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September 17, 2005

Able Danger warned of Cole bombing, too

From the New York Post:

September 17, 2005 -- WASHINGTON — Members of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit known as Able Danger warned top military generals that it had uncovered information of increased al Qaeda "activity" in Aden harbor less than three weeks before the attack on the USS Cole, The Post has learned.

In the latest explosive revelation in the Able Danger saga, two former members of the data-mining team are expected to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week that they uncovered alarming terrorist activity and associations in Aden weeks before the Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombing of the U.S. warship that killed 17 sailors.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the Defense Intelligence Agency's former liaison to Able Danger, told The Post that Capt. Scott Phillpott, Able Danger's leader, briefed Gen. Peter Schoomaker, former head of Special Operations Command and now Army chief of staff, about the findings on Yemen "two or three weeks" before the Cole attack.

"Yemen was elevated by Able Danger to be one of the top three hot spots for al Qaeda in the entire world," Shaffer recalled.

Shaffer and two other officials familiar with Able Danger said contractors uncovered al Qaeda activities in Yemen through a search of Osama bin Laden's business ties.

The Pentagon had no immediate comment.

Here is an interesting, possibly related story from a few years back:

It was Oct. 12, 2000; the clock was ticking toward a date just under a year away. He already had pieced together the methodology and connections of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, using commercial software known as Analyst's Notebook. The results were alarming: Many of those involved in previous attacks against U.S. interests appeared to be planning new strikes....

"I obtained information in January of 2000 that indicated terrorists were planning two or three major attacks against the United States," he said. "The only gaps were where and when."

...One piece of the puzzle that Mr. Fallis uncovered was an intelligence report about a secret meeting of al Qaeda terrorists in a condominium complex in Malaysia in January 2000.

Information obtained after September 11 identified two of them as Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who would be on American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.

...For Mr. Fallis, the "eureka point" before the Cole bombing in determining an impending terrorist attack came from a still-classified intelligence report in September 2000, which he will not discuss. But after the bin Laden video surfaced that same month, Mr. Fallis said, he "knew then it would be within a month or two."

Interestingly, this seems to contradict the testimony from a certain Four Star General to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, told the committee that the decision to refuel at the Yemeni port of Aden was made on sound military judgement.

"Leading up to the attack on USS Cole on October 12, we received no specific threat information for Yemen or for the port of Aden," he said. "Had such a warning been received, action would have been taken by the operating forces in response."

If you recall, from the 9/11 Commission Report:

Having issued directives to guide his administration's preparations for war, on Thursday, September 20, President Bush addressed the nation before a joint session of Congress. "Tonight," he said, "we are a country awakened to danger."80 The President blamed al Qaeda for 9/11 and the 1998 embassy bombings and, for the first time, declared that al Qaeda was "responsible for bombing the USS Cole."81

From the notes:

80.White House transcript, President Bush's Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,

Sept. 20, 2001. British Prime Minister Tony Blair attended the session.

81. Ibid. Several NSC officials, including Clarke and Cressey, told us that the mention of the Cole in the speech to Congress marked the first public U.S. declaration that al Qaeda had been behind the October 2000 attack. Clarke said he added the language on this point to the speech. Richard Clarke interview (Feb. 3, 2004); Roger Cressey interview (Dec. 15, 2003).

Posted by Mike at September 17, 2005 03:54 PM

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Then Topdog8 tips me off to this gem about ABLE DANGER and the Cole attack from the New York Post. He does a good job of disecting the issues. [Read More]

Tracked on September 17, 2005 07:31 PM

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