Time magazine came out with an article on Able Danger which is focused on the marginal issue of what the 9-11 commission knew and when did it know it. Personally I want to know what the Able Danger team knew in 2000 and why their efforts to contact the FBI were squashed by legal cowering. If you are looking for the epitomy of journalistic effort – this is not the place to look. It is a bad sign the media is not taking this story seriously.

A humorous take on the clear stubborness of the liberal mainstream media is provided by Peter Bronson in The Enquirer (Cincinnati). Which is a better read than Time on this subject:

Superman is invulnerable. Star Trek’s Enterprise has invisible shields that stop photon torpedoes. Invisible Woman has a bulletproof force field.

But those things only exist in comic books, science fiction – and the mainstream media, where you can only tell if it’s there by the things that bounce off. For example:
…
Thousands of soldiers and their families do not have force fields. They are pounded relentlessly by media mortars targeted at the war in Iraq. Even during the week Iraq passed a constitution – moving from dictatorship to democracy faster than the American Revolution – good news was shut down like one of Scotty’s busted warp drives.

But Cindy Sheehan has powerful shields that block negative publicity. The shrill voice of the anti-war left is back in Crawford, Texas, accusing Bush of “murdering” her son who died in Iraq on a volunteer rescue mission. She says Bush is a “terrorist” and, “This country is not worth dying for” – but criticism of her just bounces off like marshmallows hitting a brick wall.
…
Not even the Pentagon budget can buy a force field to protect President Bush from the press-corps lasers. But former President Clinton is still bulletproof.

During his administration in 2000, a top-secret Pentagon project called Able Danger tracked al-Qaida terrorists, and uncovered a cell including Mohamed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers, according to officers who worked on the project.

But the Clinton administration had put up a wall of rules to keep the FBI from talking to the CIA. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said attempts to alert the FBI were blocked by Clinton lawyers. “They said, ‘He’s here legally. He’s either got a green card or he’s got a visa. So you can’t even touch him – it doesn’t matter what information you have.”’

That might be a big story – “White House kept FBI from stopping 9/11 terrorists” – but it can’t get past the invulnerable Clinton force-field.

Some light humor for your Sunday.

Around the blogospher we begin with Captain Ed Morrissey who is tracking down a lead provided by a reader regarding an Iranian connection to 9-11 coming. Turns out this connection was also mentioned by Dafydd ab Hugh on July 5th – at Captains Quarters. A humble Captain ends the post with a slogan from Dafydd that is priceless. Check it out. But the linkage between Iran and 9-11 is interesting and important. Here is a snippet of the story:

Earlier this evening, I did a quick post on a passage in Kenneth Timmerman’s new book Countdown to Crisis that matches up to the timeframe when Captain Scott Phillpott went to the 9/11 Commission to insist that his secret datamining unit had identified Mohammed Atta as a potential al-Qaeda terrorist in early 2000. Timmerman, whose book came out prior to the Able Danger revelations, notes that 9/11 Commission report author and staff director Philip Zelikow called his subordinates in for a meeting at that same point in time to review explosive new information that tied Iran to al-Qaeda.

To skip through some of this, when comparing the time frame and description of this new information and where it was found, it appears possible it was something buried in the Able Danger materials the commission may have been reviewing at that time.

The story of these documents highlight the manner in which the Commission acted to protect predetermined narratives, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, for motives which appear at best murky and at worst partisan to their core.

Which seems to be still occuring with regards to Able Danger and 9-11. The information in this book is stunning if true:

What the team leader found that Sunday morning was nothing less than a complete documented record of operational ties between Iran and al-Qaeda for the critical months just prior to September 11. “The documents showed Iran was facilitating the travel of al-Qaeda operatives, ordering Iranian border inspectors not to put telltale stamps on their passports, thus keeping their travel documents clean,” the team leader told me. “The Iranians were fully aware that they were helping operatives who were part of an organization preparing attacks against the United States.” …

Check out the reporting on this by Morrissey, and compare it to the stuff Time published. One looks like a pro, the other like an amatuer. If what is being discovered about the total lameness of the 9-11 commission report is true, then it appears we may need to start all over again. And this time no politicians. Maybe bloggers would do better?

More updates possibly later today

UPDATE:

Well, if the media is not discussing Able Danger, the bloggers surely are – see here.

You might also want to check in with QT Monster’s Able Danger Blog Roll of latest news – just in case I missed something!