Aug 31 2005
Able Danger Round Up, 08/31/05
Able Danger keeps twisting and turning as news slowly dribbles out. I expect, now that we have hit the end of summer, that a prime Able Danger player – the woman PhD referred to by Shaffer and Phillpott – will come forward sometime in the coming weeks.
Not much new from the news outlets since the news out yesterday that the Pentagon may have had changed its position regarding Able Danger. We posted on this story here yesterday (which was followed by hosting problems all day). Tom Maguire noticed that WTOP, who broke the change in Pentagon sentiments, has new details out today here:
The names of U.S. citizens with connections to the military, political organizations and educational institutions reportedly turned up when the Pentagon collected intelligence as part of its Able Danger effort.
The Pentagon shut down the data mining operation that uncovered the names of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers a year before the terror attacks.
Defense contractor J.D. Smith who worked on the project says his job was to find connections among people and where those connections went.
The names and the origin of the information turned out to be so sensitive that Smith says,”It cost me a contract and a eventually my job at the company that employed me at the time.”
But the names the intelligence group investigated turned out not to be connected with al Qaida.
I agree with Tom Maguire’s position that this is the reason Able Danger was probably cancelled in early 2001. It ran afoul of too many legal and political issues. The key one being the parallel China Study that caused JD Smith’s efforts to be terminated a little before the terrorist study began to ring the warning bells (see the latter part of this post here on the NY Post article).
But what this also tells me is that the Pentagon has identified some of the lawyers and others who were involved in some part of this story: the cancelling the China Study path, the squelching of the contacts to the FBI on terrorists in the USA, or the closing of the program in 2001. But what is clear is more people are coming forward inside the DoD. These are details we have no heard and I would think were not coming from the players we know about so far.
I already referred to Tom Maguires excellent post above – it is a worthwhile read.
Mac at Mac’s Mind has an intriguing tease on what he is learning about JD Smith – and how he might really be. I cannot wait to see this information.
Ed Morrissey has his Daily Standard column out today on all the information the 9-11 Omission missed or did not address.
Mike at TOPDOG08 has the transcript of the Chris Mathews interview with Lt Col Shaffer which Mike says was a good one.
More if I find something. Have a great week.
[…] Excellent. In less than two weeks we should begin to get to the bottom of this. And there must be something here. I must still be psychic, because I posted yesterday that we had two weeks to a major break through emerging. The officers, Capt. Scott J. Phillpott of the Navy and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Army, have said the intelligence program identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by early 2000. Colonel Shaffer, a reservist, has said three meetings with F.B.I. agents in 2000 to discuss Able Danger were canceled on the order of military lawyers. […]
FOX And Friends Aug. 25th
Curt Weldon: “…I have TEN charts, including three charts of Al Queda, that were done by Able Danger BEFORE 9/11. I have these charts in my possession. Steve Cambone has one of these charts.”
Given recent developments, how quick should we be to dismiss this statement as outright fantasy? Is Weldon playing the role of Inspector Clouseau or Lieutenant Columbo? Three are Al Queda, seven are not. Among the seven, is there a chart which ties “…U.S. citizens with connections to the military, political organizations and educational institutions…” to behavior that is not, shall we say, in the best interests of the country? (AJ, prepare yourself, I am about to exceed my tinfoil hat quota by at least two propeller-beanies.) Perhaps the real story about Able Danger is not only the early exposure of Atta in America, but that the team members refined their data and eliminated the false positives FROM the chart of prominent Americans referenced above. In his interview with Matthews on Hardball, Shaffer agreed that the Able Danger methodology was retrospectively proven to have correctly identified, from a final cull of eight candidates, four of the 9-11 hijackers’ propensity to commit acts of terrorism on American soil, in 1999. Apparently, the predictive value of the Able Danger technique is high. (Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!) Tom Maguire’s WTOP story inevitably reminds this conspiracy theorist of the corruption in very high places Sibel Edmonds uncovered during her thankless tenure as an FBI translator, and about which she cannot say a word because the Feds will imprison her if she speaks out. She is the most dangerous woman in America, and official Washington knows it. State Secrets…you bet! There is not necessarily any overlap in the results of Weldon’s alleged Able Danger charts and Edmonds’ good old-fashioned FBI wiretaps, but the hints are tantalizing as hell.
[…] out JustOneMinute, Top Dog,& The Strata-Sphere fore […]