A Pentagon report rejects the idea that a secret military unit had gathered intelligence a year before the Sept. 11 attacks that might have stopped the hijackers, a senior defense official said Thursday.

Lawmakers were to be briefed Thursday on the Defense Department inspector general's report, and officials hoped to post a version with blacked-out parts on the Pentagon's Web site, two officials said. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report had not yet been released, declined to provide further details about the study's conclusions.

The report was ordered following the assertion that four of the 19 hijackers were identified in 2000 by a classified military intelligence unit known as “Able Danger.”

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Read The Full Pentagon Report On "Able Danger"
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The claim came from a former intelligence officer who worked on Able Danger, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and by Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and the Homeland Security committees.

Weldon, R-Pa., said the unit used data mining to link ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers to al Qaeda more than a year before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Weldon said the intelligence unit wanted the information given to the FBI, but that Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation.

The bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks dispensed with the issue by calling it “not historically significant.” The Pentagon has acknowledged some employees recall seeing an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist before the attacks, but said none has found a copy of it.

John Tomaszewski, Weldon's press secretary, said they have been told the report's release was imminent.