Aug 15 2005
Able Danger, Danger Speaks? Update XIII
While it appears Rep Weldon may have given his pet issue on Able Danger a few mortal blows this weekend (see here for one), it may be the case the story can (and probably should) go on without him.
Rick Moran has a truly fascinating find on the website Intel Dump. Here is the snippet from Rick’s site
OK smart guys – with your “smell tests†and “Thats just flat out wrong†opinions shown above – I hope you don’t mind, but let me clear up a few things – I was there and I lived through the ABLE DANGER nightmare.
First – yes – The lawyers involved in this (and similar projects) did interpret the 9-11 terrorists as “US persons†– so while you can second guess them all you want – but that was their “legal†call as wrong as it was and is. Unfortunately, the chain of command at SOCOM went along with them (and this, I expect, will be a topic that will become more clear in the near future).
And lawyers of the era also felt that any intelligence officer viewing open internet information for the purpose of intelligence collection automatically required that any “open source†information obtained be treated as if it was “intelligence information does this sound like idiocy to you? It did to me – and we fought it – and I was in meetings at the OSD level, with OSD laywers, that debated this – and I even briefed the DCI George Tenet on this issue relating to an internet project.
And yes, Virgina – we tried to tell the lawyers that since the data identified Atta and the others as linked to Al Qaeda, we should be able to collect on them based on SecState Albright’s declaration of Al Qaeda as transnational terrorist threat to the US…well the lawyers did not agree…go figure…so we could not collect on them – and for political reasons – could not pass them to the FBI…I know because I brokered three meetings between the FBI and SOCOM to allow SOCOM to pass the information to the FBI. And, sadly, SOCOM cancelled them every time…
Hold onto to your seats folks, I am not so sure this ride is over.
UPDATE:
OK, count me as stunned. I have been having a very good back and forth with Mac’s Mind on Able Danger, clearly out of my element since he worked Army Intel. He had been pulling me into the skeptics corner, which I had been resisting, I was afraid, in a futile effort. Well, I went over to get my cold shower at Mac’s Mind at found this stunning comment:
I’m buying into AJ theory over at Strata-Sphere that this was most likely a “beta” minining operation – not using “super-secret” high level ops, but ordinary Army Intel specs, who accidently “discovered gold”.
I also believe that Schoomaker was running a “after school” program under Shelton’s nose (with Weldon’s “plussed up funding”, which explains why General Shelton (retired now) says, “Able What?”, and why Schoomaker has no comment.
Now that rocked my boat. OK, so where does this take us?
Whistle blowers? Could it be that once these guys/gals got more than they bargined for that because General Schoomaker was running a “rogue” operation, he “shut ’em down” and quick? It would seem some are beginning to “break cover”…..heh..
That at this point is a very plausible explaination why Able Danger fell off the map and the paper trail with them.
Weldon has still got a LOT of explaining to do, and I’m afraid that the story is still fresh….
Yet I still want to hear from more some of the real members of this team – enough with the clandestine crap! Speak out!
Am I reading this right? Did Mac’s Mind just jump out of the skeptics corner? No matter, he is 100% correct – let’s get this out and over with.
Glad to see you have discarded the “skeptic” wardrobe, as passed on thru JustOneMinute, AJ.
BTW, I forgot to compliment you on your superb blog – from content to visual presentation and ease of navigation – when I posted that.
“Da ride” is most certainly not over, nor should it be. In fact, it appears the 9:11 Commissioners interrupted the ride themselves by falling off the horse during the investigation. Forget Weldon, forget other diversions tossed our way. By their own admission in their official statement, the Commission failed in their core task. But of course, in true politico style, their fall from the saddle is always someone else’s fault…. i.e. not enough data provided, despite their requests.
In retrospect, with knowledge of Atta’s presence in the US and his link to AQ, perhaps they should not have been merely requests, but demands for info. They were certainly in the position to do so.
In post-9:11 perspectives – the climate under which they labored – ABLE DANGER’s activities should have been a prime area of focus. The fact that they had testimony, if not documents, of cell activity in the US, they should have demanded not only in depth testimony, but a thorough search into documents, including why and how any were missing.
The second heads up? When the law required the names of Atta and terrorist thugs-in-arms to be purged from the files because of privacy laws at the time, the Commissioners should have clearly seen the significance – the absolute key to why our intel failed our national security.
Quite simply…. we had it. We couldn’t use it. Is that not what they were all about? Fixing that flaw?
Instead of pursuing the key flaw in depth, they wrote it off as lack of information. Pshaw.
No pass for the Commission on this one, AJ. They need to go back and do what they should have done the first time … thoroughly. It is the closest thing to a “smoking gun” on intel we possessed prior to 9:11. Intel that, had we been able to use it, could have saved thousands of lives. It is their task to ensure the next time we have such intel, we *can* use it. Otherwise they are a waste of taxpayer funds.
These attacks on Weldon’s shortcomings and drifts into the “unreliable” zone are the typical red herring – merely an excuse not to shake up the ABLE DANGER hidden files and events. And that is an operation that cannot be left out of the equation.
Agree w/MataHarley, including comments on your great work.
Thanks, and keep it up, for all of us.
(‘course the left will just be along for the ride, since they want us to fail.)
[…] AJStrata puts his vast powers of persuasion to work, and even ex-military intelligence folks can’t resist… […]
[…] While I have been sniping at conservatives who knee-jerked their way into blaming Jamie Gorelick, AJ Strata has continued to do bang-up work on not the letting the story rest. Nor should he. He recognizes that the SOCOM lawyers were operating through the prism of the pre-9/11 environment, but raises the question of whether that should have mattered. I have not been following the nuances of the story enough to do it justice, so go over to Strata Sphere for the best updates on a story which shouldn’t go away because it lays the bare the fiction that all questions about 9/11 have been answered (regardless of which administration was responsible), “Able Danger, Danger Speaks? Update XIII” […]