Countdown Debunked the NYT Atta Able Danger Story from Monday [View All]

On Tuesday Terrorism Expert Eric Kohlmann Debunked this and Curt Weldon. I couldn't believe so many DU'ers were taking this report seriously.

OLBERMANN: Let‘s begin with “The Times”‘ report.

Between the dubious, nebulous sourcing, the fact that the 9/11 Commission says it looked into this program and didn‘t find anything, and that the story has been around for a couple months, but no news organization really had been willing to touch it until today, is there reason to be skeptical about this account in “The New York Times”?

KOHLMANN: Well, even if we were sure this account was actually true, it doesn‘t tell us anything really that earth-shattering. While we didn‘t know necessarily about any involvement or knowledge by U.S. agencies of Mohamed Atta‘s presence here in the U.S., we know that the CIA knew at least about two of the individuals mentioned here, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hamzi, before 9/11.

So, if the issue is whether or not U.S. government agencies knew about 9/11 hijackers as potential al Qaeda terrorists here in the U.S. before 9/11, we already knew the answer was yes. And the larger issue, of course, is, any time you have a story like this, you have to go back to the source. And the only named source is Representative Curt Weldon.

And, with all due respect, Representative Weldon does not have a particularly good history in terms of reporting information about terrorism. His latest book, which accuses Iran of being behind virtually everything terrorism-related since the World Trade Center bombing, is based upon material that is absolute propaganda and is 100 percent wrong. It is based upon sources that we relied upon for the Iran-Contra affair that have been discredited over a decade ago.

And I think, really, the most telling comment was from a CIA official, who took the unprecedented step, really, of coming out and directly saying that he had reviewed the accusations that Mr. Weldon made in his book and determined that they were not worth his time, that they were a waste of his time. And, unfortunately, I‘m concerned that this report may again be a waste of our time, the time of the American public, the time of 9/11 Commission investigators, and the time of FBI and CIA agents.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8895001/