Tom Maguire was kind enough to alert me to this notice in the Pentagon Website so I have been keeping an eye on news updates. Well, the Washington Post just released this news – more coming forward on Able Danger (could have sworn I predicted this a few days back?)

Pentagon officials said Thursday they have found three more people who recall an intelligence chart that identified Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta as a terrorist one year before the attacks on New York and Washington. But they have been unable to find the chart or other evidence that it existed.
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In recent days Pentagon officials have said they could not yet verify or disprove the assertions by Shaffer and Philpott. On Thursday, four intelligence officials provided the first extensive briefing for reporters on the outcome of their interviews with people associated with Able Danger and their review of documents.

They said they interviewed at least 80 people over a three-week period and found three, besides Philpott and Shaffer, who said they remember seeing a chart that either mentioned Atta by name as an al-Qaida operative or showed his photograph. Four of the five recalled a chart with a pre-9/11 photo of Atta; the other person recalled only a reference to his name.

The intelligence officials said they consider the five people to be credible but their recollections are still unverified.

That’s a lot of confirmation in my opinion. Quite a lot. And also, like I predicted, I do not see the Bush Pentagon trying to hide anything on this – there is no reason for them to.

And this is a real stunner

Chope said there is no evidence that military lawyers blocked the sharing of Able Danger information with the FBI.

Note this does not say Pentagon Lawyers, it says military lawyers. Many of us following this story have suspected the barrier was put in place by presidential appointees who were following the Gorelick ‘wall’.

Further confirmation this is a big issue is from this statement

Chope also said the nature of Able Danger has been misrepresented in some news stories. He said it was created as a result of a directive in early October 1999 by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Special Operations Command to develop a campaign plan against transnational terrorism, “specifically al-Qaida.”

If you go back through my posts you will find a common nagging question, how did word of an Al Qaeda terrorist in the US get squashed given the 9-11 commission testimony by Bergler and Clarke (see here for example)? If Able Danger was established to find AQ terrorists the fact it’s results were squashed makes even less sense.

I know some think this will die off with a whimper, but I think there is a very explosive nugget in this whole story. Bergler better hope he got and destroyed every copy of Clarke’s memo in existance that had the evidence of that summer’s national security discussions on it.

UPDATE:

Tom Maguire has posted hist thoughts on this breaking news here

Tom has another update on form American Forces Information Services

One person who recalled the chart was a SOCOM civilian analyst; one was an analyst with the Land Information Warfare Activity; and one was a contractor, said Thomas Gandy, the Army’s director of counterintelligence and human intelligence.
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DoD officials have searched documents from all organizations involved with Able Danger, in addition to all the documents sent to the 9/11 commission, Downs said. They found a chart similar to the one described by the five people, but it did not contain a photo or a reference to Atta, she said.

OK, were the reporters on their toes and did they ask about Al Shehhi 0r the other two 9-11 highjackers supposedly tied to Atta? Did they know to look for Mohamed el-Amir (Atta’s name in Germany while he was a student?

“Able Danger was never a special-access program,” he said. “Able Danger was never a military unit. Able Danger was never a targeting effort; it was not a military deception operation. It was merely the name attributed to a 15-month planning effort.”

And this sounds too ‘by-the-book’. Government programs have formal titles and scope – but they have also been known to be expanded to explore interesting avenues and off shoots. This sounds like they are referring to program descriptions, not status reports and products. I could be wrong but this doesn’t jive with what we have been told to date.