Nahfeez Ahmed on "Able Danger"

A must-read essay.

Exactly one year before 9/11, a highly classified US Army intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" had already pinpointed four of the 9/11 hijackers. Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid Almidhar, and Nawaf Alhamzi were identified as members of a "Brooklyn" al-Qaeda cell on a detailed chart that included visa photographs. The Army unit was established by the Special Operations Command in 1999 by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

(snip)

Lt. Col. Shaffer gave on the record confirmation of the details revealed by Rep. Weldon, but further stated that Able Danger had scheduled three meetings in the summer of 2000 with the FBI's Washington field office to share the findings and recommend to "take out that cell."
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Those meetings were unilaterally cancelled by military lawyers at the Defense Department's Special Operations Command, and information sharing was blocked.

The stated reason? Apparently, Atta and his comrades were in the US on "valid entry visas" - the law, it was claimed, bars US citizens and green-card holders from being targeted for intelligence-collection operations. Although, this does not include visa holders, the law supposedly provided a disincentive for sharing intelligence with law enforcement. "We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn't exist," said another defense intelligence official.

Terrorists don't get and keep visas:

The explanation was disingenuous. "Mohammed Atta and his terrorist cohorts were clearly and factually established as Al-Qaeda functionaries of a foreign government [Taliban of Afghanistan] with Al-Qaeda itself being a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (DFTO)", noted Sean Osborne of the US Army's Program Executive Office - Command, Control, Communications Tactical (PEOC3T) within the Special Project Office (SPO).

"Designated terrorist's do not receive and retain 'green card' status, and any card so previously attained would have to be considered a priori fraudulent, null and void," Osborne stated.

In fact, there are 13 exceptions within Executive Order 12333 allowing intelligence-collection on US Persons and bona-fide green card-holders, including for Counterintelligence purposes, allowing for collection of against individuals reasonably suspected of involvement in international terrorism, as well as their associates.

Atta:

But all this is academic. Mohamed Atta was never a green-card holder. Worse still, he never had a valid entry visa. On the contrary, in January 2001, Atta was permitted reentry into the United States after a trip to Germany, despite being in violation of his visa status. He had landed in Miami on January 10 on a flight from Madrid on a tourist visa - yet he had told immigration inspectors that he was taking flying lessons in the US, for which an M-1 student visa is strictly required.

Essentially, Atta had entered the US three times on a tourist visa in 2001, although INS officials knew the visa had expired in 2000, and Atta had violated its terms by taking flight lessons. So Atta was illegal - and the Defense Department lawyers who blocked the FBI from accessing the Able Danger data were lying. So the question remains: why was the Able Danger report prevented by the DoD from circulating in the US intelligence community?