More Tinfoil-Time! "Gorelickgate"

All the brouhaha and kerfuffle about a possible "Gorelickgate" over the 9/11 Commission got me interested, so I went to see what DefenseTech might have to say. Noah just linked to this guy:

Sounds like the NYT has nailed the 9/11 commission staffers--except it's not really true. As the top of the piece says, the commission has acknowleged that some military officer did last year (days before the report was published) assert to commision staffers that Able Danger pegged Atta as AQ. But contrary to what the Times says, it's not "known" that he did so at a much earlier meeting. He's insisting that he did and committee staffers are still saying that he's full of it.

Now the Times' Doug Jehl wouldn't be trying to pawn off assertions as fact just to beef up his story...would he?

Then I did some further browsing on the same blog and found this follow-up:

Commission officials confirmed a report in yesterday's New York Times that two staff members interviewed a uniformed military officer, who alleged in July 2004 that a secret program called "Able Danger" had identified Atta as a potential terrorist threat in 1999 or early 2000.

Panel investigators viewed the claim as unlikely, in part because Atta was not recruited as an al Qaeda operative until a trip to Afghanistan in 2000 and did not enter the United States until June of that year, officials said.

That's pretty conclusive.

But conservative bloggers and pundits have leaped at the bait because it gives them an opportunity to blame 9/11 on a Clinton-era staffer - without ever explaining why the five Republicans on the Commission (such as James R. Thompson the former Illinois governor and Fred F. Fielding, Reagan era White House Counsel) would allow the coverup that supposedly shielded said appointee. They would need a monumental conspiracy theory to explain it, surely.

The tinfoil for the hats is in the post, guys.