NORRISTOWN - Two years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. intelligence officials linked Mohammed Atta to al-Qaida, and discovered he and two others were in Brooklyn. They wanted to mount a surveillance operation to track them.
But when officials asked Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to advise FBI agents of the "Able Danger" operation, the legal counsel shot down the plan, according to U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-7th Dist., dumbfounding those managing the covert effort.
Atta was one of four hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11. Being the only terrorist onboard who was trained to fly a jet, according to the Sept. 11 Commission Report, he was likely at the cockpit controls when the airliner slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. that morning.
If the government had been able to arrest Atta in 1999, when the Egyptian was staying in Brooklyn, the deadly terrorist attacks might have been prevented - or at least disrupted.
"But (intelligence officials) were told that, because the men had green cards, they couldn't touch them," Weldon said in an interview in Washington, D.C., Monday.
Before 2001, possessing a green card gave foreign nationals the same eavesdropping protection as American citizens.
According to the congressman, SOCOM had advised the FBI during the law enforcement agency's ill-fated siege of the Branch Davidian compound, in Waco, Texas, in 1993, that resulted in more than 80 deaths after Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raided the compound. Following the fiery debacle, all the federal participants in the siege, including SOCOM, were harshly criticized.
Fear of suffering the fallout if "Able Danger" backfired, Weldon said, explains SOCOM's reluctance to assist the FBI.
"There was a lot of concern about repercussions, and the lawyers told special operations to back off," he said.
A small group of intelligence employees ran "Able Danger" from the fall of 1999 until February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was axed.