Military Bars 9/11 Intel Testimony

Pentagon Won't Allow Officer To Discuss Secret Military Unit

(CBS/AP) 
On three occasions, Able Danger personnel attempted to provide the FBI with information, but Department of Defense attorneys stopped them because of legal concerns about military-run investigations on U.S. soil, Zaid said in his prepared remarks, encouraging the panel to locate a legal memorandum that he said Defense Department attorneys used to justify stopping the meetings.

Zaid also charged that records associated with the unit were destroyed during 2000 and March 2001, and copies were destroyed in spring 2004.

"We recognized there are linkages and patterns of linkages to the al Qaeda leadership," Shaffer said last month on CBS News' Early Show (video). "That's what our primary concern was at the time."

Rep. Curt Weldon. R-Pa., who was the first to come forward to assert that Able Danger had identified Atta and three others as being members of an al Qaeda cell, was also scheduled to testify.

If Weldon is correct, the intelligence would change the timeline for when government officials first became aware of Atta's links to the terrorist network al Qaeda.

Former members of the Sept. 11 commission have dismissed the "Able Danger" assertions.

Pentagon officials had acknowledged earlier this month that they had found three people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In addition to Shaffer, another military officer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, has come forward to support Weldon's claims. He was not on Wednesday's witness list.