A secret United States Defence intelligence programme had identified Mohammed Atta as a possible terrorist more than a year before he masterminded the September 11 terrorist attacks, a US Navy captain had said.
The programme codenamed 'Able Danger' had identified Atta in early 2000, said Navy Captain Scott Philpott, the second military officer to publicly state that the Defence Department had prior information about the Egyptian terror ringleader.
"My story is consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000," Phillpott, who managed the programme for Pentagon's Special Operations Command, said, the New York Times reported.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, an Army Intelligence veteran, had last week said that Atta and three other September 11 hijackers were identified as early as mid-2000 through the data-mining programme.
Phillpott's comments, however, was not in tune with Pentagon's stand on the issue.
Pentagon chief spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters on Monday that the Defence Department had been unable to validate the assertions made earlier by Shaffer that Atta was a member of a US-based Al Qaeda cell before the attacks.
Shaffer had claimed that analysts in the intelligence project had been overruled by military lawyers when they tried to share the programme's findings with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2000 in hope of tracking down terror suspects tied to Al Qaeda.
Di Rita said while the department continued to probe the assertions, there was no evidence so far that the intelligence unit had come up with such specific information about Atta and any of the other hijackers.
