No, that's not secret code from a 1960s spy thriller. But it does involve the FBI and the Defense Department. Ed Morrissey, Jim Geraghty and other bloggers have some thoughts on what Geraghty says could be "one of the biggest stories to come down the pike in a while". Geraghty's post is a great way to get up to speed quickly on the topic. He concludes:

Somebody's lyin.

If this checks out, a lot of folks left, right and center are going to have to ask hard questions about what the heck Jamie Gorelick was doing on that Commission instead of answering questions to it. The whole, "well, both administrations were to blame, let's move on" conventional wisdom regarding 9/11 could be shot to hell, if it turns out the U.S. military intelligence had these guys identified and located within NYC and an effort to capture them was vetoed. Over a legal argument that seems flat-out wrong. Atta wasn't a U.S. citizen; none of these guys were.

The Sandy Berger stuffing his socks has always looked like a deliberate coverup, but now that slap on the wrist sentence he recieved looks truly outrageous. And the defense of him from President Clinton — something along the lines of, "oh, that's just absent-minded Sandy, we always laughed about him walking off with papers" becomes supremely implausible. No, if Weldon's account is accurate, this entire thing smells of a stunningly brazen coverup.

Able Danger proved that at least some of the intelligence work done by the US provided the information that could have helped prevent or at least reduce the attacks on 9/11. They had identified the ringleader of the conspiracy as a terrorist agent, even if they didn't know what mission he had at the time.

What does that mean for the Commission's findings? It meant that the cornerstone of their conclusions no longer fit the facts. Able Danger showed that the US had enough intelligence to take action -- if the government had allowed law enforcement and intelligence operations to cooperate with each other. It also showed that data mining could effectively identify terrorist agents.

So what did the Commission do? It ignored those facts which did not fit within its predetermined conclusions. It never bothered to mention Able Danger even one time in its final report, even though that absolutely refuted the notion that the government had no awareness that Atta constituted a terrorist threat. It endorsed the idea of data mining (which would die in Congress as the Total Information Awareness program) without ever explaining why. And while the Clinton policy of enforcing a quarantine between law enforcement and intelligence operations came under general criticism, their report never included the fact that the "wall" for which Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick had so much responsibility specifically contributed to Atta's ability to come and go as he pleased, building the teams that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.

And when confronted with this revelation this week, the Commission lied about their knowledge of the program and attempted to impugn Rep. Curt Weldon's integrity instead. Here's what Lee Hamilton, one of the Commission's co-chairs, had to say just yesterday on the topic:

"The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."

The Able Danger project team tried three times, Fox reports, to give the information on Atta to the FBI in 2000. Each time, administration attorneys blocked their efforts.