says he personally told 9-11 commission staff about the fact Defense Department investigators tracking al-Qaida were prevented from passing along information on the presence of Mohamed Atta and three other future hijackers in the U.S. more than a year before the terrorist attack has gone on the record about the incident.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer was involved in the Army's "Able Danger" efforts to identify and target al-Qaida on a global basis using advanced technology and data analysis, which began in 1999. He told Fox News he personally briefed commission staff in October 2003 about the Atta findings.

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Though Atta's sleeper cell was identified in 2000, the information was not shared with the FBI apparently due to the Clinton-era "wall of separation" between intelligence and law enforcement. There reportedly also were concerns about the fact Atta was in the country legally at the time.

Shaffer has been working with Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., the lawmaker who last week first publicized information about the intelligence failure.

"What we talked about to the 9-11 commission was we found that these guys matched a pattern that matched the Brooklyn location" of an al-Qaida sleeper cell, Shaffer told Fox.

Staff at the 9-11 commission say nothing they received from the Pentagon backed up Shaffer's claim.

"None of the documents turned over to the commission mentioned Mohamed Atta or any of the future hijackers," a commission spokesman told the news channel.

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Shaffer disputes that fact.

"I'm told confidently by the person who did move the material over that the 9-11 commission received two briefcase-sized containers of documents," Shaffer noted. "I can tell you for a fact that would not be one-twentieth of the information Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent."

When Weldon first revealed the Able Danger information, commission staff denied they were briefed on it. Later, the panel said personnel were briefed but that the information about Atta sounded inconsistent with what they thought they knew about the terror leader, so it was not included in the final report. Weldon says commission staff were briefed on the matter three times.

Shaffer compared the absence of the al-Qaida info from the 9-11 panel's report to an infamous World War II attack.

"Leaving out a project targeting al-Qaida as a global threat a year before we're attacked by al-Qaida is equivalent to having an investigation of Pearl Harbor and somehow leaving out the Japanese," Shaffer said.

Fox News noted Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year over a disputed phone bill and allegations he hadn't gone through the proper chain of command to obtain an award for Able Danger. The specialist's attorney says no formal action has been taken against Shaffer.

There is growing concern that the Justice Department blocked the transmission of the intelligence from the Defense Department to the FBI because of the "wall" placed between foreign intelligence-gathering agencies and domestic law-enforcement agencies by Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick.

Gorelick's later presence on the 9-11 commission was criticized by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others because she was placed in a position of reviewing her own policies during the Clinton administration.

There are also concerns that the staff of the 9-11 commission was stacked with former Clinton administration operatives who had a vested interest in covering up any of its failings.

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