Crazy Curt Weldon’s Able Danger Stunt Implodes

Indiana Weldon has many tin foil hat issues that deserve the light of
day.

As I wrote recently, the shifting
story narrative of his draft dodging and why he didn't go to Vietnam is
just one of them. It's not just the fact that he might have dodged the draft
that bothers me and many others. After all, it was 1969 when everyone knew Vietnam
was a loser, so nobody wanted to be the last guy to die for a mistake, as John
Kerry would say. It's the fact that once he met his challenger, former Admiral
Joe Sestak, it seems his original deferment story needed a little
brushing up. That's when his bad eyesight story was born. But that's just the
latest silliness in Crazy Curt's world.

Laura
Rozen has a new article out for the American Prospect that outlines
the rest.

Probably Weldon’s most notorious venture into the dark side is something known to insiders as “Able Danger,” an obscure and now defunct Pentagon data-mining program. Weldon claims the program identified the chief September 11 hijacker months before the attacks. The villains in his theory are civil-liberties-minded Pentagon lawyers who supposedly blocked analysts from sharing their findings with the FBI. He has even alleged that the 9-11 Commission conspired in a cover-up of the Able Danger findings. (Both the Pentagon and the 9-11 Commission vigorously dispute his accusations.) – Laura Rozen

It's bad enough that Weldon
swiftboated a venerated veteran like Sestak, but we've all come to expect
that these days in the era of EFF
and big scale media companies like XM,
who actually promote swiftboating events through the right-wing talk radio hosts
they carry. But what Weldon did over Able Danger is reprehensible.

… The IG (Inspector General) found no evidence that Able Danger or any other government entity had identified Mohamed Atta or other terrorist cells involved in the attackes of Sept. 11, period. “None of the Able Danger team members, who were in a far better position to describe Able Danger findings” than Shaffer or Weldon, including the Air Force commander of the unit, agree that Mohamed Atta or other Sept. 11 hijackers were ever identified, the IG says. They found not only inconsistent statements from Shaffer and other witnesses who previously have spoken up in the media and in conversations and testimony before Weldon, but also witnesses who later changed their statements and disavowed memories and stories attributed to them by Shaffer and Weldon. For offenses that are redacted from the IG report on privacy grounds, Shaffer’s security clearance was revoked by the Defense Department in February 2006. Some will take this to mean that Shaffer is an honorable whistleblower whose life and career is being ruined by the system. My sense, after reporting on the Able Danger story for over a year is that if anyone is to be blamed, it is Congressman Weldon: he cynically has used Shaffer & co. to pursue a fantasist political agenda. He is indefensible. … The Final Verdict on Able Danger, by William Arkin

One thing Crazy Curt has is connections. You know, in that old style, political
boss-type way. It greases the wheels that keeps Crazy Curt in power.

A case in point: Last year, with Weldon’s support, an Italian-led consortium, AgustaWestland-Lockheed, won a $1.6 billion Navy contract to build the next generation of presidential helicopters over a U.S.-led consortium. As part of its bid, AgustaWestland, the helicopter subsidiary of Italian defense giant Finmeccanica, expanded its Philadelphia plant operations. But there was more to the deal than jobs for his district. According to Harper’s magazine reporter Ken Silverstein, AgustaWestland hired another Weldon daughter, Kim, to work in its public-relations department. Furthermore, another Finmeccanica subsidiary, Oto Melara, hired the real-estate agent, Cecelia Grimes, as its lobbyist. Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense says Weldon promoted Grimes’ lobbying clients in other ways. “Her clients were being profiled at congressional hearings that [Weldon] ran,” Ashdown recalls. Observers say Weldon is a perfect reflection of the political machine he has represented over the years. “Delaware County is, if not the most powerful, then one of the oldest and most successful political machines in the United States,” says former Weldon opponent Dave Landau. “And Weldon is only a functionary of the machine.” Anger Management, by Laura Rozen (emphasis added) The House’s most erratic member, Curt Weldon, may finally hit a wall.

It's all about Weldon's political muscle machine. Because though it's not
often written about, Curt Weldon isn't taken very seriously in the House or
around Washington. After all, he didn't get the nickname Indiana
Weldon because he's from Indiana. Long after WMDs were no longer a viable
excuse for preemptive war, Curt was ready to head off to Iraq with his little
shovel in his hand to prove all the weapons inspectors, the United States military
and everyone else had been wrong about WMD. Dave Gaubatz, who was supposed to go with Weldon on his WMD
digging expedition, finally backed out when he found out that Crazy Curt was
just hyping it for political publicity, which is Weldon's specialty.

There's also Weldon's support for Uzbekistan's thug, Islam Karimov, who has
reportedly boiled people alive. Talk about Republicans
for Torture in '06 unite! (Anything
to not talk about Iraq.) Evidently, Crazy Karimov is Crazy Curt's kind of
guy. I'm not the only one who feels it's time for Curt Weldon to be fired.

The House of Representatives of our era doesn’t lack for camp spectacle. There’s Indiana’s Dan Burton, who shot at melons in his backyard to “prove” that the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered. Tom Tancredo of Colorado once advocated that America “take out” Muslim holy sites. The list goes on. But that list, lengthy as it is, is surely topped by Pennsylvania’s Curt Weldon. Known as something of a fist-banger and loose cannon — and continually denied a committee chairmanship by his fellow House Republicans despite his 20 years of service — Weldon has a knack for uncovering fantastic government conspiracies. Word of this is finally getting around his suburban Philadelphia district, and he faces his first real challenge in ages this fall, from Joe Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral fed up with Republican national-security policy. Weldon’s reputation for Tom Clancy-esque capers may be more than offset by another longtime habit — his ability to bring defense money into the district. That it sometimes arrives with strings attached, like the hiring of Weldon friends and family members, seems to matter less than the fact that it arrives at all. It will take a Democratic tsunami for Weldon to lose, so this race is worth watching for two reasons: as an electoral bellwether, and because a Weldon departure would restore a measure of sanity to Washington. … Anger Management (emphasis added) The House’s most erratic member, Curt Weldon, may finally hit a wall.

Now let's get to the crux of Crazy Curt. His wholesale creation of the Able
Danger story is enough to prove he's not all there. He did blogger conference
calls ratcheting up the frenzy; investing time and energy of his congressional
office trying to get this story stirred up, not to mention spending taxpayers' money on a tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
But it's finally been put to rest, which included Curt spending more cash to
prove a negative. The DOD's
Inspector General's office has finally put the nail in Curt Weldon's 9/11
fantasy theories. That's the end of it, right? Wrong, because according to Curt even the DOD Inspector General is wrong. It's a whitewash! Ho-boy.

A Pentagon report rejects the idea that intelligence gathered by a secret military unit could have been used to stop the Sept. 11 hijackings. … … The report was ordered following the assertion last year that the unit had identified four of the 19 hijackers in 2000. That contention was made by a former intelligence officer who worked on Able Danger, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, and by Representative Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, has said the unit used data-mining to link Atta and three other hijackers to Al Qaeda more than a year before the attacks. The 71-page report, blacked out in parts, rejected Weldon's contention that the unit wanted information given to the FBI but that Pentagon lawyers would not allow it. Weldon questioned the “motives and the content” of the report and rejected its conclusions. “Acting in a sickening bureaucratic manner, the DOD IG cherry-picked testimony from witnesses in an effort to minimize the historical importance of the Able Danger effort,” Weldon said in a statement. Pentagon rejects idea hijackers were known before 9/11

Rep. Weldon went so far as to accuse the 9/11 Commission panel of covering
up Able Danger. He just won't accept the DOD's
Inspector General's report. He's likely making a new tin foil hat as we speak.

Rep. Weldon belongs to the crazy lunatic fringe crowd who, because of his political money machine, has been able to keep himself in power. It speaks volumes that his own party won't let him control the wheels
of any committee even though he's been in power since 1987. Considering all
the mistakes in Iraq, compounded by Indiana Weldon's tin foil hat Able Danger
nonsense, it's a miracle he still has his job. Let's hope his luck is about to run out.

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