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 DeepMunns, 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!
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, Crisscrossedby 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 DangerWhile 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:
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.
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.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":
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.
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."Among other things, he points out flaws in the IG Report on Able Danger:
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.
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:
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"?
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.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."
Posted by Mike Kasper at 7:20 PM.
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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 actedRep. 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 2002Web-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 CaterinicchiaThe 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 DestructionAs 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 AwarenessThe 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:
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Application of Information Technology to Homeland Security
Tuesday, June 11, 9:00 a.m. -- 10:30 a.m.
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Alan Harbitter, PEC Solutions
Dr. Eileen Preisser, Director, Air Force Homeland Defense Technology Center
Network Centric Warfare:
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Tuesday, June 11, 2:00 p.m. -- 3:30 p.m.
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LTG David j. Kelley, USA (Ret.), Vice President, Information Operations, Lockheed Martin Mission Systems
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Cathy Tilton, SAFLink, Chair, Biometrics API Committee, Biometrics Consortium
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Jim Zok, U.S. Department of Transportation
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Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Panel Session
GEN Paul J. Kern, USA Application of Information
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U.S. Army Materiel Security
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PDC Mini-Cource
MILSATCOM
Wednesday, June 12
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ADM William J. Fatlon, USN Biometrics: Integration of
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PDC Mini-Cource
Infomation Assurance: Roadmap
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Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Panel Session
Lt Gen Bruce A. Wright, USAF Emergency Communication and
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Business Opportunity Workshop
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Four Star Breakfast Series (*) Defense Keynote Luncheon (*)
GEN Paul J. Kern, USA Gen Richard B. Myers, USAF
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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
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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 DirectorsJay 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 DirectorsJ. 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".
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
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.
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)