"The commission members themselves were never briefed on Able Danger"
About this Quote
A bureaucratic failure sentence dressed up as an indictment, this line uses passive voice like a courtroom tactic: “were never briefed” makes ignorance sound less like an accident and more like a denial of due process. Curt Weldon isn’t just pointing at a missed meeting; he’s alleging a structural suppression of knowledge, the kind that turns oversight into theater.
The context matters. Weldon invoked “Able Danger,” a controversial Pentagon data-mining effort some claimed had identified al-Qaeda-linked individuals before 9/11, to argue that key investigators (implicitly the 9/11 Commission) were kept in the dark. In Washington, “the commission” is shorthand for legitimacy: the body that’s supposed to produce the definitive narrative. If its members “themselves” weren’t told, then the official story can be framed as incomplete not because the commission failed, but because it was set up to fail.
That “themselves” does extra work. It suggests a chain of exclusion reaching above staff-level mishaps, implying gatekeepers who decided what the country was allowed to know. Weldon’s specific intent is to relocate blame: away from messy operational incompetence and toward institutional self-protection. The subtext is a dare: if you trust the commission, you’re trusting a report written with missing pages.
It’s also politically savvy. The charge doesn’t require proving Able Danger’s effectiveness; it only requires proving that someone, somewhere, didn’t disclose it. In an era when “what did they know, and when did they know it?” is the default civic suspicion, the most damaging claim is often simply that the briefing never happened.
The context matters. Weldon invoked “Able Danger,” a controversial Pentagon data-mining effort some claimed had identified al-Qaeda-linked individuals before 9/11, to argue that key investigators (implicitly the 9/11 Commission) were kept in the dark. In Washington, “the commission” is shorthand for legitimacy: the body that’s supposed to produce the definitive narrative. If its members “themselves” weren’t told, then the official story can be framed as incomplete not because the commission failed, but because it was set up to fail.
That “themselves” does extra work. It suggests a chain of exclusion reaching above staff-level mishaps, implying gatekeepers who decided what the country was allowed to know. Weldon’s specific intent is to relocate blame: away from messy operational incompetence and toward institutional self-protection. The subtext is a dare: if you trust the commission, you’re trusting a report written with missing pages.
It’s also politically savvy. The charge doesn’t require proving Able Danger’s effectiveness; it only requires proving that someone, somewhere, didn’t disclose it. In an era when “what did they know, and when did they know it?” is the default civic suspicion, the most damaging claim is often simply that the briefing never happened.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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