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September 25, 2005

Is James Woolsey setting Able Danger up to fail?

I thought I should update this post and its title to reflect that this video clip of Jim Woolsey on Fox News makes my questioning of his motives seem paranoid. In the August 21, 2005 interview, he was supporting the credibility of the Able Danger team members who stepped forward, not detracting from them at all. On the other hand, what is that saying? Just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Ha. If Mac is right though and the VP wants this to go away, which Hadley's denial suggests, I still think the connections between Cheney and Woolsey are too strong for Woolsey not be keeping the Vice President up to date on all of the details. I will be very interested in what Woolsey has to say if the actions of top leaders in the current administration ever come into question. Anyway, here is the rest of my original post.

Mac at Macsmind explains how Cheney is trying to kill the Able Danger story, and if you can read between the lines that makes the involvement of James Woolsey, who is "helping" Congressman Weldon on this, highly suspect.

Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and James Woolsey all worked together during the Reagan administration serving as team leaders on different defense and national security issues. According to James Mann, on page 335 of Rise of the Vulcans, the three were also "would-be White House chiefs of staff in the clandestine doomsday exercises of the Reagan administration." James Bamford describes it this way on page 72 of A Pretext for War:

But during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, following the attempt on his life soon after he took office, the issue of how to run the country if the senior leadership was "decapitated" was again revived. To help resolve the problem, a plan known as the Presidential Successor Support System was developed - again in absolute secrecy. Once more, unelected private citizens from around the country and several cabinet officers were called upon to take command. But now, one of them would even assume the role of president.

Given overall responsibility for the secret government was Vice President George H. W. Bush, with Lt. Col. Oliver North, a key player in the Iran-contra scandal, as the National Security Council action officer. The operation was hidden under the cover name "National Program Office" and was run by a two-star general from a nondescript Washington office building. Among the key players in the shadow government were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and James Woolsey.

After the Reagan administration ended, Dick Cheney served as George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense for Bush 41's full term in office - from March 1989 to January 1993. Cheney then became a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from January 1993 to October 1995, when he was hired as the CEO of Halliburton. His wife Lynne was hired as a Senior Fellow by AEI at the same time in 1993 and still works at AEI in that position today.

James Woolsey was CIA Director from 1993 to 1995 under Bill Clinton and the neo-conservative hawk has gotten a lot of mileage as being bipartisan as a result, despite the fact that according to one source:

Woolsey was so disliked by Clinton that when an apparent suicide pilot crashed a single-engine Cessna airplane on the south lawn of the White House in 1994, jokers suggested it might be the CIA director trying to get an appointment with the President.

James Bamford, writes on page 118 of A Pretext for War: "One former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, had only two semiprivate meetings with the President in two years and referred to his relationship with Clinton as 'nonexistant.' " According to USA Today:

An angry ex-CIA director can be more damaging to a president than a disgruntled current director. That was President Clinton's experience after he pushed out CIA director James Woolsey, only to have Woolsey become one of the leading critics of Clinton on national security issues.

Since 1997, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Woolsey have all been leading advocates of the Project for a New American Century - whose headquarters are on the fifth floor of the American Enterprise Institute building in DC. The group's main goal for the five years preceding the Iraq War were to make the case for overthrowing Saddam and criticize the "incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration".

DowningStreetMemo.com has a timeline of Woolsey's actions since, which clearly establishes his role as an advocate for Bush and Cheney. When Wes Clark got that call from the Whitehouse on 9/11 to blame Iraq for the attacks, he said no. Jim Woolsey said yes:

01-26-1998 PNAC calls to remove Saddam Hussein from power

03-1998 James Woolsey defends INC rebels in deportation case

05-29-1998 PNAC letter outlining removal of Saddam Hussein

1999 Bush advisors "clearly wanted to go after Iraq"

2000 Woolsey serves briefly as a corporate officer for the Iraqi National Congress

02-2001 Woolsey makes first of two trips to London trying to link Iraq to 1993 WTC bombing

02-15-2001 Woolsey: "Iraq may have had a substantial hand in the World Trade Center bombing"

09-11-2001 Key Officials, Woolsey and Kristol used 9/11 as Pretext for Iraq War

09-13-2001 Woolsey: Investigators should consider the possibility the attacks were ordered

09-16-2001 Wolfowitz: 9/11 created opportunity to attack Iraq

10-2001 Woolsey in London, sent by Wolfowitz to investigate Iraqi link to 9/11

10-2001 While in London, Woolsey meets with INC [Iraqi National Congress] leaders

10-07-2001 Taliban offers US "significant insights into Iraq's terrorist collaborations in the region"

10-08-2001 Woolsey meeting cancelled with Taliban to discuss links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden

10-23-2001 Ex-CIA Chief suggests Iraq involvement in 9/11 attacks

10-26-2001 Woolsey: "substantial and growing indications" Iraq was behind attacks

02-11-2002 Woolsey arranges the debriefing of an Iraqi defector produced by the INC

Now do you understand my concern, after learning that Vice President Cheney made sure the Able Danger witnesses were gagged, that I remembered hearing Congressman Weldon say this at the hearing:

I brought in again as a volunteer Jim Woolsey. Jim Woolsey is a close friend of mine. Jim Woolsey sat in on a number of meetings with these people early on to make sure that I wasn't going off the deep end and to counsel me to make sure that I wasn't jumping to conclusions.

Combine that with this article, I'm sure there will be others, where Woolsey downplays the Able Danger controversy:

James Woolsey, President Clinton's CIA director from 1993 to 1995, said the decision not to pass the information to law enforcement agents was made before Sept. 11 and passage of the PatriotAct, which has expanded the government's ability to track terrorist threats inside the United States.

"There are all sorts of things that lawyers, during peacetime, advise their clients to do to stay within legal bounds," Woolsey said.

Now do you see it? The plan to kill Able Danger is an inside job.

As Mac says:

In light of the fact, that "Cobweb" pulled a plug on progress, the Able Danger saga continues on the web.

TopDog08 links to this letter issued by the 911 Commission on 20 September 2005. After perusing it I am even more convinced that whatever 'actvitiy' we see reference to hearings, it's all going to be one big "dog and pony" show from now on.

Why? Despite what Able Danger was, and what they did, the story is about "The Chart", and Weldon's big kahuna is that damn chart with Atta's mug shot on it. Unless he can pull it out of his rear end and soon this is a dead issue. The letter acknowledges "other charts", but not THE chart.

In other words, the focus is on a chart Woolsey knows they don't have.

They've made damn well sure it no longer exists by now.

Posted by Mike at September 25, 2005 11:58 AM

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