As past readers are quite aware, I am no fan of the commission, not so much for political reasons as it is that I think they did a crappy job in their analysis and investigation. The discussion of al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Kosovo was completely whitewashed and the attempt to merge Burkean and Gunaratnan paradigms of what al-Qaeda is was muddled, to put it bluntly. This doesn't even begin to get into the fact that by the spring of 2004 the commission had more or less degenerated into a media circus that included the hysteria within which the issue of whether or not Condoleeza Rice would testify was characterized, the appearance of Richard Clarke coinciding with the release of his book followed by Fox News attempting to debunk him, the issue of Gorelick and the wall and the subsequent allegation by her in the Washington Post that then Attorney-General Ashcroft had basically perjured himself, the frequent appearances by a handful of 9/11 widows to weigh in as commentators on the issue of the current and prior performance of the US intelligence community, the issue of Sandy Berger, Bob Kerrey's New York Times op-ed critiquing the current administration strategy and more or lessing auditioning to become John Kerry's VP candidate before the commission's report was even complete, etc. I'm sure partisans on either side can add their own respective complaints to the commission's conduct, but you don't have to be a knee-jerk partisan to recognize that maybe, just maybe all of this might not have been Good Things when conducting what is supposed to have been a professional and impartial investigation into the largest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor. The result, however, has been that this commission, its members, and the report they produced is now regarded as having, to paraphrase the words of one commenter on my other blog, "more authority than anything since Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai" by the press.

Before I launch into this, let me briefly rant that one of the things that has always frustrated me is the fact that people in the "reality-based" community will periodically dismiss the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on pre-war Iraq intelligence, the Butler report, and occasionally the Robb-Silberman commission on WMD because, near as I can tell, it doesn't fit their established narratives as far as misconduct on the part of the Bush and Blair governments since all of these documents more or less exonerate them of many of the nastier charges of intelligence manipulation and distortion with respect to Iraq.

The general rebuttal to this is that the second half of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee investigation into the role of Feith's office has yet to be completed so there might (has to?) still be something nefarious there. What this ignores, however, is that the first half of the report completely exonerates the widespread claim that the administration pressured intelligence analysts to change their findings on Iraq to suit a political agenda. Over 400 analysts were interviewed by the Committee and either they answered in good faith or we have a very real problem in that we have an intelligence community who is willing to lie en masse for an administration many of them have little love for to a congressional investigation. Claims that all of the pre-war Iraq intelligence came from Chalabi and the INC were likewise debunked, as were allegations that all of the Iraq/al-Qaeda evidence that was revealed to the general public was in toto a product of Feith's office. Does this mean that invading Iraq was necessarily the wisest or the most prudent step to take? Not at all. But here, as is so frequently the case, being anti-war or "reality-based" seems to mean that you never have to say you're sorry.

Moreover, there are far more visible problems (in the sense that anybody not completely blinded by partisanship can see them) with the 9/11 commission than there are with any of the other conventions. That the 9/11 commission degenerated into a media circus circa the spring of 2004 doesn't strike me as something that can be very easily disputed. And, just to see how many people I can possibly anger in a single post, let me add this comment: I think there were far more visible flaws with how the 9/11 commission conducted itself than any of the investigations into detainee abuse at US detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Nevertheless, here we are year later and the 9/11 commission has become a peculiar institution in American politics, which may explain why so many of its defenders in the press are so loyal.

Enter Curt Weldon, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who has already been characterized as a kook and a sucker in the press for his defense of Mahdavi. Together with several Able Danger team members, he drops the bombshell allegation that the US identified Mohammed Atta prior to 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission ignored it. The commission produced a lengthy staff statement in response and by most commentators, myself included, things were looking pretty grim for Weldon. And if Weldon conducted his argumentation the same way the administration did (though they usually prefer to ignore their critics, which is one of several reasons why I've never bought into the "Rove as evil mastermind" thesis), Weldon's allegations would soon have been forgotten except among the hard-core of the conservative movement, which would have attributed their dismissal as yet another proof of media bias.

Except that Weldon, not being Rove, hit back and convinced the former leader of Able Danger to go public to defend himself and his team. The Pentagon initially denied his charges, but have since reversed their position after an official inquiry and found more people who recall having identified Atta prior to 9/11. No documentation of this was found, but Weldon seems to have dug up the reason for that as well - a Pentagon employee seems to have been ordered to destroy everything prior to 9/11 and is willing to testify under oath to that effect. Perhaps reflecting the sensibility of all this, the Pentagon wants the hearings closed to the general public, which strikes me as quite odd indeed if this is all much ado about nothing.

One thing we need to be clear on is perjury before Congress is extremely serious business and carries with it some fairly stiff penalties if you get found out. Accepting a priori that it's highly unlikely that former Able Danger members are going to lie through their teeth under oath to Congress because of the consequences involved, it looks to me like it's quite likely that Weldon is going to come through this smelling like a rose and the commission members by contrast are going to made to look like fools. If this is in fact the case, it'll be an unqualified good in my book because it'll start to chip away the aura of institution and infallibility that the commission has so smuggly assembled around itself since the spring of 2004.

Finally, I don't think that what Weldon is doing is all that political, unless one regards attacking the 9/11 commission as being objectively in favor of either political party. If the allegations are correct, then Clinton administration is going to get a fair degree of blame, but I really don't see any way that this can be plausibly attached to Clinton the man or anybody at the level of his cabinet - though his political appointees at the Pentagon may end up being another story. Nor does this seem to reflect terribly well on the Bush administration's claim (which, for the record, I really don't buy) that fighting terrorism was one of its major concerns pre-9/11. What I'll give the man a lot of credit for, though, is making a claim and sticking to it even after having been derided by the press and one of their newest sacred cows, the 9/11 commission. Normally you'd call him a "whistleblower," but I realize that such terms are not used when referring to members of the "faith-based" community.

Either way, should be interesting to see what comes out of Able Danger the Congressional hearings.