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September 17, 2005
Too many coverups to count
It is becoming increasingly clear that there was not a single mistake or coverup in the Able Danger "nightmare", there were at least seven:
May 2000
Besides Able Danger, JD Smith and others at LIWA were also doing data mining for a project related to tracking Chinese spies. Smith and the contractor he work for at the time were fired in May 2000 after showing how several prominent people were linked to Chinese spies, not that this meant the politicians themselves were in fact spies. Apparently all the data Smith's contracting firm used was destroyed.
October 2000
Officials from Special Operations Command fail to show up for not one but three separate meetings about handing over information to the FBI.
Someone within SOCOM, either lawyers or leadership, cancels all three.
January 2001
General Hugh Shelton is briefed on the effort to target Al Qaeda, known as Able Danger, but a new administration is taking over and they are "tired of swatting flies" so the program is shelved.
May 2001
Four months before 9/11 Shaffer is ordered to halt his support for Able Danger, which had apparently continued after the restructure.
September 2001
Aided by Congressman Weldon, members of the Able Danger team give Stephen Hadley a chart showing how they had identified some of the hijackers two years before 9/11. Hadley said he would show it to Bush. Hadley now appears to be claiming that he never got any chart.
January 2004
After returning from Afghanistan, where the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission had asked him to contact him upon his return, Shaffer contacts Zelikow but is told that they no longer need to speak to him. He is subsequently placed on administrative leave and the Able Danger documents that he had kept a copy of mysteriously disappear.
June 2004
Captain Phillpott urgently requests a meeting with the 9/11 Commission and tells them how Able Danger had identified Atta almost two years before the attacks. The 9/11 Commission decides that he is not a reliable source, despite being the team leader for the project to target Al Qaeda, and makes no mention of Able Danger in its report.
Posted by Mike at September 17, 2005 02:28 PM
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