Up First? A Little Able Danger ...
We have been getting e-mails from our readers asking us what happened to the Able Danger story. Relax, the story is alive and well, even after sitting on the side for a couple of months awaiting it's hearing. Irish Pennants was there for the live hearings yesterday. But this comes from The Raleigh News and Observer, and is written by James Rosen (Not to be confused with Risen from the New York Times on the NSA story).
The Pentagon's top intelligence official clashed repeatedly Wednesday with former operatives of the clandestine Able Danger program over how much the government knew about al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Much of the testimony focused on whether hijacking mastermind Mohammed Atta had been identified long before the tragedy.
In a rare public display of bitter disputes within the close-knit military intelligence community, three members of a computer data-mining initiative code-named "Able Danger" told Congress that the Sept. 11 attacks might have been prevented if law-enforcement agencies had acted on the information about al-Qaeda they unearthed.
"It shocked us how entrenched of a presence al-Qaeda had in the United States," former Army Maj. Erik Kleinsmith told two subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee.
J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who also worked on the Able Danger team, said he used Arab intermediaries in the Los Angeles area to buy a photograph of Atta. Smith said Atta's photo was among about 40 photos of al-Qaeda members on a large chart that he personally delivered to Pentagon officials in 2000, more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Asked by Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, how certain he was that the chart contained Atta's photograph, Smith responded that he kept a copy of the chart on the office wall.
"I'm absolutely certain," Smith said. "I looked at it every day."
The dramatic hearing came five months after the Pentagon had prevented the former Able Danger operatives from testifying in public at a Senate Armed Services Committee session. It was a victory for Weldon, who persuaded 247 fellow lawmakers to sign a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, demanding open hearings on Able Danger.
"This isn't about finger-pointing," Weldon said. "It's simply about letting the American people know what we knew before 9/11. We can't learn how we can prevent the next attack unless we understand what happened in the past."
Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set up the top-secret initiative in the late 1990s under the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. Drawing together a dozen top computer and intelligence officers and contractors, it used cutting-edge computer software to bore deep into Internet data to identify and draw links among al-Qaeda terrorists around the world.
Shelton, who retired three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, has acknowledged creating the Able Danger program and being briefed on it, but he has denied having any recollection of Atta being identified before the attacks.
Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, testified Tuesday that an extensive Pentagon review of Able Danger under his direction failed to locate the chart its operatives say they produced, and didn't find evidence documenting their other claims.
"There's no one here looking not to bring the information forward. We simply have not found it," Cambone said.
Pentagon officials previously said the al-Qaeda data produced by Able Danger had been destroyed because of regulations that prevent the military from maintaining information on U.S. citizens or legal residents.
This is a point that I still cannot wrap my head around. As far as anything has been said about Atta and his co-conspirators, a number ofg them, including Atta, had overstayed their visas. In other words, they were not "legal residents." They were illegal aliens, so why destroy the records, then?
But in a series of tense confrontations, Weldon told Cambone that his military sources had informed him some of the Able Danger data still existed.
"What's going on here?" Weldon asked. "Is this a massive effort to deny reality?"
Weldon said that an unidentified current Pentagon employee had, within the last three weeks, run computer searches using pre-9/11 Able Danger data. They had five hits on "Mohammed Atta" and three hits on "Muhammed Atta," Weldon said.
"There's been no investigation!" Weldon said. "There's been no analysis by the 9/11 commission or anyone else."
Cambone denied Weldon's allegations that the Pentagon has tried to punish former Able Danger team members for talking about the program.
Cambone can deny what he wants, however, Michelle Malkin covered the Able Danger story when it broke, as did Captain Ed Morrissey . They both have alleged that Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer and others have faced a firestorm of retaliation from the Pentagon. There are people who do not want anything to get out about what Able Danger was doing, and what they had found.
Let me clarify this for those firing up their e-mails to hit us on this, because to some, it may seem rather hypocritical of us to slam the New York Times over the NSA story, but yet demand to have the answers to Able Danger.
--Able Danger WAS active up until shortly after 9/11
--The NSA intercept program IS still active.
The only reason why Able Danger has been shoved off to the side, in hopes that people would forget about it, is because the Pentagon and the intelligence agnecies we have did not want people to realize there was one group on the ball that everyone was ignoring. Jack Kelly, the brainchild behind Irish Pennants is right to criticize how this is looking to Americans. Keep in mind that Thomas and I are not conspiracy nuts. We do not look for the mothership above, nor do we consider tin-foil hats a fashion plus. (Manolo says "no" to tin-foil shoes, as well.)
But Jack has some interesting thoughts about this:
On 17 October 2003, at a meeting in Afghanistan (where Shaffer was assigned to a Ranger battalion) Shaffer tells staff director Philip Zelikow about Able Danger. It appears it's the first time Zelikow has heard about Able Danger. He gives Shaffer his business card and tells him to get in touch when he gets back to the U.S. (Zelikow has recently denied ever having met Shaffer, but Shaffer had Zelikow's business card at the hearing.) The Pentagon's records indicate that Zelikow made a request for info on ABLE DANGER the same day Shaffer says they met.
The following January, Shaffer returns from Afghanistan and calls Zelikow's office. He's put off. Two weeks later, Shaffer calls again, and is told by aides that Zelikow is no longer interested in Able Danger. Obviously, between the middle of October and January, the fix was put in.
It isn't clear why the Bush administration is covering up the suppression of ABLE DANGER data, because it occurred on President Clinton's watch.
It could have something to do with Condoleeza Rice. The Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) where the data mining for Able Danger first took place was ordered to shut down and to destroy its files after then Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre had ordered a search of how U.S. military technology has wound up in Chinese hands.The search had turned up a number of prominent names, including that of Rice, who was then provost at Stanford University, where much of the espionage activity seemed to be focused. Zelikow is a senior adviser to Rice at the State Department.
There is something going on here, and America deserves to know why the DoD is doing just about everything in their power to cover-up what Able Danger was doing, what it was accomplishing, and why the warnings went unheeded.
Bunny ;)
We have been getting e-mails from our readers asking us what happened to the Able Danger story. Relax, the story is alive and well, even after sitting on the side for a couple of months awaiting it's hearing. Irish Pennants was there for the live hearings yesterday. But this comes from The Raleigh News and Observer, and is written by James Rosen (Not to be confused with Risen from the New York Times on the NSA story).
The Pentagon's top intelligence official clashed repeatedly Wednesday with former operatives of the clandestine Able Danger program over how much the government knew about al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Much of the testimony focused on whether hijacking mastermind Mohammed Atta had been identified long before the tragedy.
In a rare public display of bitter disputes within the close-knit military intelligence community, three members of a computer data-mining initiative code-named "Able Danger" told Congress that the Sept. 11 attacks might have been prevented if law-enforcement agencies had acted on the information about al-Qaeda they unearthed.
"It shocked us how entrenched of a presence al-Qaeda had in the United States," former Army Maj. Erik Kleinsmith told two subcommittees of the House Armed Services Committee.
J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who also worked on the Able Danger team, said he used Arab intermediaries in the Los Angeles area to buy a photograph of Atta. Smith said Atta's photo was among about 40 photos of al-Qaeda members on a large chart that he personally delivered to Pentagon officials in 2000, more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Asked by Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, how certain he was that the chart contained Atta's photograph, Smith responded that he kept a copy of the chart on the office wall.
"I'm absolutely certain," Smith said. "I looked at it every day."
The dramatic hearing came five months after the Pentagon had prevented the former Able Danger operatives from testifying in public at a Senate Armed Services Committee session. It was a victory for Weldon, who persuaded 247 fellow lawmakers to sign a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, demanding open hearings on Able Danger.
"This isn't about finger-pointing," Weldon said. "It's simply about letting the American people know what we knew before 9/11. We can't learn how we can prevent the next attack unless we understand what happened in the past."
Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, set up the top-secret initiative in the late 1990s under the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. Drawing together a dozen top computer and intelligence officers and contractors, it used cutting-edge computer software to bore deep into Internet data to identify and draw links among al-Qaeda terrorists around the world.
Shelton, who retired three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, has acknowledged creating the Able Danger program and being briefed on it, but he has denied having any recollection of Atta being identified before the attacks.
Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, testified Tuesday that an extensive Pentagon review of Able Danger under his direction failed to locate the chart its operatives say they produced, and didn't find evidence documenting their other claims.
"There's no one here looking not to bring the information forward. We simply have not found it," Cambone said.
Pentagon officials previously said the al-Qaeda data produced by Able Danger had been destroyed because of regulations that prevent the military from maintaining information on U.S. citizens or legal residents.
This is a point that I still cannot wrap my head around. As far as anything has been said about Atta and his co-conspirators, a number ofg them, including Atta, had overstayed their visas. In other words, they were not "legal residents." They were illegal aliens, so why destroy the records, then?
But in a series of tense confrontations, Weldon told Cambone that his military sources had informed him some of the Able Danger data still existed.
"What's going on here?" Weldon asked. "Is this a massive effort to deny reality?"
Weldon said that an unidentified current Pentagon employee had, within the last three weeks, run computer searches using pre-9/11 Able Danger data. They had five hits on "Mohammed Atta" and three hits on "Muhammed Atta," Weldon said.
"There's been no investigation!" Weldon said. "There's been no analysis by the 9/11 commission or anyone else."
Cambone denied Weldon's allegations that the Pentagon has tried to punish former Able Danger team members for talking about the program.
Cambone can deny what he wants, however, Michelle Malkin
Let me clarify this for those firing up their e-mails to hit us on this, because to some, it may seem rather hypocritical of us to slam the New York Times over the NSA story, but yet demand to have the answers to Able Danger.
--Able Danger WAS active up until shortly after 9/11
--The NSA intercept program IS still active.
The only reason why Able Danger has been shoved off to the side, in hopes that people would forget about it, is because the Pentagon and the intelligence agnecies we have did not want people to realize there was one group on the ball that everyone was ignoring. Jack Kelly, the brainchild behind Irish Pennants is right to criticize how this is looking to Americans. Keep in mind that Thomas and I are not conspiracy nuts. We do not look for the mothership above, nor do we consider tin-foil hats a fashion plus. (Manolo says "no" to tin-foil shoes, as well.)
But Jack has some interesting thoughts about this:
On 17 October 2003, at a meeting in Afghanistan (where Shaffer was assigned to a Ranger battalion) Shaffer tells staff director Philip Zelikow about Able Danger. It appears it's the first time Zelikow has heard about Able Danger. He gives Shaffer his business card and tells him to get in touch when he gets back to the U.S. (Zelikow has recently denied ever having met Shaffer, but Shaffer had Zelikow's business card at the hearing.) The Pentagon's records indicate that Zelikow made a request for info on ABLE DANGER the same day Shaffer says they met.
The following January, Shaffer returns from Afghanistan and calls Zelikow's office. He's put off. Two weeks later, Shaffer calls again, and is told by aides that Zelikow is no longer interested in Able Danger. Obviously, between the middle of October and January, the fix was put in.
It isn't clear why the Bush administration is covering up the suppression of ABLE DANGER data, because it occurred on President Clinton's watch.
It could have something to do with Condoleeza Rice. The Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) where the data mining for Able Danger first took place was ordered to shut down and to destroy its files after then Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre had ordered a search of how U.S. military technology has wound up in Chinese hands.The search had turned up a number of prominent names, including that of Rice, who was then provost at Stanford University, where much of the espionage activity seemed to be focused. Zelikow is a senior adviser to Rice at the State Department.
There is something going on here, and America deserves to know why the DoD is doing just about everything in their power to cover-up what Able Danger was doing, what it was accomplishing, and why the warnings went unheeded.
Bunny ;)
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 10:31 AM
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