WASHINGTON (AP) - The Sept. 11 commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday.

This just gets ugly now. I have disagreed with pointing fingers on this stuff, but what irks me the most is that I am not seeing this or hearing it in the news. The fact of the matter is that Jamie Garelic has real culpability in this because it was her policies that put the “wall” in place making it illegal for the Pentagon to transfer this information to local domestic authorities.

While I say hindsight is 20/20 here, and it is armchair quarterbacking to try and blame her in retrospect; it is another matter all together that this information was known to the 9/11 commission and omitted for the bad PR value it would hold for the commission itself.

I am also annoyed that the Media will run the Rove story past its natural life cycle, but hasn’t touched this one since it became apparent the blame couldn’t be laid at the foot of the Pentagon.