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October 05, 2005

Stick a fork in Able Danger?

From the Washington Times:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has taken closed-door statements in an inquiry that could clear up whether the intelligence program Able Danger identified September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta a year before the attack.

A spokesman said yesterday that the committee likely will release a report or a statement in the next two weeks that makes conclusions, or at least determines the facts.

Most of the attention on Able Danger has come from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which already has conducted one public hearing on the intelligence-collection program. It is now asking the Pentagon to allow personnel associated with Able Danger, such as defense intelligence analyst Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Philpott, to testify in public about how Atta was purportedly identified.

But a final verdict could come sooner from the intelligence committee, based on closed-door briefings already provided by Mr. Shaffer, Capt. Philpott and Pentagon officials.

For the ninth time, Mac's Mind once again predicts The End Is Near:

This is the fork in the meat of what has been a Nice Summer Story. Again, pressure came from the top (over Spector's AO) and stuck that fork right in it's heart - it's dead.

The final report - as it will be - won't tell us much more than we aready know.

No matter what, the truth of this story will never see the light of day.

Remember Spector "magic bullet" was in on the Warren Commission - how anyone expected him to get to the bottom of Able Danger escapes me. Possibly he was trying to atone for the WC sins, but it doesn't appear that way. Besides, he hasn't the muscle. And Mr. Weldon has his check.

Again, the "Matrix" rules. What we know is only what we were allowed to know.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey won't let go, in his Weekly Standard column:

MARK ZAID has a full schedule these days, working on behalf of his beleaguered client, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer; media appearances, tilting at Department of Defense windmills, correcting poorly-written AP stories, and handling late-night interview requests. If anyone has an excuse to beg off an appointment, Zaid has a raft of them--yet last night he was happy to sit for a phone interview with THE DAILY STANDARD.

After exploding onto the scene two months ago, the Able Danger story and the revelation of its identification of Mohammed Atta as an al Qaeda operative over a year before the 9/11 attack have gone through several mutations in the press. At first, despite its launch at the New York Times, the media regarded it as a wild, unsourced conspiracy theory. The 9/11 Commission immediately dismissed it out of hand; the Pentagon took a bit more time to refute it. Eventually, key players of the SOCOM program came forward in public, first and foremost LTC Shaffer, the DIA liaison to the program.

Zaid has represented Shaffer during this public period which has seen him portrayed as a kook, a media hound, and thanks to the AP, a drunkard and a deadbeat. Zaid has taken his role as Shaffer's defender quite seriously; he recently wrote a lengthy and detailed rebuttal to the AP's report on the revocation of Shaffer's clearance....

"We're presumably waiting for them to reschedule," Zaid said. "Officially, the Defense Department and the DIA are taking the position--at least with me--that Shaffer is not allowed to testify." That gag order clearly has allowed the momentum of the story to slow in the last few weeks. When asked about the gag order's origin, Shaffer's attorney cannot tell for certain who ordered it. "These guys are talking out of both sides of their mouths," he replied when asked to identify the agency responsible for blocking the testimony. "The first time around, when the hearing on the 21st was scheduled to happen," he explained, "the Defense Department was calling the shots, and DIA was continually relaying messages from DIA to me."

That seems to have changed since the cancellation of the first Judiciary hearing. After Zaid informed the DIA that Shaffer had invitations from other Congressional committees to deliver unclassified briefings, the DIA took charge of the clearance issue--and placed hurdle after hurdle in front of the career officer and his attorney, preventing them from sharing Able Danger's details with the legislators. "The DIA is calling the shots . .
. First, I had Tony call that [a request for permission] in himself," Zaid said, "and they refused to act on that. Then I submitted it to Congressional Affairs, and they refused to act on that. They say I'm not specific enough."

"I said that House Judiciary wants to meet with him. Congressman Davis wants to meet with him. The House Committee on Government Reform wants to meet with him," Zaid continued. "Somehow, it's not specific enough because I didn't list the individual staff members." Zaid wonders why the DIA wants to know about the names of each staff member that may or may not be present during the presentation of an unclassified briefing. "They don't want him meeting with certain staff members that might be hostile to them? Well, sorry, that's not the way it works."

...In response to a question about the strange jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee for the public airing of the Able Danger narrative, Zaid said that he has been in contact with a number of staffers from committees and subcommittees. Curiously, the two committees seemingly most likely to want answers--the Armed Services committees--have remained on the sidelines.

"It really does raise the question about where the [Armed Services] committees are on this," Zaid said. He emphatically states that the two Armed services have "done nothing, at least with respect to contacting Able Danger team members."

Shouldn't these two panels at least have some curiosity about what information the DoD had about al Qaeda prior to 9/11? Everyone else seems to want answers--except those closest to the Pentagon. And Zaid wants Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer to be allowed to supply them.

It's extraordinary that the Armed Services committees would continue to act as wallflowers while the Pentagon they oversee tries to dance Able Danger off the floor.

Suspense, drama, intrigue, 9/11? I don't think this is going away.

Posted by Mike at October 5, 2005 06:06 PM

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