Weldon: Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders

September 16, 2005

By DONNA DE LA CRUZ, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 15, 7:43 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A

Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified

Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a

congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate

Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered

him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon

(news, bio, voting record), R-Pa.

Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters.

Weldon described the documents as " 2.5 terabytes " — as much as

one-fourth of all the printed materials in the

Library of Congress, he added.

A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said the witnesses for Wednesday's

hearing had not been finalized and could not confirm Weldon's comments.

A message left Thursday with a Pentagon spokesman, Army Maj. Paul

Swiergosz, was not immediately returned.

Weldon has said that Atta, the mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11,

2001, and three other hijackers were identified in 1999 by a

classified military intelligence unit known as " Able Danger, " which

determined they could be members of an al-Qaida cell.

On Wednesday, former members of the Sept. 11 commission dismissed the

" Able Danger " assertions. One commissioner, ex-Sen. Slade Gorton,

R-Wash., said, " Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the

conclusion of all 10 of us. "

Weldon responded angrily to Gorton's assertions.

" It's absolutely unbelievable that a commission would say this program

just didn't exist, " Weldon said Thursday.

Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people

who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior

to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt.

Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon's claims.

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