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September 18, 2005

Separating fact from Able Danger fiction

Well, the speculation is running wild. See this discussion by AJ Strata:

My post on the Weldon interview has been generating a lot of debate over at Free Republic (here). One comment caught my eye with an interesting theory on what happened and is worthy of some contemplation. The portion that caught my attention was:

Any destruction of documents and the closing down of Able Danger before 9/11 was due to the fear in the Clinton Administration that it could turn up linkages between known Chinese operatives and illegal contributions to Slick’s campaign. After 9/11, they realized to their horror (with the Able Danger staff briefings to the Commission) that they had at the same time destroyed information that might have prevented 9/11.

This is not the first time this connection has been suggested. There simply is no proof outside the coincidence of the parallel studies: China Connections, Able Danger Terrorist Connections. But logically it is not out of the realm of possibilities. The administration’s reaction to the China analysis could have impacted the Able Danger findings. They all occur in the same time period.

First of all, there were no briefings to the 9/11 Commission by its staff on what they had learned about the Able Danger program:

Weldon said he was told specifically by commission members, Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana; and John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy; that they had never been briefed on the Able Danger unit within Special Ops or on the unit’s evidence of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn.

The staff led by Executive Director Zelikow decided that it was not historically significant. But I think Rumsfeld is dreading Wednesday a lot more than Clinton, thus the bid to have the Able Danger hearings closed to the public.

Let's take a closer look at what Smith, Shaffer, and Phillpott have actually said. The truth is that the destruction of documents in May of 2000 is only one small part of the story, related to how the program was restructured and transferred from one contractor to another. The real story, is why were the recommendations of Able Danger never followed up on, and why was the program dismantled entirely in the spring of 2001, just months before 9/11?

Anyway, the only thing Phillpott has actually said publicly is "My story is consistent, Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000." Through Weldon and Shaffer, partially confirmed by the Pentagon, it sounds like Phillpott has also said Able Danger identified al Shehhi, Mihdhar, and al Hamzi. Shaffer says that Able Danger, based in Tampa at Special Forces and CENTCOM command on MacDill Airbase, was supported by Orion Scientific out of Fairfax, VA and the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity project based out of Belvior, VA. J.D. Smith, who worked for Orion at the time says that he linked Atta to Al Qaeda in 2000 and kept a copy the chart until 2004:

Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart until last year and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs.

The New York Post claims that LIWA program that supported Able Danger was shut down in May 2000 and all the contractors fired, after producing a chart that wrongly tagged presidential candidate George W. Bush's top foreign policy advisor as a national security risk. According to the NY Post story:

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the veteran Army officer who was the Defense Intelligence Agency liaison to Able Danger, told The Post China "had something to do" with the decision to restructure Able Danger....

A Pentagon official said last night that, while the canned contractors worked for Able Danger, the China project was separate from the counter-terrorism assignment.

The Able Danger work was transferred to another Department of Defense contractor — and the program quietly expired later that year when it was completed, the official said.

The China chart was put together by James Smith, who confirmed yesterday that his contract with the military was canceled and he was fired from his company because the military brass became concerned about the focus on U.S. citizens.

"It was shut down in a matter of hours. The colonel said our service was no longer needed and told me: 'You just ended my career.' "

From WTOP news radio in DC, we learn:

The names and the origin of the information turned out to be so sensitive that Smith says, "It cost me a contract and a eventually my job at the company that employed me at the time."

Now there are allegations, that the 2.5 terabytes of data Orion used for it's datamining effort were also destroyed in the summer of 2000:

So what we will have is a person who will testify under oath, on the record, that in the summer of 2000, he was ordered -- or he would lose his job and/or go to jail if he didn't comply -- he was ordered to destroy 2.5 terabytes of data specific to Able Danger, the Brooklyn cell and Mohammed Atta.

He will name the person who ordered him to destroy that material. And, furthermore, he will note that a commanding general from SOCOM -- Russ, what was his name?

STAFF: (OFF-MIKE)

WELDON: General Lambert was incensed when he found out that material that he was a customer for was destroyed without his approval.

We also know from Tony Shaffer, that the contract which was canceled with Orion, it was restarted with Raytheon in Garland, Texas:

GSN:
Tell me about the commercial contractors that were involved in Able Danger.

SHAFFER:
I have to be very careful now as to how I start answering because I’ve been told that there are going to be [congressional] hearings on this. I have to be careful regarding where the data may be.

Orion Scientific, [now part of SRA International, Inc., of Fairfax, VA] was helping LIWA [the Army’s Land Warfare Information Activity], but they also had a contract with Defense Intelligence. [James] Smith said in a statement I heard yesterday that Orion got cold feet when it appeared that LIWA was getting ahead of DIA in some of the analysis. Because the contract that Orion had with DIA was much more lucrative than the contract it had with Army, and the fact that the smaller contract was doing more and better things with its advanced technology, was embarrassing the DIA guys. So, I understand from Mr. Smith’s account, DIA put pressure on Orion Scientific to back out of the Army relationship, which then in turn reduced the capability of the Army support to Able Danger.

That may have been a contributing factor to why there were problems with Army and Special Operations Command beginning in the spring of 2000. At that point in time, LIWA backed out of the relationship.

GSN:
Which other contractors were involved with Able Danger?

SHAFFER:
I know that some of the technology you’re talking about were done by Battelle. There were Battelle scientists involved in this. Battelle, Orion and then Raytheon. Raytheon became the lead contractor when Army backed out of it.

What happened was the Special Operations Command -- General Schoomaker, in particular -- grew tired of trying to get the Army to do something like this. When Army started backing off for any number of reasons, Special Operations Command made the decision to relocate Able Danger to Texas. It began the effort from that location to do two things: first, recreate the LIWA suite of technology; and second, energize it using some of the same folks. The one common denominator was the senior scientist that moved from Army down to Texas to do that very function.

This sheds some light on another remark from Weldon:

Sam Johnson, Congressman Johnson's son, Dr. Bob Johnson, was working for Raytheon down in Texas. And Special Forces Command was setting up a separate operation for data mining at Garland, Texas, separate from LIWA, partly because the Army was getting cold feet because of the pressure they were realizing.

WELDON: Dr. Bob Johnson told his father that the military was deliberately destroying data. Sam Johnson came to a number of members, including Dan Burton. And, as the chairman of the government oversight committee, Dan Burton subpoenaed documents and files.

That caused a major uproar back and forth. And so, that did contribute to the ending of the LIWA.

And my understanding is -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that Richard Schiefren (ph) was the individual who ordered the destruction -- or the stoppage of the LIWA. Is that correct?

Richard Schiefren (ph), the same lawyer who was in the briefing with Steve Cambone in the winter of '01, was the lawyer who caused the data mining at LIWA to stop.

Clearly, there are two possible motives for the destruction of data. One, those 2.5 terabytes of data contained personal information on U.S. citizens that had been obtained "illegally" and people panicked. Two, Orion did not want to share "propriety" information with the competition at Raytheon. I'm betting the truth is a mixture of the two.

I think an important point is being overlooked though, by those who look at this as the central event in the history of Able Danger. First, the restructuring of support for Able Danger, transferring it from one contractor to another, clearly did not stop the program itself from completing it's mission. By September 2000, they had gathered information on a cell in the US that they wanted to pass on to the FBI. Also in September 2000, they warned of a potential terrorist attack in Yemen, at the Port of Aden in particular, three weeks before the attack on the USS Cole. Clearly, any destruction of data Orion had in May 2000 did not cripple the Able Danger effort.

What crippled the Able Danger effort was the fact that none of it's recommendations were ever followed, and when the new administration took office the program and technology were dissolved completely!

In January 2001, Hugh Shelton was briefed on Able Danger by Shaffer. The new Bush administration was just coming into office, and no action was taken. In March 2001, we now learn that Shaffer discussed Able Danger with at least four prominent military and intelligence leaders in Washington:

A briefing that included Richard Schiefren (ph), with Steve Cambone, in March of 2001, five months before 9/11, is historically insignificant? I don't think so....

I wanted to bring Tony Shaffer in to talk to you about the briefing that he was involved with with General Shelton in January of '01 and the briefing -- again, this second briefing, as Tony will tell you, was not specifically about Able Danger. It was about a program called Door Hop Galley (ph).

But during that briefing with Admiral Wilson and with Richard Schiefren (ph), the topic of Able Danger came up and Richard Schiefren (ph), who was the legal counsel at the Pentagon, knew about Able Danger....

Steve Cambone never mentioned to me that Able Danger was ever discussed in a meeting on Door Hop Galley (ph). Now, maybe he didn't remember that. That's understandable. And I'm not faulting him for that.

But in that meeting with Richard Schiefren (ph) and Admiral Wilson, as you can ask Tony Shaffer outside, Able Danger was discussed. It was not the purpose of the meeting, but it was discussed.

Ultimately, who killed Able Danger? It sounds like Tampa killed it after Shaffer's unit ended their direct support:

GSN:
Did it end Able Danger altogether?

SHAFFER:
I think it contributed to the failure of it because by that point, Army had already pulled out and Special Operations Command, because of the political change there, had also changed their focus. I remember the last conversation I had with Captain Scott Philpott on this was a desperate call from him asking me to try to help use one of my operational facilities to at least try to exploit the information [Able Danger had collected] before it got lost.

I still think that is the real controversy here. The fact that "the political change there, had also changed their focus" to the point that the disbanded the only global targeting effort against Al Qaeda four months before September 11th. That is a fact, and a crucial one:

SHAFFER: We were going down the right path. And that was my concern. And, as a matter of fact, my colleagues and I got together. As a matter of fact, one of my former investigators came forward recently and said, I remember you talking to me about this a week after 9/11.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

SHAFFER: We all realized that we had these guys. And then we started asking some questions to ourselves. Why was Able Danger, why was this whole technology piece turned off four months before the 9/11 attacks? In the spring of 2001, it was dismantled, all, completely.

Posted by Mike at September 18, 2005 03:09 PM

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