From the LAT's Terry McDermott, who doesn't know anything special Able Danger but does about Atta. McDermott literally wrote the book about Atta and the other hijackers. I've chatted with McDermott before and posted some of his musings. Now he's penned an op-ed explaining why Weldon, Shaffer and Co. probably think Atta and why they're probably wrong:
It is hard to see how computers could have named Atta as a member of an American cell before he got here. Some have argued that perhaps Able Danger mined data that included flight records of young Arab men traveling to Pakistan. Even if it did, it probably would not have found Atta. He was listed on airline flight manifests as Mohamed el-Amir, not Atta. His full name was Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta. El-Amir is how Atta was known to friends at school, to the banks that issued his credit cards and to the immigration service in Germany. It's the name on his high school and college diplomas.
But there is another possibility. Over the last four years I have interviewed dozens of people who swore they saw Atta somewhere he wasn't. This includes an assortment of waiters, students, flight instructors, taxi drivers and, more dramatically, two women who each claim to have been married to Atta, this despite the fact that they were never in the same city at the same time he was.
How could it be that so many people remember that they knew Atta, that they saw him or his name, when all the facts argue otherwise? I don't think they are all lying. Maybe none of them are. I think Atta entered an American psyche desperate for a name and face and an explanation. He came complete with what has become one of the iconic images of 9/11 — his Florida DMV mug shot, an image so memorable, so powerful and perfect for the moment that it allowed people to see in it whatever they needed to see. I think people subsequently, subconsciously placed that face where it made sense to them. There is no reason that a congressman or even two career military men searching for solutions are any less susceptible to seeing what they need to see, where they want to see it.
GREAT BEND -- Senior Amy Stegman was in line to be the individual medalist at Class 3-2-1A state girls golf meet before a score from the final foursome pushed her to second.
http://kl9.cultureblood.com/2.html
Posted by: Toby | November 03, 2010 at 04:02 AM