Citing Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman, an August 26 Associated Press article reported that “the stories told” by Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott -- that their military intelligence unit, known as Able Danger, identified lead hijacker Mohammed Atta more than a year before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- “match.” The AP attributed the remark about Shaffer and Phillpott to Whitman but did not directly quote him. But the AP failed to report that, to the extent the accounts by Shaffer and Phillpott are indeed consistent, it is only because Phillpott was one of Shaffer's two original sources. The AP also noted that the 9-11 Commission determined that the Able Danger claims were not “historically significant” but omitted the principal reasons the commission provided for reaching that conclusion.

Shaffer and Phillpott have both claimed that in 2000 Able Danger was prevented from providing FBI officials with information that the unit had obtained identifying Atta prior to the September 11 attacks. But as The Washington Post reported on August 19, Shaffer has acknowledged that Phillpott and a civilian official “told him after the attacks that Atta and other hijackers” had been identified on an Able Danger chart in 2000, and Shaffer was “relying on the[ir] word.”

Moreover, there is significant doubt as to whether the unnamed civilian official actually supports Shaffer's account. As Media Matters for America has documented, 9-11 Commission member and former senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) has argued that, because a far-reaching Pentagon investigation has yet to find any evidence supporting Shaffer's account, “as of today” the civilian official “does not corroborate what he [Shaffer] has to say.”

Further, the AP reported that 9-11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said the commission “did not obtain enough information on the [Able Danger] operation to consider it historically significant.” But the article omitted the key reasons the commission provided for determining that the claims were unreliable. As the Post reported on August 23, “The Sept. 11 panel said it did not find Phillpott's assertions credible because there were no documents to support them, and because Atta did not first travel to the United States until June 2000,” at least four months after Phillpott claims that Able Danger identified Atta in Brooklyn, New York. As USA Today noted on August 26: “Shaffer says the team placed Atta in New York as early as February 2000, but The 9/11 Commission Report said he arrived in June of that year.”

From the August 25 AP article:

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the stories told by Shaffer and Philpott* match. But no evidence has been found that would support their claims that any Sept. 11 hijackers were identified by Able Danger, Whitman said.

Shaffer and Philpott have said they made comments to the Sept. 11 commission about Able Danger and its findings, but were not taken seriously. If proven correct, the intelligence would change the timeline for when government officials first learned of Atta's links to al Qaeda.

[...]

Former [9-11] commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice Chairman Lee Hamilton issued a statement August 12 that said the commission did not obtain enough information on the operation to consider it historically significant.

* Various media outlets have alternately spelled the name “Philpott” and “Phillpott.”