| Thursday, August 11, 2005 |
| Havana on the Potomac |
Tucked deep in the NYT's follow-up story on the 9/11 commission's apparently ignoring information on military intelligence's Atta discoveries a year before the terror attacks is this telling paragraph:
Mr. Felzenberg confirmed an account by Mr. Weldon's staff that the briefing, at the commission's offices in Washington, had been conducted by Dietrich L. Snell, one of the panel's lead investigators, and had been attended by a Pentagon employee acting as an observer for the Defense Department; over the commission's protests, the Bush administration had insisted that an administration "minder" attend all the panel's major interviews with executive branch employees. Mr. Snell referred questions to Mr. Felzenberg. [emphasis added] Backing up a bit, here is more info on Felzenberg and the briefing in question, from an earlier paragraph:
Al Felzenberg, who served as the commission's chief spokesman, said earlier this week that staff members who were briefed about Able Danger at a first meeting, in October 2003, did not remember hearing anything about Mr. Atta or an American terrorist cell. On Wednesday, however, Mr. Felzenberg said the uniformed officer who briefed two staff members in July 2004 had indeed mentioned Mr. Atta. To paraphrase poor old Dick Durbin, if I were to read these passages to you, without telling you what country I was talking about, you might think I was talking about the government of Cuba or the former dictatorship in Iraq, not an elected government of the free and democratic United States of America ... |
posted by JReid @ 12:56 AM   |
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