From Friday's Wash Post:
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 doesn't mean much, except that it's just another bit of evidence suggesting something murkier is going on than the NYT has presented--namely, we now know that, contrary to the NYT's version, commission staffers had two reasons to doubt what the official asserted.
P.S. Terry McDermott is the expert on Atta's history and timeline. I'm emailing him now...
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