TOPDOG08.COM

« Weldon was talking about Ewing not Ennis | Main | Able Danger in the news »

October 21, 2005

Able Danger is finally seeing the light of day

It's official. I'm going to go watch "Good Night, and Good Luck" this weekend. I hope some real journalists will go do the same.

'Good Night, And Good Luck.' takes place during the early days of broadcast journalism in 1950's America. It chronicles the real-life conflict between television newsman Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. With a desire to report the facts and enlighten the public, Murrow, and his dedicated staff - headed by his producer Fred Friendly and Joe Wershba in the CBS newsroom - defy corporate and sponsorship pressures to examine the lies and scaremongering tactics perpetrated by McCarthy during his communist 'witch-hunts'. A very public feud develops when the Senator responds by accusing the anchor of being a communist. In this climate of fear and reprisal, the CBS crew carries on and their tenacity will prove historic and monumental.

Here is Curt Weldon on Sean Hannity:

SH: You know what I'd like to do, Congressman? I actually have the ability, I would like to sit down with all 7 of these guys for a national 1 hour TV special on the Fox News channel. If you can get all 7 of these guys I will tape it. This weekend, next weekend, I'll fly down to Washington. You let me know what you want me to do. This needs to be brought to the attention of the American people. We need to expose this. And we need to get some more main stream coverage. I cannot believe that if we don't learn the lessons from the past, our countrymen are going to die again.

CW: Here's our problem, the Pentagon today will not allow any of these people who work for the Pentagon, to talk to the media and they have gagged them from talking to members of Congress.

SH: Can Col. Shaffer no longer talk to us?

CW: Col. Shaffer is prohibited by his lawyer from talking. He's at great risk, he has talked to some people. He's at great risk, which is why they want to take away his pay and his health care benefits so they can hold it over his head and not allow him to talk while he's under suspension. This is not America, Sean. There's nothing here about our national security. There's no classified information. This is a story that needs to be told, that has been stopped by people in the Defense Intelligence Agency, who were in that agency, the career bureaucrats that were in that agency, when they had access to this information, and did nothing with it. They're still there, Sean. And for the life of me I can't understand why, and I said to Mr. Don Rumsfeld 10 days ago, who I support, I said, Mr. Secretary, why can't they talk in public.

More importantly, Captain Ed, one of the most popular conservative bloggers, drops this bomb shell insider account on us tonight, too:

Deputy Director of DIA is Mark Ewing. He won't be in that position for very long, seeing as how he recently put in his paperwork to resign. This action comes after he had a spat with the outgoing director, Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the subject of which is not clear ... there is the recent revelation that Ewing may very well have pulled a three-monkeys trick (see/hear/speak no evil) when presented with the findings of Able Danger. As the senior leadership exodus at DIA continues (see below) Ewing would have been the last one standing and facing the music. He would like to flee the intelligence community completely but that is apparently not possible: through a curious set of administrative circumstances he has ample government service time under his belt, but cannot retire and collect his pension (details require a long explanation). If anyone needs to panic it is Ewing.

Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby is the outgoing director of DIA. His previous assignment, in the late 2001 time-frame, was the J2 (the DOD's top officer for warning). Not many outside the business know this but his retirement timetable seemed to accelerate about the time ABLE DANGER hit the fan. This is a guy who never met a mission that he didn't want to kill or ignore if there was any chance that it would prevent him from achieving that next star on his collar. Jacoby is a naval officer but not a "ship-driver". If he were, you tell me, would you want serve on the ship being captained by a guy would didn't think it would be prudent to put the vessel in the water due to the risks involved in actually sailing? When he does go sailing he likes to make sure that there are plenty of familiar hands to help man the sails. Once he was firmly in the director's chair, he began a purge of the old executive corps at DIA, replacing most of them with friends from the office of naval intelligence. When he couldn't easily force incumbents out of their seats, he simply created new executive positions to put his pals into.

The head of HUMINT at DIA is a guy named Bill Huntington (he spoke during the DOD briefing on Able Danger). Technically he's the vice deputy director for HUMINT, but in all of these jobs the civilian deputy is the long-term head of office, while the military officer who is named the head of the office is the short-timer. Huntington is in the process of attempting to flee DIA for the DNI.

The deputy director of intelligence (head of the analysis office) is Earl Sheck. Sheck was one of the first cronies Jacoby brought over from ONI. As the keeper of the analytical resources at DIA, the odds that Sheck also knew something about Able Danger are pretty good. Able Danger was a SOCOM/LIWA show, but if they were using tools from Orion (also have contracts at DIA) and working CT issues, inevitably they would have talked to relevant offices in DIA, if nothing else than to bounce ideas off of each other or to request additional intel support. DIA's CT mission is run by the J2, but to think that Sheck would not be aware to some extent is inconceivable. Sheck is also rumored to have one foot out the door.

An intelligence agency, full of cronies who all botched their respective roles during the decades preceding and years after September 11th, thought they could handily weather the Able Danger storm. When it became clear that the ship was about to capsize, they all couldn't move fast enough for the life rafts. Not like they would have much to worry about given the tendency to not punish intelligence officers for negligence, but then the DIA isn't the CIA, and military officers (like Jacoby) have the UCMJ to worry about.

Even Mac's Mind, who never gets tired of making fun of Able Danger, is jumping back on the band wagon - granted with one eye on the exit:

"Able Danger - The Great Summer Story - Re-Awakens!"

I wonder what Cobweb has to say about all of this?

Posted by Mike at October 21, 2005 01:33 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.topdog08.com/cgi-bin/mt-trackback.cgi/827

Comments

Post a comment