Flashy Links! | Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant. |
Play Time: | Missionred.com. Thanks User Friendly. |
Stories: |
Police: Man's Testicles Locked In Padlock. Thanks Warren. Man forgets wife at Italy petrol station for 6 hrs. Five Siblings Sue 'Extreme Makeover' Show. Thanks John. |
Science! |
Jinxed computer users might be sending out a bad vibe, researchers
suggest. Thanks Warren. Errors Cited in Assessing Climate Data (registration required). Giant waterfall discovered in California national park. Thanks Jim. |
Images: | Truck Explosion. |
Follow-ups: | Spacecraft Blasts Off to Gather Mars Data. |
Come to think of it... why don't we treat the world like a PC. With all the shit floating around it's time for a format. Maybe we'll get it right in 3 or 4 tries.
(...)ya think people would actually get it together and try to learn from the mistakes and take action to prevent it again instead of all this he said/she said, they had/we have crap.
Investigations are now under way into what was done before September 11, 2001, about Able Danger's identification of Atta and three of the other future hijackers as members of an al-Qa'ida cell operating in the US and why the 9/11 commission also chose to ignore the unit's intelligence findings.
I especially like his lvl 11 body guard "bandits". Hehehe.
I fucking hate that mission...
WASHINGTON — The federal commission that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was told twice about "Able Danger," a military intelligence unit that had identified Mohamed Atta and other hijackers a year before the attacks, a congressman close to the investigation said Wednesday.
Rep. Curt Weldon (search), R-Pa., a champion of integrated intelligence-sharing among U.S. agencies, wrote to the former chairman and vice-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission late Wednesday, telling them that their staff had received two briefings on the military intelligence unit — once in October 2003 and again in July 2004.
Weldon said he was upset by suggestions earlier Wednesday by 9/11 panel members that it had been not been given critical information on Able Danger's capabilities and findings.
"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," Weldon wrote to former Chairman Gov. Thomas Kean (search) and Vice-Chairman Rep. Lee Hamilton (search). "The 9/11 commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter.
"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," Weldon wrote in his letter Wednesday night.
"Therefore it is no small irony," Weldon pointed out, "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."
"It could be a very crucial incident in terms of the lead-up to 9/11. It could reveal flaws in the intelligence sharing or the lack of intelligence that we have not yet focused on," Hamilton said of the military's tracking of Atta and its inability to get domestic intelligence agencies to follow up.
Among the most critical facts to be determined, if the information about Atta did exist in 2000, would be who then blocked the intelligence from going to the FBI, which could have tracked down the terror cell.
"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," Weldon wrote.
"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," he added.
Critics say her duties on the commission represent a conflict of interest, contending that she is the single greatest cause of the organizational failures within intelligence that contributed to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Former acting FBI Director Thomas J. Pickard said that Gorelick had played a key role in setting the very counterterrorism policies being investigated. During her tenure at the Justice Department, which controls the FBI, she opposed FBI initiatives to work more closely with other US agencies to investigate and prevent terrorism, according to Former acting FBI Director Thomas J. Pickard.
During the 9/11 Committee, questions were raised as to why there was a "wall" that prevented information from being shared between departments such as the FBI, CIA and Justice Department. The reason - in 1995, she was the number two person at the Justice Department. Gorelick essentially decreed that, because terrorism was to be tried as any other crime, and information between organizations cannot be disseminated during investigations, a "wall" was set up - a "wall" that ultimately led to 9/11.
NEW intelligence reports suggesting that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta arrived in the US in late 1999 or early 2000 - six months earlier than previously thought - are likely to spark a reassessment of public servant Johnelle Bryant's incredible story of a face-to-face meeting with the terrorist.
In an extraordinary 2002 interview later branded a hoax by some media -- including the ABC's Media Watch -- Ms Bryant claimed to have met Atta in late April or early May of 2000 when she worked as a loan officer with the US Department of Agriculture's farm services agency in Florida.
But despite some independent support for her claims, Ms Bryant's account was dismissed as a fake on the grounds that Atta did not get a visa to enter the US until May 18, 2000, and did not arrive until June 3 that year on a flight from Prague that landed at New Jersey's Newark airport.
Her claims were ignored in last year's 9/11 commission report on the events leading up to the terrorist attacks. The commission accepted the advice of US immigration authorities that Atta did not arrive until June 2000.
But revelations that a military intelligence unit known as Able Danger believed Atta had actually arrived in the US in late 1999, or at the latest very early in 2000, have lent new credibility to Ms Bryant's claims, while at the same time raising questions about the exchange of intelligence between US security agencies.
Investigations are now under way into what was done before September 11, 2001, about Able Danger's identification of Atta and three of the other future hijackers as members of an al-Qa'ida cell operating in the US and why the 9/11 commission also chose to ignore the unit's intelligence findings.
Republican congressman Curt Weldon has accused the commission of ignoring material that would have forced a rewriting of the September 11 events.
Spokesman Al Felzenberg admitted this week the commission had been sceptical when an Able Danger officer briefed it in July last year and said Atta had been in the US in late 1999 or early 2000. The investigators knew this was impossible, Mr Felzenberg said, since travel records confirmed he had not entered until June 2000.
"The information that (the officer) provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing," he said. "There was no way that Atta could have been in the US at that time."
A full party of 8 leaving from TOA shouldn't have any insurmountable troubles..
By the way, I did that Villany of Galrath quest last night. What a freaking joke. Do they expecty ANYONE to be able to do that without dying multiple times? I like a challenge, but c'mon. And with mercs it's simply impossible because they're such idiots.