The question of what was taking place as far as intelligence within our government before 11 September 2001 is slowly being answered by our media. After the attack, carried out from within America by suspected, al Qaeda operatives no one wanted to really discuss who, knew, what, when, and why.

This is a huge revelation

More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

So the CIA, FBI, and Military intelligence was aware. Bush and his administration knew

(Presidential Daily Brief, 6 August 2001)


What a complete failure! Not of one party, but of our entire government.

BooMan thinks there's a cover-up afoot.

More,

The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 19 hijackers, only Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been identified as potential threats by the Central Intelligence Agency before the summer of 2000, and information about them was not provided to the F.B.I. until the spring of 2001.

Mr. Weldon has long been a champion of the kind of data-mining analysis that was the basis for the work of the Able Danger team.

The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world.

IMHO, I think it was the FBI that messed up the most here, but the biggest failure was in communication and networking; which is unbelievable this day in age. I base that on empirical evidence, along with this new evidence.

This guy though is putting his berries out there, he fears the political wrath of the current Administration, and I would too.