Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, has said the unit used data-mining to link Atta and three other hijackers to Al Qaeda more than a year before the attacks. The 71-page report, blacked out in parts, rejected Weldon's contention that the unit wanted information given to the FBI but that Pentagon lawyers would not allow it.
Weldon questioned the ``motives and the content" of the report and rejected its conclusions. ``Acting in a sickening bureaucratic manner, the DOD IG cherry-picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort," Weldon said in a statement.
``The report trashes the reputations of military officers who had the courage to step forward and put their necks on the line to describe important work they were doing to track Al Qaeda prior to 9/11," Weldon said.
The report acknowledged that one Able Danger member alleged he was prohibited from providing a chart to the FBI in 2000 by a senior special operations commander. But, the report said, ``the senior official did not recall the incident, and we are persuaded that the chart would have been of minimal value to the FBI."
The Pentagon had said some employees recall seeing an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist before the attacks. The report said those accounts ``varied significantly" and witnesses were inconsistent at times in their statements.
Several lawmakers had asked the Pentagon to investigate whether Defense Department officials mismanaged Able Danger and retaliated against Shaffer. He was a proponent of the program who later had his security clearance revoked.
The report said that Shaffer was not retaliated against but that the inspector general did find ``procedural oversights" in the handling of his office contents and his performance evaluations.
A message left with Shaffer's lawyer yesterday was not returned immediately.
Last year, the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks dispensed with the issue by calling it ``not historically significant."
Thomas Kean, the commission's cochairman, said he hoped the report would put an end to discussion about Able Danger.
