Able Danger, Atta and Michael Chertoff

For the current state of the Able Danger controversy, this is your best one-stop-shopping resource. Note that the senator chairing the inquiry is none other than Arlen "single bullet" Spector, who is no sane person's first choice to head an investigation of a possible cover-up. Be that as it may, this bit captured my interest:

Judiciary Chairman Senator Arlen Specter (Republican-Pennsylvania), told the hearing he was "surprised to find that the Department of Defense has ordered five key witnesses not to testify". The five were serving and reserve military officers and civilian contractors who had worked on Able Danger and who say they remember the chart.

The chart in question is the one on which Mohamed Atta's face appeared -- at a time when the FBI insisted that he had yet to enter this country. I presume that the Five include Captain Scott Philpott, who confirmed the early identification of Atta to FOX News but refused to discuss further details outside his "chain of command." One may thus presume that said chain of command approved Philpott's disclosure to FOX.

The order not to testify carries a distinctly fishy aroma.

What to make of this endlessly-twisting tale? From time to time, I've conjectured that the entire affair was a mere exercise in disinformation, designed to embarrass the Clinton administration and to promote legally-questionable "data mining" operations. But -- from the current administration's viewpoint -- such a game hardly seems worth the candle. Why undermine the FBI's timeline? Calling the Official Story into question can only legitimize those writers (such as Daniel Hopsicker) who have presented evidence that Atta was involved with the drug trade.

If Able Danger liaison Tony Shaffer was allowed to speak freely to representative Curtis Weldon, and even to the ghastly Michael Savage (who blames "liberal lawyers" at the DIA!), then why aren't "the Able Danger Five" allowed to speak to Spector's committee?

The Wikipedia entry contains a fascinating note on one J.D. Smith, a civilian contractor working on the project. (Is he one of the Five? I presume so.) "Smith stated that Atta's name had emerged during an examination of individuals known to have ties to Omar Abdul Rahman, a leading figure in the first World Trade Center bombing."

Republican flack Mickey Kaus and others have postulated that the Atta known to members of the Rahman ring was not the Atta of 9/11 fame, but Shaffer has made deep-sixed that alternative explanation.

The reference to Rahman and his buds gets us into very strange territory.

In 1994, the district attorney in New Jersey was Michael Chertoff, now the head of Homeland Security. One of the funders of Rahman's mosque was a mysterious man named Magdy El-Amir -- who has also been accused of funding Al Qaeda. When Chertoff returned to private practice, he took El-Amir as a client. Many have wondered why Bush picked the lawyer for an accused Al Qaida moneyman to head Homeland Security.

From time to time during his U.S. sojourn, Atta used the name Mohamed El-Amir. Admittedly, it is a common Egyptian name.

Perhaps a coincidence. Perhaps not.