TOPDOG08.COM

September 01, 2007

Can you name this unnamed Navy official?

Many thanks to keshavsmilitaryblog for pointing out this article from Seapower magazine back in October 2005:

Digging Deep

Munns, David

The use of data mining reportedly helped unmask a terrorist leader months before 9/11, but there are concerns about coordination and privacy

26 Terabytes of Data

The Navy mines large volumes of data each day, but converting it into intelligence is still the work of human analysts.

* New software tools cannot determine the significance of data.

* An executive office to foster coordination among data mining programs could be helpful.

* Coming soon: Project Rockwell will plumb the depths of news reports.

Recent reports by The New York Times and Fox News that the Pentagon identified 9/11 ring-leader Mohammed Atta as part of a U.S.-based terrorist cell months prior to the attacks on Washington and New York have sparked new interest - and controversy - about the Defense Department's relatively nascent abilities to assess huge volumes of data for patterns of behavior that are indicative of terrorists and their activities.

According to press reports, Atta was identified in early 2000 by several military officers, including Navy Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, who managed a Pentagon program called "Able Danger" that employed an analytical process called "data mining." The process allows intelligence analysts armed with specially designed software to aggregate multiple data sources, such as lists of terrorists and decades of reporting by the Associated Press, and search for specific patterns of behavior, anomalies and relationships. The findings become the basis for refined analyses by intelligence specialists.

The New York Times reported in August that Defense Department lawyers forced three meetings to be canceled where military officials involved with "Able Danger" were to report Atta's name to the FBI after the program identified him. These claims have not been confirmed by the Pentagon.

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who arranged a meeting between the news agencies and Phillpott, released a statement in late August describing the program's objective as "to identify and target al Qaeda on a global basis, and, through the use of cutting-edge technology ... to manipulate, degrade or destroy the global al Qaeda infrastructure."

After the public speculation about "Able Danger," the 9/11 Commission stated Aug. 12 that it had learned about the program in October 2003. Initial informants did not mention Atta or any other future highjackers. In July 2004, a different informant knowledgeable about "Able Danger" told the Commission he had seen Atta's name and photo in another analyst's notes. However, this informant was not able to substantiate that assertion to the satisfaction of the Commission, and "Able Danger" was not mentioned in the Commission's final report.

The alleged identification of Atta has attracted high-profile attention to the potential of data mining technologies and processes as intelligence tools. However, the usage and processes of data mining remain relatively immature in the military arena.

One official told Seapower that coordination of data-mining efforts and requirements between federal agencies should be much improved. Also, implementation and oversight issues remain a key challenge in balancing the use of data-mining tools with privacy concerns.

Data mining is not new. Industry has reaped benefits from it in sectors such as health care, insurance and banking. But the lack of coordination between government agencies sometimes creates barriers that prevent valuable intelligence from reaching the proper authorities.

At the forefront of acquisition and development of Navy data-mining tools are the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, the Naval Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). There is little to no coordination between these commands to acquire data-mining tools in concert, a Navy official said, adding that one of the biggest problems with Navy data-mining tools is the number of various commands working on acquiring these tools, "some of which overlap, and it's not always as well coordinated as it could be."

The official suggested establishing a maritime domain awareness program executive office as a means to "deconflict" some of the divergent acquisition of data-mining tools between commands, which leads to conflicts in data and hardships in comparing data sets. The Navy had no comment on the plausibility of this suggestion.

"There have been times where ONI needed information that existed in other agencies' data sources" and it was not available, the Navy official said. "It's certainly not seamless and it's not as well integrated as it could be. Today, there are still lots of places where things can fall through the cracks and where connections might not be made.

"For example, there is not a single source of, or a single list of, terrorists" that all intelligence commands share, the official said. "If someone boards a ship in the Mediterranean and gets a crew list of people who are on that ship and that ship's en route to the United States, we can take that crew list but we have to run it against multiple lists to see if anybody who's on that ship pops up as a bad guy. ... It could be easy to not check against somebody's database."

ONI shares a working relationship with Naval Networks Commander Vice Adm. James McArthur, who wears a lesser-known hat as the assistant chief of naval operations for Information Technology. McArthur's office provides oversight and guidance to validate ONI's information technology spending on tools such as data mining.

McArthur's office was reluctant to discuss these tools because of the "Able Danger" controversy, citing their immaturity and the relative lack of "concrete" examples of how they can be used successfully, according to a Navy spokesperson.

Several experts told Seapower that data mining is destined to be a valuable asset in the war on terror, but should be viewed as a capability with advantages and limitations rather than a cure-all for the nation's growing intelligence requirements.

Jeffrey W. Seifert, an analyst in information science and technology policy for the Resources, Science and Industry division of the Congressional Research Service, released an overview of data mining last December. The report points to a limitation in data mining as being unable to determine the value or significance of intelligence. It also mentions an inability of data-mining tools to determine causal relationships.

"For example, an application may identify that a pattern of behavior, such as the propensity to purchase airline tickets just shortly before a flight is scheduled to depart, is related to characteristics such as income, level of education and Internet use. However, that does not necessarily indicate that the ticket purchasing behavior is caused by one or more of these variables," the report states.

Regardless of the particular data-mining tool or its limitations, the first step in data mining is to concentrate data into a single, normalized architecture or data model. That can be done physically, by actually moving all the data into a common disk form, or "disk warehouse," so it can then be digested to resolve ambiguities, or the sorting can be done automatically by a computer. For example, if one set of data is recorded in meters and one is recorded in feet, then the data-mining process would initially make a conversion so that when the actual tools are run against the data set a consistent outcome would be produced. Once data is normalized, the tools scan through it and create a statistical model.

Data-mining tools look through the existing data and identify patterns. From those patterns, anomalies, or out-of-place data patterns, are recognized and then analyzed. One notable outcome from the analysis of these patterns is the ability to make predictions about what is missing in the data, or what elements of data are not included.

This, however, is an extremely difficult task when working with 26 terabytes of active data on a daily basis, an amount that would fill up about 85 high-end 300 gigabyte hard drives each day. This quantity of information being processed by the Navy is also growing at a rate of 10 percent per year, according to ONI.

Nonetheless, data mining is an asset to government agencies that have taken on new roles in the aftermath of 9/11.

A new interest of the Navy and other government agencies is to track the movement of more than 130,000 commercial vessels and the 17 million cargo containers they carry, which could be used by terrorists as a means of attack against U.S. ports, or to smuggle arms or people into the country. ONI looks at transit plans, bills of lading, intelligence reports, and years of reporting by internal analysts and news agencies to identify vulnerabilities or suspicious activity within the shipping industry. Today, the Navy is shifting its focus from the ships themselves to terrorist use of the commercial shipping network, according to a Navy source.

"Many of the problems that we're looking at in the commercial shipping industry are very much analogous to fraud detection; we want to track norms and we want to identify things that are outside of the norm," said the Navy official.

Data-mining tools take some of the manpower out of the loop, but the likelihood of them ever reaching a capability to replace the need for analysts is unlikely. Data-mining tools provide some of the manipulation of data that data entry analysts have historically had to deal with, and the development of these tools now allows analysts to focus on the actual threats and their dissemination to the appropriate authorities for mitigation.

There are typically 10,000 messages on an analyst's desk at ONI every morning. One tool ONI has been exploring, and is deploying this fall to approximately three-dozen workstations, is Project Rockwell. Derived from another agency and an industry partner, Project Rockwell allows analysts to go through open wire news feeds, such as Reuters or the Associated Press, and run queries against the feeds in the areas that they have highlighted.

If there is a subject an analyst has particular interest in, they can highlight it, and pertinent information will be color-coded on their desktop. For example, if there is a topic of concern that normally has one news-feed pertaining to it and suddenly there are hundreds of feeds, Project Rockwell brings that information to the analyst's attention and directs them to that topic or subject of interest.

"What it allows them do is go through the thousands of messages that they would get normally in a day and does it four times faster," said the Navy official. "That's not taking the man out of the loop, but it's certainly freeing up the man to do more analysis and less data sorting and initial review."

In the homeland security realm, there are some legal privacy constraints, not necessarily restrictions, on sharing information outside of Department of Defense boundaries, depending on what that information is. Intelligence commands, for example, have limitations on how and how long they can retain information on U.S. persons or companies.

"What we're hoping to build is a capability that, if we can't keep the data, will allow us to connect the data that might be held by the FBI or by the U.S. Coast Guard, as examples of law enforcement agencies, so they can easily extract value from our data," said the official.

Posted by Mike at 02:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 26, 2007

Our new ally in the global War on Terror? Al Qaeda!

From Late Edition on CNN:

BLITZER: Near the end of your article, you have this explosive point in there about John Negroponte, who is now going to be the deputy secretary of state, as opposed to the head of U.S. intelligence. You write this: "I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence officials that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte's decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept the position of deputy secretary of state."

Explain what you were hearing, because that's obviously a very explosive charge.

HERSH: Yes, it's probably the single most explosive, if you will, or depressing or distressing sort of thing I discovered in the last few months, which is simply this: This administration has made a policy change, a decision that they're going to put all the pressure they can on the Shiites.

That is the Shiite regime in Iran, and they're also doing everything they can to stop Hezbollah, which is Shiite, the Hezbollah organization from getting any control or any more of a political foothold in Lebanon.

So essentially, I quote -- I saw Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, and he described it this way, as fitna, the Arab word for civil war. As far as he is concerned, we are interested in recreating what's happening in Iraq in Lebanon, that is, Sunni versus Shia.

And in looking into that story -- and I saw him in December -- I found this. That we have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without Congressional authority, without any Congressional oversight -- Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money -- for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the -- we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.

They call it the "Shiite Crescent." And a lot of this money, and I can't tell you with absolute assurance how, exactly when and how, but this money has gotten into the hands, among other places, in Lebanon, into the hands of three, at least three jihadist groups.

There's three Sunni jihadist groups whose main claim to fame inside Lebanon right now is that they are very tough. These are people connected to al Qaida who want to take on Hezbollah. So this government, at the minimum, we may not directly be funneling money to them, but we certainly know that these groups exist.

My government, which arrests al Qaida every place it can find them and sends -- some of them are in Guantanamo and other places, is sitting back while the Lebanese government we support, the government of Prime Minister Siniora, is providing arms and sustenance to three jihadist groups whose sole function seems to me and to the people that talk to me in our government, to be there in case there is a real shoot-'em-up with Hezbollah and we really get into some sort of serious major conflict between the Sunni government and Hezbollah, which is largely Shia, who are basically -- as you know, there is a coalition headed by Hezbollah that is challenging the government right now, demonstrations, sit-ins. There has been some violence.

So America, my country, without telling Congress, using funds not appropriated, I don't know where, but my sources believe much of the money obviously came from Iraq, where there's all kinds of piles of loose money, pools of cash that could be used for covert operations.

All of this should be investigated by Congress, by the way, and I trust it will be. In my talking to the membership, members there, they are very upset that they know nothing about this. And they have great many suspicions.

We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11, and we should be arresting these people rather than looking the other way...

BLITZER: And your bottom line, Sy...

HERSH: ... and could lead to a real mess...

BLITZER: Your bottom line is that Negroponte was aware of this, obviously, and he wanted to distance himself from it? That's why he decided to give up that position and take the number two job at the State Department?

HERSH: That's one of the reasons, I was told. Negroponte also was not in tune with Cheney. There was a lot of complaints about him because he was seen as much too of a stickler, too ethical for some of the operations the Pentagon wants to run.

As you know, this Pentagon has been running covert operations. I think Mr. Gates's job and one of the things he wants to do is get some control over it. But under Rumsfeld, we were running operations all over the world with who knows what money and who knows what authority, because most of those operations are not briefed to the intelligence committees.

And the Pentagon has basically been open about it in saying, hey, this is military stuff that has nothing to do with CIA operations. We have nothing to do with them. We are running military operations. And the president has the authority to do this.

But Negroponte was unhappy about -- in general about some of the things. He also, I don't think, liked -- he may not have been terrific at his job, that's another factor. But certainly John Negroponte went through this issue, Iran-Contra, in the '80s, when we had the first big debate over the use of unlawfully obtained money to buy arms.

Well, you know, the whole arms-for-hostages business was to generate cash to fight the war, the Contra war against the Sandinistas, that mess that we had. Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras there, very sensitive to the issue that took place 20 years ago. He did not want a repeat of it.

And I frankly, it's something that I think to be asking him in a Congressional session or whatever. But I have that -- you know, I understand this is very serious stuff. And my magazine understands this is very serious stuff.

And we have really taken a lot of time with this story and couched it as carefully as we could and with all of the caveats. This is serious business.

BLITZER: The article is entitled, "The Redirection: Is the Administration's New Policy Benefiting Our Enemies in the War on Terrorism?" That is the subtitle, the author, Seymour Hersh. Sy, thanks very much for joining us from Cairo.

HERSH: Thank you.

You can read the full article here, and my comments on it here.

Posted by Mike at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 20, 2006

Read the damn book first, Larry

Cross posted at Able Danger Blog. I wanted to leave my review of Triple Cross at the top of the page, but this was too good to pass up:

Peter Lance, Crisscrossed

by Larry C Johnson

Peter Lance is back hawking his latest book, Triple Cross. Unfortunately, it does not come with a “Buyer Beware” label. Peter, in my judgment, confuses self-promotion with analysis and is prone to jump to conclusions not supported by actual evidence. Consider for example Lance’s specious claim in his recent post on Huffington Post, touting his book and his accomplishments:

What isn't known and will be revealed for the first time in Triple Cross was that Ali Mohamed had been acting as an FBI informant on the West Coast since 1992 - a year before the WTC bombing carried out by the same cell members he'd trained.

Really?

Johnson goes on to quote from two news articles, both of which quote none other than Larry Johnson but neither of which claim Ali Mohamed was an informant since 1992 or provide any details about his handling agent, John Zent. My emphasis added. Lance has entire chapters full of details about Ali Mohamed and his inept FBI handling agent. Larry might know this if he read the book, but seeing as how it is not in stores yet, I guess he knew all he had to know from the cover. Leaving no truth unspurned, he keeps digging:

Peter does a slick job of intermixing facts and conjecture to create the impression that he has a special truth. Consider the following from Peter:

Using evidence from the SDNY court cases, interviews with current and retired Special Agents and documents from the FBI's own files, I prove in Triple Cross that Patrick Fitzgerald and Squad I-49 in the NYO could have prevented those bombings - not just by getting the truth from FBI informant Ali Mohamed, but by connecting him to Wadih El-Hage, one of the Kenya cell leaders.

Here’s the truth—there is not one document, piece of court evidence, or retired FBI agent that supports the claim that in the year prior to the bombing of the US Embassies in East Africa Ali Mohamed was recorded stating his intent to attack those embassies. Not one.

This is an easy one. Lance never said Mohamed stated his intention to attack the embassies beforehand! He said the FBI should have been able to stop the bombings by connecting him to Wadih El Hage. One of the articles Larry quoted describes the connection:

Ali Mohamed's testimony, which will likely earn him a reduced sentence, may prove particularly damning to el-Hage. The former U.S. Army sergeant, a naturalized American citizen born in Egypt, claims he worked with el-Hage in Nairobi and that during a visit to the man's house, bin Laden's security chief told him to surveil American, British, French, and Israeli "targets" in Senegal.

Of course, there is always that link chart Jay Boesen made in 2000 which shows two clear connections between them. First as personal advisors to Bin Laden, and second as associates of Abouhalima and the Brooklyn Cell of Al Qaeda in New York. Nonetheless, Larry continues:

Peter’s venom spewed at Patrick Fitzgerald is particularly crazy. Consider the following claim by Lance:

How was it that Fitzgerald, the man Vanity Fair described as the bin Laden "brain," possessing "scary smart" intelligence, had not connected the dots and ordered the same kind of "perch" or "plant" to watch Sphinx that the Bureau had used against Gotti?

Well, for starters, prosecutors in the United States are not like prosecutors in France. Fitzgerald and other junior prosecutors do not have the luxury of waking up each morning and deciding on their own to follow a hunch. Moreover, they normally don’t direct Federal investigations. The investigative part is handled by FBI agents who run field offices.

I'll have to quote Patrick Fitzgerald on this one:

I was on a prosecution team in New York that began a criminal investigation of Usama Bin Laden in early 1996. The team – prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to the criminal case – had access to a number of sources. We could talk to citizens. We could talk to local police officers. We could talk to other U.S. Government agencies. We could talk to foreign police officers. Even foreign intelligence personnel. And foreign citizens. And we did all those things as often as we could. We could even talk to al Qaeda members – and we did. We actually called several members and associates of al Qaeda to testify before a grand jury in New York. And we even debriefed al Qaeda members overseas who agreed to become cooperating witnesses.

But there was one group of people we were not permitted to talk to. Who? The FBI agents across the street from us in lower Manhattan assigned to a parallel intelligence investigation of Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. We could not learn what information they had gathered. That was “the wall.” A rule that a federal court has since agreed was fundamentally flawed – and dangerous.

Posted by Mike at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 19, 2006

My review of Triple Cross

Cross posted at Able Danger Blog:

Lance breaks new ground on Able Danger

While I was deciding how I should start my review of Peter Lance's new book - "Triple Cross: How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him" - I remembered a quote from Monica Gabrielle, one of the Jersey Girls, in a documentary about 9/11:

The one thing that I personally was hoping for was another Woodward and Bernstein with regard to 9/11. Someone, anyone that was willing to put their teeth into this.

Well, we have found that person, and his name is Peter Lance. In his third book on the origins of the 9/11 plot and the failures of the FBI and others to stop the attack, Lance focuses on Ali Mohamed - yet another figure relegated to footnotes in the 9/11 Report who Lance shows played a central role in Al Qaeda's plan of attack. Not only did he create the "Brooklyn Cell" which supported the 9/11 hijackers, but he wrote the training manual for Al Qaeda and created training camps for hijackers! Arrested in 1998 for his role in the embassy bombings, Ali Mohamed has demonstrated foreknowledge of the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and an outline of the 9/11 plot itself, all of which he did not reveal to the FBI until after the attacks! Worse, he has still not been formally sentenced because the FBI believes they can use him to get information on Al Qaeda even when he's been playing the FBI for two decades.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I am quoted twice in the Epilogue to Triple Cross. However, this review of the book is not based on my limited contacts with Lance. It is based entirely on the content of the book, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Able Danger. Some have expressed frustration at the delays in publication, but I can attest to the fact that Lance needed the extra time in order to include all of the latest details from the interviews National Geographic conducted for their documentary based on his book and the latest developments in the Able Danger and Greg Scarpa Jr. scandals.

The best part of Triple Cross is the way Lance weaves together the different strands of the 9/11 story and enhances them with his own original reporting on each. For example, the book quotes from numerous interviews Lance conducted with Tony Shaffer, Curt Weldon, and other members of the Able Danger team. While not a complete history of Able Danger, it is by far the most complete version published to date. He devotes four chapters to the subject and weaves together the story of Able Danger with the story of how the "Big Five" intelligence agencies all failed to detect the plot on time. He also provides new evidence that the discovery of what a central role Ali Mohamed played in the Al Qaeda leadership may have played a role in the destruction of all the Able Danger charts and data at LIWA in April 2000. This took place literally days after the chart linked above was produced by a member of the Able Danger team.

To give you an idea of the level of detail Lance includes about Able Danger, here is how he opens Chapter 37, "The Briefing in Bagram":

That October in 2003, Shaffer, then an army major, was aboard an army UH 60 Blackhawk helicopter snaking along the Kabul River toward Asadabad, a small firebase in Northeast Afghanistan eight clicks from the Pakistani Border. Wearing forty pounds of body armor and brandishing an M-4 carbine and an M-11 pistol, Tony was attached to Task Force 180, whose mission was to "deter and defeat the re-emergence of terrorism" after 9/11 by hunting down and eliminating members of the fugitive Taliban. As a clandestine officer with the DIA, he was assigned to work in unison with the other "three-letter" agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, in what was a hoped-for reintegration of the intel services that had become so fragmented and stovepiped in the years before 9/11. While he got along well with the FBI agents who were engaged in the Taliban hunt, Tony and other DIA operatives still regarded the CIA as independents, nicknaming them the "Klingons" after the Star Trek aliens, who were reluctant members of "the Federation."

Able Danger is mentioned throughout the book, but some other chapters which focus on it include Chapter 31, "Operation Able Danger", Chapter 32, "Obliterating the Dots", and Chapter 33, "Able Danger Part Two". Over the past nine months, I was beginning to doubt if anyone would ever give the Able Danger story the treatment it deserves. Peter Lance has gone above and beyond my expectations in "Triple Cross" and anyone who is interested in getting to the bottom of the Able Danger story should read it.

Among other things, he points out flaws in the IG Report on Able Danger:

It's also clear that, in attempting to impeach Capt. Phillpott, the IG relied heavily on the word of Dietrich Snell, the 9/11 Commission senior counsel, who found Phillpott's account of the Able Danger findings "not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the [Commission] report or further investigation." That was Snell's conclusion following a July 12, 2004, meeting with Phillpott ten days before the Commission's "final report" was to go to press:

We considered Mr. Snell's negative assessment of Capt. Phillpott's claims particularly persuasive given Mr. Snell's knowledge and background in antiterrorist efforts involving al Qaeda. Mr. Snell considered Capt. Phillpott's recollection with respect to Able Danger identification of Mohammed Atta inaccurate because it was 'one hundred per cent inconsistent with everything we knew about Mohammed Atta and his collegues at the time.' Mr. Snell went on to describe his knowledge of Mohammed Atta's overseas travel and associations before 9/11 noting the "utter absense of any information suggesting any kind of a tie between Atta and anyone located in this country during the first half of the year 2000," when Able Danger had allegedly identified him.

But in this book we've demonstrated that there was massive evidence on the high visibility of 9/11 hijackers al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, who were living openly in San Diego as early as January 2000. We showed how Atta himself entered the United States on June 3 and rented a room in Brooklyn near the Al Farooq Mosque, using his own name. Just how difficult would it have been for the Able Danger analysts to track his movements via airline reservations and immigration sources, since, according to the IG's report, the Able Danger data harvest was "collecting data from 10,000 websites each day"?

In an interview following release of the report, one operative close to the data-mining operation told me that "we also accessed INS databases in the data harvest, so picking up Atta who had to get airline tickers and a visa prior to his arrival in early June was no big deal."

This Tuesday, go pick up a copy of "Triple Cross", then tune in to "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News, where Lance is scheduled to appear for an interview with Bill.

Posted by Mike Kasper at 7:20 PM.

Posted by Mike at 01:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

September 16, 2006

"From Xena Warrior Princess to Joan of Arc"

Just collecting some more links.

From the testimony of Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer:

(U) Last but by no means least, Dr. Eileen Preisser, the brilliant double PhD who’s understanding of both cutting edge technology and human factors/neural networking served as the intellectual “glue” that put together the suite of technology and analysts that perform the astounding feat of identifying Atta and other pre-9-11 terrorist events....

(U) Jun 2000. At the request of SOCOM ([ ], DIA’s Rep to SOCOM), with the permission of the DIA/DO leadership, I approach MG Noonan, Commander of Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) to request that Dr. Eileen Preisser be attached to my unit, STRATUS IVY so that she could continue to support ABLE DANGER. This request is denied – I am told later, privately, that MG Noonan felt that by trying to take Dr. Preisser that I was trying to “steal his capability”....

(U) Late September 2001. Eileen Preisser calls me for coffee and tells me she has something she needs to show me. At coffee she shows me a chart she had brought with her – a large desk top size chart. On it she has me look at the ‘Brooklyn Cell’ – I was confused at first – but she kept telling me to look – and in the “cluster” I eventually found the picture of Atta. She pointed out (and I recognized) that this was one of the charts I LIWA had produced in Jan 2000, and had a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach – I felt that we had been on the right track – and that because of the bureaucracy we had been stopped – and that we might well have been able to have done something to stop the 9/11 attack. I ask Eileen what she plans to do with the information/chart – she tells me that she does not know but she plans to do something.

(U) Last week of September 2001. I am on my normal afternoon run from the Pentagon to the Lincoln Memorial – and I receive a call from Dr. Preisser. She tells me “you’ll never guess where I am” – she tells me about sitting in the outer office of Scooter Libby and the fact that she, Congressman Curt Weldon, Congressman Chris Shays and Congressman Dan Burton are going in to brief Steven Hadley on the Atta chart. I am both amazed and satisfied that the Atta information and our work on ABLE DANGER had been provided to proper government leadership and fully expected that the ABLE DANGER team might even be reconstituted. It was not.

(U) Nov 2001-July 2003 – I accept recall to active duty as a Major in the Army and command a Defense HUMINT unit named Field Operating Base (FOB) Alpha. During this period I attempted to work with ASD/SOLIC to resurrect ABLE DANGER as part of FOB Alpha’s mission. When some sensitive information relating SOLIC was leaked to the press the effort to bring back ABLE DANGER was also terminated. Dr. Preisser was involved in this attempt to resurrect the project.

From the testimony of Erik Kleinsmith:

From March of 1999 until February of 2001, I was an active duty Army Major and the Chief of Intelligence of what was then called the Land Information Warfare Activity or LIWA. My branch provided analytical support to Army Information Operations, but because of the data mining capabilities we possessed in the Information Dominance Center, we routinely provided direct analytical support to several combatant commands as well as other customers. One of our most prominent operations was in support of the data mining proof of concept demonstration for the Assistant Security of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence or ASD-C3I. Called the JCAG project, it demonstrated how data mining and intelligence analysis could be conducted in a counterintelligence and technology protection capacity. That project ran throughout the later half of 1999 and our results were ultimately subpoenaed by Congressman Dan Burton's office through the House Reform Committee on November 16th, 1999.

In December of 1999 we were approached by US Special Operations Command to support Able Danger. I assigned the same core team of analysts that worked the JCAG project, and with Dr. Eileen Preisser as the analytical lead, four of us conducted data mining and analysis of the Al Qaeda terrorist network coordinating with SOCOM and other organizations throughout that time. In the months that followed, we were able collect an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map Al Qaeda as a world-wide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States.

In approximately April of 2000 our support to Able Danger became severely restricted and ultimately shut down due to intelligence oversight concerns. Supported vigorously by the LIWA and INSCOM chains of command, we actively worked to overcome this shut down for the next several months. In the midst of this shut down, I along with CW3 Terri Stephens were forced to destroy all the data, charts, and other analytical products that we had not already passed on to SOCOM related to Able Danger. This destruction was dictated by, and conducted in accordance with intelligence oversight procedures.

Ultimately, we were able to restart our support to SOCOM at the end of September 2000. Additionally, the bombing of the USS Cole on October 12th brought USCENTCOM to the IDC, who then became our primary customer until my departure from active duty on April 1st 2001.

From the later testimony of Erik Kleinsmith:

Because of our abilities, our support was routinely requested by several customers that took our work far outside our normal mission of supporting Army information operations. In the two years that I was Chief of Intelligence, we provided analytical support to every Combatant Command and several times I notified my chain of command that my analysts were overwhelmed with tasks. Because of our ability to understand data mining technology from an intelligence analytical perspective, Dr. Eileen Preisser and I spent a lot of our time inventing new and rewriting traditional analytical processes that gave my analysts even better ability to take advantage of the IDC tools.

Coordination for our support to SOCOM’s Able Danger Project began in December of 1999. After an assessment of our capabilities in comparison to other intelligence organizations, SOCOM requested our support in January of 2000. By February we were conducting massive data mining and analysis of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups associated with that network. I would like to stress that during this time my branch was completely supported by my chain of command that included the Commander of LIWA, Colonel Jim Gibbons, and the Commander of INSCOM, then Major General Robert Noonan.

One of the pivotal questions that has come up since 9/11 is whether or not Mohammed Atta or any of the other hijackers were identified by an infamous chart produced during this time. I reiterate my answer that I gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee that I do not remember seeing Mohammed Atta’s name or face on a single specific chart. The more important point is that our team was tracking hundreds of names and creating dozens of charts for SOCOM. And while most of these charts contained information and intelligence that needed further analytical vetting, we were still able to identify a significant worldwide footprint with a surprisingly large presence within the United States.

In the middle of our preliminary analysis of the data, we were ordered to cease our support to SOCOM due to what we were told were intelligence oversight concerns. While I received the order through my chain of command, we knew that the order had come from somewhere in the Pentagon. Even today neither I, nor any of the other team members that I have spoken with, can say exactly where the order originated. This order, along with a subsequent six month struggle for LIWA and INSCOM to get permission to restart our work was a huge source of frustration felt by both our team and our SOCOM contacts. SOCOM finally grew so impatient with our inability to overcome our work stoppage that they decided to move their analytical operation to a Raytheon facility at Garland, Texas and continue their own efforts without our support. By the time we were allowed to begin work again, the bombing of the USS Cole had changed the face of our entire effort completely.

From the testimony of JD Smith:

From March 1997 to August, 2000, I worked at Orion Scientific Systems, McLean, Virginia, as a Program Manager. From March 1997 to approximately 15 September 1999, I managed and performed criminal intelligence support activities within the Gulf States Initiative (GSI) Program – an unique joint federal (U.S. Army/National Guard)/multi-state (Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi) effort by working with specialized contractor support personnel and the U.S. government to assist/upgrade criminal intelligence support information technology hardware, software, communications, facilities, and training within the mentioned states.

As the GSI Program was being phased out, I had met with personnel at Fort Belvoir (the GSI Headquarters [HQ] location) concerning Orion’s ability to perform similar support to elements of the U.S. Army. In discussions and meetings about our capabilities, I met Dr. Eileen Preisser, Chief Intelligence Officer, U.S. Army INSCOM HQ, Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Fort Belvoir. After multiple meetings and discussions held at Fort Belvoir and at Orion Scientific Systems (8400 Westpark Drive, McLean, VA), a formal support proposal was presented to Dr. Preisser on or about 12 October 1999.

My recollection is that during a two-week period (i.e., the end of October 1999), Orion Scientific and the U.S. Army were able to establish a, “Task Order Contract” (i.e., funding provided for individual tasking – no guaranteed work or tasking by the Government). All tasking would come from INSCOM, specifically Dr. Preisser to Orion with me (James D. Smith), the Program Manager/Task Manager, responsible for assigned products/deliverables as well as the accountability for hours charged per task by experienced intelligence analysts....

Notes (incomplete), from my monthly calendar for this time period reveal the following:
• 26 October 1999, Dr. Preisser, James Smith, and John Sconda met to discuss Orion MAGIC (Orion proprietary software) capabilities.
• 1, 2, 3 November 1999, Dr. Preisser, James Smith, and others met to discuss a task research activity concerning “Chinese military and business influences around the globe.”
• 09 November 1999, James Smith met with Dr. Heath at INSCOM and Orion’s support Task Order contract was started.
• 17 November 1999, Dr. Heath and staff met at Orion for discussions.
• 22, 23 November 1999, James Smith met with Dr. Heath at Fort Belvoir.
• 01, 02, 03 December 1999, James Smith met with Colonel Worsocki (sp.) concerning Orion’s unclassified collection processes and possible studies.
• 20 December 1999, Task Order Delivery to LIWA (product not identified).
• 13 January 2000, Dr. Preisser presentation to Command (all input sent to her on time – topic not identified).
• 19 January 2000, Meeting with Dr. M. Heymann concerning LIWA support.
• 20 January 2000, Briefing from James Smith to Major Erik Kleinsmith (topic unknown).
• 24 January 2000, Major Task Order delivery to Dr. Preisser (Taliban Visual chart).
• 03 February 2000, Meeting with Dr. Heath and staff on progress.
• 08 February 2000, James Smith met with Major Kleinsmith and Dr. Heymann
• 09 February 2000, Orion produced additional information concerning China to Dr. Preisser for meeting 10 February 2000, with the SSCI.
• 22 February 2000, James Smith met with Major Kleinsmith (4 hours) concerning a Project Plan (subject of Plan unidentified).
• 23 February 2000, Information (data extraction) samples discussed with Dr. Preisser of Law Enforcement related and open source data.
• 28, 29 February 2000, James Smith worked on the DIESCON II proposal.
• 01 March 2000, James Smith prepared a report of all direct labor charges to report to INSCOM.
• 02 March 2000, James Smith met with Dr. Heath and staff concerning developed Program Plan.
• 06 March 2000, New LIWA Task Order assigned (topic not identified).
• 08 March 2000, Task Order delivery given to Major Kleinsmith by James Smith.
• 10 March 2000, Task Order meetings at Fort Belvoir (4 hours).
• 17 March 2000, James Smith attends meetings at LIWA all morning (4 hours).
• 23 March 2000, Orion plans to install “Magic” at LIWA per request.
• 27, 28, 29 March 2000, installation of Magic at LIWA.
• 31 March 2000, James Smith meetings at LIWA (4 hours).
• 05 April 2000, James Smith meets with Major Kleinsmith all morning at LIWA (4 hours).
• 06 April 2000, James Smith met with Dr. Heymann (topics not identified).
• 07 April 2000, James Smith met with LIWA for two hours – progress report.
• 14 April 2000, James Smith met with Dr. Heath and staff concerning deliverables.
• 18, 20, 21 April 2000, James Smith met with Major Kleinsmith and Colonel Worsocki (sp.)
• 27 April 2000, Major Kleinsmith and Dr. Preisser hosted at Orion for major meeting (topics not identified).
• 28 April 2000, James Smith met at LIWA for monthly progress reporting.
• 01 May 2000, James smith delivered major research activity to LIWA (topic not identified).
• 02 May 2000, James Smith prepared a major Task Order Report with future budget needs projected.
• 05 May 2000, LIWA meeting (4 hours).
• 08 May 2000, James Smith met with Major Kleinsmith (4 hours).
• 11 May 2000, James Smith delivered Task Order charts, fiscal reports and projections.
• 25 May 2000, Task Order delivery to LIWA (chart with data not identified).
• 30 May 2000, James Smith delivered to LIWA monthly reports.
• 09 June 2000, James Smith meets at Fort Belvoir (no further information).
• 17, 18 19 July 2000, Multiple meetings with Major Kleinsmith and Dr. Preisser – topics unknown.
• 04 August 2000, last day at Orion for James Smith

From an October 9, 2005 op-ed written by F. Michael Maloof:

If we only had acted

Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, correctly asserts the terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001, could have been averted.
The assertion was based on his efforts as early as 1999 to create a national collaborative or fusion center. It would data-mine vast amounts of information from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement to confront such asymmetrical threats as terrorism, proliferation, illegal arms trafficking, espionage, narcotics and information warfare and cyber-terrorism.
It was a process that produced, among other things, the Able Danger open-source analysis that reportedly revealed hijacker Mohamed Atta as a potential terrorist before the attack.
Mr. Weldon first sought help from Eileen Preisser, who ran the Information Dominance Center at the U.S. Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Fort Belvoir, Va. He then asked this writer to work with Ms. Preisser to see how the Army initiative could be expanded into a national effort.
As Mr. Weldon envisioned it, the national collaborative center would have been comprised of a system of mini-centers or "pods" of some 34 entities from the U.S. intelligence community and law enforcement agencies to function in a common operating environment.
It would not have been just another analytical unit. The effect of data-mining information that had already been analyzed was to game-plan particular issues and offer options to policymakers and national commanders to deal with them.
For example, say terrorists in South America work with drug cartels raise money to buy weapons on the "gray" arms market to smuggle to terror cells in the U.S. Information from independent analytical centers dedicated to the elements in this hypothetical scenario would be fused at the center to determine a course of action.
Potential end-users would have been the White House, Congress, State and Defense Departments, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the regional commanders-in-chiefs (CINCs) and government operation centers.
In a July 30, 1999, letter to then-Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, Mr. Weldon proposed creating a national entity "that can acquire, fuse and analyze disparate data from many agencies to support the policymaker in taking action against asymmetrical threats. "These challenges are beginning to overlap, thereby blurring their distinction while posing increasing threats to our nation."
Mr. Weldon pointed out that the Defense Department "has a unique opportunity" to create a centralized national center, which he called the National Operations Analysis Hub (NOAH, to protect against the "flood of threats."
The NOAH would have been created by presidential executive order as a tool of the National Security Council. The Defense Department would have been designated to run it.
Mr. Weldon's proposal, however, met with immediate opposition from the Defense Department. The office of the assistant secretary for command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I), now renamed networks and information integration, especially pushed for creating the Joint Central Analytic Group (JCAG). C3I was concerned that money for the national collaborative center would be diverted from the long-sought JCAG counterintelligence analytical center.
Unfortunately, the JCAG, now at the Defense Intelligence Agency at Bolling Air Force Base, doesn't talk to other analytical centers that deal with various asymmetrical threats.
Nor do the other existing analytical centers dedicated to collecting information on terrorism, proliferation, arms smuggling and other threats talk to each another regularly.
Following the initial DoD turndown, Ellen Preisser and this writer then data-mined unclassified information to report to Mr. Weldon on possible Chinese front companies in the United States seeking technology for the People's Liberation Army.
It showed how Chinese front companies in the United States listed as U.S. corporations were acquiring U.S. weapons technology from U.S. defense contractors, and improving China's military capability. Such access to U.S. technology then would allow the Chinese over time to duplicate U.S. military systems down to the widget.
Indeed, a June 27, 2005 article in The Washington Times reported U.S. investigators were concerned with China and its middlemen increasingly and illegally obtaining "sensitive or classified U.S. weapons technology" from U.S. companies.
Reaction to the study on Chinese front companies in the United States from the Army and the General Counsel's office in the Office of the Defense Secretary was immediate. In November 1999, they ordered the study destroyed, but not before Mr. Weldon complained to then Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki.
Mr. Weldon also wrote a letter to then-FBI Director Louis Freeh requesting an espionage investigation. Mr. Freeh never responded to the Weldon request.
Then in an April 14, 2000, memorandum from the legal counsel in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Capt. Michael Lohr wrote that the concern over the LIWA initiative potentially bumped into what amounted to domestic spying.
"Preliminary review of subject methodology raised the possibility that LIWA 'data mining' would potentially access both foreign intelligence (FI) information and domestic information relating to U.S. citizens (i.e. law enforcement, tax, customs, immigration, etc," Capt. Lohr wrote.
"I recognize that an argument can be made that LIWA is not 'collecting' in the strict sense (i.e. they are accessing public areas of the Internet and non-FI federal government databases of already lawfully collected information)," Capt. Lohr added. "This effort would, however, have the potential to pull together into a single database a wealth of privacy-protected U.S. citizen information in a more sweeping and exhaustive manner than was previously contemplated."
In effect, the national collaborative center experiment based on the LIWA example was sidelined.
If the concept of the NOAH had been in effect on September 11, 2001, events may have been different. The cost for such a system would have been minimal compared to the heavy cost in human life and resources the nation suffered.

F. Michael Maloof is a former senior analyst in the Office of the Defense Secretary.

Committee on Government Reform hearing on October 12, 2001:

Mr. Shays: In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen Pricer, who argues that we don't have the data we need because we don't take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally floors' worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees the purchase of
chemicals, the sending of students to universities. You wouldn't see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don't know ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked, which is a little unsettling.

USA Today from April 22, 2002:

Eileen Preisser, a professor of homeland and national security at the New Mexico Institute of Mines and Technology, warns that the varied progress among the states in establishing security plans has created a "Frankenstein monster syndrome."

"The states are grabbing what they can and sewing it all together," she says. "What happens, though, when you need it to work and it all collapses or spins out of control?"

Preisser, on loan to the U.S. government as an adviser on homeland security and technology matters, says federal authorities have provided states with few guidelines to ensure that officials are at least giving emergency workers similar levels of training.

"I have a lot of respect for Tom Ridge," Preisser says. "But until his office blesses some kind of national strategy, we're going to have people going off in all different directions."

As for the nation's overall preparedness to deal with a major terrorist incident, Preisser estimates a 50% chance of a successful response if the incident took place near where medical and emergency response teams are plentiful.

Beyond "those centers of excellence," Preisser says, the chances of overall success drop to about 10% in the event of a bioterrorist attack. "I hate to say it," she says, "but we're not prepared like we should be."

ABC World News Tonight from April 30, 2002:

Newscast: Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge faces criticism from Congress and states

PETER JENNINGS, anchor: On Capitol Hill today, congressmen heard testimony from administration officials about the state of homeland security. Tom Ridge, the director of Homeland Security, was not there. The Bush administration refuses to let Mr. Ridge testify before the Congress. Around the country, many people are asking, what progress there is to see. ABC's Jackie Judd has been covering the testimony today, and she reports from Washington.

JACKIE JUDD reporting:

Peter, frustration is mounting across the country about the administration's efforts to make the nation safe from terrorism. As you say, Tom Ridge got a tongue-lashing on Capitol Hill today, but he wasn't there to hear it. The White House says, as an adviser to the president, he doesn't answer to Congress.

(VO) Committee chairman, Democrat Robert Byrd, accused Ridge of keeping the public in the dark.

Senator ROBERT BYRD (Chairman, Senate Appropriations Committee): The real losers are the American people whose lives this government is bound to protect. They're not being given the whole picture.

JUDD: (VO) In Atlanta today, anger at a hearing on how undercover investigators got into four federal buildings, bypassing all security measures.

Representative BOB BARR (Republican, Georgia): They were given, in effect, the keys to the kingdom. In the words of investigators, they owned those buildings.

JUDD: (VO) All 50 states now have homeland security directors, and most have mapped out anti-terrorism plans. But there is no coordination, not even on what computer equipment they should use so the states can talk to one another in a crisis.

Professor EILEEN PREISSER (New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology): In this kind of an environment, especially when we're dealing with weapons of mass destruction, we do need some kind of policy at the highest level to standardize what happens across the board.

Mr. DAVID DEWHURST (Chairman, Texas Homeland Security Task Force): Fingerprints are 100 percent.

JUDD: (VO) In Texas, the director of homeland security says intelligence about who is slipping across the borders illegally is really no better today than it was before September 11th. David Dewhurst also says even now only a tiny fraction of cargo ships coming into the port of Houston is inspected.

Mr. DEWHURST: These containers can be moved all around the United States before they're inspected. So this affects Wyoming. It affects North Dakota. It affects Kentucky.

JUDD: Ridge plans to unveil a national strategy this fall to help guide the states. Security analysts, Peter, who are sympathetic to Ridge, say the task is so complex, it could take a decade to implement.

JENNINGS: A long time. Many thanks, Jackie. Jackie Judd in Washington.

SIGNAL Magazine from May 2002:

Creating a Knowledge-Based First-Responder Force
By Patrick S. Guarnieri
May 2002

Web-enabled techniques help prepare reaction to weapons of mass destruction.

Before September 11, only a few brave organizations were dedicated to authorizing and funding programs to test advanced technologies for state and federal disaster first responders and train key personnel in their use. For scenarios involving weapons of mass destruction, even fewer offered unclassified-level training in the skills and technology needed by law enforcement and health care personnel. Among those few are the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Homeland Defense Technology Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, Washington, D.C.; and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro. In times of crisis, it has been their experts who arrived on the scene toting a combination of “Men in Black” suitcase technology and advanced supercomputing capabilities to assist the nation’s first responders.

The terrorist attacks and subsequent anthrax incidents, however, quickly brought attention to the critical need for first responders, including health care professionals, to be trained in the use of specialized information, communication and coordination technologies. To address this pressing requirement, several government, military and industry organizations have joined forces to prepare emergency response professionals to deal with erupting crises immediately instead of waiting for the men with the suitcases to arrive.

Dr. Eileen M. Preisser, a professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, is one of the key players in this arena. A congressional fellow on science and technology applicable to national security, she was appointed this year as director of the Air Force Homeland Defense Technology Center. Her role, as she describes it, is “to help prepare American cities for possible terrorist attacks and give them the tools and education required to perform consequence management before any national agency arrives on the scene.”

Since September, a large portion of Preisser’s time has been spent working with Congress and groups from the Executive Office of the President to make U.S. Defense Department command, control, communications, computers, intelligence and coordination technologies available to first responders throughout the United States, Canada and NATO. “My methods are effective, but I knock over ricebowls. I’ve been called everything on Capitol Hill from Xena Warrior Princess to Joan of Arc,” the former Air Force special activities officer says.

Her partners in this mission are C.H. “Butch” Strauv II, program director, Office of National Defense Preparedness within the Office of Justice Programs, and Dr. Van Romero, president, National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, an organization sanctioned by the Office of Justice Programs. The consortium prepares firefighters, law enforcement professionals, medical and other emergency personnel to respond to acts of chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological terrorism. Strauv and Romero facilitate Preisser’s access to law enforcement and emergency medical services personnel, firefighters, public works professionals and mayors from around the country as well as to the university-accredited courses that give structure to the technical training offered online and in the classroom. The consortium already has trained and supported more than one million first responders in the United States, NATO and Canada. Since last September, it has trained approximately 100,000 personnel at strategically located sites across the United States.

Romero and Preisser endeavor to engage anyone and everyone on the threats facing the nation, and they are experts on the topic. “We used to think terrorism wouldn’t happen in the United States, but it has. It cannot be overemphasized that we in the United States are ill prepared for terrorism at home. We cannot train people fast enough. There is a six-month waiting list to get into the consortium’s on-site courses,” Romero notes.

Preisser agrees that the need for training is great. “Time is of the essence here. We have to find better ways to educate, train, support and exercise our first responders on a nationwide basis. Using the Web to offer accredited distance learning and preparing the same courses so they can be tailored for execution at conventions as part of professional continuing education is a logical extension of our work.”

This self-organized partnership recently created a valuable asset for first responders—the Collaborative Engagement Complex, which was built to house a portal system and facilitate collaborative engagement to support the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium in its mission.

The core of the new complex is the RESPOND! architecture, which uses the GENESIS technology Preisser developed in association with a major U.S. defense contractor. Other partners are being brought into this project from within the Defense Department and the civilian sector. The software is used to create threat profiles and terrorism vulnerability assessments for cities, companies or sites anywhere in the country. It not only handles text but also is being augmented to handle audio, video, signals and sensor data, which can be streamed to the responders upon request to track and follow a specific situation. The RESPOND! portal helps create a knowledge-based first-responder force.

RESPOND! will allow for training online and in conference environments on topics such as explosives, hazardous materials, urban search and rescue, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) incident management, public works emergencies and unified command protocols. It uses new Web-based knowledge assessment tools to help instructors create randomly generated digital exams. WebKat and Learning Framework provide secure testing formats for Web-based instruction as well as for tracking students’ grades and progress.

RESPOND! technology creates a knowledge environment where multiple users can interact for education, exercise, training or information sharing. The system assigns first responders passwords and log-on identifications that allow them to send e-mail, enter community-of-interest chat rooms and use the first response white pages to locate a colleague or expert. They can use the technology to do a city-threat assessment using massive data mining and information patterning online. During a crisis, they also will be able to work through the portal on secure lines to connect and collaborate with multiple colleagues anywhere in America.

The technology operates in Windows environments, allowing for the use of audio, video, white boarding, still photography or mapping annotations.

“The RESPOND! architecture is new technology for the first responder that builds upon what was originally Defense Department technology for anti-terrorism and counterterrorism. We call this tech transfer, and it is the fastest way to get advanced technology into the hands of the first responders,” Preisser explains.

According to Strauv, a lot of available technology can be used. Most was developed originally under Justice Department programs that support the consortium. The programs, which cost approximately $100 million annually, provide equipment and training to respond to and manage domestic terrorism safely. The program’s advantage for local municipalities is that first responders normally do not pay for their training if they register with the Office of Justice Programs first. “It’s one of the few benefits of being a hero,” Romero says.

“I think the real travesty to date,” Preisser says, “is that I am not currently training any Defense Department people in these courses, not even reservists. We do not have policies and mechanisms established that allow us to train military personnel as we do civilians in the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium. There is a big fear of many in the Pentagon of military overreach. We have not figured out that the military can help significantly in training and equipping first responders without violating posse comitatus laws.

“What needs to happen is that key professional specialty codes in the active-duty military, the Reserve and National Guard must be identified as first-responder equivalents so they can take and benefit from this WMD consequence management training. One of my key goals for this year is to develop policy and mechanisms to get reserve Department of Defense personnel—who are often on the scene as first responders—trained and educated in the first-responder protocols we are teaching in the consortium. If I can do this with online courses and convention and seminar exposure, so be it. But we have to move out on this. It’s important to all Americans.”

“Eventually,” Preisser continues, “we want to give first responders wearable interface access and smart card technology as well.” Such technology will drastically revamp the way firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and physicians do business across multiple states and municipalities.

Patrick S. Guarnieri is the chief executive officer of the National Conference on Homeland Security. The not-for-profit organization educates, trains and shares information with first responders on issues associated with terrorist incidents involving weapons of mass destruction.

Federal Computer Week on June 12, 2002:

By Dan Caterinicchia

The ultimate success or failure of the Homeland Security Department will be determined by the intelligence and information technology plan that's proposed and the person selected to lead that effort, according to a congressional fellow who advises the Executive Office of the President on technology.

Speaking June 11 at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet International 2002 in Washington, D.C., Eileen Preisser, also director of the Defense Department's Homeland Defense Technology Center, said the key will be getting the new department to organize and share information horizontally, instead of vertically in the usual stovepipes.

"The kicker that will determine if it succeeds or fails is the intelligence and IT plan that's prepared," Preisser told Federal Computer Week. "There has to be a [chief information officer or chief operating officer]-type person to bring together all the disparate capabilities that exist and create a new and exciting virtual information environment that will set the pace for everything else in government.

"If you hire a 65-year-old to do it, it will fail. If you hire former military, it will fail."

Preisser said the government should look to someone with experience in a large industry enterprise effort who understands the mission and the roles that the various agencies should play in the "big picture."

"I would like for that to happen, but I don't see that happening," she said.

Preisser said she fears that the new department will just add more bureaucracy to a system already overloaded with red tape. She added that agencies were just beginning to move "horizontally over the last nine months, and forcing them to go back will be the hardest cultural shift."

An interagency organization can be successful as long as the various parts are united by their mission and outfitted with the "same standard suitcase and equipment, and put in the field together," she said, adding that the interagency operational security (OPSEC) group is a prime example of one that works.

However, the only way the proposed Homeland Security Department can break agency stovepipes will be to cut off the individual budgets and fund everything at the department level, Preisser said. And even with the right IT and funding plan, the basic implementation will take anywhere from 15 years to 25 years, she said.

To get at least the basic foundation done faster than that, DOD officials should be given a mentoring role. Preisser said DOD officials have the necessary experience and should be "highly encouraged" to share what they know.

With that idea in mind, the Missile Defense Agency is developing an architecture for "mission-critical test beds" that will produce a common operational picture for itself and the other players involved in a potential accident or strike involving missiles, such as state and local first responders, utility companies and industry partners, Preisser said.

The test beds are designed to help DOD, aided by its partners, to identify text, voice, video or audio data patterns over time that should not be there. "That is the 'so what' of homeland security," she said, adding that terabytes of data are useless if the user can't pinpoint what they need quickly and act on it.

The architecture for this environment should be complete by July, when a decision is made whether to proceed in Texas or Florida. After that, partners will be selected based partly on geographical location, and by September, sites will be configured to use the architecture, Preisser said.

From Federal Computer News on June 17, 2002:

By Dan Caterinicchia

Three top Defense Department officials said last week that DOD could take a larger leadership role in establishing the proposed Homeland Security Department and that the key to the department's success would be the person responsible for information technology.

Eileen Preisser, director of DOD's Homeland Defense Technology Center, said the ultimate success or failure of the Homeland Security Department will be determined by the intelligence and IT plan that's proposed and the person selected to lead that effort. Preisser spoke at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet International 2002 conference in Washington, D.C.

"The kicker that will determine if it succeeds or fails is the intelligence and IT plan that's prepared," Preisser, a congressional fellow who also advises the Executive Office of the President on technology, told Federal Computer Week.

"There has to be a [chief information officer or chief operating officer]-type person to bring together all the disparate capabilities that exist and create a new and exciting virtual information environment that will set the pace for everything else in government," Preisser said. "If you hire a 65-year-old to do it, it will fail. If you hire former military, it will fail."

Preisser said the government should tap someone who has worked on an enterprise system for a large corporation and who understands the mission and the roles that the various agencies should play. "I would like for that to happen, but I don't see that happening," she said.

Preisser and Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Kellogg Jr., director of command, control, communications and computers for DOD's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to bring the department up to speed quickly, DOD officials should be given a mentoring role.

Kellogg told FCW that he has received "marching orders" from Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to work with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and other departments to "scope the issue...and get it done."

The greatest challenge facing the Homeland Security Department is integrating the cultures of the agencies it will comprise, Myers said. "It's very difficult to get those cultures to think in a different way, and [without IT] to back it all up, we're putting ourselves at risk, and that's unacceptable," he said.

"We need to capitalize on current technologies to build to the future, because the intent is to link everyone together," Kellogg said, adding that his office is now working on a "proposal on the way ahead to do it."

The only way the Homeland Security Department can break agency stovepipes will be to cut off the agencies' individual budgets and fund everything at the department level, Preisser said. She fears that the new department will just add more bureaucracy to a system already overloaded with red tape and that agencies were just beginning to move "horizontally over the last nine months, and forcing them to go back will be the hardest cultural shift."

"I don't buy that," said Paul Kurtz, senior director for national security for the White House's Office of Cyberspace Security. "It breaks down stovepipes, and that is a key to our success. The refrain has been to bring [the agencies] together to be more powerful. The sum of the total is greater than what we have now."

The government must continue to use and evolve IT, and the related policies and procedures, in a coordinated way. Currently, federal agencies, as well as state and local governments and industry partners, don't know where to go when they possess, or are in search of, certain homeland security information or intelligence, Kurtz said.

"This is the government doing its part to reorganize and coordinate better," he said. "Reorganization isn't the end, it's the beginning. We're trying to make it better."

The White House, in conjunction with the private sector, would release its national strategy for critical infrastructure protection in August or September, but that document will be subject to frequent updates as threats and vulnerabilities change, Kurtz said.

"We're going to make mistakes," he said. "We're new at this. The goal is to release the strategy in August or September and pursue that while the legislation is being put together on [Capitol] Hill. We're trying to do both at the same time."

Press Release for TSM 2003 conference at Murray State:

The conference begins at 6 p.m. April 3 with Dr. Eileen Preisser, Congressional Fellow and Special Assistant for Homeland Defense and National Security, giving the keynote address.

Shane Harris in National Journal on November 7, 2005:

Data Destruction

As quickly as the IDC garnered powerful fans, it also earned some enemies. The center was not a chartered member of the formal intelligence community -- the 14 agencies that in 1999 officially constituted the country's spy apparatus. For a support organization, buried several layers deep in the Army, to tread on territory normally reserved for big-name agencies like the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and to present intelligence gleaned from the Internet, of all places, was simply anathema to people steeped in decades of intelligence rules and culture. The IDC analysts were mavericks.

In particular, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the analysts' results on a number of projects, not just Able Danger, the former IDC employee said. "We'd show them our stuff, and they'd say, 'Show us the math.' " But the answers didn't always add up so neatly. The combination of data mining and hunches sometimes produced results that the bigger intelligence agencies viewed as murky, even if military commanders found them compelling.

At a Pentagon briefing on Able Danger in September of this year, Thomas Gandy, the Army's director of counterintelligence and human intelligence, cautioned reporters about inferring too much information from the "links" the IDC established, particularly because its data-mining tools were far less sophisticated than the ones used today. "Just that there are links established doesn't really mean anything," Gandy said. "In the primacy of this technology, you get some very goofy links that require research."

Kleinsmith and the former employee, as well as others who worked tangentially to the IDC over the years, insisted that the IDC analysts were senior and seasoned, and that they recognized the fact that simple links required further investigation. Yet the analysts' enthusiasm for a less tidy sort of inquiry, which often raised more questions than answers, divided intelligence professionals. Some former government officials, who declined to be named, derided the IDC analysts as "zealots" and said their work never produced the eureka-like results that some, particularly former Able Danger members, now claim.

One senior IDC analyst, Eileen Preisser, who worked with Kleinsmith on Able Danger and other projects, was characterized by a former Defense official as "an uncontrolled flake." Kleinsmith, who called Preisser an "analytical genius," admitted that she "has constant trouble in working with others in the community." Preisser has worked in several intelligence jobs, inside and outside the government, and those who know her see her as the prototypical IDC believer.

She "is especially critical of those folks who she feels did not, or do not, 'get' the technology," Kleinsmith said. "Instead of working within the system, maneuvering around the tough spots, negotiating and dealing, she tends to burn her way through an issue to get where she needs to go." Preisser now works for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. A spokeswoman there said Preisser declined all requests for interviews.

In early 2000, in the midst of Able Danger, a lawyer with the Army's general counsel visited Kleinsmith. As Kleinsmith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, the lawyer reminded him that under Army regulations, any data the IDC collected on U.S. persons -- even inadvertently -- had to be destroyed within 90 days. If analysts could establish a legitimate reason to investigate a person further, they could keep the corresponding data.

But with potentially tens of thousands of names, checking each one would have been impossible, Kleinsmith said. In the Pentagon briefing, Gandy concurred: "I don't think they had the capability to scrub it in the fashion that the oversight rules could live with."

By the spring of 2000, Kleinsmith said, the IDC had the list of 20 individuals whom Special Operations wanted investigated further under Able Danger. But in March, Kleinsmith was ordered to cease all work on the project. He believes the order came from outside the IDC's command. From May to June, Kleinsmith and his team destroyed the information, and possibly the linkages between Mohamed Atta, Al Qaeda, and convicted terrorists already sitting in U.S. prisons.

"It was terrible," Kleinsmith said.

'So It Begins'

After the data purge, the heartbeat of the IDC slowed. In late September 2000, the center was authorized to begin new work on Able Danger, Kleinsmith said. A data harvest would take no time to replicate, but the analysis on people and locations was much harder to reproduce.

But Able Danger never ramped up a second time. On October 12, while the USS Cole was docked in Yemen's port city of Aden, Al Qaeda suicide bombers rammed the destroyer with a small explosive-laden boat, killing 17 U.S. sailors and wounding 39. From then on, U.S. Central Command, responsible for the Middle East, became the IDC's primary customer, Kleinsmith said. Special Operations Command, unhappy because the IDC's attention had shifted, moved Able Danger to a private intelligence research center run by Raytheon in Garland, Texas, Kleinsmith said.

A Raytheon spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. But Eileen Preisser, the IDC analyst who had worked on Able Danger with Kleinsmith, was working for Raytheon after the September 11 attacks. In a 2001 interview with National Journal, she spoke of projects she was involved with that were essentially the same as those at the IDC.

After the Cole bombing, the IDC concentrated on projects not related to Al Qaeda. "We went on to do some other things, other projects," the former IDC employee said. Less than a year later, the 9/11 attackers struck. Looking back, Kleinsmith doesn't claim that he saw the attacks coming. Rather, he felt resigned. "I wasn't surprised," he said. He had studied Al Qaeda's evolution and believed he knew its capabilities. "I thought, 'So it begins.'

Total Information Awareness

The 9/11 attacks breathed some new life into the Information Dominance Center. In late 2001, retired Navy Adm. John Poindexter, who had served as President Reagan's national security adviser, met with the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where Poindexter was soon to be employed. Poindexter was looking for a site to test new technologies under his Total Information Awareness program, which, not unlike the IDC, aimed to use open-source data and government information to understand terrorism.

TIA also looked at tools to examine commercial databases containing information on U.S. citizens, within the context of privacy regulations.

Poindexter wanted a proving ground staffed by seasoned, technology-inclined analysts, a "Manhattan Project" for counterterrorism, he said. The DARPA director, Tony Tether, told him to consider the IDC. After meeting with Gen. Alexander, the Army commander overseeing the center, Poindexter agreed to test some of the TIA tools at the IDC.

"TIA was a very good concept," the former IDC employee said. The center offered TIA "a high-speed testing bed" for its new technologies. "Some of the tools sucked, and some of them were good ideas," the employee said. The frustration came from officials' reluctance to use the tools for active intelligence projects. Poindexter emphasized that TIA was a research project and wasn't using data mining as part of any real intelligence operations. TIA was an experiment.

But the experiment was short-lived. In late 2002, Poindexter's role in TIA was revealed in the press. The controversial retired admiral's past caught up with him -- Poindexter was the central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, which diverted the profits from covert arms sales to Iran to anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua.

Members of Congress derided TIA as an Orwellian excess of the post-9/11 era. The funding was pulled. Kleinsmith, who had left the Army by the time TIA arrived, seemed perplexed by lawmakers' concerns. "We've had this capability for years," he remembered thinking. "Who cares?"

TIA's detractors declared a victory for privacy protection when they killed the project. Poindexter was forced to resign in August 2003. But research on TIA tools has hardly ceased.

Rather, it has moved into the intelligence agencies, where the work and the budgets for it are classified, Poindexter said, noting that now Congress has more-limited oversight and should be more concerned about privacy infringements. The former IDC employee concurred, saying "The [TIA] concept hasn't died off. It continues. And it continues elsewhere now, and I can't talk about that. The tools are continuing to be developed."

Government Computer News from May 6, 2002:

TechNet International 2002.

You and your guest are invited Tech Net International Gala Evening

Tuesday, D.C. Convention Center Exhibit Halls A & B

Enjoy a Buffet Dinner and Technology Tour followed by a special performance by the irreverently uproarious "Capitol Steps"

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The Department of Defense finds this event meets the minimum regulatory standards for attendance by Dod employees. This finding does not constitute a blanket approval or endorsement for attendence.

Technet International 2002

AFCEA'S 56TH ANNUAL CONVENTION AND EXPOSITION

TechNet International 2002 is one of the nation's largest [C.sub.4]I conferences and expositions- everything for the communications, electronics, intelligence and information systems professional.

It's FREE, but it's priceless!

Five VALUABLE reasons you can't afford to miss TechNet International 2002:

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Register for TechNet International 2002 today! To register, visit www.technet2002.org

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Featured Speakers

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Defense Keynote Luncheon

and 2002 David Sarnoff Award Winner

Gen Richard B. Myers, USAF

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Four Star Breakfast Series

GEN Paul J. Kern, USA

Commanding General

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ADM William J. Fallon, USN

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Lt Gen Bruce A. Wright, USAF

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The Industry Perspective

C. Michael Armstrong

Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer AT&T

Back by Popular Demand! J-6 Luncheon Panel

Moderator: LTG Joseph K. Kellogg Jr., USA

Director, J-6

The Joint Staff

Panel Sessions

Admission to panel sessions is free to all registrants.

Application of Information Technology to Homeland Security

Tuesday, June 11, 9:00 a.m. -- 10:30 a.m.

Moderator:

Donald Zimmerman, CEO, Synergy, Inc., Senior Vice President, Information Technology Division, SOZA & Co., Ltd.

Panelists include:

Alan Harbitter, PEC Solutions

Dr. Eileen Preisser, Director, Air Force Homeland Defense Technology Center

Network Centric Warfare:

Approaches to Implementation

Tuesday, June 11, 2:00 p.m. -- 3:30 p.m.

Moderator:

Paul R. Brubaker, Chief Executive Officer, Aquilent, Inc.

Panelists include:

MG Steven W. Boutelle, USA, Director, Information Operations, Networks and Space, Office of the Secretary of the Army

Maj Gen Charles E. Croom, Jr., USAF, Vice Director for Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems, The Joint Staff

LTG David j. Kelley, USA (Ret.), Vice President, Information Operations, Lockheed Martin Mission Systems

Rick Rosenburg, Program Executive, Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) Strike Force, EDS

Biometrics: Integration of Technologies for Information Security

Wednesday, June 12, 9:00 a.m. -- 10:30 a.m.

Moderator:

Jeff Dunn, National Security Agency, Co-Chair, Biometric Consortium

Panelists include:

Joseph Atick, Chief Executive Officer, Visionics

LTG Peter Cuviello, USA, Director, Information Systems for Command, Control and Computers

Cathy Tilton, SAFLink, Chair, Biometrics API Committee, Biometrics Consortium

Smart Card Applications

Wednesday, June 12, 2:00 p.m. -- 3:30 p.m.

Moderator:

Mary Dixon, Director, DoD Smart Card Program, Office of the Secretary of Defense

Panelists include:

LTC Greta Lehman, USA, Program Manager, U.S. Army Secure Electronic Transaction-Device Office

Dave Wennergren, Chairman, Smart Card Senior Coordinating Group

Jim Zok, U.S. Department of Transportation

Emergency Communications and Infrastructure Reconstitution

Thursday, June 13, 9:00 a.m. -- 10:30 a.m.

Moderator:

Brenton Greene, Deputy Manager, National Communications System

Panelists include:

Joe Wassel, Office of the Secretary of Defense

Professional Development Center Mini-Courses

Admission to mini-courses is free.

An overview of AFCEA's most popular PDC courses:

MILSATCOM

Tuesday, June 11

9:00 a.m. -- Noon

Wednesday, June 12

1:45 p.m. -- 4:45 p.m.

The Military Satellite Communications course covers the whole spectrum of MILSATCOM programs and issues. It also gives up to date visibility into the latest OSD initiatives, including the Transitional Communications Study (TCS) and the National Security SATCOM Systems Synchronization (NS4R) Roadmap.

Instructor: James Mazzei

Information Assurance, Roadmap to Excellence

Tuesday, June 11

1:45 p.m. -- 4:45 p.m.

Wednesday, June 12

9:00 a.m. -- Noon

The Information Assurance, Roadmap to Excellence course covers the entire spectrum of Information Assurance issues. The course provides current information regarding the use of biometrics along with passwords to achieve multi-factor identification and authentication. Timely information regarding joint NIST and NSA initiatives in COTS IT product evaluation using the Common Criteria is provided as well. Instructor: James E. Wingate, CISSP

Schedule
(*)Ticket required. Tickets available at www.technet2002.org.
morning
7:30 8:00
Tuesday, June 11
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*)
GEN Paul J. Kern, USA
Commanding General
U.S. Army Materiel
Command
8:00 a.m. - Noon
Career Transition
Seminar
Wednesday, June 12
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*)
ADM William J. Fatlon, USN
Vice Chief of Naval
Operations
Thursday, June 13
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*)
Lt Gen Bruce A. Wright, USAF
Vice Commandar Air Combat
Command
7:30 9:00 10:00
Tuesday, June 11
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Panel Session
GEN Paul J. Kern, USA Application of Information
Commanding General Technology to Homeland
U.S. Army Materiel Security
Command
9:00 a.m. - Noon
PDC Mini-Cource
MILSATCOM
Wednesday, June 12
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Panel Sesion
ADM William J. Fatlon, USN Biometrics: Integration of
Vice Chief of Naval Technologies for Information
Operations Security
9:00 a.m. - Noon
PDC Mini-Cource
Infomation Assurance: Roadmap
to Excellence
Thursday, June 13
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Panel Session
Lt Gen Bruce A. Wright, USAF Emergency Communication and
Vice Commandar Air Combat Infrastructure Reconstitution
Command
9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Business Opportunity Workshop
for Small Business
7:30 11:00 Noon
Tuesday, June 11
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. Noon - 1:30 p.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Defense Keynote Luncheon (*)
GEN Paul J. Kern, USA Gen Richard B. Myers, USAF
Commanding General Chariman of the Joint Chiefs
U.S. Army Materiel of Staff
Command
Wednesday, June 12
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. Noon - 1:30
Four Star Breakfast Series (*) J-6 Luncheon Panel (*)
ADM William J. Fatlon, USN Moderator:
Vice Chief of Naval LTG Joseph K. Kellogg Jr.,
Operations USA
Director, Command, Control
Communications and Computer
Systems (J-6)
The Joint Staff
Thursday, June 13
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m. Noon - 1:30 p.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Luncheon (*)
Lt Gen Bruce A. Wright, USAF C. Michael Armstrong
Vice Commandar Air Combat Chairman of the Board and
Command Chief Executive Officer
AT&T
7:30 1:00
Tuesday, June 11
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*)
GEN Paul J. Kern, USA
Commanding General
U.S. Army Materiel
Command
Wednesday, June 12
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*)
ADM William J. Fatlon, USN
Vice Chief of Naval
Operations
Thursday, June 13
7:30 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.
Four Star Breakfast Series (*)
Lt Gen Bruce A. Wright, USAF
Vice Commandar Air Combat
Command

Posted by Mike at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 07, 2006

Who is Jay Boesen?

Just doing some research here, but I think he is important.

From the National Conference on Homeland Security in October 2002:

Technical Board of Directors

Jay Boesen - Senior Counter Intelligence analyst and field officer specializing in European, Middle East and Asian terrorism. He is a former senior consultant for analytical tradecraft at the Defense Intelligence Agency's Joint Terrorism Analysis Center's Counter Terrorism course. Mr. Boesen served as liaison at the DCI Counter-terrorist Center at the Central Intelligence Agency. He has also served as guest lecturer at the CIA's Analytical Risk Management Course.

From the same site in October 2004:

Technical Board of Directors

J. L. Boesen - has a Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts from the University of the State of New York and a Master's degree in International Relations from Troy State University. Mr. Boesen is the author of the Vulnerability Assessment Fundamentals Course and the Advanced Vulnerability Assessment Course at the U. S. Department of Energy. He was the Special Advisor for Intelligence to the D.O.E. Director of Safeguards and Security. Mr. Boesen served as liaison at the DCI Counter-terrorist Center at the Central Intelligence Agency and was responsible for analytic training and support at the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) Joint Terrorism Analysis Center. He currently serves as a faculty member in automated analytical methodologies and exercise scenario development for the DIA and Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism's "Counter-terrorism Analysis Course,” Mr. Boesen was a senior tactics instructor and course chief with the US Air Force Security Police Academy, was a lead instructor and course developer for vulnerability assessment training at the Department of Energy Non-Proliferation and National Security Institute's Central Training Academy. While assigned to the European region he was recognized for his efforts in fighting terrorism by the German Federal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) earning the title of "Honorary Kriminalkommissar." He has conducted some of the first terrorism risk assessments in the world. Mr. Boesen is co-author of an NCHS published book entitled "The Al-Qaeda Network".

From another NCHS web page:

The Law Enforcement Intelligence section was developed and is maintained by members of our Technical Advisory Board and the Genesis Intelligence Laboratory at Raytheon. To review the credentials of our Technical Advisory Board, go to the About Us section of this web site.

The Raytheon Genesis System utilizes “best of breed”, commercially available applications coupled with proprietary software and processes to mine, exploit and analyze all-source intelligence data. Characterized by extreme speed and super computing capacity, Genesis can provide solutions to all strategic, operational and tactical intelligence problems. The end product of this process is actionable intelligence that all operators and first responders can utilize to detect, deter, disrupt and/or neutralize asymmetric threats.

The Law Enforcement Intelligence section contains weekly updated information concerning the following subjects.

** Intelligence concerning terrorist organizations domestically and abroad.
** Charts concerning Al-Qaeda members their affiliations and photographs.
** Current information on radical and protest groups which may pose threats to the United States domestically or abroad.
** Information concerning safety of U.S. citizens at various locations domestically and abroad.
** Information concerning new methods of operation, potential venues and weaponry.
** Analysis of current intelligence data.

In order to gain access to this section you must be a local, state or federal law enforcement agency. After you provide the information requested, The National Conference on Homeland Security will verify its accuracy and provide you with a user name and password. Non-law enforcement entities should contact NCHS directly for a determination as to whether they may gain access. Once you have gained access, you will be provided with navigation instructions.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GENESIS
You may contact Jay Boesen at Raytheon
(703) 391-2913, Extension 7063

From After by Steven Brill:

To screen people, the data would be mined through a system that Raytheon called Genesis, which, Woollen explained vaguely, could track "certain patterns of behavior" that indicated someone was a threat.

None of that was enough by itself, Woollen added. The real value Raytheon added was that the Raytheon system would be "proactive." Once a visitor arrived here, his data would be constantly updated, so that everything he did would be "tracked during the entire lifetime of the visa." If he got into trouble here and was wanted by the police, or even if new information about his prior activities was developed by Genesis, he'd be placed on a new lookout list so that he could be apprehended.

Depending on your point of view, it was all fascinating, scary, or encouraging. But Peterman and the man from the White House science office also knew that it was wildly expensive. To take one example, how could they pay for the biometric scanners -- whether of the iris, the palm, or the face -- at every border crossing? And how would someone be apprehended once put on a lookout list? Where would all the checkpoints be?

Nonetheless, these Raytheon guys seemed determined to build a system that, in some form, had to be built, so Peterman gave them the name of the procurement people at INS who were overseeing the development of the entry-exit system, and said they should get a meeting over there. He added the now standard speech that all homeland security staffers had learned -- which was that they did not make any purchasing decisions.

According to an attorney named Wade Birdwell:

When Able Danger powered up, Dr. Preisser became the head of the data evaluation group within the program, apparently applying the Genesis data-mining technology (or a derivative thereof), the development for which she was at least partially responsible. Over the next few months, she and her group developed a list of approximately 80 possible Al-Queda operatives, including Atta, and a Brooklyn cell, and made at least three attempts to get the FBI/DOJ to initiate an investigation based upon their findings.

If Weldon presents evidence tomorrow of the success of Able Danger in predicting an attack that became the attack on the U.S.S. Cole attack in October 2000, and that the Pentagon/DOD received the warning, but ignored it, then we can reasonably infer that the Pentagon/DOD knew that Dr. Preisser and her group were on the right track in doing the very thing they were supposed to be doing, i.e., discovering, predicting and, thereby, preventing Al-Queda activity before it occurred. If they were not so aware, we can reasonably infer that Dr. Preisser and her group attempted to make them aware over the course of the next few months. We can also reasonably infer that Dr. Preisser and her group went back to their data and became more convinced than ever that they had a line on Al-Queda in the form of that list of 80 possible operatives, and that they would have attempted to bring this back up with the powers that be.

Unfortunately, this would all have occurred during the Florida recount debacle. But it is at least possible that this critical information in Clinton Administration efforts ( I use that term advisedly) made it some way up the chain of command, and was available to both the Clinton Administration and the incoming Bush 43 Administration.

My guess, it stopped at some fairly high career bureaucrat(s) because they didn't want their betters to know that they could have stopped the U.S.S. Cole attack, but didn't. Then, the 2.5 teragigs of data get deep sixed shortly thereafter, ostensibly because the Pentagon/DOD was worried about being accused of domestic spying.

The point of all this is that Dr. Preisser, again, a critical member of the DOD intelligence community presumably knew all of this was going on, and can testify that her superiors ignored not only her unsubstantiated warnings about the 80 possible operatives, but also her clear success in predicting the U.S.S. Cole attack almost a year before the 9/11 attack.

From a Raytheon presentation on Genesis:

So the intelligence side, we are now bringing together the data. There is, of course, the question of how do we absorb that and be able to use it and put it all together make the right decisions. In this area, we have tools, not only at Raytheon, but at all other places, that are incredible. In our case, the front page that you saw, there’s a tool called Genesis. If I give Genesis your name, Genesis will find out more about you than you could ever remember about yourself. That is a key tool to look into people, visitors that are coming in. That is not just data that is available publicly, but other data that may be available also; it puts it all together and it yields a recommendation to a border guard, to an analyst, et cetera, on the basis of the data available.

Excerpts from "1000 Years for Revenge" by Peter Lance that mention Jay Boesen.

Page 235:

In light of what we now know was going on in Manila at the time, Khalifa's release has to be considered one of the most grevious instances of negligence in the years leading up to 9/11. Even given the need to apease Jordan, a key U.S. ally in the Mideast, the release of Khalifa represents disturbing evidence of just how badly the FBI and State, two of the nation's top antiterrorism agencies, were at odds.

"I remember people at CIA who were ripshit at the time," said Jacob L. Bosesen, who worked as an analyst tasked from the Department of Energy to the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center. "Not even speaking in retrospect, but contemporaneous with what the intelligence community knew about bin Laden, Khalifa's deportation was unreal."

Page 357:

Ronnie Bucca was a fire marshal. By any traditional definition, terrorism wouldn;t have been even remotely close to his jurisdiction. But he had seen the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as an act of arson, and one that touched him personally. Now the four main conspirators and the bomb maker himself had been convicted. The blind Sheikh and the other member of his "jihad army" would be locked up for years. any other investigator might have given up and moved on. But not Bucca. He was the firefighter who had fallen five stories and worked his way back to Rescue One.

As the spring of 1997 arrived, he continued to believe that the Trade Center was a potential target. "He said, 'They're gonna come back and do it again,'" said Jacob L. Boesen, an analyst who worked with Ronnis at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. "I said to him, 'They did it once.' But he said, 'Some of those people have folded now into al Qaeda.'"

Boesen, who wrote a study on al Qaeda for the National Conference on Homeland Security, said Bucca was a rare combination. "Ronnie's military experience as an intelligence officer gave him an analytical role, and his experience as a Special Ops Green Beret gave him an operational perspective," said Boesen. "He was the real deal. He has was frustrated because the Bureau was the lead player in New York when it came to terrorism and he couldn't get anybody on the Task Force to listen."

Page 382:

By late November, Ronnie was visiting firehouses to discuss terrorism preparedness with the rank and file. In July he'd taken a course in advanced counterterrorism analysis at the Joint Military Intelligence Training Center. In his capacity as an analyst with the 3413th Military Intelligence Detachment, Ronnie and his unit would now meet at least once a month with Jacob Boesen, an analyst with the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center, who would come up from Washington to Fort Dix and deliver chalk talks on the latest terrorism intelligence.

"We were working in asymmetrical threat analysis," said Boesen, "using a program called Analyst's Notebook the helped us produce link charts of the entire Al Qaeda organization." The charts, like the one of page 362-63, allowed DIA analysts to step back and take a broad snapshot of Osama bin Laden's organization and its related cells.

Boesen remembered one session in particular. "After we'd finished," he said, "Ronnie pulled me aside and asked what I thought the chances would be of al Qaeda hittin New York again. At that point the sense in law enforcement had been that Yousef and his cell were finished. But Ronnie seemed to sense that was something else in the works. That's when he asked me about KSM."

Bucca had seen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's name in the unsealed bin Laden indictment, and he wanted to pick Boesen's brain to see what he knew.

"The truth was, we knew very little about him at the time," said Boesen. "Just what was in the intel from Manila. We knew the FBI had tried to grab him in Qatar. But what we didn't know was that he was now in Hamburg meeting with Mohammed Atta and the other members of the 9/11 cell."

Posted by Mike at 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 15, 2006

"It did not fit with the story we wanted to tell"

From page 41 of Shaffer's written testimony:

During the briefing, Congressman Weldon asked Russ Caso, his chief of
staff, to call the 9/11 commission and find out if they (the 9/11
commission) had ever heard of ABLE DANGER. Mr. Caso left the room and
called Chris Cojm at the 9/11 Discourse Project and asked him if they
had ever "heard of something called ABLE DANGER". Chris quickly
checked and told Russ "Yes - we heard of it" - Russ then asked him why
they did not put it in their final report - Cojm's answer was this "It
did not fit with the story we wanted to tell". Russ came back in and
told Congressman Weldon and me of the comment. Both Congressman
Weldon and I could not hide our astonished looks at hearing the news.
This was the beginning of the investigation as to why ABLE DANGER
information was not examined or included in the 9/11 report that has
brought us to where we are today.

Posted by Mike at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 08, 2006

It's not the NSA you should be worried about

I've made the point before, but government overreach should really be the last of our concerns when it comes to safeguarding our privacy. Lack of government oversight in the private sector is the problem.

From the Chicago Sun Times:

The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts.

Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official.

Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often.

And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company.

Some online services might be skirting the law to obtain these phone lists, according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called for legislation to criminalize phone record theft and use.

In some cases, telephone company insiders secretly sell customers' phone-call lists to online brokers, despite strict telephone company rules against such deals, according to Schumer.

And some online brokers have used deception to get the lists from the phone companies, he said.

"Though this problem is all too common, federal law is too narrow to include this type of crime," Schumer said last year in a prepared statement.

In other words, Kossacks want to provoke a constitutional crisis because the NSA did something like this to track Al Qaeda, but anyone with $100 bucks can already do it today. During the Able Danger story "information brokers" and "buying information online" were mentioned several times. Frankly, it makes me wonder if they might have used a service like this in order to locate Al Qaeda agents.

Posted by Mike at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 11, 2005

An Inconvenient Patriot

Yeah, I stole the title from that Sibel Edmonds article, but I'm just pointing out no one but Colin Powell bothered to listen to Brian Sheridan and what he had to say.

First some background:

IAB Fall Meeting Program

"The Engineer's Response to Homeland Security"
October 17-18, 2002 — New York, NY

Speaker Biography: Brian Sheridan

Deputy General Manager, National Security Programs & Operations
Bechtel Nevada

Mr. Sheridan is currently serving as the Deputy General Manager for National Security Response Programs & Operations at Bechtel Nevada. He is responsible for the management of four major programs: Combating Terrorism, The National Security Response, Environmental Management, Defense & Civil. In addition to his program responsibilities, he also oversees the Remote Sensing Laboratory (based at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada and Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland), and the Special Technologies Laboratory Operations (based in Santa Barbara, California).

Before working with Bechtel Nevada, Mr. Sheridan served as the Vice President for Strategic Programs, Bechtel National Incorporated (BNI), where he was responsible for business development for the Combating Terrorism and Homeland Defense markets.

Prior to his assignment at BNI, Mr. Sheridan served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) at the Department of Defense. He had five direct report Deputy Assistant Secretaries responsible for: Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance, Special Operations, Combating Terrorism, Drug Enforcement, and Inter-American Affairs. He previously served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in SOLIC and before that as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Enforcement Policy and Support.

Before entering the Pentagon, Mr. Sheridan worked as a Consultant for Frank Lynn & Associates, a marketing consulting firm in Chicago. Prior to consulting, Mr. Sheridan worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

His educational background includes a BA from Boston College (1982); an MSFS from Georgetown University (1985); and an MBA from the University of Chicago (1991).

Mr. Sheridan is married to Anne Sheridan and they have three children: Connor (age 11); Patrick (age 9); and Sloan (age 7). They currently reside in Las Vegas, Nevada.

From page 228 of Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke:

Colin Powell took the unusual step during the transition of asking to meet with the CSG, the senior counterterrorism officers from NSC, State, Defense, CIA, FBI and the military. He wanted to see us interact, respond to each other's statements. When we all agreed at the importance of the al-Qaida threat, Powell was obviously surprised at the unanimity.

Brian Sheridan, the soon departing Assistant Secretary of Defense, summed it up: "General Powell, I will be leaving when the administration changes. I am the only political appointee in the room. All these guys are career professionals. So let me give you one piece of advice, untainted by any personal interest. Keep this interagency team together and make al-Qaida your No. 1 priority. We may all squabble about tactics and we may call each other assholes from time to time, but this is the best interagency team I have ever seen and they all want to get al-Qaida. They're comin' after us and we gotta get them first." Powell asked extensive questions about what State could do, took detailed notes, and later asked Rich Armitage (who would become Deputy Secretary) to get involved.

From an op-ed to the LA Times by former Clinton NSC staffer Daniel Benjamin:

In reporting for our book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," Steven Simon and I found that Clarke was not alone. Several top U.S. government officials agreed in interviews that the new administration had been unwilling to revise its understanding of America's security position and too slow to recognize the danger of Al Qaeda.

Brian Sheridan, President Clinton's outgoing assistant secretary of Defense for special operations and low intensity conflict, was astonished when his offers during the transition to bring the new Pentagon leadership up to speed on terrorism were brushed aside. "I offered to brief anyone, any time on any topic. Never took it up."

From the 9/11 Commission staff statement:

Brian Sheridan—the outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in DOD—never briefed Rumsfeld. Lower-level SOLIC officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues and was not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda. Undersecretary Feith told the Commission that when he arrived at the Pentagon in July 2001, Rumsfeld asked him to focus his attention on working with the Russians on agreements to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and preparing a new nuclear arms control pact. Traditionally, the primary DOD official responsible for counterterrorism policy had been the assistant secretary of defense for SOLIC. The outgoing assistant secretary left on January 20, 2001, and had not been replaced when the Pentagon was hit on September 11.

From Bill Gertz on May 2, 2003:

As we reported in this space in February, Thomas W. O'Connell is President Bush's pick to be the next assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict (SOLIC). The White House this week sent the nomination to the Senate.

Special operations is a high priority with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the war on terrorism, but the SOLIC post has been vacant since the Bush team took office.

It withdrew its first nominee, then proposed eliminating the assistant secretary post and folding the SOLIC office into another organization. Some senators balked at that proposal and it was dropped.

Mr. O'Connell is a senior manager at defense contractor Raytheon Corp. A former special-operations commando, he worked at the CIA and was a deputy director at U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla.

From Slade Gorton's written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

In the Department of Defense, the 9/11 Commission interviewed General Schoomaker, who was Commander of the Special Operations Command at the time Able Danger was created. The Commission interviewed General Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Scott Fry and General Gregory Newbold, successive directors of operations for the Joint Staff. The Commission interviewed Brian Sheridan, the Assistant Secretary for Special Operatoins and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) during the period Able Danger was in existence; as well as several other senior and mid-level managers in SOLIC. Despite direct questions for any information relevant to the 9/11 attacks, they mentioned nothing about a chart. They mentioned nothing about identifying Mohamed Atta, even in response to questions about the Able Danger program.

From Tony Shaffer's interview with GSN Magazine:

GSN:
Even when a program is compartmented, wouldn’t the senior leadership on the civilian side know about it?

SHAFFER:
I cannot speak to that because I have no direct knowledge. I only know from my direct knowledge that General Shelton was aware because of his tasking this to Special Operations Command. I briefed him on another operation regarding the Internet and data, and I referenced Able Danger to him because we were going to use the same Able Danger methodology to protect U.S. person issues.

I briefed [General Shelton] on that other operation in the spring 2001 timeframe, before 9/11. So, from my knowledge, I believe he remembered Able Danger at that point in time because of the reference to this other operation.

However, I don’t know how far above him or laterally, he shared information regarding Able Danger. I don’t know about the civilian leadership.

The highest level on the civilian side that I’m directly knowledgeable of was that the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict was aware because I briefed him on this. [Editor’s Note: Brian E. Sheridan held that assistant secretary position at the time.]

He received a briefing from me [in 2000] on Stratus Ivy, my unit, and I gave him information on what we were doing for Able Danger. His comment to me was, “You need to get on those guys and push them harder.” That was the way he told me to get on SOCOM to get them to push harder to get this going.

GSN:
This was before Able Danger had any success or had identified any results.

SHAFFER:
Absolutely, yes.

Posted by Mike at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 02, 2005

Sign this petition

Help support Weldon's letter calling for public hearings on Able Danger. Sign it here then spread the word. We've got over 500 signatures so far, let's make it 1,000.

Posted by Mike at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 18, 2005

List of Congress members supporting Able Danger

From Weldon's office:

Below is a list of those who have signed Congressman Weldon's letter to Secretary Rumsfeld requesting open hearings for ABLE DANGER members...

Republican (144)

Curt Weldon (R-PA)
David L. Hobson, (R-OH)
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Joel Hefley (R-CO)
Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
Tom Davis (R-VA)
Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
Charles W. Dent (R-PA)
Jim Ramstad (R-MN)
Mark Souder (R-IN)
Phil English (R-PA)
Michael McCaul (R-TX)
Sam Johnson (R-TX)
Christopher Shays (R-CT)
Walter B. Jones (R-NC)
Charles H. Taylor (R-NC)
John L. Mica (R-FL)
John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
Jeff Miller (R-FL)
Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD)
Nathan Deal (R-GA)
Joe Wilson (R-SC)
Donald A. Manzullo (R-IL)
Charles W. Boustany, Jr. (R-LA)
Ralph M. Hall (R-TX)
John E. Peterson (R-PA)
Ron Paul (R-TX)
Jerry Weller (R-IL)
Michael N. Castle (R-DE)
Geoff Davis (R-KY)
J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
Cliff Stearns (R-FL)
Fred Upton (R-MI)
Rob Simmons (R-CT)
Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)
Henry Bonilla (R-TX)
Virgil H. Goode, Jr. (R-VA)
Howard Coble (R-NC)
Jim Gibbons (R-NV)
Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY)
Dan Burton (R-IN)
Joseph R.Pitts (R-PA)
Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
Ellen Gallegly (R-CA)
Don Sherwood (R-PA)
Zach Wamp (R-TN)
Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Frank Wolf (R-VA)
Chris Chocola (R-IN)
Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Ron Lewis (R-KY)
Rob Aderholt (R-AL)
Randy J. Forbes (R-VA)
Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-CA)
John Boozman (R-AR)
Frank A. LoBiondo (R-NJ)
John E. Sweeney (R-NY)
Michael R. Turner (R-OH)
Dennis R. Rehberg (R-MT-At Large)
Tom Osborne (R-NE)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Pete Sessions (R-TX)
John Linder (R-GA)
Todd W. Akin (R-MO)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
Robin Hayes (R-NC)
John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN)
Bob Inglis (R-SC)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Lee Terry (R-NE)
Dave Weldon (R-FL)
Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT)
Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL)
Melissa Hart (R-PA)
John Sullivan (R-OK)
Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
Adam H. Putnam (R-FL)
Don Young (R-AK-At Large)
Peter King (R-NY)
Daniel E. Lungren (R-CA)
Michael T. McCaul (R-TX)
Katherine Harris (R-FL)
John Hostettler (R-IN)
Paul E. Gillmor (R-OH)
Roy Blunt (R-MO)
Michael Simpson (R-ID)
Tom Price (R-GA)
Charlie Norwood (R-GA)
Michael Bilirakis (R-FL)
Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
Henry E. Brown, Jr. (R-SC)
Thomas G. Tancredo (R-CO)
Terry Everett (R-AL)
Robert Ney (R-OH)
Ed Whitfield (R-KY)
Wally Herger (R-CA)
Mark Foley (R-FL)
Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)
Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA)
Mike Rogers (R-MI)
John J. H. "Joe" Schwarz (R-MI)
Jon C. Porter (R-NV)
Kay Granger (R-TX)
Greg Walden (R-OR)
Mary Bono (R-CA)
Anne Northup (R-KY)
John Kline (R-MN)
Frank D. Lucas (R-OK)
Candice S. Miller (R-MI)
William Jenkins (R-TN)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Sue W. Kelly (R-NY)
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Kenny Hulshof (R-MO)
Cathy McMorris (R-WA)
Ralph Regula (R-OH)
John Carter (R-TX)
Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)
James Leach (R-IA)
Jim Kolbe (R-AZ)
Bill Shuster (R-PA)
John McHugh (R-NY)
Tim Murphy (R-PA)
Barbara Cubin (R-WY-at large)
Michael Conaway (R-TX)
Chris Cannon (R-UT)
Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
Jim Ryun (R-KS)
Jeb Bradley (R-NH)
Steven C. LaTourette (R-OH)
Ander Crenshaw (R-FL)
Bill Young (R-FL)
Melissa Bean (D-IL)
Jack Kingston (R-GA)
Ed Royce (R-CA)
Tom Cole (R-OK)
Patrick Tiberi (R-OH)

Democrats (100)

John Murtha, John P. (D-PA)
Ike Skelton (D-MO)
Jim Cooper (D-TN)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
Solomon Ortiz (D-TX)
Silvestre Reyes (D-TX)
Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
Joe Baca (D-CA)
Bob Etheridge (D-NC)
James R. Langevin (D-RI)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
Ed Pastor (D-AZ)
Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Loretta T. Sanchez (D-CA)
Linda T. Sanchez (D-CA)
Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-NY)
Corrine Brown (D-FL)
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Ellen Tauscher (D-CA)
Sam Farr (D-CA)
Chet Edwards (D-TX)
Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)
Nita M. Lowey (D-NY)
Neil Abercrombie (D -HI)
Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD)
Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Madeline Z. Bordallo (D-GU)
Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
Nick J. Rahall, II (D-WV)
Robert Brady (D-PA)
Paul Kanjorski (D-PA)
Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Tim Holden (D-PA)
G.K. Butterfield (D-NC)
Dale E. Kildee (D-MI)
James E. Clyburn (D-SC)
Steve Israel (D-NY)
Harold Ford (D-TN)
John Larson (D-CT)
Eni Faleomavaega (D-AS)
Ken Meek (D-FL)
John Dingell (D-MI)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Rush Holt (D-NJ)
Vernon J. Ehlers (D-MI)
Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL)
Martin Olav Sabo (D-MN)
Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA)
David Wu (D-OR)
Grace F. Napolitano (D-CA)
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Ruben HinoJosa (D-TX)
John M. Spratt, Jr. (D-SC)
Norman D. Dicks (D-WA)
Edward Markey (D-MA)
Jane Harman (D-CA)
Peter DeFazio (D-OR)
Bart Stupak (D-MI)
Susan A. Davis (D-CA)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Hilda Solis (D-CA)
Gene Green (D-TX)
Martin T. Meehan (D-MA)
Marion Berry (D-AR)
Charles B. Rangel (D-NY)
James P. Moran (D-VA)
Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
Chaka Fattah (D-PA)
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
Lane Evans (D-IL)
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
Bill Delahunt (D-MA)
Rick Larsen (D-WA)
Robert E. (Bud) Cramer, Jr. (D-AL)
Gene Taylor (D-MS)
Allyson Y. Schwartz (D-PA)
Richard E. Neal (D-MA)
Al Green (D-TX)
Robert Wexler (D-FL)
John T. Salazar (D-CO)
Michael Capuano (D-MA)
Mike Thompson (D-CA)
Collin Peterson (D-MN)
Joseph Crowley (D-NY)
Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
Mark Udall (D-CO)
George Miller (D-CA)
Adam Smith (D-WA)
Michael Honda (D-CA)
Anthony Weiner (D-NY)
Steven R. Rothman (D-NJ)
Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
Jerry Costello (D-IL)
Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)
Allen Boyd (D-FL)

Independent (1)

Bernard Sanders (VT-at large)

Posted by Mike at 07:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 08, 2005

Weldon press conference on Able Danger tomorrow

From Congressman Weldon's web site:

PRESS CONFERENCE ON ABLE DANGER; NEW INFO EXPOSES MORE BLUNDERS BEFORE 9-11 & POINTS TO WIDER COVER-UP

WASHINGTON, Nov 8 - U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, will hold a press conference on Wednesday, November 9th at 12:30 p.m. in the House Radio/TV Gallery to discuss the latest findings from his investigation into Able Danger.

The latest findings include: information Able Danger provided to defense officials about terrorist activity in the Port of Aden prior to the terrorist attack on the USS Cole back in October 2000; a discovery of another Able Danger member who confirms a set of Able Danger data not accounted for by the Pentagon; recent statements by the 9-11 Commission about Able Danger; and the latest efforts by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to smear Able Danger member Lt. Col. Shaffer who broke the silence about the Pentagon’s efforts to track al-Qaeda worldwide prior to September 11.

WHAT: Press Conference with Congressman Curt Weldon on Able Danger

WHERE: House Radio/TV Gallery, The Capitol (H-321)

WHEN: Wednesday, 9 November 2005 at 12:30 p.m.

CONTACT: John G. Tomaszewski, (202) 225-2011

**Print media who do not have credentials may obtain a day pass at the House Print Gallery in H-315.

Posted by Mike at 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 04, 2005

Effort to make Able Danger disappear continues

The mainstream media has moved on, but the Pentagon maintains its stubborn focus on destroying Shaffer to keep others from speaking out.

Quoted verbatim from Captain Ed:

November 03, 2005

Shaffer Loses His Appeals

Earlier today, I received a message from Mark Zaid, attorney for Able Danger whistleblower Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer. The Defense Intelligence Agency has decided to proceed in revoking Col. Shaffer's clearance, a necessary component for his civilian job at the agency, and will likely terminate his employment. Zaid says:

Ed, in record breaking speed that to me clearly denotes selective retaliatory attention, the DIA's SAB has affirmed the revocation of Tony's security clearance. Unfortunately DIA has seen fit to completely disregard our submissions, and Cong Weldon and Hunters' formal requests to refrain from acting against Tony. This was the final stage of the process. There are no more administrative appeals left with respect to the clearance. A response to the indefinite suspension will be filed tomorrow. I expect that Tony will receive a notice of termination also in record breaking speed. That will take effect no sooner than thirty days from when received.

Since the Judiciary Committee has decided to schedule the Alito hearings in January, that gives them some free time between now and the end of their work sessions to haul the DIA in front of them and demand some answers. Given the old and picayune nature of the infractions that the DIA has used to challenge Shaffer's security clearance, their haste in closing this case strongly suggests that Zaid has it pegged; this termination surely comes as a vindictive ploy to warn other potential Able Danger witnesses not to cooperate with Congress.

That sounds like a terrible message to allow to pass unnoticed by the American public. While we understand the need for secrecy in dealing with some issues about the war on terror, we need to know that we have all the effective assets of intelligence work on line and functioning properly. We need to know exactly what Able Danger found, and what information got passed along and which got blocked by the DIA and Pentagon lawyers. Mostly, though, when the people's representatives demand that a government agency opens its books, it damned well better cooperate.

Posted by Mike at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 02, 2005

Talking about Able Danger is "unhelpful to our country"

Rumsfeld speaks, or double speaks as the case may be:

Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Lee Rodgers, Hot Talk KSFO San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

RODGERS: Since we mentioned several days ago that we had a few minutes with you this morning, I have gotten more e-mails from listeners asking me to ask you one question, more than on any other subject. The question has to do with this Able Danger investigation, and why can't military people involved talk about it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, they do and have talked about it. They've been up and testified before congressional committees and briefed people on a classified basis. What's been in the press is that some people feel that everything they say should be on an unclassified basis and the judgment apparently was made by the people involved that that would be unhelpful to our country. But in terms of talking to people about it, they've done it extensively.

The interesting thing about that is it's such an interesting story, of course it's something that occurred well before this Administration came in, back in the '90s as I understand it, and it's an interesting story.

The problem we've had is that our folks have spent a large amount of time trying to go in and look at all the records and see what they could find and haven't been able to validate it, which doesn't mean something wasn't so. It just means they've not been able to validate it.

The Department of Defense has provided literally volumes of information to multiple committees up there and if anyone else has any insights we're happy to open it up and go look somewhere else. But at some point if you can't find something, you can't find it.

Posted by Mike at 07:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 31, 2005

Able Danger Doubters

Add Kausfiles to the "blissfully ignorant" list:

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

...If the Times story falls apart, will reporters Johnston, Stevenson and Jehl get fired like so many people think Judtih Miller should be fired (given that her WMD stories fell apart)? What if Jehl's big front-page Able Danger scoop turns out to be a crock too? That would be two big strikes against Jehl! Hey, what do you have to do to get fired at the New York Times? ... This principle of actually holding reporters accountable for the accuracy of their stories could get out of hand.

Posted by Mike at 09:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 30, 2005

Tim Roemer on Lou Dobbs

Not much news here, but I found another Lou Dobbs transcript I missed from October 19th:

DOBBS: Congressman Curt Weldon, Tim, has made a very primary issue out of a secret Pentagon report. Why is there no mention of Able Danger in the 9/11 Report? Can you answer that for us?

ROEMER: Absolutely, Lou. Congressman Weldon has said that there was a chart that identified Atta before 9/11. If we would have seen that chart, if there was a chart that existed and it was put before the 9/11 Commission, it'd probably be front and center on this book because what we say in our book is government failed to communicate and share information.

Able Danger may have put together some good information. We have not seen a chart, however, that would have said Atta was somebody that was a terrorist identified before 9/11.

The DOD, Defense Department has looked for this chart. They haven't found it. The White House has looked for it. They haven't found it. It doesn't exist.

DOBBS: But the Pentagon at the same time, Tim, as you know, has stopped two of the principal witnesses here -- the DOD has stopped them from ever moving forward with their further public statements.

Is there anything that the Congress should be doing right now? Because some of the coincidence, after being told that Able Danger material was not put before the commission, occurred twice, once in October of 2003, which happens to be the same period that Sandy Berger, the Clinton administration's former national security adviser was accused of destroying documents. It's led to all sorts of speculation about what was destroyed, how it related to the Pentagon's secret project, Able Danger, and what it knew about Mohammed Atta.

ROEMER: Well, first of all, Lou, let's be very clear. The information with Sandy Berger had nothing to do with -- we got all that information in the 9/11 Commission, so there's no issue there.

With respect to Able Danger or data mining, you know, trying to piece together information that terrorists are talking to certain people, and they put together these spider diagrams to show how they communicate, who they communicate with, that's a very, very valuable mechanism for us to track terrorists.

We do it at the CIA, we do it at the FBI. Those are valuable means purportedly we were doing at Able Danger and DOD. It's not as if it was only going on at DOD.

What Congressman Weldon and others have claimed -- and I'd love to see the chart. I'd love to see the evidence, where's the beef of this? I'd love to see it. DOBBS: So would all Americans.

Tim Roemer, we thank you for what you're doing, what you've accomplished, and we wish you luck going forward.

ROEMER: Thank you, sir.

DOBBS: Tim Roemer.

Posted by Mike at 06:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 27, 2005

Lou Dobbs is keeping the focus on Able Danger

The best part is, Lou sticks with a story, and something about Able Danger has caught his attention. Personally, I'm hoping Lou will set up one of those calendars he uses - to keep track of how many days all of the witnesses in the Able Danger story have been gagged. If you count September 21st as Day One (although it might technically be even longer) then today is already Day Thirty-Seven.

From last night:

DOBBS: Colonel Anthony Shaffer's attorney Mark Zaid joins me now.

Mark, thanks for being with us.

MARK ZAID, COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER'S ATTORNEY: Thank you.

DOBBS: What is your response to what Slade Gorton said there?

ZAID: Well, I think the first thing is that someone should remind Senator Gorton he's no longer talking on the Senate floor where he has immunity from defamation, because he's going perilously close to crossing the line with his attacks on Tony Shaffer who, by the way, is -- his statements are being supported by half a dozen or so more career civil servants within the military and the defense contracting community.

So it's just nonsense with his statements that, in fact, he's talking about things he just doesn't know, and that's the problem.

He doesn't know because the Defense Department never gave the 9/11 Commission the crucial information.

DOBBS: Never gave them the information.

Dr. Eileen Pricer (ph), Captain Scott Philpott, both DOD, and J.D. Smith (ph), a defense contractor -- did any of those individuals who support your client, Colonel Shaffer -- have any of them made any progress in communicating with the 9/11 Commission, with the government here?

ZAID: Well, Shaffer spoke to them in October of '03, as the senator said, and then they asked the DOD for more information. When the DOD -- what we didn't know at the time was that the Defense Department had destroyed millions and millions of the documents that the Able Danger team had come up with, so it's no surprise that the commission then didn't have the information.

Then, Scott Philpott goes to them in July of '04, only about a week or so before the committee's report was issued, so it was too late to do anything.

Where the senator fails to address is the issue that if the commission had gone back to Shaffer in January of '04, when he tried not once but twice to talk to them and said one sentence, "Mr. Shaffer, we're not finding any documents that support your claims. Can you point us in the direction we should go?"

If they had done that, Shaffer could have gone back to his office at DIA and obtained the info.

And J.D. Smith, my other client, actually had a copy of the chart -- the chart that everyone is looking for -- with Mohamed Atta's name and photo, had it hanging in his wall. That chart then was destroyed several months later, and the DIA destroyed Shaffer's documents.

DOBBS: I'm unclear about who would take a picture, a chart off a wall for an active DOD project without their permission or knowledge?

ZAID: No.

By this time, Able Danger actually had ceased by late 2000, early 2001.

And the copy of the chart that J.D. Smith had was a draft copy that he had just kept as a memento. And when he moved his offices, the paper the chart was on was so frail it just fell apart and was destroyed. That didn't happen until the summer of 2004.

If the commission had actually followed up and done its due diligence, the chart would exist today in their hands and what Senator Gorton says was irrelevant probably would have been featured prominently in their report.

DOBBS: As another member of the commission, Tim Roemer, has said on this broadcast, he never saw the chart, no one has ever been able to produce the chart, he would have loved to have seen the chart.

ZAID: Absolutely.

And I can tell you also that Senator Gorton is not necessarily speaking for the entire 9/11 Commission.

I know of meetings with at least one commission member -- and it's not who you just referenced -- who does not agree with what Senator Gorton is saying.

DOBBS: Well, let's find out, what is the next step here? Because Congressman Curt Weldon, who is doing an outstanding job of advocacy for truth here and trying to get to the truth, and Senator Specter holing hearings on the Judiciary Committee on this very issue -- what happens next? How do we get to the truth?

ZAID: Yes.

And the Defense Department has been blocking the Senate Judiciary from pursuing their investigation. I had to testify in the place of my clients because DOD wouldn't allow it.

We're hopeful that somewhere within the grand canyon of the government and in the defense contractors that additional information, and especially the documents, someone will find some copies.

We do know that there is at least another person coming forward soon who will say the same assertion that Shaffer and Philpott and Price and the others have been.

So what's their motive? What exactly did these people have to gain by lying? Even the Defense Department says that they're credible witnesses, but unfortunately there is no documents. But we know in this town, just because there's no documents -- hey, 18 minutes off the Nixon tape disappeared. Do we think there wasn't anything on those 18 minutes? We just have to find it.

DOBBS: Mark Zaid, we thank you for being here representing Colonel Anthony Shaffer. We will continue along with you to try to get to the bottom as best we can of this remarkable controversy on able danger...

ZAID: Thank you.

DOBBS: And who knew what a year before 9/11.

Congressman Curt Weldon as we just mentioned, leading an investigation being and a remarkable advocate for both your clients and for the truth here. Thank you.

Posted by Mike at 06:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

9/11 Commission spent "months" on Able Danger

Responding to a question about Louis Freeh's book, Lee Hamilton responded instead to his comments on Meet the Press regarding the Able Danger program, and the fact that Freeh felt the FBI could have prevented 9/11 if it had the information Able Danger put together. A commenter on one of Vi's posts pointed this out. From C-SPAN back on October 20th:

Hamilton: If I can go back to the previous question on Louis Freeh, I've not read the book either, but my recollection is that he said that the 9/11 Commission had not looked into the Able Danger. We have looked at that and we've spent a lot of time on it both prior to the report being issued and since, and our conclusion has been that after months of looking at it we've not found a single bit of documentary evidence to back up the claims of those who thought they had seen the name and photo of Mohamed Atta. And I won't go into detail on this, but Slade testified on this question, well I guess you submitted testimony, which states very comprehensively what the Commission has done with respect to Able Danger, and I commend that statement to your attention.

Gorton: The Louis Freeh book is his side of his feud with President Clinton and has to be read in that light.

Kean: I think, I was told, I didn't read it, but I was told actually he was quite complimentary of the Commission in most areas.

There he goes again. Slade Gorton, casting doubt on a perceived criticism related to Able Danger with absolutely no basis at all. Freeh's book does not even mention Able Danger. The controversy broke after it went to press. Here is what Freeh said on Meet the Press:

Louis Freeh: No I disagree with that. And you know, while we're on the subject of the 9-11 Commission, I'm very interested and I know the country is in the Able Danger report. We have now very honorable military officers telling the United States, Tim, that in 2000 not only had Mohammad Atta been identified, by photo and name, but was earmarked as an Al Qaeda operative in the United States. Apparently this information was brought to the 9-11 Commission prior to their report, but there's no reference to it. That's the kind of tactical intelligence that would make a difference in stopping the hijacking, not the strategic intelligence, the stuff that comes out of um, like water out of a fire hydrant and then in hindsight, you say, well you missed these three molecules of water. I think we're very interested in what the 9-11 Commission didn't do with respect to Able Danger.

Posted by Mike at 10:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 26, 2005

Hunter asks for IG report on Able Danger retaliation

I think Weldon mentioned this last Wednesday, but this story provides some more details. It is worth remembering that the Inspector General has been involved in this all along, stiffling Able Danger from the start:

Smith says data was gathered from a variety of sources, including about 30 or 40 individuals, but one day it all came to a grinding halt. So why did that happen?

"The I.G. (inspector general) came in and shut down the operation because of a claim that we were collecting information on U.S citizens," says Smith.

I also have to point out this comment from a reader at Captain's Quarters, before anyone gets their hopes up:

Jerry is correct on the DIA chain of command. This tactic of holding hostage the security clearances of whistle-blowers is not isolated to Jacoby's administration in particular or DIA in general.

I happened to be assigned to the same Air Force HUMINT service where Tony Schaffer and Eileen Preisser were both assigned in the mid 1980's. I held a position which gave me a bird's-eye view into the tactics used by that Air Force bureaucracy to get rid of "bad apples".

This process included co-opting the I.G.'s concurrence (for legal cover) before actually pulling the "bad apple's" clearances...

Posted by: MaidMarion

Anyway, here are some new details from The Hill:

In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dated Oct. 20, Hunter said there are several inconsistencies between the information provided by the DIA about its decision to revoke Shaffer’s clearance and Shaffer’s version of the story.

Hunter wrote that the House Armed Services Committee has been reviewing issues concerning Able Danger, specifically allegations that Shaffer’s security clearance had been revoked “possibly in retaliation for his having spoken to the 9/11 Commission staff about Able Danger.”

“The Committee has taken these allegations seriously and with assistance from your staff has conducted both an internal review of documents provided by the Department of Defense and informal interviews with persons associated with these allegations,” Hunter wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

He said that the committee’s investigations had turned up inconsistencies and that the committee “also has concerns with certain aspects of how the DIA handled this matter.”

Hunter is asking the Pentagon to stop any further action to revoke Shaffer’s clearance or to terminate his employment with the DIA until the inspector general’s office conducts its own review. Hunter is also asking for a copy of that review once it is completed.

Hunter is one of the few members of Congress who have spoken up on at least on one facet of this complex issue.

Weldon said he is planning to brief all members of Congress on Able Danger and the campaign to ruin Shaffer’s reputation.

Posted by Mike at 08:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Didn't have anything to do with 9/11?

Slade Gorton claims to already know the results of the Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. He says they will agree with him. All along, he has been saying that Able Danger was historically insignificant. Now he says it "didn't have anything to do with 9/11"! Let's hope Mr. Gorton is in for a rude awakening. If not, it begs the question, how does he know so much about classified proceedings in the Senate that the American public has not been allowed to hear for ourselves?

From Lou Dobbs last night:

DOBBS: Congressman Curt Weldon claims a secret Pentagon project known as Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta as a member of a New York-based al Qaeda cell a year before the September 11th terrorist attacks. There was no mention of Able Danger in the commission's report on 9/11. I'm joined now by former Senator Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission. Good to have you here, but, in fact was Able Danger omitted from your initial 9/11 Commission report with a purpose?

SLADE GORTON, FORMER 9/11 COMMISSIONER: No, Able Danger was omitted -- omitted from our report because it didn't have anything to do with 9/11. We learned about Able Danger from Colonel Shaffer, who briefed four of our staffers on it in Kabul, Afghanistan eight or nine months before our report came out. We immediately followed up on it, and we got all of the Able Danger materials from the Department of Defense, and they had nothing to do with Mohammed Atta or with any of the other conspirators. So Able Danger was -- got very interesting. It didn't identify Mohammed Atta a year beforehand. Unfortunately, no one identified Mohammed Atta beforehand. Able Danger was simply irrelevant to our report, and still is.

DOBBS: Irrelevant, you say, and at the same time, you're saying that Colonel -- Lieutenant Colonel Terry (sic) Shaffer, Congressman Curt Weldon have their facts entirely wrong. Is that correct?

GORTON: No, not entirely wrong. Colonel Shaffer told us about Able Danger. And he was the first person who did so. He also claimed later that he told us about Mohammed Atta. He didn't do that. We had four people in on that meeting, all of whom were fascinated by Mohammed Atta, who of course at that point we knew to be the leader of the conspirators. He was never mentioned.

Congressman Weldon said he turned over Mohammed Atta's name to Steve -- to Steve -- what's his name -- the deputy head of the National Security Agency in the White House. He didn't do so. He never told us about it. He never told his own congressional investigating committee about it. Never mentioned it until he got to his book about three or four months ago. Unfortunately, he's just mistaken. He may have talked about some of the elements of 9/11, but they didn't include Mohammed Atta.

DOBBS: Congressman Weldon, as you know, has called for an investigation. I take it you feel that that's unnecessary at this point?

GORTON: Oh, no. That investigation has already taken place. It's taken place by the Senate Intelligence Committee. That investigation will report, I hope, within the next week, and it will agree with the 9/11 Commission.

DOBBS: The fact that the intelligence community has not followed up on the recommendations that you and the rest of the commission put forward, and you focus greatly on the FBI. Do you have any sense that there is going to be a movement toward fulfilling the recommendations, the remaining recommendations of the commission?

GORTON: Well, let's divide it. Congress did a very good job in creating a new direction of national intelligence and a National Counterterrorism Center. We had more faith in the FBI I think at the time in which we reported a year ago, because we really liked Bob Mueller and what he was trying to do. But he's being defeated by the FBI itself, which just won't change its culture to provide the kind of activity on internal security here in the United States that we think is necessary. We're very troubled by that.

DOBBS: Senator Slade Gorton, we thank you for being here as we continue to follow this story and to follow the recommendations that are followed and not followed by the administration. We thank you for being here.

Posted by Mike at 08:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

October 25, 2005

What exactly was Atta's connection to Rahman?

While avoiding the subject of a misguided CIA connection with Rahman, the Norristown Times Herald is back on the case at least:

Previously, Shaffer said that Atta, an Egyptian, had been linked to the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., a hotbed of anti-American sentiment once frequented by Sheik Omar Ahmed Abdul Rahman, know as the "Blind Sheik." Rahman is also Egyptian. Atta was not believed to be in the U.S., however, when he came to the attention of the team.

In 1995, Rahman was convicted of plotting to bomb various sites in New York City. Four of Rahman's associates were convicted in 2002 of conspiring with him to commit terrorist acts while he was in prison.

Though Shaffer was not allowed to give testimony at the Sept. 21 committee hearing, his attorney, Mark Zaid, did testify.

As a sobering reminder of "Able Danger's" unfulfilled promise, Zaid said the missing charts showing terrorist links likely still contained "several dozen" individuals yet to be captured.

"There are terrorist on the chart who may still be out there and planning attacks," Zaid said.

This Ashcroft press conference might explain it:

A U.S. grand jury has indicted four people for supporting and providing resources for convicted blind terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and the organization known as the Islamic Group, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced at an April 9 news conference in New York.

"The Islamic Group is a global terrorist organization that has forged alliances with other terrorist groups, including al Qaeda," Ashcroft said, noting that it has an active membership in the United States, concentrated in the New York City metropolitan area....

Among other overt acts, the indictment charges that, during a May 2000 visit to Sheik Abdel-Rahman, Stewart allowed Yousry to read letters from Ahmed Abdul Sattar regarding whether the Islamic group should continue to comply with a cease-fire in terrorist activities against Egyptian authorities that had been in place following the shooting and stabbing of 58 tourists and four Egyptians visiting an archaeological site in Luxor, Egypt in 1997. That's a terrorist attack for which the Islamic group claimed credit....

QUESTION: Do you know what, if anything, is the consequence of the letters that you allege were read to the Sheik, and if you read letters back in addition to (inaudible) which you say was issued under his name in the year 2000? What, if any, are the consequences of these communications?

ASHCROFT: Well, the first consequence is that the agreement and that the rules relating to his incarceration have been broken.

The second is that the communication, in accordance with the items mentioned in the indictment, that he had lifted his approval of the cease-fire is a very important signal to members of the Islamic group.

Yes, sir?

QUESTION: How did these people provide financial support (inaudible) and other things, including sending money to Sheik Rahman's son in Afghanistan?

ASHCROFT: The indictment alleges that money was transferred, but frankly, for us to go beyond the indictment at this time would be improper....

QUESTION: Could you talk about the Luxor attack and the taking of the tourists as hostages? Did the sheik--the information that got out--what were the repercussions, that they encouraged these gentlemen to take the hostages?

ASHCROFT: Well, you know that dozens of people died in Luxor.

QUESTION: Right.

ASHCROFT: And the sheik is a person whose leadership is substantial in the community of terrorists. Scattered on the bodies of those who died in Luxor were the pamphlets saying, ``Release the sheik from his imprisonment in the United States,'' just to indicate that his influence in the Islamic group as a terrorist organization was a profound influence, and so that signaling from him would be important....

QUESTION: When did you start monitoring conversations? Can somebody answer that question?

ASHCROFT: 1998, I believe, is it? December of 1998.

From the Wikipedia entry for Ayman al-Zawahiri:

On February 23, 1998, he issued a joint fatwa with Osama bin Laden under the title "World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders", an important step in broadening their conflicts to a global scale.

In 1999 al-Zawahiri was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian military tribunal for his role in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad insurgency, including the massacre of sixty-two civilian tourists in Luxor in 1997.

According to Vincent Cannistraro, former top CIA counterterrorist official, "Zawahiri is the guy-he's the operational commander...number one, on the right hand side of Osama."

Posted by Mike at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 24, 2005

Gorelick and Zelikow, birds of a feather?

A group called 9/11 CitizensWatch suggests that both Zelikow and Gorelick were out to cover for their respective administrations from the start:

9/11 CitizensWatch joined the families in calling for current and former administration leaders, as well as National Security Director Condaleeza Rice, to testify under oath and in public. Rice did so, on the condition that the Commission could not ask any other cabinet-level official to appear, and the Commission acceded.

Not a single executive branch official or federal agency employee was issued a subpoena to testify, though several resisted. After long periods of foot-dragging the agencies reportedly complied, but only after public exposure and commentary. Commission reluctance to hold individuals responsible for their perceived failures meant that key testimony was never required and that needed reforms or restructuring, discipline or demotion still remain unaddressed.

The Commission accepted a deal to radically limit their access to the White House documents detailing just what high-level administration officials knew in advance of the attacks. The Presidential Daily Briefings or PDBs included "BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S." (dated Aug. 6, 2001) and warned of imminent hijackings. Only two delegates of the Commission were to be allowed to see pre-edited versions of these documents: Executive Director Philip Zelikow and Commissioner Jamie Gorelick. The other commissioners would have to rely on Zelikow and Gorelick to report back to them, based on their notes, which the White House would also be allowed to redact. Commissioners Max Cleland and Tim Roemer both objected to the deal.

Eventually, a second compromise was worked out, letting additional Commission members see other selected PDBs from earlier months. Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive argued that PDB's are not as sensitive as claimed and that several have been released publicly from President Johnson's term in office. (Slate, MSN.com 3/22/04).

Here is the original article:

After much sturm und drang, a compromise was worked out allowing three commission members and the staff director to see the originals of the PDBs from the Bush and Clinton years and then write up a summary for their peers.

I don't see a mention of Gorelick specifically, although I would bet the three commissioners mentioned were Gorelick, Kean, and Hamilton. Maybe the 9/11 families had more information than was in the article?

Posted by Mike at 01:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Weldon renews comparison to Kim Jong-Il

The Conservative Voice reports:

Appearing on the Laura Ingraham Radio program Monday, Rep Curt Weldon (R-Pa) said that the smear campaign and cover-up is continuing, in regards to Abel Danger Intel. Weldon advised that Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who has a gag-order placed on him by the Pentagon, DIA and DoD, is being summarily vilified by these government agencies.

Weldon said: “This is something I expect from Kim Jong Il of North Korea.”

At least 7 former Able Danger team members have volunteered to testify before Congress that former Clinton Administration officials were warned ahead of time of both the USS Cole bombing and of Mohammed Atta’s presence in the US a year before 9/11/2001. These individuals have also been placed under gag-orders and are not allowed to speak to any Senate Committees or the media.

Posted by Mike at 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 23, 2005

Able Danger linked Atta to Brooklyn mosque

In the flood of news stories after the Senate hearing, it looks like I missed an important revelation. From the Norristown Times Herald:

Previously, Shaffer told The Times Herald that Atta, an Egyptian, had been linked to the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., a hotbed of anti-American sentiment once frequented by Sheik Omar Ahmed Abdul Rahman, know as the "Blind Sheik." Rahman is also Egyptian.

In 1995, Rahman was convicted of plotting to bomb various sites in New York City. Four of Rahman's associates were convicted in 2002 of conspiring with him to commit terrorist acts while he was in prison.
As a sobering reminder of the intelligence program's unfulfilled promise, Zaid said the charts likely contained "several dozen" terrorist yet to be captured.

"There are terrorists on the chart who may still be out there and planning attacks," he said.

When queried later Wednesday by e-mail, Zaid speculated about why the Pentagon halted "Able Danger."

One theory is that Defense Department officials became "very uncomfortable" when the LIWA program ran China charts that showed links to U.S. political officials. The China effort, however, was not part of "Able Danger," he wrote.

When LIWA shut its operation down in 2000, the "Able Danger" program was forced to move elsewhere. But why the program itself was shut down in late 2000 or early 2001 is still a mystery.

If you believe Robert Friedman, here are some more details:

One week on Atlantic Avenue, it might be a CIA-trained Afghan rebel travelling on a CIA-issued visa; the next, it might be a clean-cut Arabic-speaking Green Beret, who would lecture about the importance of being part of the mujaheddin, or ‘warriors of the Lord.’ The more popular lectures were held upstairs in the roomier Al-Farooq Mosque; such was the case in 1990 when Sheikh Abdel Rahman, travelling on a CIA-supported visa, came to town. The blind Egyptian cleric, with his ferocious rhetoric and impassioned preaching, filled angry, discontented Arab immigrants with a fervour for jihad – holy war. This was exactly what the CIA wanted: to stir up support for the Muslim rebels and topple the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan.

The sheikh, however, had a somewhat broader agenda.

A former investigative counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, now a private attorney in Washington, Jack Blum speaks bitterly but fatalistically. ‘After every covert war there is an unintended disposal problem,’ he says, as if he were talking about unexpected land mines and not potential Islamic terrorists living in Brooklyn. ‘We steered and encouraged these people. Then we dropped them. Now we’ve got a disposal problem. When you motivate people to fight for a cause – jihad – the problem is, how do you shut them off?’

The answer for the CIA was, you don’t. And then when the fanatical fervour you’ve whipped up leads to unintended consequences – the assassination of a Jewish militant leader in Manhattan, the bombing of the World Trade Centre, a terror conspiracy to blow up the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and other Manhattan landmarks – you try to discourage local law enforcement agencies and the FBI from looking into the matter too deeply.

Well, that could explain this part of Weldon's blistering speech:

What we have here, I am convinced of this now, is an aggressive attempt by CIA management to cover up their own shortcomings in not being able to do what the Able Danger team did: They identified Mohammed Atta and the al Qaeda cell of Brooklyn 1 year before 9/11. But even before that, as the story unfolds, you are going to hear the story that they also identified the threat to the USS Cole 2 weeks before the attack, and 2 days before the attack were screaming not to let the USS Cole come into the harbor at Yemen because they knew something was about to happen.

Mr. Speaker, bad news never comes easy; but in a democracy, the bad news has to come out so we can make sure it does not happen again.

Mr. Speaker, this whole thing started, not to embarrass anyone, this whole thing started because none of us knew that Mohammed Atta was identified before 9/11. It started because this Congress, this body in particular, tried to establish what is now in place back in 1999, a national collaborative center, but the CIA said we did not need it. The American people deserve to have the answers here. They deserve to know why 3,000 people died. They deserve to know what we could have done and should have done to better prepare ourselves and to work to prepare for the next incident. The American people need to know where those multiple terabytes of data is. Is it still being used? We know in January of 2001, General Shelton was given a 3-hour briefing on Able Danger. So even if they destroyed the data back in the summer of 2000, in January of 2001 there was enough material to give General Shelton, Commander of the Joint Chiefs, a 3-hour briefing.

Mr. Speaker, there is something here. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is something desperately wrong, Mr. Speaker. There is something outrageous at work here. This is not a third-rate burglary of a political campaign headquarters. This involved what is right now the covering up of information that led to the deaths of 3,000 people, changed the course of history, led to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has disrupted our country, our economy and people's lives.

As other's have pointed out:

"The terrorist associations were mapped out on large charts, according to Shaffer, during the program that operated from 1999 to 2001"? During this time frame, Rahman's followers were still active at the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn. This came out in the Yemeni Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad case. He "helped funnel Islamist fighters to al-Qaida in Bosnia and Afghanistan." This happened at the Al Farouq mosque:

"The al-Farooq mosque was recently in the news when federal prosecutors announced charges alleging that a radical Yemeni cleric -- who in 1999 appeared at the mosque to raise money, allegedly for needy families -- in fact helped funnel millions of dollars to al-Qaeda. According to Justice Department officials, Sheikh Muhammad Ali Hasan al-Moayad told a federal informant that money he took in at the mosque went to Osama bin Laden.....

Al-Farooq first became a major source of revenue for terrorist groups in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, the late Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a key figure in the latter-day international jihad movement, addressed a conference at the mosque, exhorting the faithful to carry out holy war wherever they are. Azzam's Alkifah Refugee Center -- a bogus charitable organization that ran a nationwide network out of the mosque -- was involved in both fundraising and recruitment for terrorist operations. In 1990, al-Farooq was taken over by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind cleric who had just come to the United States from Egypt, and who for a while effectively commanded the jihad movement here....

[Al Farooq] mosque leaders have since claimed to have left the jihad business. According to new indictments, however, the jihad fundraising at al-Farooq may have never really stopped."

Posted by Mike at 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Snell worked for Zelikow, not Gorelick

As much as you've got to love Curt Weldon for having the guts to say he will resign if the Able Danger cover up continues, you've also got to admit that at times Congressman Weldon can get his facts wrong.

A great furor has arisen in the blogosphere over this Weldon comment:

"The person who debriefed Scott Philpot was, in fact, the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick," Weldon told the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "His name was Dieter Snell."

Weldon contended: "It was Dieter Snell who did not brief the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commissioners were never briefed on Able Danger."

He also said pretty much the same thing to Lou Dobbs on CNN:

That 9/11 Commission staffer made a decision not to brief the commissioners. That 9/11 Commission staffer was working for Jamie Gorelick, who was a member of the Commission, who wrote the famous memo that said they could not tranfer information between the military and the FBI.

First of all, the Gorelick memo - which you can read - dealt with FBI counterterrorism efforts and the need to separate countterterrorism from criminal prosecution, to avoid getting a mistrial. It did not have anything to do with the separation of FBI counterterrorism from CIA countterterrorism, DIA countterterrorism, or anything else. William Dugan established this at the Judiciary Committee hearing.

Now, on to the real substance of the argument.

Did Snell debrief Phillpott? Yes. Was he working for Jamie Gorelick? No. Not any more than he was working for Slade Gordon or any other member of the Commission, as opposed to the Commission staff. He was working for Philip Zelikow, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission staff who hired him as Senior Counsel.

Who is Philip Zelikow? Zelikow is now the lead Counsel for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Zelikow also wrote a document called the National Security Strategy for Rice back in 2002. Not exactly a Clinton administration hold over:

Zelikow, who's mostly stayed out of the spotlight, is a strange fit for the role of administration scourge. Intellectually, he's squarely in the neoconservative camp. He was part of the Bush foreign policy transition team, and the president later named him to his presidential advisory board on intelligence. Zelikow is reportedly close to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, with whom he co-wrote a book about German reunification in 1995. In 2002, according to James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet, Rice tapped Zelikow to rewrite the National Security Strategy of the United States, which emphasized preemption. He also fought for the administration's corner in his academic writing. After working on the National Security Strategy, Zelikow wrote a 6,000-word article in the neoconservative journal The National Interest praising his own document for its "explicit adaptation to the new conditions of international life."

Not only did Zelikow hire Snell, he put him in charge of writing the section of the 9/11 Commission report that dealt with the 9/11 plot. As Ernest R. May told The New Republic:

With agreement from the commissioners and his colleagues in the front office, Zelikow divided the staff into teams, more or less coinciding with topics in the outline. MacEachin headed one studying Al Qaeda. In time, this team split in two, with Dietrich Snell captaining a group that worked specifically on the 9/11 plot and the movements of the hijackers. Though a lawyer through and through, Snell had prosecuted terrorists in New York, was fascinated by the terrible story, and proved to be both a natural-born historian and a gifted writer. Hurley led the team that focused on U.S. counterterrorism activity prior to September 11.

MacEachin's, Snell's, and Hurley's teams found offices in the premises that Hamilton had obtained from the CIA. So did a team that concentrated on the intelligence community, as well as parts of a team that dealt with terrorist finance. This Special Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF, pronounced "skiff"), essentially one large safe, housed also the front office and the commission's sensitive files. It had the commission's principal conference room. Other staff in Washington and New York worked on topics such as emergency response on September 11, which required less access to highly classified material, but the SCIF was where the commission met and where all drafts for the final report ended up.

Zelikow asked all the teams to start preparing timelines and monographs for their subjects. For some, this was the first hint that they might not be writing a conventional government report--that they would be writing history. MacEachin set the example, turning out a rolling chronology into which he fitted every new scrap of information. Nearly all members of the staff accommodated to this way of sorting evidence--and this way of thinking about it. In the late spring of 2003, when the outline was finally unveiled before all the commissioners, it appeared to have won acceptance among the staff. The commission endorsed it almost without debate.

It is also worth noting that while Zelikow had been told about Able Danger in October 2003, he subsequently ignored Tony Shaffer, when Shaffer attempted to contact him to discuss it in more detail.

Snell on the other hand, did not meet with Phillpott until days before the 9/11 Report was supposed to go to press. As the Commission describes in their press release from August 12, 2005:

On July 12, 2004, as the drafting and editing process for the Report was coming to an end (the Report was released on July 22, and editing continued to occur through July 17), a senior staff member, Dieter Snell, accompanied by another staff member, met with the officer at one of the Commission’s Washington, D.C. offices. A representative of the DOD also attended the interview.

According to the memorandum for the record on this meeting, prepared the next day by Mr. Snell, the officer said that ABLE DANGER included work on “link analysis,” mapping links among various people involved in terrorist networks. According to this record, the officer recalled seeing the name and photo of Mohamed Atta on an “analyst notebook chart” assembled by another officer (who he said had retired and was now working as a DOD contractor).

The officer being interviewed said he saw this material only briefly, that the relevant material dated from February through April 2000, and that it showed Mohamed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn. The officer complained that this information and information about other alleged members of a Brooklyn cell had been soon afterward deleted from the document (“redacted”) because DOD lawyers were concerned about the propriety of DOD intelligence efforts that might be focused inside the United States. The officer referred to these as “posse comitatus” restrictions. Believing the law was being wrongly interpreted, he said he had complained about these restrictions up his chain of command in the U.S. Special Operations Command, to no avail....

The interviewee had no documentary evidence and said he had only seen the document briefly some years earlier. He could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification. Nor could the interviewee recall, when questioned, any details about how he thought a link to Atta could have been made by this DOD program in 2000 or any time before 9/11. The Department of Defense documents had mentioned nothing about Atta, nor had anyone come forward between September 2001 and July 2004 with any similar information. Weighing this with the information about Atta’s actual activities, the negligible information available about Atta to other U.S. government agencies and the German government before 9/11, and the interviewer’s assessment of the interviewee’s knowledge and credibility, the Commission staff concluded that the officer’s account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation.

Notice that it does not say Snell made the decision, it only says that "the Commission staff" did. That leads me to believe that Snell showed Zelikow his momorandum which specifically named Atta, and it was Zelikow, not Snell, who deemed it "not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation".

Now compare the records Snell kept, explicitly mentioning Atta, with the records that Zelikow kept when he met Shaffer in Afghanistan. From the same press release:

On October 21, 2003, Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, two senior Commission staff members, and a representative of the executive branch, met at Bagram Base, Afghanistan, with three individuals doing intelligence work for the Department of Defense. One of the men, in recounting information about al Qaeda’s activities in Afghanistan before 9/11, referred to a DOD program known as ABLE DANGER. He said this program was now closed, but urged Commission staff to get the files on this program and review them, as he thought the Commission would find information about al Qaeda and Bin Ladin that had been developed before the 9/11 attack. He also complained that Congress, particularly the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), had effectively ended a human intelligence network he considered valuable.

As with their other meetings, Commission staff promptly prepared a memorandum for the record. That memorandum, prepared at the time, does not record any mention of Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers, or any suggestion that their identities were known to anyone at DOD before 9/11. Nor do any of the three Commission staffers who participated in the interview, or the executive branch lawyer, recall hearing any such allegation.

Was Snell on this trip? If not, who else was? The plot thickens.

Here is some more background information on Zelikow:

Zelikow practiced law in the early 1980s, but he turned toward the
field of national security in the mid 1980s. He was adjunct professor
of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California in 1984-1985, and served in three different offices of the U.S. Department of State in the second Reagan administration.

Zelikow joined the National Security Council in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, at the same time as Condoleezza Rice. Zelikow left the NSC in 1991 and went to Harvard, where from 1991 to 1998 he was Associate Professor of Public Policy and co-director of Harvard's Intelligence and Policy Program.

In 1998 Zelikow moved to the University of Virginia, where he directs the nation's largest center on the American presidency, serves as director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and, as White Burkett Miller Professor of History, holds an endowed chair.

Philip Zelikow has co-authored many books. He wrote a book with Ernest May on The Kennedy Tapes, and another with Joseph Nye and David King on Why People Don't Trust Government. He wrote Germany Unified and Europe Transformed with Condoleezza Rice.

Prof. Zelikow's area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, "public myths" or "public presumptions," which he defines as "beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community." In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called "'searing' or 'molding' events [that] take on 'transcendent' importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene. In the United States, beliefs about the formation of the nation and the Constitution remain powerful today, as do beliefs about slavery and the Civil War. World War II, Vietnam, and the civil rights struggle are more recent examples." He has noted that "a history's narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make a connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all" ("Thinking about Political History," Miller Center Report [Winter 1999], pp. 5-7).

In the November-December 1998 number of Foreign Affairs, he co-authored an article entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism,” in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, “the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently.”

Philip Zelikow served on President Bush's transition team in 2000-2001. After George W. Bush took office, Zelikow was named to a position on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and worked on other task forces and commissions as well, including the National Commission on Federal Election Reform.

Posted by Mike at 05:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

October 21, 2005

New Weldon Audio and Video Clips on Able Danger

Thanks to Vi at QT Monster for getting me all this material.

On Wednesday evening, Weldon went on the Savage Nation.
The clip is about 17 minutes. (3.0 MB - MP3)

Next, he gave a powerful speech on the floor of the House.
Vi got about 20 minutes of excerpts. (4.8 MB - WMA)
You can also hear this 90 second clip. (340 KB - WAV)

Thursday, Weldon appeared on several talk radio programs.
Here is his interview with Sean Hannity. (5.7 MB - MP3)
Here is an interview with Victoria Taft. (7.8 MB - MP3)

Thursday night, Weldon was interviewed on CNN by Lou Dobbs.
Here is the segment in Windows Media. (5.9 MB - WMV)
Here is the segment in Quicktime. (5.0 MB - MOV)

No major newpaper has commented on these developments. None.

Posted by Mike at 03:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Able Danger in the news

Conservative columnistJ. Grant Swank Jr. gives a running commentary on Weldon's speech:

If what US Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) says is true about the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), America has been wearing a blindfold so as not to see the truth about 9 / 11 prevention.

Weldon, Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committee, addressed the House of Representatives. He exposed the DIA as a perpetrator of deceit and intentionally destroying the reputation of a reputable American so that the latter would not be able to tell the truth. He is LTC Anthony Shaffer, a 23-year defense intelligence officer, whom the DIA has sought to smear.

...Just months ago, Weldon stated he discovered that Able Danger "actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda in January and February 2000, over 1 year before 9 / 11 ever happened. In addition, I learned that not only did we identify the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, but we identified Mohamed Atta as one of the members of that Brooklyn cell along with three other terrorists who were the leadership of the 9/11 attack."

I was hoping someone would point out it was not just "4 of the 19".

Shaun Waterman has an updated piece for the UPI, but I have no idea who carries the UPI other than the Washington Times, and they have not picked up the story yet. Anyway, here is the article:

“There is something outrageous at work here,” Weldon said. “Mr. Speaker, we could ignore this. I cannot. If it means I have to resign from this body, I will resign.”

After the speech, Weldon told reporters he had written to the inspector-general of the Department of Defense to ask for “an immediate formal inquiry, with people testifying under oath” into what he called “a clear witch-hunt” against Shaffer.

In a turn of events that clearly outraged Weldon, Shaffer said boxes of his personal effects, returned to him by the DIA earlier this month, contained both government property and classified documents.

“Sending classified material through the mail is a felony, and much more serious than any of these minor, trumped-up charges against [Shaffer],” Weldon said, adding that “I want the appropriate persons held accountable.”

A DIA spokesman told ISN Security Watch that the agency had indeed mailed Shaffer his personal effects from his workspace at the DIA. “We’re not aware of any classified material being included in that shipment,” said the spokesman. He had no immediate comment on any of Weldon’s other charges.

Canada Free Press also has a story on the speech:

Was it a typo or a boast in code from Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) arsenal when the word "Abel" somehow replaced "Able", as in Able Danger in the published text from Rep. Curt Weldon’s defense of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer on the House Floor yesterday?

Able was spelled Abel several times in the typed transcript from Weldon’s hour-long plea to Congressmen for a new probe into what he says is a "witch-hunt by defense officials against a September 11 intelligence whistleblower" (Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer).

Able Danger was the elite, 20-member, highly classified U.S. Army Intelligence program under the command of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) that identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attack only to have their intelligence blocked by lawyers in the Bill Clinton administration,

And now it’s happening again to what Weldon says could be "a second pot of information". Only this time it’s defense officials and lawyers blocking the truth from coming out.

Biblical brother Abel was the first recorded murder, as related in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 4:1 through 4:16. Abel was toiling in the field when his brother, Cain rose up against him and slew him.

There are enough twists and turns in the Able Danger story without boasts in code.

Am I my brother's keeper? It looks like it was only mispelled twice, toward the end of page one of five. I wouldn't make too much of it.

Posted by Mike at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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 01:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 20, 2005

Weldon was talking about Ewing not Ennis

Okay, I'm updating this because from all of Weldon's statements today it is clear he is talking about someone who was at DIA in 2000 and is still there today, trying to ruin Tony Shaffer's career. Ennis did not join DIA until 2004, so cleary that can not be who Weldon means. I think when he says "Deputy Director" he means "Deputy Director". Mac's ambigious post mentioning Ennis sounds to me like blowing smoke.

From his interview with Sean Hannity today:

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.

In his blistering speech on the House floor, Weldon makes repeated references to the Deputy Director at the DIA:

Mr. Speaker, in August and September I met with the military officials involved with Abel Danger and one by one they told their story, until, Mr. Speaker, leaders in the Defense Intelligence Agency, including the deputy director, decided they do not want the story told. I think because they perhaps are fearful of being embarrassed and humiliated.

According to this DIA web page, no longer online, but still cached by Google:

DIA Command Element

Overview: The Director of DIA is a three-star military officer who serves as principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense and to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on matters of military intelligence. The Deputy Director is a senior federal executive and acts as the Director's second-in-command. The Chief-of-Staff is also a senior federal executive and controls the day-to-day operation of the agency and the major task of leading and directing the agency's human resource program.

DIA's Current Command Element:

Director: VADM Lowell E. Jacoby, USN

Deputy Director: Mr. Mark W. Ewing

Chief of Staff: Mr. John K. Kiehm

Mark Ewing is also listed as Deputy Director in this DOD directory:

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Dir VADM Thomas R Wilson USN
Dep Dir Mark W Ewing

Mac's Mind thinks Weldon is really referring to the Deputy Director for HUMINT, not the Deputy Director of the whole DIA:

UPDATE: Weldon was talking about the pressure on Schaffer coming from the Office of Deputy DIA. Well that's a little broad. I made a call, a name.....General Michael Ennis is currently the Deputy Director for Human Intelligence and comes directly under the Director's office.

I doubt it. Here is a short biography for Ennis:

Major General Michael E. Ennis was appointed Deputy Director for Human Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, on 20 January 2004. He previously served as the Commandant's Director of Intelligence at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps....

Following an eighteen month tour of duty in Okinawa as a Rifle Platoon Commander and Battalion Embarkation Officer, 1st Lieutenant Ennis was assigned to officer recruiting duty in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he spent three years recruiting officer candidates from the colleges and universities of Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

In 1978, Captain Ennis entered the Foreign Area Officer program and spent two years studying Russian, first at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and then at the U.S. Army's Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany. In 1980 he returned to Okinawa where he served one year as the Deputy G-2 of the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade and as the S-2 of the 9th Marine Regiment. Upon returning to the United States, Captain Ennis spent three years as a translator on the Washington-Moscow Hotline (MOLINK).

In 1986 Major Ennis returned to Europe where he spent over three years in Potsdam, East Germany as the Naval Representative to the CINC, Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. He returned to the United States in 1989 and was assigned as the Operations Officer, 2nd Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Intelligence Group. LtCol Ennis completed a Military Fellowship at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. He was then assigned to Moscow, Russia where he served as the Assistant Naval Attaché and as the U.S. Military representative to Azerbaijan.

Upon selection to Colonel in 1993, he was returned to the United States where he served two years as the Director of the Intelligence Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps. From 1995 to July 1998, Colonel Ennis served as the AC/S G-2 of the III Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa and in 1998 he was named Commander of the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific (JICPAC) in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii where he remained until he was selected for Brigadier General in 2000. He was selected for Major General in 2005 and assumed his current rank on 18 May, 2005.

Major General Ennis' personal decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with one gold star, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Army Achievement Medal.

Ewing on the other hand, seems to have been Deputy Director forever:

Director Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, USN
Deputy Director Mark W. Ewing
Chief of Staff John K. Kiehm

Wilson retired back in 2002. Here is another reference from 2000:

Mr. Mark W. Ewing, Deputy Director, Defense Intelligence Agency

My gut feeling is that Weldon is talking about Ewing, not Ennis, but that is still only an educated guess.

Posted by Mike at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Complete text of Weldon speech

Sorry dailup users. Here it is from the Library of Congress:

(Here are the PDFs: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 31 | Page 4 | Page 5)

ABLE DANGER FAILURE -- (House of Representatives - October 19, 2005)

[Page: H8979] GPO's PDF

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Reichert). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon ) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk to our colleagues and through our colleagues to the American people about an issue that troubles me greatly.

I have been in this institution 19 years, and during those 19 years I have been on the Committee on Armed Services. Currently, I am the vice chairman of that committee and chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the purchase of our weapons systems. In the past I have chaired the research subcommittee. I have chaired the readiness subcommittee, and I have spent every available hour of my time working to make sure that our military troops were properly protected and have the proper equipment and training.

I am a strong supporter of our military. Whether it was in the last 2 years of the Reagan administration, the four years of the Bush administration, the 8 years of the Clinton administration, or the current administration of President George W. Bush, I have been a strong supporter of our military. I am a strong supporter of President Bush. I campaigned for him. I am a strong supporter of Secretary Rumsfeld. I say all of that, Mr. Speaker, because tonight I rise to express my absolute outrage and disgust with what is happening in our defense intelligence agencies.

Mr. Speaker, back in 1999 when I was Chair of the defense research subcommittee, the Army was doing cutting-edge work on a new type of technology to allow us to understand and predict emerging transnational terrorist threats. That technology was being done at several locations, but was being led by our Special Forces Command. The work that they were doing was unprecedented. And because of what I saw there, I supported the development of a national capability of a collaborative center that the CIA would just not accept.

In fact, in November 4 of 1999, 2 years before 9/11, in a meeting in my office with the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Deputy Director of the CIA, Deputy Director of the FBI, we presented a nine-page proposal to create a national collaborative center. When we finished the brief, the CIA said we did not need that capability, and so before 9/11 we did not have it.

When President Bush came in after a year of research, he announced the formation of the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, exactly what I had proposed in 1999. Today it is known as the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center. But, Mr. Speaker, what troubles me is not the fact that we did not take those steps.

What troubles me is that I now have learned in the last 4 months that one of the tasks that was being done in 1999 and 2000 was a top-secret program organized at the request of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, carried out by the general in charge of our Special Forces Command, a very elite unit focusing on information regarding al Qaeda. It was a military language effort to allow us to identify the key cells of al Qaeda around the world and to give the military the capability to plan actions against those cells so they could not attack us as they did in 1993 at the Trade Center, at the Khobar Towers, the U.S.S. Cole attack, and the African embassy bombings.

What I did not know, Mr. Speaker, up until June of this year, was that that secret program called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda in January and February of 2000, over 1 year before 9/11 every happened. In addition, I learned that not only did we identify the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, but we identified Mohamed Atta as one of the members of that Brooklyn cell along with three other terrorists who were the leadership of the 9/11 attack.

I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, again, over 1 year before 9/11, that Able Danger team attempted on three separate occasions to provide information to the FBI about the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, and on three separate occasions they were denied by lawyers in the previous administration to transfer that information.

Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday on ``Meet the Press,'' Louis Freeh, FBI Director at the time, was interviewed by Tim Russert. The first question to Louis Freeh was in regard to the FBI's ability to ferret out the terrorists. Louis Freeh's response, which can be obtained by anyone in this country as a part of the official record, was, Well, Tim, we are now finding out that a top-secret program of the military called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta over a year before 9/11.

And what Louis Freeh said, Mr. Speaker, is that that kind of actionable data could have allowed us to prevent the hijackings that occurred on September 11.

So now we know, Mr. Speaker, that military intelligence officers working in a program authorized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the general in charge of Special Forces Command, identified Mohammed Atta and three terrorists a year before 9/11, tried to transfer that information to the FBI were denied; and the FBI Director has now said publicly if he would have had that information, the FBI could have used it to perhaps prevent the hijackings that struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the plane that landed in Pennsylvania and perhaps saved 3,000 lives and changed the course of world history.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because we have been trying to get the story out about Able Danger and what really happened. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I have to rise tonight to tell you that as bad as this story is, and as bad as it is that the data was not transferred to the FBI, and as bad as it is that the 9/11 Commission totally ignored this entire story and referred to it as historically insignificant even though it was authorized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even though Louis Freeh has now said it could have provided information to prevent the attack against us, the 9/11 Commission ignored it. Not because the commissioners ignored it, but because someone at the staff level on the

9/11 Commission staff decided for whatever reason that they did not want to pursue the Abel Danger story.

Mr. Speaker, in August and September I met with the military officials involved with Abel Danger and one by one they told their story, until, Mr. Speaker, leaders in the Defense Intelligence Agency, including the deputy director, decided they do not want the story told. I think because they perhaps are fearful of being embarrassed and humiliated.

So what direction had they taken, Mr. Speaker?

They have gagged the military officers. They have prevented them from talking to any Member of Congress. They have prevented them from talking to the media. And the Defense Intelligence Agency has began a process to destroy the career and the life of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer.

Now, it might be easy for us to ignore this, Mr. Speaker. We all have busy careers and worry about reelections every 2 years and worry about our own families and our jobs. But I cannot do that in this case and neither can this body, and neither can the other body. You see, Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer took an oath to defend our Constitution. He took the words ``duty, honor, country'' seriously and devoted 23 years of his life in four deployed intelligence operations of our military to protect America.

During the time he served our country, he has received the Bronze Star, an award that does not come easily, for showing acts of courage, leadership, and bravery in the course of his activities.

[Time: 20:30]
He has received public commendations from previous directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency, including General Patrick Hughes, including generals at Special Forces Command, and including Admiral Wilson of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has received dozens of letters and commendations for his work. The laudatory comments I reviewed in his files are unbelievable.

But, you see, Mr. Speaker, there is a problem. The Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was in a meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer almost a year before 9/11, and Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer showed him a disk in his office with information about al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta, and the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency stopped the briefing and said, you cannot show me that. I do not want to see it. It might contain information I cannot look at.

Now, Tony Shaffer was not in the room alone, Mr. Speaker. There were other people, and we know their names. So we have witnesses. Now, the Deputy Director has denied that meeting and denied he was there and denied this particular story, but the fact is he knows that we are going to pursue it.

So what has happened to Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, Mr. Speaker? The Defense Intelligence Agency has lifted his security clearance. One day before he was to testify before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, in uniform, they permanently removed his security clearance. And now our Defense Intelligence Agency has told Colonel Shaffer's lawyer that they plan to seek a permanent removal of his pay and his health care benefits for him and his two children. Why, Mr. Speaker? Because Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, like Commander Scott Philpot of the Navy, like J. D. Smith, and like a host of other Able Danger employees, has told the truth.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I sat here in the 1990s and I sat here during the 9/11 investigation and watched a ridiculous situation develop with Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser under President Clinton. He walked into the National Archives before he was to testify before the 9/11 Commission looking through documents. He took documents out of the archives and stuffed them in his socks and pants so that no one would see them as he left the National Archives. Now, that is a felony, tampering with Federal documents and removing classified information regarding our security and information that the 9/11 commission needed to see.

Sandy Berger initially lied about it. He said he did not do it. Then he admitted it, and he was given a punishment. And, oh, by the way, his security clearance was temporarily lifted, but he will get it back again, for lying, for stealing, and for committing an act of outrage against our country's security. Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, a Bronze Star 23-year military veteran, simply told the truth and now his life is being ruined.

His career is ended. He is no longer in military intelligence. They have taken his security clearance, and they are about to destroy him as a person. They are about to deny him the basic health care and the salary that he has earned, and they are doing it in this way. This is outrageous. It is evil. They do not want to fire Tony because they also do not want him to talk to the media. So by suspending him and removing his pay and his health care, they hurt him bad, but he cannot talk because he is under suspension and his lawyer has advised him that to talk to the media, to talk to Members of Congress, even when he is not being paid, would cause him further problems and totally prevent him from ever having this gross problem reversed. Mr. Speaker, this is outrageous. Mr. Speaker, this is not America.

Over my 19 years in Congress, I have led 40 delegations to the former Soviet Union. I have sat in the face of the Soviet Communists and confronted them on full transparency. I sat at the table with President Lukashenko of Belarus, who has been called by our Secretary of State the last dictator in Europe. I took both delegations to North Korea, Mr. Speaker, and sat across the table from Kim Gye Gwan and I told him we abhor the way they treat their people, the way they lie about what is happening, and the way they distort information.

Mr. Speaker, I took three delegations to Libya to meet with Qadhafi, and I told him that we are absolutely outraged at what Libya did in helping complete the Lockerbie bombing and the bombing of the Berlin nightclub.

You know, Mr. Speaker, I never thought I would have to take the floor of this Chamber and make the same statements about the Defense Intelligence Agency. As a supporter of the President, as a supporter of the military, Mr. Speaker, if we allow this to go forward, then we send the signal to every man and woman wearing a uniform that if you tell the truth, you will be destroyed if a career bureaucrat above you does not like what you are saying. If you tell the truth, we will take your health care benefits away from your kids. If you tell

the truth, we will ruin you.

Mr. Speaker, this is not America. Mr. Speaker, this is not what I have been told by Secretary Rumsfeld that we are doing with our troops in protecting them, in giving them the best equipment and the best training. This is not what I spend hours in committee hearings on. This sends the wrong signal to America's troops. It tells them, do not be honest. Do not respect the fact that you have to be truthful. If there is somebody that the truth offends, then you better be silent.

Mr. Speaker, I have today asked for an independent investigation of the Defense Intelligence Agency and their efforts at destroying Tony Shaffer's life. This is outrageous, Mr. Speaker. They trumped up charges against him. They said while he was overseas in Afghanistan, forward deployed, that he forwarded cell phone calls from his official phone to his personal phone; and when they checked that out, it ran up a cost to the taxpayers of about $60. The second verbal charge they gave him was that he went to a course at the Army War College and he got reimbursed for his travel, his mileage and tolls, 100-some dollars. And they said he received a commendation for which he was not entitled, even though it was signed by his commanding officer and the acting Secretary of the Army.

But they went beyond that, Mr. Speaker. They went beyond that with this man. They said he had $2,000 of debt, personal debt. Well, I would like to have every Pentagon employee tomorrow, I would like to have the senior leadership show us what debt they have in the Defense Intelligence Agency so we can make that public.

They even went to this length, Mr. Speaker: the Defense Intelligence Agency wrote in an official document that Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer stole public property. A serious charge. Well, when you check what that public property was, it was an assortment of pens, government pens. But what they did not say in the Defense Intelligence report was that he took those pens when he was 15 years of age and was with his father when he was on assignment at one of our embassy outposts. He took the pens to give to other students at the school when he was 15 years of age. And by the way, Mr. Speaker, it was Tony Shaffer himself who admitted to that thievery when he applied for his security clearance. So the Defense Intelligence Agency knew that during his entire career of 23 years, but they put that in the document against him.

This is a scandal, Mr. Speaker. It is an outrage. It is a travesty. Everyone that worked with Tony Shaffer, the Navy officers, the private citizens have all said the same thing. This is a scandal to get Tony Shaffer because he has told the truth.

Now, this Defense Intelligence Agency and this Deputy Director had the audacity to have their legal counsel send Tony Shaffer's lawyer a letter on September 23. I cannot put that letter in the RECORD because it is privileged information, but it will eventually come out. But in that letter, in the second to last paragraph, the legal counsel for the Defense Intelligence Agency says to Mr. Shaffer's lawyer, he cannot receive any more classified information from the Defense Intelligence Agency because I checked and his security clearances have all been removed. Therefore, he is not allowed to look at anything that is secret or confidential.

Now, that is a letter sent by the general counsel of the DIA on September 23 of this year. Two weeks later, Mr. Speaker, to show the stupidity of the Defense Intelligence Agency, they send seven packages to Mr. Shaffer's lawyer

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of his personal belongings, which the Deputy Director of the DIA told my staff 3 months ago did not exist any more. And in those seven boxes, Mr. Speaker, were five classified memos. The Defense Intelligence Agency sent five classified memos to Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, which they told him on September 23 he was not allowed to have access to.
Mr. Speaker, that is a felony; and I have asked the Inspector General and the legal officials to investigate and prosecute the Defense Intelligence officials who sent five classified documents through the mail or by hand delivery to Tony Shaffer.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, the Defense Intelligence Agency, in its absolute total stupidity, included in those boxes $500 worth of Federal property, including a multi-hundred dollar GPS system owned by the Federal Government, which they sent to Tony Shaffer, I guess to keep. They also sent, Mr. Speaker, 25 pens, brand new, and marked on them is ``Property of the U.S. Government.'' The Defense Intelligence Agency, in its absolute utter stupidity, sent Tony Shaffer Federal property which they accused him of taking when he was 15 years of age.

Mr. Speaker, there is something desperately wrong here. There is a bureaucracy in the Defense Intelligence Agency that is out of control. They want to destroy the reputation of a 23-year military officer, Bronze Star recipient, hero of our country, with two kids because people in defense intelligence are embarrassed at what is going to come out.

And what is going to come out, Mr. Speaker? Well, we are going to find out, Mr. Speaker, that that unit, Able Danger, not only identified Mohammed Atta before 9/11, not only did they try to pass that information to the FBI, not only was that large data destroyed in the summer of 2000, but now, Mr. Speaker, I can add a new dimension to this whole story. Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I met with another Able Danger official. I was not aware of this official's knowledge because he does not live within the Beltway.

This official, Mr. Speaker, has impeccable credentials. I cannot reveal his name today. I will to any Member of this body, any of our colleagues that want to come to me, I will tell you privately who this official is, and you will agree with me when I tell you his name that he has impeccable credentials. This official yesterday, Mr. Speaker, in a meeting in my office, told me that he has never been talked to by the Pentagon. He has never been talked to by the Defense Intelligence Agency in their supposed investigation. He has never been talked to by the 9/11 Commission staff in their investigation; yet this official had a leadership position in Able Danger.

This official told me that there is a separate cache of information collected from over 20 Federal agencies in 1999 and 2000 on Able Danger that still may exist. Now, the Pentagon has told us all this material was destroyed, and now I have a senior official telling me there is a second pot of information that may well still exist.

Furthermore, at the hearing over in the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, when Senator Specter asked why this data was destroyed, the witness who destroyed the data said, well, I was told that we could not keep this data for more than 90 days because it might involve information that contains U.S. persons, so we had to destroy it.

[Time: 20:45]
Well, I found out that is not the story. The reason the data was destroyed was because Special Forces Command asked the Army for that data and within a matter of days, that data was destroyed so the Army would not pass it to Special Forces Command. Yet there still is, was and I hope still is a massive pot of data.

But furthermore, that official that I talked to yesterday will also say that there was no 90-day requirement, as was testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He said on a regular basis they kept information from Able Danger data mining for months and months and months. In fact, he will say he had a discussion with a lawyer in DOD named Schiffren who told him do not worry about it, just fill out a document, sign your name that you need it, put it in the box, and you can keep it as long as you want.

Mr. Speaker, that is entirely contradictory to what the Defense Intelligence Agency has been telling us, to what DOD has been telling us. Now we have someone who is willing to come forward and say that 90-day period is not real, they kept Able Danger information for months and months and months.

Mr. Speaker, there is something desperately wrong here. A sitting President of the United States resigned his position because he tried to cover up a third-rate burglary when some low-level operatives from the Republican committee to reelect him broke into the Democrat headquarters in Washington, D.C. No one was killed. No money was stolen. No State secrets were stolen. It was a third-rate burglary, but it caused the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the deaths of 3,000 Americans.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about 2.5 terabytes of data about al Qaeda. That is equal to one-fourth of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Mohammed Atta and three of the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about military intelligence officers, including an Annapolis graduate who will command one of our destroyers in January of 2006 who risked his entire career to state on the record I will swear until I die that I saw Mohammed Atta's face every day starting in January of 2000, a year and a half before 9/11.

Mr. Speaker, this is not somebody off the street, this is a graduate of Annapolis, a 23-year Naval officer who will command one of our destroyers in January who is agreeing with Lieutenant Shaffer. We have three other people who have testified under oath that they saw the same photograph, and the person I met yesterday will testify that he had the name of a Mohammed Atta before 9/11 but not the face.

Mr. Speaker, this is not some third-rate burglary coverup. This is not some Watergate incident. This is an attempt to prevent the American people from knowing the facts about how we could have prevented 9/11 and people are covering it up today. They are ruining the career of a military officer to do it and we cannot let it stand. I do not care whether you are Democrat or Republican, you cannot let a lieutenant colonel's career be ruined because of some bureaucrat in the Defense Intelligence Agency. If we let that happen, then no one who wears the uniform will ever feel protected because we will have let them down. Anyone who wears the uniform of this country who is serving today expects us to back him or her up and that is not happening. We are seeing lying, distortion.

Mr. Speaker, do you know, Wolf Blitzer on CNN told my staff that a Department of Defense employee told him that Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer was having an affair with one of my employees. How low can we go, Mr. Speaker? How low can we go to allow this Defense Department to try to ruin the reputation and the personal life of a lieutenant colonel with a Bronze Star? To Wolf Blitzer, Mr. Speaker.

We need to know the name of that defense official who told Wolf Blitzer who told my staff, and he is not the only one. I have other media people who will come forward in this grand effort to destroy the reputation of a uniformed military officer, to create scandalous accusations. He does not even know my staff, to accuse him of stealing pens when he was 15, to take away his health care benefits for his two kids because he is telling the truth.

What do we stand for if not the truth? Is it more important that we be politically correct? Is it more important that I not rock the boat because my party is in the White House, because I campaigned for Bush, and support Don Rumsfeld. Is that more important? If that is more important, I do not want to be here. I will leave. I will leave my post, but I will not do it until we get justice for this man and for these people who the 9/11 Commission called historically insignificant.

Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong inside the Beltway.

Mr. Speaker, there is something desperately wrong when a military officer risks his life in Afghanistan time and again, embedded with our troops under

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an assumed name with a false beard and a false identity, forward deployed with our troops, gets castigated, gets ridiculed, gets some low life scum at the Pentagon spreading malicious lies about this individual, and then say to his lawyer, we are going to take away his health care benefits, we are going to take away his salary.
Mr. Speaker, if we allow this to stand as Democrats and Republicans, then none of us deserve to be here. When we all go overseas and meet the troops, we tell them how proud we are of them. We provide funding for them. We give them training and take care of their families. What we are allowing to happen right now is the Defense Intelligence Agency to ruin the career and the life of a man who spent 23 years protecting his Nation. If Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer was telling this story alone in a vacuum, that would be one thing. But he has been corroborated over and over again. I have met with at least 10 people who fully corroborate what Tony Shaffer says. Those meetings with the FBI, the FBI employee still works there and she told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, I set those meetings up with the FBI to transfer information about al Qaeda and Able Danger. So she is still there and she testified.

What we have here, I am convinced of this now, is an aggressive attempt by CIA management to cover up their own shortcomings in not being able to do what the Able Danger team did: They identified Mohammed Atta and the al Qaeda cell of Brooklyn 1 year before 9/11. But even before that, as the story unfolds, you are going to hear the story that they also identified the threat to the USS Cole 2 weeks before the attack, and 2 days before the attack were screaming not to let the USS Cole come into the harbor at Yemen because they knew something was about to happen.

Mr. Speaker, bad news never comes easy; but in a democracy, the bad news has to come out so we can make sure it does not happen again.

Mr. Speaker, this whole thing started, not to embarrass anyone, this whole thing started because none of us knew that Mohammed Atta was identified before 9/11. It started because this Congress, this body in particular, tried to establish what is now in place back in 1999, a national collaborative center, but the CIA said we did not need it. The American people deserve to

have the answers here. They deserve to know why 3,000 people died. They deserve to know what we could have done and should have done to better prepare ourselves and to work to prepare for the next incident. The American people need to know where those multiple terabytes of data is. Is it still being used? We know in January of 2001, General Shelton was given a 3-hour briefing on Able Danger. So even if they destroyed the data back in the summer of 2000, in January of 2001 there was enough material to give General Shelton, Commander of the Joint Chiefs, a 3-hour briefing.

Mr. Speaker, there is something here. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is something desperately wrong, Mr. Speaker. There is something outrageous at work here. This is not a third-rate burglary of a political campaign headquarters. This involved what is right now the covering up of information that led to the deaths of 3,000 people, changed the course of history, led to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has disrupted our country, our economy and people's lives.

Mr. Speaker, we could ignore this. I cannot. If it means I have to resign from this body, I will resign. I will not allow, after 19 years in this body and as a vice chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, bureaucrats in the Defense Intelligence Agency to concoct stories, to talk about the theft of pens when this lieutenant colonel was 15 years old, to talk about this man's personal debt of $2,000. I would hate to check the indebtedness of Members of Congress. I know mine is more than $2,000.

Mr. Speaker, this is not America. I had a group of college students down from Drexel University. There were about 20 of them, including representative students from eight other nations. We talked about this. Of course we have talked about all of the problem countries in the world. We talk about our values as a Nation, the need for a democracy to have people involved, to have transparency, to have people who respect the rule of law and the Constitution.

How do I tell them that is what is working here, Mr. Speaker, when the Pentagon says that these people who simply want to tell the truth are not allowed? They are saying it is for classified purposes, yet the DOD lawyer on the Senate side there is nothing classified about any of the information. It is not about classified programs. I would be the last to want to see anything classified revealed. I have seen many, many instances where I have been given sensitive information that only a few people in the Congress and the country had. I would never reveal it. It is not about that. This is not about the DIA, this is not about the CIA, this is about CYA. It is about CYA by bureaucrats in the Defense Intelligence Agency and possibly some political operatives that do not want the facts to come out about Able Danger and the information that the Able Danger team put together. And in the process, they are going to destroy a man, a man who has been recognized by his country, who has a family, and who simply wants to do the right thing.

Mr. Speaker, I hated to take the floor tonight, but I did not know what else to do. We have committees of Congress working on this. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), chairman of the FBI Appropriation Committee on Oversight. He is as outraged as I am. I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), who is looking at this, and the gentleman from California (Chairman Hunter). The Committee on Armed Services has a full-time staffer assigned to get to the facts of this. I want to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. King), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, because he is looking at this. I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Hoekstra) and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He has met with Tony Shaffer and has offered to get more information. I want to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for standing up and beginning to ask questions, and I want to thank Senator Specter and Senator Biden, who attended a Committee on the Judiciary hearing and expressed their outrage. I want to thank Senator Sessions, Senator Kyl, and Senator Grassley, who were all there. In fact, Senator Grassley called it a coverup.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you the number of Members who have come to me and said this is unacceptable. I would hope that as a result of what we have heard tonight every Member of Congress will ask for an inquiry. The gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney) wrote a letter to the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services asking for an investigation. We have from Republicans to Democrats, left to right, conservatives to liberals. What is happening here is unacceptable. It is unimaginable. It is un-American. All over the world tonight, young Americans are wearing our uniforms. They are doing a great job. They make us all proud when we travel overseas. They make us proud because of the pride they have. When I talk to them, they say I am glad to be doing what I am doing. I am doing the right thing for our country. I will go any place the Commander in Chief sends me. Whether I am in Afghanistan or Iraq, they will tell me that.

[Time: 21:00]
Whether we are in Kosovo or Somalia, they will tell us that. Whether we are at Hurricane Katrina, whether we are at Hurricane Andrew, or whether we are out in California, the earthquake, or the Midwestern floods, our troops are all the same. They respect our country. They respect our Constitution. If we allow this travesty to continue, Mr. Speaker, then we have let all of those people down for some nameless, faceless bureaucrat who is fearful that the information will finally come to light, that the DIA just did not get it.

Back in 1999 and 2000, they did not have a clue. They had millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, and could not do what a 20-member team did in being able to identify Mohammed Atta before the 9/11 attacks. DIA does not want that to come out, Mr. Speaker. They do not want that to come out. Heaven forbid the Defense Intelligence Agency, with hundreds of millions of dollars, would have a 20-member team do what they could not

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do because they were using new technology and new software. They do not want that to come out. That is why that Deputy Director, when he was at that meeting, said, I do not want to see this. Do not show it to me. And that is why today that Deputy Director is trying to ruin the career of Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer.
The only way to resolve this, Mr. Speaker, is to have a full independent investigation by the Inspector General of the Pentagon. I have asked Secretary Rumsfeld today to do that. I would ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in that request. Let the independent inspector for the Pentagon go in, not DIA. DIA cannot investigate itself. It does not have the capability to do that. It does not have the integrity to do that. Let the Inspector General do the investigation and while that is being done, protect Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer. He does not deserve to have his career ruined or destroyed for telling the truth.

And while we are at it, Mr. Speaker, if DIA is going to continue to press this ridiculous set of facts, then as I said earlier, I want DIA prosecuted for the five felonies they committed in sending classified documents to a person that 2 weeks earlier they said was incapable of receiving classified information. And if this continues, I want DIA held responsible for illegally transferring $500 of public assets to a person, that in the process of sending that stuff to him, DIA committed fraud against the taxpayers. I want them held accountable: DIA's stupidity; DIA's incompetence.

We have a new nominee for the head of DIA, and I am going to ask every Senator to fully explore each of these issues before that person is confirmed. I will meet with every Senator personally and go over all of this information. And I would encourage the Senators and the House Members to interview the other people who worked with Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer and to get their assessments of what is going on there. They will all tell them the same thing: Shaffer is being abused and used as a scapegoat. If they can ruin Shaffer, they can silence the story.

It cannot happen, Mr. Speaker. We cannot let it. That is not what America is about. That is not what we say to our enlisted personnel when they sign up for duty. That is not what we say when we pass our defense bills every year.

This man is being maligned and mistreated. He is being harassed. The most scurrilous accusations, totally unfounded, have been given to the American media; and I will name names, and I will ask for an investigation of the people who made those statements to these media people because it all needs to be put on the record.

And as someone tomorrow who will chair another hearing on our defense oversight to try to get the best value for the dollars for our military, I ask all of our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, on both sides of the aisle to join us. This is not Republicans or Democrats. It is about what is fundamental to this country. I would ask our constituents across America we represent to join us, to express their outrage, to e-mail, make phone calls, write letters to the Secretary of Defense, the President of the United States, to Members of Congress to simply let the story be told. Let the Able Danger story finally come out to the American people. Let them understand what really happened. Let Scott Philpott talk. Let Tony Shaffer talk. Let the others who have been silenced have a chance to tell their story to Congress and openly to the American people. In the end, the country will be stronger.

Posted by Mike at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)

Is this why they are so afraid?

Captain Ed asks:

If the DIA really has resorted to these tactics, then it only demonstrates even more that they fear Shaffer and the rest of the Able Danger revelations. What has them so afraid?

Maybe we should ask the 9/11 Commission. They'll be in DC tomorrow:

The 9/11 Commission Report: The Unfinished Agenda: An ongoing series of public events assessing the progress of reform since the 9/11 Commission Report.

Next event: Second Report on 9/11 Commission Recommendations: Reforming the Institutions of Government
Thursday, October 20, 2005 • 10:30 a.m. • Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC • Oceanic Room

I'm starting to think people are silencing Able Danger not because they are embarassed about what did or did not happen with the program itself, but rather because of what Able Danger might have uncovered.

I almost hesitated to post this because it sounds so ridiculous, and even if it is true, there is no way any proof will get out in public without the approval of the new Roberts-Miers court - not very likely given their desire not to rock the boat. The main reason I am posting it anyway, even if it makes me look silly, is that the Department of Justice would not be claiming the "State Secrets" privilege against Sibel Edmonds if she was just making stuff up. They would not be falsely accusing Tony Shaffer of having an affair if they could prove him wrong. They would not be keeping Gary Berntsen's book from seeing the light of day if they were not worried about what he has to say. It also strikes me as something more than a coincidence that all three happen to be represented, in part, by Roy Krieger and Mark Zaid.

I would be very happy to be proven wrong, because what Sibel Edmonds is saying has the potential to even further erode our trust in government and also shows that we are still in danger - from the international smugglers and criminal organizations she describes. Until someone can prove these whistleblowers wrong, instead of trying to shut them up, I'm going to trust them - not the Penagon.

Here is what Sibel Edmonds said on August 15th:

I am talking about countries, not a single country here. Because despite however it may appear, this is not just a simple matter of state espionage. If Fitzgerald and his team keep pulling, really pulling, they are going to reel in much more than just a few guys spying for Israel....

Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an
all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator,
stumbled over one piece of it.

But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of
ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include
multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear
sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.

Here is what she said on August 22nd:

If you go to my CBS 60 Minutes transcript of October 2002 – even though they chose to broadcast mostly the administrative problems and issues – I had one statement there that said that this involved people, officials, well-recognized names in the Department of State, Department of Defense, and certain elected officials. So I believe the source is also quoted somewhere else talking about the fact that in the late '90s they were going to have a special prosecutor to uncover these criminal activities and corruption, including the politicians – this is in the article. But later, after the administration changed, they decided to cool it and not do anything with it, so they stopped the investigation and they went against the initial decision of having a special prosecutor trying and indicting these criminals in the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress....

And these activities overlap. It's not like okay, you have certain
criminal entities that are involved in nuclear black market, and then
you have certain entities bringing narcotics from the East. You have
the same players when you look into these activities at high-levels
you come across the same players, they are the same people.

Here's another interesting part of that transcript:

SE: No, but as I said, the reason I went to the Congress and to the 9/11 Commission had to do with criminal activities and the criminal activities I provided information on had a lot to do with 9/11. And it's very interesting for example this latest development with the 9/11 Commission and this information from the Department of Defense that had to do with Atta, right?

SH: Able Danger.

SE: And the main media is treating it as if "here's one piece of information the 9/11 Commission didn't include." I had this press conference last summer and together with 25 national security experts. These sort of people from NSA, CIA, FBI. And we provided the public during this press conference with a list of witnesses that had provided direct information, direct information. Some had to do with finance of al-Qaeda. These are people from NSA, CIA, and FBI to the 9/11 Commission, and the 9/11 Commission omitted all of this information, even though some of this information had been established as fact. One of them had to do with certain informants in April 2001. This informant provided very specific information about the attacks. The other had to do with certain information the FBI had in July and August 2001, where blueprints and building composites of certain skyscrapers were being sent to certain Middle Eastern countries, and many more information was just omitted. With my case they just said, "Refer to the inspector general's report," even though I had provided the commissioners with the documents and names of witnesses. So now today you're seeing the press talk about "Oh, one piece of information," which right now the Commission is denying: "We don't recall seeing that information." Well, I can put out 20 other cases. These are agents who worked for agencies such as FBI, CIA, some of them for 20 years, some for 18 years. I have their list, I have their affidavits that provided documents, and they were all omitted. But the media is treating it as if "oh, look, this one piece of information was omitted" from the 9/11 Commission report.

Now from the Vanity Fair article on Edmonds in September:

Vanity Fair has established that around the time the Dickersons visited the Edmondses, in December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence investigation that had its start in 1997. "It began in D.C.," says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. But "it became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on."

Its subject was explosive: what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. "There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on," the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation—away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. "This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion," he says. "It was to keep this from coming out."

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city's large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.

Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large-scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing, and it wasn't always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out—a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname "Denny boy." It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.'s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert's campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

From the Washington Post:

"Fitzgerald's office said on Monday it had decided to announce any decisions in the Plame case in Washington, rather than Chicago, where the special prosecutor is based.

From the Campaign for a Cleaner Congress:

Campaign for a Cleaner Congress today called on the number three leader in the U.S. House, Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), to address questions about his past and current chiefs of staffs and his special assistant's involvement with junkets sponsored by a lobbying organization, the American Turkish Council (A.T.C.).

The Council is the subject of a report in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine, which hit newsstands in New York on Wednesday, that reveals wiretapped conversations, translated by a then-FBI employee Sibel Edmonds, recorded Turkish nationals describing efforts to bribe U.S. politicians, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). According to the wiretaps, thousands of dollars were to be paid to Hastert's campaign funds in small checks, which under Federal Election Commission rules do not have to be itemized in public filings if they are under $200.

Officials of large corporations with economic interests in Turkey, such as Philip Morris with whom Rep. Blunt's wife is employed as a lobbyist, sit on the Council's board.

A Campaign for a Cleaner Congress review of Congressional travel records shows that Gregg Hartley, then chief of staff to Congressman Roy Blunt (R-MO), took a junket sponsored by the A.T.C. Blunt's current Chief of Staff, Amy Field, also attended the same junket, and Jared Craighead, who was a special assistant to Rep. Blunt and now works as a senior policy advisor to Governor Matt Blunt, attended a separate A.T.C.- sponsored junket. Nov. 13-19,1999.

Now that Delay has stepped down, Blunt is the new Majority Leader. If what Edmonds has said is true, a lot of people should indeed be afraid. Not just members of the Bush administration.

Posted by Mike at 02:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

October 18, 2005

Details emerge for Able Danger's second act

Four years after 9/11, we are finally rebuilding Able Danger. Someone must have realized that if we were actually struck again - by a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack this time - and did not have something like this is place simply because we knew it worked and were trying to covering up the fact we had shut it down before 9/11, you think there might have been some dramatic political consequences - assuming the true story ever saw the light of day?

From Government Computer News, via AJ:

A draft proposal floating behind closed doors would reconstitute and improve upon a former Army data-mining program called Able Danger.

Able Providence, as the new program has been dubbed, would establish “robust open-source harvesting capabilities” to give military and law enforcement agencies the information to take the initiative in the war on terrorism—that is, to be able to plan and execute offensive measures—in addition to continued defensive actions.

In addition, the program would be driven by a presumption that use of weapons of mass destruction within the United States is possible. As a result, Able Providence would need to detect, track and target terrorists as they move from location to location and reorganize their cells.

As one part of the new data-mining effort, the proposal suggests using information about terrorist financing and the Islamist system worldwide to identify correlations.

The proposal, which GCN has seen, would place the Able Providence project within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with the Defense Department having joint oversight responsibilities.

A first-year budget of a little more than $26 million would cover the cost of a director drawn from the Senior Executive Service, a deputy director from SES (or a brigadier general), five planners, software and hardware, and office space.

From the Saint Petersburg Times:

The Pentagon is establishing a secret facility in St. Petersburg to help Special Operations Command better process intelligence.

Because the project is classified, details remain sketchy. But Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, confirmed the basic outline late Friday.

He said Blackbird Technologies of Virginia was awarded the $27-million contract to operate a Joint Intelligence Operations Center on behalf of SOCom, which is based at MacDill Air Force Base.

SOCom oversees the nation's secret commandoes and is coordinating the Defense Department's global war on terror.

"They're continually looking for a more effective way to deal with their intelligence issues," said Young, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

The center - to operate out of a building at 9th Street N and Gandy Boulevard - is intended to help National Intelligence Director John Negroponte "remodel" military intelligence at SOCom.

What a coincidence. A program for $27 million and a program for a little over $26 million. Hmm, I wonder if the two might be related?

Posted by Mike at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 12, 2005

Somehow I doubt that Maloof was there

From U.S. News and World Report:

CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. – The first annual National Security Whistleblowers Conference, held on this tiny resort island, has to be one of the more unusual gatherings of intelligence veterans in recent years. The nearly 20 current or former officials from the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and even the supersecret National Security Agency who make up the core of the conference share an unusual distinction: They are all deeply out of favor with their longtime employers....

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of a project that combed through public databases looking for hidden links. But these allegations have been vigorously denied by the Pentagon and the White House, while several members of Congress are investigating. Shaffer was slated to speak but instead sat quietly by as his lawyer, Mark Zaid, spoke for him....

"We're trying to figure out what we can do," Zaid said, "which is not much." But he added that he will most likely appeal the clearance revocation. Zaid is also looking into filing a class action suit related to the revocations of security clearances in whistle-blower cases. "It's the mentality of how the executive branch works," he said. "You can show a pattern."

It's something that several other panelists had in common. Russ Tice worked as an analyst at the NSA, which houses the nation's international eavesdropping capabilities. He worked on some of the nation's most secret intelligence-collection projects. But while he was on temporary assignment at the DIA, he said, he became concerned that an analyst there might be spying for the Chinese government....

The conference was organized by Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was pushed out of the bureau after raising accusations of wrongdoing by other FBI translators. She has been barred from discussing the details of her case by the FBI, which denies her allegations and says the entire issue is classified. She created the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition www.nswbc.org to bring whistle-blowers like her together to push for legal reforms and bring together other advocacy groups.

NSWBC.ORG is no longer available online from my ISP for some reason, but speaking of Edmonds, here's an interesting interview:

SH: It's interesting that the state-secrets privilege actually doesn't exist. There's no law that has ever been passed by Congress that even says such a thing. Wasn't it the Supreme Court that made up the state-secrets privilege in the first place?

SE: Yes, it's based on common law, and in fact, most judges don't even know how it is applied, and therefore that is another challenge we are bringing about: for the Supreme Court to look into this and say this is time for us to clarify just what the hell is this state-secrets privilege. If you were to go ask many attorneys in this country, they would tell you that, "Hey, I didn't know that the United States had any official secrets act," and they act surprised because even most attorneys don't know that we have this arcane draconian common law that is being exercised to gag people and rid them of their First Amendment rights.

SH: Sibel, let's see if we can figure out why they [the government] are going to such lengths to keep you quiet. Can you tell me, what is the American Turkish Council – let me rephrase that, can you tell me what the American Turkish Council is?

SE: Well sure, it's on the Web site. They are this lobbying organization for Turkish business and relationship between U.S. and Turkey. It's exactly like AIPAC

SH: Oh good, exactly like AIPAC!

SE: Exactly. In fact, they have so many crossovers, if you look at their members you will see many that are members of both organizations. And if you look at the people who are in the management and are in charge of these lobbying groups, you come across the same names, which is very interesting.

SH: That is very interesting. In fact, my next guest after you will be Bob Dreyfuss about the AIPAC spy scandal and something that occurred to me last night as I read the Vanity Fair piece An Inconvenient Patriot about you, was that some of the things I read about in there, and we'll try to get to some of this a little bit later, were about "unnamed Department of State and Department of Defense employees," which made me wonder whether perhaps your case is tied in with the AIPAC spy scandal case in any way.

SE: Absolutely. And I cannot go into any details – and maybe some other investigative journalist from across the ocean will come here and do the rest of this article – as article part two. But even the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today, is just touching the surface of it. It's going only to a certain degree. It doesn't go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that's as far, and the best – as far as I can explain.

SH: Thank you very much for that, and we'll see what we can make of it. Can I ask you how you first learned of the American Turkish Council?

SE: Oh, no, you can't.

SH: That's classified. Well, according to this article, which is written everybody by David Rose, it's in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine. It's called "An Inconvenient Patriot." And I'm going to go ahead, because the states-secrets privilege has not been invoked against me so far – I don't think. David Rose says in this article – he basically talked to the congressional staffers who have debriefed you. And what they say, is while you were translating intercepts for the FBI you overheard American Turkish Council employees discussing criminal activity among both Republicans and Democrats, and even including the Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert. Can you cough or sneeze or blink twice or anything for me?

SE: All I can tell you is that the sources that David Rose interviewed – they were the people that were present during the investigation of the Congress and their meetings with the FBI, so I am sure that it was not based on hearsay that they made these comments. I am sure that they based it on the wiretap recordings they heard and the documents. So they didn't just come and say this is what it was without having all those documents and files from the FBI to go over, and I guess their statements were based on the evidence that was presented to them both by the inspector general's office – Glenn Fine briefed the Congress – because as you know the IG report was classified, but they briefed the Congress. So I guess they relied on the documents from the inspector general's office and the FBI to make those statements. I guess that was the case.

SH: So this just doesn't come from you but from the official investigations of your accusations as well?

SE: That's what I would assume because if these are Congressional sources who were in these investigations, and also David Rose spoke with certain FBI officials who were part of these files and case investigations within the FBI – they would not make comments on what they think it is but they would provide facts, that is my assumption. Otherwise, Vanity Fair would not print it.

SH: The article quotes one unnamed official as saying, "This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion. It was to keep this from coming out."

SE: Uh, when you say "this," I don't know. If you go to my CBS 60 Minutes transcript of October 2002 – even though they chose to broadcast mostly the administrative problems and issues – I had one statement there that said that this involved people, officials, well-recognized names in the Department of State, Department of Defense, and certain elected officials. So I believe the source is also quoted somewhere else talking about the fact that in the late '90s they were going to have a special prosecutor to uncover these criminal activities and corruption, including the politicians – this is in the article. But later, after the administration changed, they decided to cool it and not do anything with it, so they stopped the investigation and they went against the initial decision of having a special prosecutor trying and indicting these criminals in the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.

Here is the article from Vanity Fair:

The Edmondses' thoughts were turning to brunch when Matthew answered the telephone. The caller was a woman he barely knew—Melek Can Dickerson, who worked with Sibel at the F.B.I. "I'm in the area with my husband and I'd love you to meet him," Dickerson said. "Is it O.K. if we come by?" Taken by surprise, Sibel and Matthew hurried to shower and dress. Their guests arrived 30 minutes later. Matthew, a big man with a fuzz of gray beard, who at 60 was nearly twice the age of his petite, vivacious wife, showed them into the kitchen. They sat at a round, faux-marble table while Sibel brewed tea.

Melek's husband, Douglas, a U.S. Air Force major who had spent several years as a military attaché in the Turkish capital of Ankara, did most of the talking, Matthew recalls. "He was pretty outspoken, pretty outgoing—about meeting his wife in Turkey, and about his job. He was in weapons procurement." Like Matthew, he was older than his wife, who had been born about a year before Sibel.

According to Sibel, Douglas asked if she and Matthew were involved with the local Turkish community, and whether they were members of two of its organized groups—the American-Turkish Council (A.T.C.) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (A.T.A.A.). "He said the A.T.C. was a good organization to belong to," Matthew says. "It could help to ensure that we could retire early and live well, which was just what he and his wife planned to do. I said I was aware of the organization, but I thought you had to be in a relevant business in order to join.

"Then he pointed at Sibel and said, 'All you have to do is tell them who you work for and what you do and you will get in very quickly.'" Matthew could see that his wife was far from comfortable: "She tried to change the conversation to the weather and suchlike." But the Dickersons, says Matthew, steered it back to what they called their "network of high-level friends." Some, they said, worked at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. "They said they even went shopping weekly for [one of them] at a Mediterranean market," Matthew says. "They used to take him special Turkish bread."

Posted by Mike at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 10, 2005

DIA removed charts from Shaffer's briefcase

It looks like Rory O'Connor will be one to watch on the Able Danger story from here on out, not to rule out past posts I already missed.

Here is Rory with the inside scoop:

After revoking the security clearance of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a key figure in the ongoing Able Danger ‘information warfare’ controversy, Department of Defense officials - apparently inadvertently - sent at least six classified documents to the whistleblower. The documents - two directly related to the once-clandestine Able Danger operation, which identified Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers a year before the terror attacks - were among the items found in six boxes of “personal stuff” the Defense Intelligence Agency returned to Shaffer via his attorney, Mark Zaid, according to a source close to the attorney. The source added that DIA officials told Zaid they had spent “15 hours scrubbing” the material to make sure no classified information was contained therein.

The documents DIA returned “confirm and expand the information about the amount of support” Able Danger was getting from another program known as Stratus Ivy - and “included information to confirm that Shaffer had other officers working to support Able Danger,” the source said.

In addition, twenty-six pieces of mail addressed to someone named Domingo A. Romo (and his wife Sandra) - ranging from financial statements to insurance information - were also found among the materials provided to Lt. Col. Shaffer.

The Pentagon scrubbing did have at least some cleansing effects, however. Although DIA did return Shaffer’s leather briefcase, items it once had contained - an Able Danger set of TOP SECRET documents (mission planning order, cover plan, etc.,) as well as some of the briefing books and charts that had been used to brief Pentagon leadership about the program - have all been hidden or destroyed by DIA.

Posted by Mike at 01:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

October 09, 2005

Well, that sure beats stealing pens

I just read Maloof's piece again, but I still don't see him say that he knew anything about Able Danger or it's use of LIWA during the time he was apparently using it for the Chinese proliferation work. Was he involved in or aware of Able Danger? If so, why didn't he ask his good friends Perle, Feith, or Cambone not to let it die on the vine in early 2001? Instead, he only talks about April 2000, not what happened at LIWA during the following eighteen months.

From the New York Times on April 28, 2004:

An appeals board reinstated his clearances after Mr. Feith and Mr. Perle wrote letters to the D.I.A. But the intervention angered some intelligence officials, and a second panel reversed course in April 2003. Mr. Maloof is now on paid leave.

Boy, I bet Shaffer would appreciate one of those letters about now.

Before people draw too many parallels between Shaffer and Maloof, can we all agree that secret dealings with a Lebanese gun runner are a lot more serious than stealing pens when you were fifteen or sixteen?

Another Near East policy official, F. Michael Maloof, was stripped of
his security clearance a year ago after the FBI linked him to a
Lebanese-American businessman under investigation by the FBI for
weapons trafficking. A handgun registered to Maloof was found in the
possession of Imad el Hage, a suspected arms dealer.

Investigators are seeking to learn whether Maloof's alleged contacts
with Hage and a hard-line former Lebanese general, Michel Aoun, may have been part of a back-channel effort to destabilize Syria, which has occupied Lebanon for nearly two decades.

"People are concerned about covert action being conducted by a policy office with no legal mandate to do so," said one Democratic official involved in the Judiciary Committee inquiry. "If the Senate and House intelligence committees in their review only look at the Chalabi relationship but don't look at the office's role in what was in effect covert action to explore regime change in the entire arc of the Middle East, then their inquiry will be a joke."

The official said he is trying to determine if some of the office's
activities may have been prohibited by the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which holds that all activity to undermine a foreign government must be approved by the president in a specific document approving such activity.

Posted by Mike at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

October 08, 2005

SOCOM moves to rebuild Able Danger capabilities

From the uncannily well-informed Paul De La Garza at the Saint Petersburg Times:

The Pentagon is establishing a secret facility in St. Petersburg to help Special Operations Command better process intelligence.

Because the project is classified, details remain sketchy. But Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, confirmed the basic outline late Friday.

He said Blackbird Technologies of Virginia was awarded the $27-million contract to operate a Joint Intelligence Operations Center on behalf of SOCom, which is based at MacDill Air Force Base....

The center - to operate out of a building at 9th Street N and Gandy Boulevard - is intended to help National Intelligence Director John Negroponte "remodel" military intelligence at SOCom....

He added: "The SOCom upgrade will look at better data management capabilities that include the use of open source information, emergency backup and retrieval systems and visualization tools."

...Open source intelligence, or "OSINT" - the kind of work that will be conducted out of the center - refers to intelligence-gathering based on information collected from open sources, such as information available to the general public.

That includes newspapers, the Internet, books, phone books, scientific journals, radio broadcasts, television and other sources.

Posted by Mike at 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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 06:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 03, 2005

Suggestions for Congressional committee members

Thomas Raleigh, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, writes to the Dallas Star Telegram:

The recent Able Danger hearings ought to have resulted in a clearer understanding of what happened to a small but valuable intelligence program that went horribly wrong. By obstructing this investigation, in a manner that was as deliberate as it was clumsy, Rumsfeld undermines public confidence in him and his department.

There will be more hearings on Able Danger -- you can count on it. In light of recent reports that the Pentagon may be expanding intelligence operations that deliberately seek to evade congressional oversight, at the next hearing, the first series of questions Congress ought to pose might go something like this:

"Mr. Secretary, we have learned that it was Army lawyers who prevented Able Danger officers from meeting with FBI officials. It is my understanding that military lawyers provide commanders with advice, but operational decisions and directives remain the purview of commanders. What were the lines of command and control of Able Danger? What commander issued the order that prevented Able Danger personnel from meeting with the FBI? Who runs our intelligence programs; risk-adverse lawyers and intelligence bureaucrats, or warfighting commanders?

"Your former deputy Douglas Feith manipulated and distorted pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Then there was 'Curveball'; now Able Danger. That is a lousy track record. Could you please tell this committee, and the American people, why we should continue to entrust the Pentagon to run over 80 percent of this country's intelligence programs?"

Posted by Mike at 08:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 02, 2005

I hope this is not to keep Weldon quiet

I'm probably just being paranoid, but this sure caught my attention. I hope the new Chairmain of the Joint Chiefs is a huge Osprey fan and this has nothing to do with the growing Able Danger controversy.

V-22 OSPREY CLEARED FOR FULL PRODUCTION

WASHINGTON, Sep 28 - Today, the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) approved in principle the full-rate production of the V-22 Osprey. This hurdle marks a significant milestone for the tiltrotor program that has had its share of challenges, and for the Boeing plant in Ridley, Pa. that is charged with the production of the Osprey.

Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services – and Chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee that oversees the V-22 program – views the Pentagon’s decision as a special victory for the people in Delaware County, Pa.

“This is big news for Delaware County and the surrounding areas, which will directly benefit from this decision,” said Weldon. “The V-22 will dramatically transform the way we fight our wars in the future, and is in high demand from our military leadership. This decision frees up almost $20 billion in potential orders – translating into increased production and ultimately more jobs for the region,” Weldon said.

Weldon recalls a time when the Osprey was effectively side-lined by the Pentagon for safety concerns. “Vice President Cheney (then-Secretary of Defense) and the Democratic-controlled Congress killed this program, relegating it to minimal production status,” said Weldon.

“Today’s approval is monumental in that it is one of very few weapon systems to be brought back from near extinction, and we owe this achievement to the hard working folks at Boeing – corporate and union – who have made the necessary changes to make this tiltrotor technology available to our warfighter.” Weldon added, “This is total vindication from all of the critics who had taken cheap shots at the V-22 project over the years,” said Weldon.

Here is an interesting perspective on Why the V-22 Osprey is Unsafe.

The Wikipedia entry on the Osprey summarizes the issues pretty well:

The Osprey's development process has been long and controversial. The first flight occurred in March 1989. Since then however there have been four significant failures during testing - a crash in 1991, a second in 1992 that killed seven, a third in April 2000 that killed 19, and a fourth in December 2000 that killed four. This aircraft has been in development for 16 years since first flight and has still not finished testing or development. It is claimed that problems identified in all of these mishaps have been addressed by the V-22 program office and advocates of the program are optimistic that the aircraft is mature enough for fleet operations. Critics state that the aircraft will never be mature enough for reasons of pure physics — the V-22 cannot be fixed because of its flawed side-by-side rotor design.

The cause of the April 2000 crash was investigated, and was officially determined to be due to the rate of descent of over 2000 feet per minute (600 m/min) of the aircraft while at slow horizontal speeds of around 30 knots (56 km/h). Descending too fast at slow horizontal speed in helicopter mode can cause the airflow over the rotor blades to enter a vortex ring state (VRS). While this phenomenon is present in all rotary-wing aircraft, it was believed that the Osprey may be much more susceptible to it. The Osprey's flight operations rules already restricted the Osprey to an 800 feet per minute (240 m/min) descent at lower than 40 knots (74 km/h) airspeed; the crew of the mishap aircraft exceeded this operating restriction threefold. Another factor that may trigger VRS is helicopters operating in close proximity, a concern given the likely missions for the Osprey. The Marine evaluators have concluded that the restrictions imposed do not impede the mission of the craft in any way, despite the concern that an Osprey with a slower rate of descent is more vulnerable to enemy fire.

The Osprey recently completed its final operational evaluation (OPEVAL) prior to a full rate production decision. This OPEVAL was extremely successful; events included long range deployments, high altitude, desert and shipboard operations. Press reports on these final trials, notably included some where journalists were carried in the craft to demonstrate it, state that contrary to earlier reports on the matter, the Osprey is not only less susceptible to entering Vortex ring state, it is more easily recoverable from it.

On September 28, 2005, the Pentagon finally approved full-rate production for the Osprey. The current plan is to boost production from 11 a year to 48 a year by 2012. Planned production quantities include 360 for the Marine Corps, 48 for the Navy, 50 for the Air Force, 4 for the Texas Air National Guard and 6 for the Georgia Air National Guard.

Posted by Mike at 02:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Zaid's Rebuttal To The AP

From Captain's Quarters:

Earlier this week, the AP reported on a series of issues that the DIA used as an excuse to revoke the clearances of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the liaison to the SOCOM program Able Danger and the first public witness to the program's identification of four 9/11 hijackers as al-Qaeda operatives more than a year before the terrorist attacks. Many of us saw the revocation as a transparent attempt to discredit LTC Shaffer before he has a chance to testify to Congress on the Able Danger program, and the failure of the DoD to allow it to share its information with the FBI as well as the 9/11 Commission's refusal to meet with any of the Able Danger team.

Now his attorney, Mark Zaid, has posted his comment on the matter at CQ. With his permission, I'm reposting here so that it gets the most exposure possible.

Zaid's lengthy comment provides all the details.

The most salient points I noticed were that his Bronze Star has NOT been challenged in any way shape or form. A different medal called a DMSM was challenged by someone at DIA, apparently because they were not authorized to know about what he was doing when he won it. Zaid even provided the AP with a copy of a letter from Col. Gerry York supporting the fact that Shaffer definitely earned the DMSM award.

Zaid also notes that the pens and notepads were taken for school from an American Embassy when Shaffer was 15 or 16 and apparently in high school overseas. I guess one of his parents worked at the embassy? Not sure, but talk about going on your permanent record! I have no idea how that could have anything to do with his security clearance. Adding insult to injury, the late payments on his credit card occured while he was in Afghanistan deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom! He arranged for his wife to make the payments but she simply forgot. DIA has since dropped that issue, though the AP still mentioned it.

I really think the AP story makes the DIA look bad, not Shaffer, but Zaid's frustration is a reminder that you can not count on getting the full story from a reporter who is up against a deadline. They go for volume first then quality and accuracy. Zaid got them to correct the story three different times, but they still couldn't get it right.

Posted by Mike at 01:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 01, 2005

Burton confirms chart was given to Hadley

From the New York Times:

A second Republican member of Congress has said that Stephen Hadley, who was then the deputy national security adviser, was given a chart shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks that showed information collected about Al Qaeda before the attacks by a secret military intelligence program called Able Danger.

The account was provided by Representative Dan Burton of Indiana, who said in an interview that on Sept. 25, 2001, he attended a meeting with Mr. Hadley in the White House along with Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania. Mr. Weldon has said that he gave Mr. Hadley such a chart at the meeting, but the White House had refused to comment on Mr. Weldon's account.

Told about Mr. Burton's account, a spokesman for Mr. Hadley, who is now the national security adviser, confirmed for the first time last week that Mr. Hadley recalled seeing such a chart in that time period. But the spokesman, Frederick Jones, said that Mr. Hadley did not recall whether he saw it during a meeting with Mr. Weldon, and that a search of National Security Council files had failed to produce such a chart.

It's not that Hadley didn't receive such a chart, he just doesn't recall it. It's not that Atta was not on the chart, he just doesn't recall it. It sounds like Hadley is definitely hedging his bets.

You might recall from the Post story:

But in the White House response, Mr. Jones said: "Mr. Hadley did in fact meet with Congressman Weldon on Sept. 25, 2001. He recalls in that same time period receiving a briefing on link analysis as a counterterrorism tool, and being shown a chart that was an example of link analysis. But he does not recall whether he was shown that chart in the meeting with Mr. Weldon or in some other meeting. Either way, Mr. Hadley does not recall seeing a chart bearing the name or photo of Mohammed Atta."

Mr. Jones said that security council staff members reviewed the files of Mr. Hadley and others who attended or might have attended such a meeting, but no chart was found.

Via QT Monster, here are some more details heard on Fox News Saturday:

LTC Shaffer was just on Fox with his lawyer, being interviewed by Catherine Herridge - (Sat am - 12:40 ET) His lawyer did ALL the talking. He is now no longer able to speak to the media or to Congress openly, or behind closed doors. Nada. He also does NOT fall under whistle blower protection because he is a member of the intelligence community. Also, Congressman Burton was there by telephone and said that he himself witnessed this 'chart' that has dissapeared, and would like to know where the wherabouts of the contents of many boxes of info that was subpeoned that had been stored in Crystal City (Arlington, VA.) The saga continues....

Burton reiterated, even after the interview was over, that we needed to find those boxes!

Here is a video of the segment. Shaffer is apparently not even allowed to talk to members of Congress about Able Danger now.

Laura Rozen also has this update, which I hope will be good news:

A reader suggests that the NYT is going to have a big Able Danger story on Sunday.

Posted by Mike at 07:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 30, 2005

Shaffer accused of stealing pens

What is it with these DoD higher ups about their lines and their pens?

Voice of the Taciturn does a good job batting away every single one of the ridiculous charges against Shaffer, as do Mac at Mac's Mind - who had just sworn the story off for the tenth time - and Ed at Captain's Quarters, too. I think the obvious point is that this story is not just going to fade away like AJ was worried it might. The Pentagon has made sure of that now. So much for a dead story.

Interestingly enough, the Pentagon has told Shaffer not to talk about Able Danger, but they can't keep him from going on every cable news and talk radio show in America in order to defend his own good name.

From the AP:

An officer who has claimed that a classified military unit identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the 2001 attacks is facing Pentagon accusations of breaking numerous rules, allegations his lawyer suggests are aimed at undermining his credibility.

The alleged infractions by Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, 42, include obtaining a service medal under false pretenses, improperly flashing military identification while drunk and stealing pens, according to military paperwork shown by his attorney to The Associated Press.

Shaffer was one of the first to publicly link Sept. 11 leader Mohamed Atta to the unit code-named Able Danger. Shaffer was one of five witnesses the Pentagon ordered not to appear Sept. 21 before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the unit's findings.

The military revoked Shaffer's top security clearance this month, a day before he was supposed to testify to a congressional committee.

Could the Pentagon restore his clearance to try to make the story go away? Sure. Would it work? I doubt it. I think they've gone too far and said too much against him for Shaffer to just back down now.

Anyway, I'm updating this to add a very insightful comment left in the comments section over at Voice of the Taciturn:

I just processed $28K in travel for 2 high level people today, three weeks after their trips. You think they're going to take away the Assistant Secretary's Top Secret Clearance because he was behind on his credit card? Oh yeah, I'm taking home some staples tonight, and maybe some paperclips. Good lord, Halliburton steals us blind and they ding this guy over this petty crap!!!!

Lowly Government Worker

Posted by Mike at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

September 29, 2005

"Trust the lines, they will protect you!"

I'd have to agree with Mark at Decision '08 that "my initial enthusiasm for William Arkin’s Able Danger series has declined in direct proportion to the number of installments." From Arkin's latest blog post:

Shaffer and other shadow warriors just don’t like lines. They think that they can conduct surveillance, analyze intelligence, enforce the law, and fight the war on terrorism all by themselves. As a result, they see the rules segregating intelligence from law enforcement, let alone intelligence from war fighting and policy (remember Iraq) as niceties that the global war on terrorism can no longer afford.

Not only is this an inaccurate description of the Able Danger program, but it's also a weak defense for the failure of our intellegence community to simply work together as provided for under existing law. Both current and past regulations were intended to allow different agencies to work together. Working together is exactly what Shaffer and Phillpott tried to do. Instead, they were beatened back at every turn by bureaucrats worried that "it's not my job" or concerned someone might "steal their thunder" by actually using shared information to accomplish something. It sounds like the General who compared Shaffer's team to "Kelly's Heroes" must have been one of Arkin's sources for this piece.

If buying photos of suspected terrorists who visit radical mosques in Europe means you are trying to "conduct surveillance" does that mean you can only use photos the CIA already has on file, instead of purchasing them from an investigator who might do that type of work for law firms or angry spouses all the time?

If connecting dots between open source databases and news articles means you are trying to "analyze intelligence" does that mean you can only rely on prepackaged information that might not even apply to your current objectives when you try to create new war plans?

If you discover that an international terrorist organization might be setting up operations in the US, are you trying to "enforce the law" all by yourself when you attempt to pass that information on to the FBI, instead of assuming that they will stumble upon it on their own in time to prevent an attack?

If you are tasked to plan for future strikes against Al Qaeda operatives world wide, are you trying to "fight the war on terrorism" all by yourself when you try to convince your military leaders that a terrorist attack is eminent at the Port of Aden in September 2000?

The more you listen to Arkin, the more it sounds like he is saying Able Danger, the one program that might have actually prevented 9/11, should never have existed in the first place! It sounds like he might have even agreed with the decision to dismantle it, just four months before 9/11, if he had heard about it at the time.

He brings up Iraq, but what does Iraq have to do with Able Danger? While Al Qaeda might be established in Iraq now, clearly Al Qaeda is an unconventional enemy and requires a different approach to planning that a conventional enemy with territory and an army. Does Arkin really fail to see that or is he just kicking up sand?

Ultimately, Able Danger was not disabled by "rules segregating intelligence from law enforcement" as Arkin suggests. Instead, it was doomed by bureaucratic leaders and cultures that enforced de facto segregation and kept information from being shared even when it should have been shared under existing regulations:

WILLIAM DUGAN: I guess I wish to convey to the committee that US person information is something that we are skittish about in the Defense Department. We follow the rules strictly on it. And we want to do the right thing and follow the attorney general guidelines.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: Mr. Dugan, Mohammed Atta was not a US person was he?

WILLIAM DUGAN: Based on what I've read in the press since Sept. 11, 2001, I don't believe he was.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: Mr. Dugan, you're the acting assistant secretary of defense for intelligence oversight. Can't you give us a more definitive answer to a very direct and fundamental and simple question like was Mohammed Atta a US person?

WILLIAM DUGAN: No, he was not.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: We're dealing with the intelligence gathering data of the Department of Defense and prima facie reason is to believe and that had that information been shared and the FBI was trying to get it, 9/11 might have been prevented. I hope you'll go back and talk to the secretary and tell him that the American people are entitled to some answers.

Is Arkin really arguing that the one military program that might have prevented 9/11 should never have happened anyway and is not worth taking a second look at to determine if it might still be of use?

It is worth adding - as AJ has noted - that Arkin acknowledges Able Danger was justified to collect and share intelligence on terrorists:

Nothing restricts U.S. military intelligence from collecting information on real terrorists, and nothing even stops U.S. intelligence from passing information indicating terrorist involvement on the part of a U.S. citizen from being passed to the FBI.

These were the rules before 9/11 and despite passage of the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of new intelligence-law enforcement sharing arrangements, these same rules apply today.

Then goes on to say Able Danger crossed the line, but can't say how:

One can only wonder at this point what information the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) really collected on behalf of Able Danger that necessitated a complete purge and destruction of its entire database.

Well, I would have to do a lot more than "wonder" before I questioned the credibility of officers prepared to risk their career to testify under oath before the Judiciary Committee, but maybe that's just me.

Posted by Mike at 09:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

September 28, 2005

Interesting letter to the editor

Written to the Billings Gazette in Montana:

People forgetting that laws apply to everyone

The Pentagon has recently barred military officers from testifying about a classified intelligence program called "Able Danger." American citizens can be held indefinitely without cause as part of the Patriot Act.

And Arnold has switched from the Republican mantra of slamming "activist judges" who are not in lockstep with legislative bodies by saying that the gay marriage bill passed by the California Legislature is now a matter that should be decided by the courts!

The United States has always held its head high in the world as a nation that is governed by laws. We have always portrayed the belief that no one is above the law, but, given recent events, it seems that we are slowly blurring, even erasing, the lines that were drawn by our founding fathers to separate governance by law from governance by political whim.

Unfortunately, once those lines disappear or become completely distorted, we may never be able to redraw them. At what point will Americans start paying attention? At what point will we demand that our laws apply to everyone, whether or not they may share our own political or religious affiliation?

Rod Gottula
Shepherd

Posted by Mike at 08:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 27, 2005

Able Danger hearings postponed again

From the AP:

Citing next week's Rosh Hashanah observances, the Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed its scheduled hearing on what a highly classified military intelligence unit code-named "Able Danger" knew about the 9/11 hijackers.

But an attorney for a military intelligence officer who was expected to appear said the Defense Department's refusal to allow such testimony - not the Jewish holiday - was the real reason for the delay.

"It sounds better than the truth, which is that DOD is not cooperative," said Mark Zaid, attorney for Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who has said the unit used data mining to link ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers to al-Qaida more than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Zaid said he was informed on Monday that Shaffer would not be allowed to testify at the hearing scheduled for Oct. 5. Observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins Monday, Oct. 3.

Posted by Mike at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Now Hadley tells Weldon he was misquoted

After hearing last night that Curt Weldon would be on 540AM in Orlando at 8AM this morning, I signed up for their free registration so I could listen online. For once, I didn't sleep through my alarm clock, and it was worth it for the five minutes that Weldon was actually on, starting at about 8:47AM.

First, Weldon said Hadley's staff had told his staff "this morning" that the Washington Post misquoted him. That the reporter "got it wrong" and that what the Post printed was not what he meant to say. It's not entirely clear from Weldon which part Hadley now says the reporter got wrong, but I hope Hadley will clarify that point. Weldon also referred to some evidence he was considering bringing forward to "prove" his own version of the account. Very interesting.

Second, Weldon said the DIA had stepped up significantly its actions against members of the Able Danger team since the hearing last week. Weldon attributed this to bureaucrats in DIA who had worked in both the Bush and Clinton administration and were covering their ass. Could be, but I'm still thinking their orders came from higher up.

That was the only new information I heard in the brief segment, but if you heard anything else or think I got it wrong, leave me a comment or send me an email and let me know what I missed.

Here's what the Washington Post said Hadley said, which he now denies:

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley yesterday denied receiving a Defense Department chart that allegedly identified lead terrorist Mohamed Atta before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, dealing a blow to claims by a Republican congressman that have caused a political uproar in recent weeks....

"Mr. Hadley does not recall any chart bearing the name or photo of Mohamed Atta," said the spokesman, Frederick L. Jones II. "NSC staff reviewed the files of Mr. Hadley as well as of all NSC personnel" who might have received such a chart.

"That search has turned up no chart," he said.

Hadley does recall seeing a chart used as an example of "link analysis" -- the technique used by the Able Danger program -- as a counterterrorism tool, but is not sure whether it happened during a Sept. 25, 2001, meeting with Weldon or at another session, Jones said.

Posted by Mike at 08:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

September 26, 2005

More voices want Able Danger witnesses ungagged

Here are some editorials, all asking the Pentagon to let them testify.

Muzzling pre-9/11? - The Journal News, NY

Able Danger and total awareness - Daniel Gallington in the Washington Times, DC

Able Danger: Pentagon should reveal details of pre-9/11 program - Salt Lake Tribune, UT

Force Pentagon to provide data - Scranton Times, PA

The Suicide Ethos - Andrew McCarthy in National Review

Here is a quote from McCarthy, who is right on target:

In the Information Era, the world is increasingly small. Thus, in the course of carrying out those missions, it frequently happens that DoD intelligence services will incidentally capture information about U.S. persons. Does that mean these services need to shed that information, even if it could be vital to our safety?

Of course not. The whole point of the governing regulations is to allow the military to keep intelligence that might save American lives. Thus, Dugan conceded that the rules set forth 13 broad reasons for retaining information about U.S. persons....

There are few of these categories that would not provide, by themselves, a justification to maintain intelligence gathered on U.S. persons in the course of tracking an international terrorist organization and its members who were in the process of plotting to mass murder American civilians and military personnel. And that's leaving aside that the information we are talking about was, for the most part, actually gathered from publicly available information (a justifying category unto itself — see, No.2, above)

Dugan went on to note that "[w]e place special emphasis on the protection of information on United States persons. Our second area of emphasis is on ensuring improper activity by intelligence personnel is identified, reported, investigated, and then action taken to keep it from happening again."

The culture, the message to our forces, could not be more patent: protecting American lives is secondary to not being vexed by the ACLU and its fellow travelers. Even if proving our hearts are pure means gratuitously and utterly unnecessarily expunging goo-gobs of critical intelligence about our enemies in the middle of a war in which we know they are trying to kill us (and, mind you, al Qaeda regarded this as a war long before 9/11, even if our government didn't).

Posted by Mike at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 25, 2005

Atta stayed in Brooklyn during June 2000

Those who dismiss the Brooklyn connection should consider this. Why did Atta decide to go to Brooklyn? I would bet he knew someone at the infamous Al Farouq mosque on Atlantic Ave.

AP story by Pat Milton published December 9, 2001:

Mohamed Atta, suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings, rented rooms in New York City in the spring of 2000 with another hijacker, a federal investigator says.

Atta's visit to the city he later attacked came at the time of his first known trip to the United States. Authorities learned of his New York stay while trying to retrace the hijackers' steps prior to the attacks, said the investigator, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Investigators confirmed that Atta and the second man stayed in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and are trying to identify anyone who may have provided support to the men.

Atta's trail in Brooklyn began with a parking ticket issued to a rental car he was driving, said a senior Justice Department official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity....

The U.S. investigator said Atta and another hijacker briefly rented a room in Brooklyn in late spring 2000. They also answered a "Room for Rent" classified advertisement placed by a landlord in the Bronx, and also lived there, the investigator said. Authorities have interviewed landlords at both locations, the investigator said.

From Chapter 7 of the 9/11 Report:

In the early summer of 2000, the Hamburg group arrived in the United States to begin flight training. Marwan al Shehhi came on May 29, arriving in Newark on a flight from Brussels. He went to New York City and waited there for Mohamed Atta to join him. On June 2, Atta traveled to the Czech Republic by bus from Germany and then flew from Prague to Newark the next day. According to Ramzi Binalshibh, Atta did not meet with anyone in Prague; he simply believed it would contribute to operational security to fly out of Prague rather than Hamburg, the departure point for much of his previous international travel.

Footnote 46 from Chapter 7 of the 9/11 Report:

As they looked at flight schools on the East Coast, Atta and Shehhi stayed in a series of short-term rentals in New York City.

From the LA Times in March 2003:

Separately, Ashcroft announced the unsealing of charges in Brooklyn, N.Y., federal court against two Yemeni citizens, Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed. Ashcroft said the men stand accused of conspiring to provide material support to the Al Qaeda and Hamas terrorist groups through a worldwide fund-raising operation that netted Osama bin Laden $20 million.

According to Ashcroft, a portion of the funds came from the Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, a onetime gathering place for Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the blind sheik, and other men, all of whom were convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The men were arrested Jan. 10 in Frankfurt, Germany; the U.S. is seeking their extradition. A Justice Department spokesman said announcement of the arrests was delayed for "operational reasons."

From the New York Post in 2005:

A sheik who boasted he was Osama bin Laden's spiritual adviser was convicted yesterday of scheming to financing terrorism, in a case that nearly went up in smoke when a key witness set himself on fire outside the White House.

Yemeni cleric Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, 56, faces up to 75 years behind bars after a Brooklyn federal jury found him guilty of five charges stemming from a conspiracy to support al Qaeda and Hamas....

The two men were arrested in January 2003 after three days of meetings with a pair of FBI informants in which they discussed funneling $2.5 million to al Qaeda and Hamas.

These sessions were secretly taped in a German hotel that had been wired for video and sound as part of a sting operation.

Posted by Mike at 11:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Great site with Able Danger video clips

The Intelligence Summit describes itself as a "Non-Partisan Non-Profit Educational Forum" and it has an extensive archive of video clips related to Able Danger from different news programs, Fox in particular. Check it out.

This video clip of Jim Woolsey on Fox News makes my questioning of his motives look paranoid. In the August 21, 2005 interview, he was supporting the credibility of the Able Danger team witnesses who stepped forward, not detracting from it at all. If Mac's Mind is right though, and the VP wants the story to go away, 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.

Posted by Mike at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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 11:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Is Bush losing supporters over Able Danger?

It sounds like he just lost Mark Tapscott, Director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation:

For a life-long conservative Republican and Bush voter in 2000 and 2004 like yours truly, that last question is especially galling. It was bad enough early in Bush’s first term when he signed an executive order keeping the truth about Bill Clinton’s midnight pardon spree behind closed doors. I swallowed hard and accepted the White House’s executive privilege claim on that one.

But the Able Danger hearing capped a long series of troubling decisions that tortured credulity such as Bush increasing federal spending twice as fast as Clinton, expanding entitlements at a pace only Lyndon Johnson could match, signing a campaign finance law that limits political speech and refusing to veto even the most outrageous examples of congressional pork barreling.

The last straw came the day before William Dugan, an assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said to the Senate panel “I don’t know” when asked if Able Danger had identified Atta. That’s when the Pentagon barred testimony by the five officials who have said they worked on the program and recall seeing the terrorist’s name on a chart during the Clinton administration.

Either the powers-that-be think most people are too stupid to figure out that a whitewash is in process or they assume most people aren’t paying attention and there is little to fear from the Senate. They will be proven right if Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate panel, doesn’t quickly start issuing subpoenas to get to the bottom of this scandal.

Here's another one:

I haven't written about Able Danger lately....
....It's not because there's nothing going on. It's because the Bush administration is really starting to piss me off with the on-again off-again responses of the Pentagon and the clear attempt to do damage control. I want the truth. That's all I've ever wanted. And they aren't cooperating. What the heck is wrong with these people?

Not unlike Iraq, this is fast becoming a lose-lose situation for Bush.

Posted by Mike at 12:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 23, 2005

"Yes you did, no I didn't, yes you did, no I didn't"

Simply unbelievable:

Specter: Pentagon drops hearing objection

A Senate committee said Friday that the Pentagon has dropped its refusal to let five people with knowledge of a highly classified intelligence program testify about it publicly, but a Pentagon spokesman said it remained opposed to such testimony in an open hearing.

In a news release, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the five will testify at an open hearing Oct. 5.

Asked about Specter's announcement, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "Our position with respect to this has not changed. Our concerns have not changed." He said the Pentagon has not agreed to permit the five to testify in public, although discussions with the committee were continuing.

Whitman said the Pentagon has provided a great deal of information about the intelligence program, called "Able Danger," to the Intelligence and Armed Services committees, and will continue to do so.

Specter spokesman William Reynolds said in response to Whitman's remarks that the Pentagon had given its assent Friday to the witnesses appearing. The agreed arrangement did not explicitly state whether the hearing would be open or closed, Reynolds said, but the committee plans to follow it usual practice of hearing testimony in public.

Talk about a standoff. It sounds like Specter has never had closed hearings and doesn't intend to have any, so what happens October 5th?

Posted by Mike at 11:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Does the Pentagon have any credibility left?

First they had never heard of it, then they could not find any documentation to support it, next they held a press conference on it, before saying it was too classified to discuss in a public forum, now it is once again, apparently fair game:

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department on Friday reversed its earlier decision to bar key witnesses from testifying about just how much information the U.S. government had on the Sept. 11 hijackers before they led the attacks that killed 3,000 people.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has therefore scheduled a second hearing for next week on the formerly secret Pentagon intelligence unit called "Able Danger".

Former members of Able Danger say the group identified Sept. 11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, more than a year before the attacks. Although those Able Danger analysts say they told the Sept. 11 commission about their findings, former members of the panel have so far dismissed the claim.

The Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement Friday that the Pentagon now will allow five witnesses to testify. Among those are Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and defense contractor John Smith.

Shaffer said in written testimony last week that the Pentagon blocked him from offering information on Able Danger and its identification of Atta — the lead hijacker.

Posted by Mike at 04:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Why Lambert didn't share the data with the FBI

Sorry for another short post without sources. I will get caught up tonight after I get some more work done at my real job. Think about it, though. In April, May 2000 depending who you ask, LIWA got into major trouble simply for HAVING information on US citizens in those databases it was using to mine for terrorists worldwide, despite the fact it was open source public information anyone could buy. "Armed federal agents" apparently seized everything they could find that JD Smith and others had been working on, out of fear that it related to US persons. Who would send armed federal agents? The FBI. All the databases at LIWA were deleted in July 2000 as Kleinsmith testified, which infuriated Lambert at SOCOM headquarters.

SOCOM rebuilt the Able Danger capability with Raytheon in Garland, Texas. The same capability federal agents from the FBI had been sent in to shut down. So in September, when they had information on someone inside the US they had identified with the same technology, why would they not want to share that information with the FBI? Not because of the Gorelick wall. Because Lambert was afraid the FBI would ask "where did you get this?" and send in the freaking armed federal agents to seize all the data! Then they would be right back at square one.

Based on Kleinsmith's written testimony, it sounds like the Cole bombing changed all of that and LIWA started supporting both CENTCOM and SOCOM again, until April of 2001 that is, when Kleinsmith left. According to Shaffer, all support - for SOCOM at least - ended by May. Which brings us back to the question: Why was it axed in May 2001? I think the hearings are in the Judiciary Committee because the question of why it was shut down is outside their jurisdiction.

Posted by Mike at 02:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

More evidence the 9/11 Commission is spinning

Compare this quote from the 9/11 Commission:

Brian Sheridan—the outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in DOD—never briefed Rumsfeld. Lower-level SOLIC officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues and was not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda. Undersecretary Feith told the Commission that when he arrived at the Pentagon in July 2001, Rumsfeld asked him to focus his attention on working with the Russians on agreements to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty and preparing a new nuclear arms control pact. Traditionally, the primary DOD official responsible for counterterrorism policy had been the assistant secretary of defense for SOLIC. The outgoing assistant secretary left on January 20, 2001, and had not been replaced when the Pentagon was hit on September 11.

With these quotes from the LA Times:

Voices in the Wilderness Are Turning Into a Chorus

by Daniel Benjamin
The Los Angeles Times
March 30, 2004

...Brian Sheridan, President Clinton's outgoing assistant secretary of Defense for special operations and low intensity conflict, was astonished when his offers during the transition to bring the new Pentagon leadership up to speed on terrorism were brushed aside. "I offered to brief anyone, any time on any topic. Never took it up."

Even if one dismisses Sheridan's remarks as those of a political appointee, the same cannot be done for Don Kerrick. A three-star general, Kerrick had served at the end of the Clinton administration as deputy national security advisor, and he spent the final four months of his military career in the Bush White House. He sent a memo to the NSC's new leadership on "things you need to pay attention to." He wrote about Al Qaeda: "We are going to be struck again."

But he never heard back. "I don't think it was above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen," he said.

The most damaging remarks came from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001. Shelton told us that in the Bush administration terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner." He also recounted how the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frustrated at the lack of progress in dealing with Al Qaeda, had begun a disinformation program in the last year of the Clinton administration to create dissent within the Taliban. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz shut it down. Counterterrorism, the new leadership felt, was not a military mission.

Shelton added, "The squeaky wheel was Dick Clarke, but he wasn't at the top of their priority list, so the lights went out for a few months." Shelton summed up Rumsfeld's attitude as being "this terrorism thing was out there, but it didn't happen today, so maybe it belonged lower on the list."

Notice how the 9/11 Commission made it sound like Sheridan neglected to do his duty and brief Rumsfeld when Rumsfeld actually blew him off.

Then take this from Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, p.228:

Colin Powell took the unusual step during the transition of asking to meet with the CSG, the senior counterterrorism officers from NSC, State, Defense, CIA, FBI, and the military. He wanted to see us interact, respond to each other's statements. When we all agreed at the importance of the Al Qaeda threat, Powell was obviously surprised at the unanimity.

Brian Sheridan, the soon departing Assistant Secretary of Defense, summed it up: "General Powell, I will be leaving when the administration changes. I am the only political appointee in the room. All these guys are career professionals. So let me give you one piece of advice, untainted by any personal interest. Keep this interagency team together and make al Qaeda your number one priority. We may all squabble about tactics and we may call each other assholes from time to time, but this is the best interagency team I've ever seen and they all want to get al Qaeda. They're comin' after us and we gotta get them first."

...Rice decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism would also be downgraded. No longer would the Coordinator be a member of the Principals Committee. No longer would the CSG report to the Principals, but instead to a committee of Deputy Secretaries.

Still think the 9/11 Commission is being "fair and balanced" on this?
They interviewed all the same generals. Why don't they quote them?

Posted by Mike at 09:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 22, 2005

9/11 Commission asked generals about Able Danger

The latest character assassination attempt by the 9/11 Hit Commission - with an entire section entitled "Memories are Faulty" - unwittingly reveals some important new details:

In the Department of Defense, the 9/11 Commission interviewed General Schoomaker, who was Commander of the Special Operations Command at the time Able Danger was created. The Commission interviewed General Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Scott Fry and General Gregory Newbold, successive directors of operations for the Joint Staff. The Commission interviewed Brian Sheridan, the Assistant Secretary for Special Operatoins and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) during the period Able Danger was in existence; as well as several other senior and mid-level managers in SOLIC. Despite direct questions for any information relevant to the 9/11 attacks, they mentioned nothing about a chart. They mentioned nothing about identifying Mohamed Atta, even in response to questions about the Able Danger program.

In other words, while they never asked these military officers if Able Danger had identified Mohamed Atta or presumably any of the other hijackers, they did ask them specifically about Able Danger. Which begs the question: What did the 9/11 Commission ask all these people about Able Danger and what was their response?

Maybe this staff statement is a hint?

Though plans were not executed, the military continued to assess and update target lists regularly in case the military was asked to strike. Plans largely centered on cruise missile and manned aircraft strike options, and were updated and refined continuously through March 2001....

In late 1999, the military engaged in substantial preparations in anticipation of possible terrorist attacks around the Millennium. The Joint Chiefs of Staff developed a plan to react as rapidly as possible to an al Qaeda strike anywhere in the world. The Pentagon
was also prepared to provide assistance within the United States to other federal agencies in response to an act or threatened act of terrorism.

In the summer of 2000, the Joint Chiefs of Staff refined its list of strikes and special operations possibilities to a set of thirteen options within the Operation Infinite Resolve plan. Planning by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CENTCOM also focused primarily on the
development of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for the purposes of intelligence collection and targeting of Bin Ladin and al Qaeda leaders....

The new team at the Pentagon did not push for a response for the Cole, according to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy. Wolfowitz told us that by the time the new administration was in place, the Cole incident was “stale.” The 1998 cruise missiles strikes showed UBL and al Qaeda that they had nothing to fear from a U.S. response, Wolfowitz said. For his part, Rumsfeld also thought too much time had passed. He worked on the force protection recommendations developed in the aftermath of the U.S.S. Cole attack, not response options....

On February 8, General Shelton briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on the Operation Infinite Resolve plan, including the range of options and CENTCOM’s new phased campaign plan. These plans were periodically
updated during the ensuing months. Brian Sheridan—the outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in DOD—never briefed Rumsfeld. Lower-level SOLIC officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues and was not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda. Undersecretary Feith told the Commission that when he arrived at the Pentagon in July 2001, Rumsfeld asked him to focus his attention on working with the Russians on agreements to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and preparing a new nuclear arms control pact. Traditionally, the primary DOD official responsible for counterterrorism policy had been the assistant secretary of defense for SOLIC. The outgoing assistant secretary left on January 20, 2001, and had not been replaced when the Pentagon was hit on September 11....

General Pete Schoomaker, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army and former Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, said that if the Special Operations Command had been a supported command before 9/11, he would have had the al Qaeda mission rather than deferring to CENTCOM’s lead. Schoomaker said he spoke to Secretary Cohen and General Shelton about this proposal. It was not adopted.

Posted by Mike at 12:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Interesting report from SOCOM's hometown

Tampa is also home to CENTCOM. From the Tampa Tribune earlier today:

According to the draft version of a report prepared for the Pentagon's top intelligence official, federal oversight regulations ``were frequently cited'' by military organizations across thecountry ``as limiting factors to robust open-source collection.''

Public information includes items as generic as newspapers and professional journals and more sensitive documents such as legal filings, driver's license applications and property records.

In particular, the regulations have been a barrier for U.S. Northern Command, which has its headquarters in Colorado and is responsible for guarding U.S. borders, the report states.

The concerns, however, appear to be unfounded, according to the report.

Written by the Defense Open Source Council, the study says a review of current regulations and policy found no ``restrictions on collection and exploitation of publicly availableinformation.''

The Defense Open Source Council was established by Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence since March 2003.

The council is made up of representatives from Cambone's office, the four military services, and the defense agencies that gather and analyze secrets stolen overseas.

The May 24 draft report is labeled ``for official use only.'' The Tampa Tribune obtained excerpts of the study....

Using open-source information as an intelligence tool is not new.

Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command, both at MacDill Air Force Base, are significant consumers of public information.

Within SoCom, the open-source effort is known as ``the Pit,'' a reference to a large electronic repository where information from public and private databases is gathered and sorted by computers.

Yet the practice of tapping open sources remains largely unregulated, a point underscored by the Defense Open Source Council....

Wait for it:

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.

Posted by Mike at 01:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 21, 2005

Cheney ordered Able Danger witnesses gagged

My ears definitely perked up today when I heard Weldon say this:

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.

Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

Then I read this from Mac at Macsmind:

Early today I watched the 'Spector House' Able Danger hearings on CSPAN.

I watched closely, because at 8am, my cell was buzzing, a call from a friend. I had asked him to get some clarification on Shaffer's story that Rummy told 'em not to testify. The word I got from him was that contrary to popular knowledge, Rummy didn't pull the plug on the witnesses, it came from "Cobweb", which is just a little - OK, a lot higher up the chain.

Here's what I know. Spector is being "allowed" this little foray basically to keep Weldon quiet. Like I said before, "Give him his hearing and maybe he'll go away". There are people - active - who want this to go away and how the power to make it go away.

I know that everyone is clamering for more and indeed you have some of the families of 9/11 victims and others demanding answers. But unless the WH walls come crumbling down, it isn't going to happen. The MSM isn't picking up on the story (a little CIA/MSM/CYA going on IMHO), thus the majority of the public isn't catching on - thus no interest outside of bloggers and the principles.

So my take is that we'll have more 'revelations', 'hearings, etc, but that's about it. Weldon's book will sell a lot of copies.

The fact is that - and catch my drift - there are people that feel that keeping the truth at bay is better at this time than to "let it all hang out."

A sham, yeah. Incredible, yeah that too. But it won't be the first time and it's likely not to be the last.

"Cobweb" is Cheney. If you don't believe me, ask the London Times:

These top-secret code names have been used at various times by the SS:

Acrobat/Andy: Andrews Air Force Base
Angel/Cowpuncher: Air Force One
Bamboo: Presidential motorcade
Baseball: Secret Service Training Division
Birds-eye: Department of State
Bookstore: White House Communications Center
Cactus: Camp David
Cement Mixer: White House Situation Room
Cobweb: Vice President's office
Magic: Helicopter co-ordination command post
Pacemaker: Vice President's staff
Playground: Pentagon helicopter pad
Pork Chop: Old Senate Office Building
Roadhouse: Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York City
Wheels Down: Air Force One has landed

That would explain how they gagged the FBI witness, too.

Posted by Mike at 11:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Presidential Daily Brief or Able Danger?

A very interesting point, from The Corner of all places:

Remember the vaunted 9/11 Commission hearings? We were told that it was so urgently important that the public understand accurately the history of government counter-terrorism activities prior to the attacks that all manner of classified information was declassified – including, famously, a presidential daily brief from the intelligence community (among the most sensitive documents generated by the government) outlining the al Qaeda threat circa August 2001. Indeed, under great political and media pressure, the president’s then-National Security Adviser Condi Rice was compelled to give hours of sworn public testimony about everything she and the administration did from January 2001 through 9/11.

Why is it that this was important enough for the National Security Adviser but somehow not important enough for a group of intelligence operatives in connection with a program that hasn’t existed anymore for years?

Posted by Mike at 06:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 20, 2005

Pentagon blocks Able Danger testimony

First they had never heard of it, then it was merely a planning program that "ran it's course" in January 2001, now it is so vital to national security it can not be discussing in Congressional hearings.

I'm speechless. The Abu Ghraib photos I can almost understand. But this? Who gave them the power to decide what the American people get to know about the only military program that could have stopped 9/11?

From the New York Times:

The Pentagon said today that it had blocked a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks.

The announcement came a day before the officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement that open testimony about the program "would not be appropriate - we have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum." He offered no other detail on the Pentagon's reasoning in blocking the testimony....

Mr. Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, said that in place of members of the Able Danger team, a senior defense official would be sent to the Wednesday hearing to discuss "what the law and policies are on domestic surveillance and to provide some insights about information-sharing between agencies."

Posted by Mike at 09:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Able Danger hearing will air on C-SPAN3

Since both the House and Senate are in session tomorrow, the Able Danger hearing will be relegated to C-SPAN3. I know I don't get C-SPAN3, but I'm fairly sure you can watch it online at c-span.org, too.

C-SPAN3 Schedule:

09:30 AM EDT
3:00 (est.) LIVE
Senate Committee
Able Danger and Intelligence Sharing
Judiciary
Arlen Specter, R-PA

Posted by Mike at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tentative Able Danger witness list released

Are Phillpott and Shaffer only letting their lawyer speak for them or will they be on one of these panels after all? If they are really planning a one-person panel for Weldon, that seems a little bit odd.

Anyway, the Judiciary Committee has released the Tentative Witness List:

PANEL I

The Honorable Curt Weldon
United States Representative [R-PA, 7th District]

PANEL II

Mark Zaid, Esq.
Attorney at Law
Washington, DC

Erik Kleinsmith
former Army Major and
Chief of Intelligence of the Land Infomration Warfare Analysis LIWA
Project Manager for Intelligence Analytical Training
Lockheed Martin
Newington, VA

PANEL III

Gary Bald
Executive Assistant Director
Counter Terrorism/Counter Intelligence
Federal Bureau of Investigation
United States Department of Justice
Washington, DC

William Dugan
Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight
United States Department of Defense
Washington, DC

Posted by Mike at 04:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

9/11 families allege Pentagon cover-up

From the Staten Island Advance:

Sept. 11 family members are protesting a reported Pentagon attempt to close this week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a claim that military intelligence had lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in its sights as early as 1999.

"They want to sweep it under the rug," said Joan Molinaro, a former Eltingville resident, whose firefighter son was killed at Ground Zero.

"They have been denying this Atta thing up, down and sideways for weeks," she said. "And now they want to cover it up."

Bruce DeCell of Dongan Hills, who lost a son-in-law and cousin at the World Trade Center, said he has wearied of attempts by government officials to suppress 9/11-related information. "They always plead national security," he said. "But 9/11 was about national security and 3,000 people died because they let it happen."

"It would be a travesty to keep the facts surrounding this operation from the public," said Kristen Breitweiser of New Jersey, who lost her husband at Ground Zero.

According to Fox News:

The Pentagon is pressuring the Senate Judiciary Committee to close to the public next week's hearings on a former secret military intelligence unit called "Able Danger," two congressional sources have confirmed to FOX News.

Witnesses from the Pentagon are expected to testify at that hearing; that's why they want it classified. FOX News has learned that committee Chairman Arlen Specter's office is vigorously resisting the request.

Why would the Pentagon want closed hearings?

Let's ask Republican Congressman Weldon:

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

Posted by Mike at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

September 19, 2005

Able Danger details reported in 2003?

Dan Verton, the Vice President and Executive Editor of Homeland Defense Journal and a former senior writer with Computerworld Magazine, is somewhat understandably pissed that he got scooped by Government Security News on the Able Danger story. On his personal web site, he says he actually broke the Able Danger story way back in 2003:

Recent news about the findings of the Able Danger military intelligence unit is not news at all. Your humble correspondent reported on the findings of the unit and the fact that the unit had briefed senior Defense Department officials during the transition phase between the Clinton and Bush administrations more than two years ago.

Well, actually there are a lot of new details about the story. One, the fact that the first four intended pilots had been identified by the SOCOM effort. Two, the fact that the program was shut down four months before 9/11 and apparently never restarted after the attacks. Three, members of the Able Danger team are coming forward to talk. Four, they spoke to the 9/11 Commission staff, repeatedly, but were ignored. Five, the Pentagon still seems to have a lot to hide. Six, the issues of intelligence sharing and collection have still not been resolved. Seven, people are still afraid of retribution for talking.

I don't think Dan really reported anything Weldon had not said in the speeches he made in 2002. I think Dan simply fails to realize that a lot more details have come out now - and a lot of important ones, too.

Anyway, here are some more expects from the piece on Dan's web site:

According to the story Weldon told me during that interview, the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., had approached LIWA in 2000 for information on its commercial data mining capabilities that it had built with the assistance of a former CIA profiler who was employed as a contractor. With LIWA’s help, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) built a scaled-down version of the data mining system. It then produced an entire profile of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Through that profile, SOCOM made detailed recommendations to the Clinton administration in January 2001 — only weeks before the inauguration of President George W. Bush. Those recommendations, according to Weldon, included guidance on which individual al-Qaeda cells to direct military and law enforcement action against to cripple the terror organization.

During our interview, Weldon stated categorically that a detailed briefing had been scheduled with then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton. However, what was at first scheduled to be a three hour briefing was reduced at the last moment to one hour. And, tragically, the recommendations passed on to the leadership at the Defense Department were never acted upon, said Weldon. He also said that he had briefed then Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge on the findings and the urgent need to improve information sharing.

This is basically the same thing Weldon said in his speech at the Heritage Foundation back in 2002, and other speeches at the time. Here is a direct link to the Heritage Foundation video for Real Player.

Anyway, here is an excerpt from the Computerworld Magazine article Dan is citing:

The U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., also tapped into LIWA’s data mining capabilities and with that agency’s help built a small version of the LIWA system. It then produced an entire profile of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Through that profile, the Special Operations Command made detailed recommendations to the Clinton administration in January 2001 about which individual cells to direct action against to cripple the organization. Those recommendations were never acted upon.

“All of that activity could have prevented or helped to prevent 9/11 from ever occurring,” said Weldon, speaking in May in the House of Representatives.

"I briefed our Homeland Security director, Tom Ridge. He agreed with us, but he has not yet been able to achieve this new interagency collaborative center,” Weldon said in May. “And that is an indictment of our government that the American people deserve to be outraged over."

Dan wonders why this is only coming up now. I think the 9/11 Commission and the Pentagon share the blame, but the truth is that befor - no one even imagined that 9/11 could have been prevented.

If the facts don't fit the frame, the facts bounce off.

Posted by Mike at 03:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Testimony of Kie Fallis from 2002

This seems especially relevant in light of need for the DIA to "reconstitute the Able Danger capability" which it apparently never reconstituted after 9/11. (The new project is Able Providence).

This part in particular sounds a lot like the "Able Danger" tool set:

FALLIS: In my case, Senator, what I did is, I began to notice there was a voluminous amount of information, as others have testified, regarding Al Qaida. Most of it appeared to be unrelated to other pieces of information. It appeared to be almost chat. By using a piece of software that I was able to put these small snippets of information into, and graphically represent them as well, I was able to, over a course of many months, to determine certain linkages between these items -- linkages that would never be apparent without the use of this tool. It would be lost in the weeds. And there were a lot of weeds to look through.

Statement of Kie Fallis to the Joint Intelligence Committee on October 8, 2002 during the investigation into 9/11:

FALLIS: Thank you, Senator Roberts.

Mr. Chairman, members of these committees, I'd like to tell that it's a great honor for me to come before you today to have a discussion about the subject at hand. And I would also like to say that it's a great honor for me to be a part of this group of distinguished Americans at the table here, as well.

That said, my comments today will be strictly from the perspective of a former terrorism analysts, employed at the Central Intelligence Agency. What I'd like to do is to briefly summarize my written statement. And I want to move, sort of immediately, to this part on terrorism analytical issues complicating improved future performance.

The single most important issue that will affect future performance is the experience out of the analysts. While this certainly applies to all intelligence analysts regardless of subject area, it is even more critical for those trying to prevent the next terrorist attack. In the case of an analyst responsible for tracking a Middle Eastern terrorist group, this person will need to be -- will need to have an expertise or at least a good working knowledge of terrorism itself, the group that they have for an account, regional and country issues present in the group's operating area, which can be quite extensive, and Islamic history, culture and the sex there of.

This sort of required level of expertise is rarely going to be found outside the intelligence community and is instead going to be recruited from academia and then developed in-house through training programs and mentors.

Coupled with this issue of experience comes the ability to place current intelligence reporting in the context of historical perspectives. In the period leading up to the 1998 East Africa bombings, and the 2000 attack against USS Cole in Yemen, terrorism analysts, nearly across the board, incorrectly assessed that a group would not conduct an attack in an area where it was able to operate with relative ease. Additionally, there appears to be a continued reluctance to correctly assess and evaluate the nature of cooperation between many Sunni and Shiite Islamic extremist groups. Both of these examples, and there are certainly others, occurred despite over a decade of credible reporting to the contrary.

The other significant issue complicating future analytical performance against terrorists is the tendency of the FBI to compartment all pre and post-attack investigative information. I realize this committee has spent a great deal of its time looking at the many legal and other aspects of this problem, and I am not qualified to comment on those findings. However, as a former terrorism analyst and liaison officer to the FBI, I can tell you that having this information is critically important to being able to predict a future event.

If the communities' analysts are left in the dark about how a group puts an attack together, and each group does tend to do things a little differently, how will those analysts be able to pick up on future indicators of a future attack? Quite frankly, it's nearly impossible.

The investigative -- as an example, the investigative results of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing were not disseminated until almost two years after the event, and then only to a few select analysts and agencies.

Another issue would have be what have occurred right prior to the 1998 East Africa bombings, and that's -- U.S. agencies had conducted a vigorous investigation to include a physical search of the Al Qaida cell leader in Nairobi almost a year prior to this bombing. Almost all of the results of this effort weren't shared with the terrorism analytical community due to concerns -- legitimate concerns about the criminal case. Most of the information was never properly exploited. And after the embassy bombings, the post-attack investigative results were not shared.

Now as a result, by failing to share the information, bin Laden analysts were unable to build a correct modus operandi for Al Qaida attacks. And like the Khobar Towers example, they were unable to attach the proper level of importance to those culpable individuals still at large. This directly contributed to most analysts having only a moderate level of interest in the January 2000 Malaysia meeting of Al Qaida operatives, when in fact the same node that has organized the meeting in Malaysia was in fact responsible for a great deal of the planning for the East Africa bombings.

Moving on to my conclusions, the collection of additional information, further reorganizations and the hiring of additional analysts is unlikely to significantly effect any of these issues. The central hub in our nation's past, present and future failure or successes in the counterterrorism arena will rest squarely on the shoulders of the working level, all-source analysts in both the law enforcement and intelligence community.

These men and women are the hard-working patriots who will have to try and find that single piece of hay in a stack of needles, and then try to tie it to another disparate piece of information in a timely manner. This will never be an easy job for them to accomplish, but the leadership of America's intelligence and law enforcement communities must provide them with the training, tools and information to accomplish the mission.

The information they need to successfully predict and prevent the next terror attack is probably already contained in one or more databases inside the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community. The only question is whether experienced, working level analysts will be given access to that information and will properly integrate that material into an accurate advisory warning.

Thank you and that will conclude my remarks.

You can read the transcript of the question and answer portion below.

ROBERTS: Let me just follow up with a question if I might. How did the use of the analytical software tools and the databases that you put together, that gave you insight, in regards to the draft that you tried to prepare improve your ability to produce the intelligence assessments on various terrorist groups? And how do we get that information to the analysts as you have just described?

FALLIS: In my case, Senator, what I did is, I began to notice there was a voluminous amount of information, as others have testified, regarding Al Qaida. Most of it appeared to be unrelated to other pieces of information. It appeared to be almost chat. By using a piece of software that I was able to put these small snippets of information into, and graphically represent them as well, I was able to, over a course of many months, to determine certain linkages between these items -- linkages that would never be apparent without the use of this tool. It would be lost in the weeds. And there were a lot of weeds to look through.

FALLIS: The reason it makes it easier by using this, and it makes it much easier to collaborate with other analysts in the intelligence community, in the FBI, CIA and others, to bring your findings, share their findings, and then work together towards a common goal of preventing the next attack.

ROBERTS: We've heard from Mrs. Hill -- or pardon me, Ms. Hill in another hearing so if we often do not anticipate these attacks, how can we do better?

FALLIS: By making better use of the information that we've already collected, quite frankly. There's a -- we have literally a treasure trove of intelligence information spanning back decades. And the proper examination of that information, the proper databasing and building of relationships among -- with that information, I think, will give us the results, not all the way to the extent that we might want them, but it will take us a lot further than we are now.

ROBERTS: We've heard that in order to get the warnings out the right people, that it would represent a flood to the policy makers and others with what we call constant vague warnings or warning fatigue. How can we ensure that that doesn't happen?

FALLIS: That's a very difficult thing to accomplish, because too few warnings and the information's not going to get across, too many and you induce warning fatigue. I think the answer lies in the analytical efforts against terrorist groups to be conducted more efficiently and effective, to gather the details, mined from the data that are there, put them together into a collaborative assessment, and then produce better and more correct and more thorough warning products, perhaps fewer, but more pressing and more accurate.

ROBERTS: Senator Rudman called for bringing in outside experts on a more regular and systematic basis. And our inquiry has heard from others that some in the intelligence committee, at times, lack the expertise. Can these experts be found? And can they be brought in to improve analysis?

FALLIS: Oh absolutely, and that was done routinely. And frequently individuals in the counterterrorism center, the leadership there, would attempt bring in academic experts and others. And I would say that they contributed a lot to the effort of the communities' analysts.

ROBERTS: I want to ask you a question, and it appears to be, you know, perhaps too basic, but -- how do you do your job? It's a lot like when my daughter asks me, when she knew I was a Senator, and she said, "Well, daddy, what do you really do, you know, when you go to work?" I want to know how you do your job. Can you describe the type of information you use and how you put it together and what happens to it then? Just give us an idea from a typical, although you're an atypical analyst from your background and your work. And I thought it was pretty assent, but I understand now that it is prescient. But at any rate, to that ability that you have -- what do you do when you get up in the morning and you go in and you're an analyst?

FALLIS: The first thing I would generally, Senator, would be to look through all of the national products that would be available to me in message queue, in a computer terminal that would be sitting on my desk, to sort of set the ground for what had been happening in the previous 24 hours.

From that point, I would move to a message traffic handling system where I had built a profile of certain key words that would hit on certain messages being brought in. You then sometimes have up to 200 messages a day to read through. From those, I would try to pick out the most compelling information, the most accurate, the best- sourced to begin populating my database with.

Then throughout the day you'd be talking to your counterparts at the CTC and/or the FBI. And putting together assessments or other products as directed. It could be exciting, and at times it could be mind-numbing.

ROBERTS: Is this what we call rocket science? Is this really hard work? You know, we hear about the analyst who has to have all this expertise and background, et cetera. You have that. You're fluent in Farsi. You're a student of that part of the world. In terms of recruiting and training, how tough is this?

FALLIS: The act of producing -- of doing analysis and producing assessments is not -- it's certainly not rocket science and it certainly isn't pushing any intellectual boundaries. It does require time to build the experience to become what we would call a working- level or a journeyman-level analyst. There's nothing special about it. As I related to both committees, I certainly did nothing special in the period leading up to the attack on the USS Cole. I think all I did was consistently read all of the traffic I could. And then instead of just moving onto something else, taking the traffic and trying to exploit every piece of information in it to see where that would take me.

ROBERTS: Bottom line, do you have a recommendation in regards to -- in behalf of all your analyst colleagues out there who are doing the hard-working work, as opposed to all of the very important and necessary officials that we normally have here who testify?

FALLIS: I would say that we need -- we need two things increased -- two areas of concern that are going to have to be addressed, and that is the ability of analysts across the community to collaborate on their efforts, and in doing this collaboration, to have the most possible information available to them.

Obviously, we have to be concerned about whether people are properly cleared. They have to be in order to receive certain information, read into certain programs, but by reaching that sort of apex of good, experienced, hard-working analysts with the tools they need to do the job, I think that we will -- we will have a lot of the information to predict their next act of terrorism.

And more importantly, even now, looking back at the information that we had, many people will say, "Well, that was too vague. That wasn't quite enough. That didn't point to this." And that's absolutely true, but if it had been put together, and if the gaps had been properly tasked out to collectors to follow up on and to exploit, there's no telling where that could have led to.

Posted by Mike at 02:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)

September 17, 2005

Transcript of Weldon press conference

Weldon may have his flaws, but you've got to give him credit for being the only one willing to stick his neck out on this:

And for them to just try to brush this aside and hope it goes away -- the same problem that you identified I was told by Fox News that the press guy over at the Pentagon actually went in the room and told Fox News and the New York Times, "When you going to let this story go?"

This is the largest disaster in the history of the country. I mean, it would be like saying we don't want to know the details of Pearl Harbor. Three thousand innocent people were killed; the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, want the answers; why are we not getting straight talk? Why is there a constant effort to spin?

Why would you say, as Larry Di Rita said from the Pentagon after referring to Tony Shaffer and Scott Philpott's (ph) recollections, "Well, you know, memories sometimes play games on people."

Well, how about now that they've acknowledged five people recalling seeing Mohammed Atta's photograph and the linkage to the Brooklyn cell?

Here's the rest of Weldon's press conference from September 15th:

WELDON: Good afternoon.

I'm Curt Weldon, and I'm here to provide a response to the 9/11 Commission in their statements this week about Able Danger and the outrageous statement made by Slade Gorton that it just didn't exist.

And it is absolutely outrageous, especially from a commission that I supported, that spent $15 million with 80 staffers to give the American people and the Congress a full and complete understanding of what happened prior to 9/11.

They have maintained there is no information about Able Danger or the data mining work. They couldn't find anything.

So I brought some charts for you. These are all original charts. None of these charts were made after 9/11. These charts were all made before 9/11.

Now, granted, they're not all about Able Danger. They're not all about Mohammed Atta, nor Al Qaida.

They're about drug trafficking. They're about terrorist cells. They're about crime in Russia. They're about crime in Serbia. They're about the World Trade Center bombing in '93.

So this information is a compilation of work being done by the Army's LIWA Center, as well as some of the work being done by Able Danger on Mohammed Atta and Al Qaida.

It's absolutely unbelievable to me that a commission would come out and say that this program just didn't exist.

The Pentagon has acknowledged now, publicly, that they have identified five defense employees who either vividly remember identifying Mohammed Atta prior to 9/11 or seeing his name linked with a Brooklyn cell prior to 9/11.

We have Scott Philpott (ph), a Navy commanding officer, who's commanded one of our naval warships, an Annapolis graduate, who has come out publicly and risked his entire career to say what he'll say next Wednesday under oath: that he specifically remembers identifying Mohammed Atta in January and February of 2000, specifically; that he would stake his career on it. And that he was the leader of Able Danger.

We have Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer -- who's outside in the hallway, who I couldn't bring into the House Gallery because of House rules, but who's available for you to talk to, outside -- who will testify under oath on Wednesday before the Senate that as a DIA liaison to Special Forces Command for Able Danger, he attempted to present information to the FBI on three occasions in September of 2000 about the Brooklyn cell and Mohammed Atta.

WELDON: We've identified the woman at the FBI who set those three meetings up. She will testify under oath at the Senate hearing next Wednesday that she actually organized three meetings. She knew the topics of the meetings because there had been other discussions that occurred prior to the attempt to set up those three meetings.

And in each of the cases of those three meetings, they were abruptly canceled by Pentagon lawyers hours before those meetings were to take place.

I asked the Pentagon had they talked to that FBI person. They said, "No."

And, by the way, the Pentagon did not conduct an investigation. There were no subpoenas. There were no witnesses under oath. It was an inquiry. There's a big difference between an inquiry and an investigation, as my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee brought up when we had a briefing last week with six or seven members of the committee.

What will be the added dimension to the Senate investigation and hearing that will take place on Wednesday is not just the five people that the Pentagon has confirmed, identified and knew about Mohammed Atta prior to 9/11, but we'll bring out the person who actually did much of the data analysis. Actually, his name, I think, has already been brought out in the public. That's J.D. (ph).

But the person who's not been brought out in the public yet, this individual who will testify that he was actually the one who destroyed 2.5 terabytes of data about Able Danger that included the Brooklyn cell and Mohammed Atta.

Now, I'm not a computer expert. I don't know what 2.5 terabytes of data are. But, John, I read your story. You called the Library of Congress.

And the Library of Congress, if we can believe this great reporter down here who I trust fully, told him that it's basically one-fourth of all the printed material that the Library of Congress has in their collection. Now, that's a lot of material.

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.

So here we have a case where General Lambert at SOCOM was not told that an employee had been ordered to destroy all the material that he was a customer for. And that material related to Able Danger, it related to Al Qaida and it related to Mohammed Atta.

In addition, I urge you to go back and review, on the Heritage Commission Web site, a speech that I gave on May 23rd of 2002. That speech, which is one hour and 20 minutes long with questions, is about stovepipes. In fact, you'll see a chart there that I referred that I can't find.

WELDON: That chart refers to Able Danger.

It refers to the data mining. I'm not definitely sure that specific chart referred to Able Danger. But you can see the chart.

But what is in that speech are the exact details I've been talking about for the last two months. What was also in that speech, which I had forgotten and which I'm now public acknowledging, is that there was a three-hour briefing provided to General Shelton in January of 2001.

And furthermore, what Tony Shaffer will tell you in the hallway outside is that he personally briefed General Shelton on Able Danger, and in a briefing in the first quarter of 2001, and he will name the people that were in the room. He was giving a briefing on another topic, remember the name of that?

STAFF: (OFF-MIKE)

WELDON: Door Hop Galley (ph) which is another classified program.

In the course of that briefing -- and there was a Navy admiral in the room, Admiral Wilson, in charge of DIA, and Richard Schiefren (ph) was in the room. Richard Schiefren (ph) was an attorney at DOD.

In the course of that discussion, Richard Schiefren (ph) discussed Able Danger. I did not know that up until I watched the Heritage Foundation speech that I gave in 2002, where I document the meeting, in the briefing that was done for General Shelton. When I asked Tony Shaffer this morning about that, he said, "Yes, I briefed General Shelton. I was also involved in a Door Hop Galley (ph) brief, where Steve Cambone" -- he was not in the position he's in today. He was a special adviser to Don Rumsfeld.

My concern is if there were 2.5 terabytes of data that were destroyed in the summer of 2000, there had to be material in 2001 if you briefed General Shelton. Where is that material? Where is that briefing?

In addition, there is a question about the possibility of additional data that was in Tony Shaffer's office that was removed, not all of which was turned over to the 9/11 Commission.

As most of you know by now, when Tony Shaffer returned in January of 2004, Tony Shaffer -- or 2003, get my dates right, 2003 -- 2004 -- in January 2004 -- right, because it was in October of 2003 when he first briefed the 9/11 Commission's staff over in Baghram.

In January of 2004 when he was twice rebuffed by the 9/11 Commission for a personal follow-up meeting, he was assigned back to Afghanistan to lead a special classified program.

When he returned in March, he was called in and verbally his security clearance was temporarily lifted. By lifting his security clearance, he could not go back into DIA quarters where all the materials he had about Able Danger were, in fact, stored. He could not get access to memos that, in fact, he will tell you discussed the briefings he provided both to the previous administration and this administration.

For the 9/11 Commission to say that this does not exist is just absolutely outrageous.

It is a total denial of the facts. It's a denial of information the Pentagon has affirmed. And to say that we just don't have data to back it up is not enough.

WELDON: They had 80 staffers and spent $15 million and came up with nothing and didn't mention Able Danger once in their report, and I'm convinced never briefed the 9/11 commissioners.

In one month we provided all these charts, we reconstructed the original Mohammed Atta chart, which I've showed many times, with the linkages -- from the original data, I might add, that people had available.

All of this will come out on Wednesday, but I could not sit by and have Slade Gorton make the statement he made. He has not interviewed personally any of the Able Danger staff. He talked about a disagreement between a Defense Department female employee and Tony Shaffer. I've talked to both of them and he's totally wrong. He didn't speak to either one of them.

Tim Roemer, a good friend of mine, came out and said, "Well, they couldn't have had a photograph of Mohammed Atta because he wasn't in the country before a certain date." That obviously came from staff of the commission.

Well, as we now know, the photograph did not come from an immigration picture or a driver's license. An individual who will testify on Wednesday will say they bought that photograph from a woman in California who was researching the activity at selected mosques. That's where the photograph came from.

It's very troubling to me that people are going out of their way not to want to know the details of what happened here, to distort and spin.

In the time that I have known about this, I have not tried to spin this any way. I have not made any comments as to the intent or the effort by any of the 9/11 commissioners. In fact, I have defended them. I don't think any of them were ever briefed.

I can tell you, to not have this covered by the 9/11 Commission, to not have it mentioned, for them to say, as they did initially, that it was historically insignificant -- 2.5 terabytes of data about Mohammed Atta and Al Qaida, a three-hour briefing for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is historically insignificant? 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.

And so the more information I get, the more questions arise. The American people deserve to have answers.

One of the pilots of one of the airplanes on 9/11, Michael Horrocks, was a neighbor of mine. He went to the same university I went to. He was a dedicated Navy pilot. He was killed. He left behind a wife and two kids.

The chief of all rescue for New York City Fire Department, Ray Downey, was one of my best friends. Ray had taken me through the Trade Center in 1993 when I went up. Ray was the one who convinced me to introduce the language to create the Gilmore commission. The Gilmore commission made three reports before 9/11. Ray Downey was a member of that commission, chaired by former Governor Jim Gilmore.

WELDON: The 3,000 people and the families of those people and their friends and loved ones, the American people and the Congress, when we approved the 9/11 Commission, asked to know all the facts.

How could anyone not only ignore this particular situation before they made the report but then when the report comes out and they're embarrassed and changed their story three times in one week about this particular Defense program, then come out with a statement they made yesterday that it didn't exist?

There's something wrong here, something tragically wrong.

The American people, the families, the country and the Congress need to know the truth, the whole truth, the complete truth. And so far we haven't gotten it.

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.

Somebody's got to connect the dots and answer the questions. If the 9/11 Commission won't do it, then Congress has to do it.

I applaud Senator Specter and his staff for scheduling a hearing on Wednesday where all of these people can testify.

To say that nothing existed in spite of five people, the Pentagon acknowledged, knew about this information, in spite of what documentation we can provide as evidence of some of the work they were doing on a number of different programs -- the commission's attitude has been, "We don't want to go there."

The same response -- the acting staff director of the 9/11 Discourse Project told my chief of staff, when he made a call at my request, when I found out the details of Able Danger in May of this year.

And his response to Russ when he did not remember the first day when Russ called, the second day was, "Yes, you were briefed on Able Danger. Well, why wasn't it included in your report?" "We decided to not go down that route," whatever that means -- "down that route."

I talked to two of the commissioners personally, Tim Roemer and John Lehman. Neither of them had been briefed on Able Danger. To my knowledge, no member of the 9/11 Commission was ever briefed on Able Danger.

The facts are the facts. And it really is very discouraging to me that the 9/11 Commission's response is to do what they allege this administration and others have done: not be candid and forthcoming.

Now, I tried to get to the 9/11 Commission. I contacted the commission through staff.

WELDON: I offered to go in and give them a briefing while they were doing their investigation. They could have seen the Heritage tape that's on the Heritage Commission's Web site of the speech I gave in May of 2002. It's a public document. If they would have talked to me, I would have given them that link. I would have given them every piece of information that I had to reconstruct what I've reconstructed.

Do we have the actual date when I presented this document? Was it April?

STAFF: I think it was April -- one of the two hearings in the Hart Building.

WELDON: In the Hart Building, when the 9/11 Commission brought in George Tenet, and I was watching the hearings from my home, I couldn't believe the questioning. So I drafted this document and had my staff director hand deliver it to the 9/11 Commission. They never asked a question. This is the actual document.

The next week, they sent a staffer over to pick up some additional materials about the NOA (ph), about the concept, and about information I had briefed them on. They never followed up and invited me to come in and meet with them. So they can't say that I didn't try.

I had one phone conversation with Tom Kean, and it took me a long while to get him. That lasted about five minutes. He was in a big rush.

And I tried to explain to him in that five-minute time period all of the parameters of this information, so they could do what the Congress asked them to do. He assured me that 9/11 commission staff would follow up and they never did.

So we had Scott Philpott (ph) voluntarily go to the commission, Tony Shaffer voluntarily go to the commission. I went to the commission. And they choose to ignore the information. They choose to categorize it as historically insignificant, which the Pentagon will not do. They won't characterize it as that.

A three-hour briefing for General Hugh Shelton, a briefing on Door Hop Galley (ph) that included Richard Schiefren (ph) and Admiral Wilson and Steve Cambone, where Able Danger was discussed, and no one wants to get to the bottom of what really happened.

The 9/11 Commission has lost my confidence.

I voted for the commission. I supported the commission. I talked about the commission. I have given speeches around the country supporting the commission's recommendations.

WELDON: I was so frustrated when I could not get a face-to-face meeting with the commission staff or commissioners, that the day that Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean briefed Congress, that was right before the 9/11 commission's report was to be released, in the Cannon Caucus Room they invited members over. I got there first. I was the first member to raise my hand to ask the first question.

And I stood up and I said to the two of them, "I support your work. I support your recommendations. Many of your recommendations are recommendations previously made by the Gilmore commission. But I am extremely upset that you would not meet with members of Congress who were involved with these issues."

Lee Hamilton's response to me, in front of my colleagues in Congress, was, "Well, Curt, we couldn't meet with everyone."

So I tried.

And so I felt, after seeing what I thought was a ridiculous press conference yesterday and knowing what's going to come up on Wednesday at the Senate hearing -- unless somebody is gagged between now and Wednesday, because I have talked to all the witnesses -- there are some serious questions that need to be answered.

Who -- and why -- ordered 2.5 terabytes of data referring to Able Danger, Al Qaida, and including Mohammed Atta, in the summer of 2000? And why did they not seek the approval of General Lambert before his data was destroyed, especially given the fact that Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, had declared Al Qaida an international terrorist organization? How could you destroy that volume of material about one of the top terrorist cells in the world?

I don't buy the idea that there was information about American persons -- or I guess, if you include Mohammed Atta in there, he would be considered an American person. I don't buy that as an excuse to justify destroying that kind of data.

Number two, who ordered -- either within the Pentagon legal staff or higher up -- the blockage of meetings on three separate occasions in September of 2000 where Able Danger material was going to be briefed to the FBI?

WELDON: And again, we have that person who set those meetings up who will testify on Wednesday. Who stopped those meetings and why did they stop them?

Number three, what was in the three-hour briefing that was prepared for General High Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in January of '01, and where is that brief, since it would still have existed, even though the bulk of the data had been destroyed in the summer of '00?

What materials did Richard Schiefren (ph) discuss in a briefing that was held with Colonel Shaffer, Steve Cambone and Admiral Wilson in the Door Hop Galley (ph) briefing in the winter of '01? What was the Able Danger material discussed in that meeting?

And finally, and most importantly, why did the 9/11 Commission, charged with the responsibility by the Congress with my support, choose to totally ignore the work of Able Danger? And why did they not pursue the people that I've pursued over the last 35, 40 days that would have provided them the same information that I've provided?

We, today, do not have a clear picture of what happened before 9/11 because this vacuum exists. I'm offering no conspiracy theories. I'm not making any allegations.

As a member of Congress, as the vice chair of two security and intelligence committees -- Armed Services and Homeland Security -- all I want are answers for the American people.

I'll be happy to make the document available of the questions that I've presented to a 9/11 commissioner and carried by my chief of staff in one of their hearings in '04.

QUESTION: What do you think is the whole truth?

WELDON: I think the whole truth is, bureaucrats in Defense intelligence don't want this story to be told. I don't know why.

I don't believe it's a coincidence that Colonel Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient, 23-year career decorated veteran, put in charge of assignments working with SOCOM in the jungles of Afghanistan undercover, doing work that allowed him to brief George Tenet and other senior leaders on a number of occasions -- and you can talk to him outside -- that the work that he was doing relative to Able Danger and Al Qaida, interacting with the Army's information dominance center at Fort Belvoir, was not significant.

I think here are those, perhaps, that are going to be embarrassed by this: embarrassed in the previous administration, and now it looks like embarrassed in this administration.

WELDON: And I can tell you I met with Steve Cambone right after the story broke in the New York Times. And, as you all know, I did a floor speech a month before that. So this wasn't something I did for the media.

The New York Times did not pick up on this story until a trade publication called Defense Security News published it. And then the New York Times picked it up. That was a month after I gave the floor speech in late June of this year.

When Steve Cambone came in to meet with me, he said, "Congressman, you know more about this program than I do."

I brought Tony Shaffer in to meet with Steve Cambone, with the understanding his career would not be ruined. In the 19 years I've been in this city, I have seen people's careers ruined. I saw it with Notra Trulock, I saw it with Jay Stewart (ph), I saw it with Dr. Gordon Ehlers, I saw it with Mike Maluf (ph), I saw it with Jack Daly (ph).

I've seen it time and again.

My concern was that these military people, who wanted to simply tell the truth, would not have their careers ruined.

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.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

WELDON: I think my own perception is the 9/11 Commission staff did not want this story to be pursued. As John Lehman and Tim Roemer told me, I don't think this was ever briefed to 9/11 commissioners.

I think, for some reason, there was a staff effort deliberately put forward not to allow this information to be brought forward.

Now, a couple of strange things have happened during this time period, and one thing I've never mentioned publicly.

The first week the story broke in the New York Times, I was in Pennsylvania that Friday doing district work and I got a call at my office. My chief of staff took the call, and it was from a person I'd never met in my entire life. I'd never mentioned her name. She was on vacation and asked my chief of staff for me to call her back.

Her name was Jamie Gorelick.

I said, "What does she want, Russ? I don't know the woman." I said, "I'm tied up. Would you please call her back and ask her what she wants?"

WELDON: Russ called her back on her cell phone. She was on vacation. And her response to my chief of staff was, "Please tell Congressman Weldon I've done nothing wrong."

Am I correct, Russ?

There are a lot of things here that leave a lot of unanswered questions.

I don't know why Al Feltzenberg (ph) got mad. I don't even know the guy. I don't know why Al Feltzenberg (ph) came out the first day the New York Times asked him and said they were never briefed. And the second day, he said they were briefed, but they never mentioned Mohammed Atta. On the third day, he said, "Well, we were briefed and they did mention Mohammed Atta, but only in passing and it was too late."

How many times can you change the story?

There's something deeper here that I don't understand, but that the American people need to have the answer to. And the only reason I'm doing this today is because the 9/11 Commission came out with their presentation yesterday that to me is just outrageous.

I listened to it. I read the transcript. And to read the statement of Slade Gorton, it just turned my stomach.

First of all, let me say this to you: I'll believe Commander Philpott (ph) 100 times before I'll believe politician Slade Gorton.

Scott Philpott (ph) jeopardized his entire naval career to state emphatically that he will swear on his career that they knew about not just Able Danger, but Mohammed Atta and ties to the Brooklyn cell in January and February of 2000. I believe Scott Philpott (ph).

And for them to say that this didn't exist, that this is not real -- what was the exact comment he used? This never happened? I mean, how could you say this never happened with everything I've given you, with all the people that have come out, with five people the Pentagon has confirmed, with the person at the FBI who set the meetings up, with the man who's going to testify next week on Wednesday that he destroyed the data and was ordered to destroy the data? How could you say this never happened?

How could you say there was never a three-hour briefing with General Shelton? How could you say that that briefing material never existed?

QUESTION: So who was it at the Pentagon that canceled those meetings with the FBI? Because you know Pat Downes (ph) and Tom Gandy (ph) gave a briefing a couple of weeks ago at the Pentagon and denied, absolutely, categorically, that there was ever any effort on the part of anyone at DOD to stop information being transferred.

WELDON: I wasn't there. And neither were the two men that you just referred to there. So we're all going on second- and third-hand information.

I can tell you that two of the people involved with this will testify under oath on Wednesday: Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer, who's in the hallway and the FBI woman whose name has been out in the news, who set the meetings up. Neither of them are backing down on their statements.

So they can swear all they want; they can be as emphatic as they want. We have two people who will testify under oath that, number one, they set the meetings up; and, number two, that the purpose of those meetings was to transfer information that Able Danger had produced about Al Qaida and about the linkages of the Brooklyn cell and Mohammed Atta.

And let me also give you this point. They've constantly focused this on a chart. Well, we can't find the chart.

WELDON: This is not just about a chart. I've showed you 13 charts here. This is about 2.5 terabytes of information about Mohammed Atta and Al Qaida, the group that attacked us. It's not about one chart, the chart that I gave to Hadley, with Dan Burton present with me in the White House.

And for them to just try to brush this aside and hope it goes away -- the same problem that you identified I was told by Fox News that the press guy over at the Pentagon actually went in the room and told Fox News and the New York Times, "When you going to let this story go?"

This is the largest disaster in the history of the country. I mean, it would be like saying we don't want to know the details of Pearl Harbor. Three thousand innocent people were killed; the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, want the answers; why are we not getting straight talk? Why is there a constant effort to spin?

Why would you say, as Larry Di Rita said from the Pentagon after referring to Tony Shaffer and Scott Philpott's (ph) recollections, "Well, you know, memories sometimes play games on people."

Well, how about now that they've acknowledged five people recalling seeing Mohammed Atta's photograph and the linkage to the Brooklyn cell?

And how about now the witness that's going to testify that all this data was deliberately destroyed, in spite of the fact that the general was not aware his material was being destroyed?

There are just too many unanswered questions.

I wish I had a full staff to investigate all this. I don't. I hope the American media follows up on this material. I'm going to continue to use my influence to do that.

But there's something rotten here. And I'm not saying it's rotten in the conspiracy standpoint, I'm saying it's rotten from the standpoint that the American people are not getting answers.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

WELDON: I've been told that the woman at the FBI has e-mails that will verify the meetings.

I can tell you that Tony Shaffer will tell you his e-mails, all classified, on his system, were deleted. They were deleted during the time that he could not get access because they had temporarily lifted his security clearance.

WELDON: And that in itself is absolutely outrageous.

You've all seen the charges they've trumped up against him, which were that he transferred a cell phone that amounted to $60 while he was working over in Afghanistan undercover to his personal phone, and that he had gotten reimbursed for mileage to a training course at Fort Dix that they said he wasn't entitled to even though it was a military training program which is $109.

And for that, they temporarily lifted his security clearance, conveniently after he gets back and had told the 9/11 Commission staff all the documents were in his office at DIA headquarters, but he could not get back into DIA headquarters because they had temporarily lifted his clearance for these three stupid allegations. But all during this time the Army's paying him $100,000 a year as a military officer -- and, oh, by the way, during that time they promoted him to lieutenant colonel.

Does something sound fishy there? It sure does to me.

QUESTION: I believe you said you spoke with the FBI woman...

WELDON: I didn't.

QUESTION: Oh, you didn't?

WELDON: But I know people who have. And she's also come out publicly. But I'll tell you what she said. I didn't talk to her personally.

QUESTION: I'm wondering about the why of this. Does the FBI woman know and will she testify why the Pentagon canceled the...

WELDON: She doesn't know.

QUESTION: She doesn't know.

WELDON: No. All she knows is the meetings were set up, and that's what she'll testify to.

QUESTION: OK.

And how...

WELDON: Now, Tony Shaffer talked to her, and you can talk to him outside.

QUESTION: And the other "why" question is why were the 2.5 terabytes of data destroyed? And since we're going to hear from the DOD person who destroyed the data, are we going to hear on Wednesday why?

WELDON: I don't know that anyone knows that. What the Pentagon's saying is that they routinely destroy data. We're trying to get to the bottom of what that means.

What I don't understand, as the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is if you have 2.5 terabytes of data about Al Qaida; and Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, has declared Al Qaida a national terrorist organization; and if that data -- which is largely open-source data, so it's not classified --