Sep 14 2005
Able Danger, 9-11 Omission of Denial, 09/14/05
The 9-11 Commission has made a very strange move one week out from Senate hearings on Able Danger: they claim Able Danger cannot back its claim of identifying four of the 9-11 highjackers and trying to alert the FBI of the presence of Al Qaeda in the US in the summer of 2000. Like they would know?
Former members of the Sept. 11 commission on Wednesday dismissed assertions that a Pentagon intelligence unit identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as an member of al-Qaida long before the 2001 attacks.
Note that the commission doesn’t address the full Able Danger claim – identifying possible AQ in country and trying to alert the FBI. The statement only mentions one terrorist: Atta.
How do they know the Able Danger team is wrong? Especially after the Pentagon did a complete ‘about face’ as a result of their review of their files: which dwarfs the material the 9-11 commission was allowed to retain on the subject.
Kean said the recollections of the intelligence officers cannot be verified by any document.
“Bluntly, it just didn’t happen and that’s the conclusion of all 10 of us,” said a former commissioner, ex-Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash.
Really? Then what caused the 9-11 commission to rush back to the US and start researching the claims? How could some small program that simply identified possible Al Qaeda members cause the 9-11 Commission to scramble so breathlessly to get information from the DoD if it was not tied to 9-11? The record of the commission’s reactions to Shaffer’s claims in Afghanistan are completely at odds with this current position.
Gorton and Kean, please tell us what caused your mad scramble then? I strongly suggest you be prepared to answer that question, and back it up with internal documentation and notes, before next week!
Pentagon officials said this month that they could find no documents to back up the claims.
The Washington Post should be much more careful and accurate in their reporting than that. Do they want to look like this fool?
The DoD found plenty of documentation that backs up the Able Danger claims, just not any that specifically call out the 4 9-11 highjackers by name. They have reports with suspected AQ terrorists’ names. They have charts and pictures of suspected AQ terrorists. They have the data mining SW system and records of the data sources used to identify these possible AQ terrorists (the data itself was destroyed since it contained information on US citizens as well as the terrorists). The DoD has records that Able Danger did try and set up the meetings with the FBI. They have a final report from January 2001 of the format, scope and content Able Danger described having in the Spring of 2000.
The fact the final report does not contain the 4 9-11 highjackers is consistent with the Able Danger claims they were directed to remove mention of these people from the reports in the summer/fall of 2000. There is a mound of contemporaneuous, circumstantial evidence supporting their claims and notone item showing a conflict with their claims.
Why did the commission leap onto such a shakey limb?
Weldon’s spokesman, John Tomaszewski, said no commissioners have met with anyone from Able Danger “yet they choose to speak with some form of certainty without firsthand knowledge.”
It makes no sense? Are they demonstrating they know something, or simply proving by example how they could have screwed the Able Danger issue up so badly?
Well gee AJ what do you think they are gonna say, oopsy we blew it and made a political statement instead of actually fulfilling our mandate? hehe…
Denial is not just a river in Egypt eh?
We are starting to get it back together down here…I am still as angry as ever about the idiocy masquerading as thought but thats Louisiana. Actually had some guy try and tell me that Louisiana politics were no more corrupt than any other State. Nearly swallowed my tongue and politely informed him that he probably couldnt tell the difference between a hole in the ground and his ass.
Having worked on several campaigns down here and watched the political machine chew up people I found that laughable.
My mother in law is in fairly bad shape and we are all hoping she snaps out of it soon. Depressed about the horror she saw in the Dome. And the fact that her life in New Orleans is underwater.
Wifey is working hard putting databases together for the State OEP and polishing up the evacuation plan that the company she works for put together for the state. She is exhausted and angry.
Thanks for your concern and comments on my blog.
Pierre
AJ:
Not sure if you caught this bit about Lt. Col. Shaffer. It seems that he’s trying to start up a new data mining project based on A Times Herald story.
From the article:
Also, there’s a discussion of the Army regs dealing with surveillance and US persons.
As a casual observer to the AD debate, it would appear to me that the Army developed their unique data-mining expertise during Bosnia in 1996. Anyone with any common sense would easily see how AD would improve their data-mining abilities and skills including improvements for leading edge database search capabilities.
To even suggest that AD would not be able to link terrorists associations or obtain photos of the 911 hijackers is an insult to our intelligence. The Clinton Administration was very concerned about a terrorist attack in Atlanta during the Olympics and a similar LIWA pre-AD type project was no doubt in overtime. Gorelick sent 10,000 Army personnel to Atlanta! Again, I ask why was Sandy stealing papers related to the Olympics security for the 911 Commission?
The AD guys were doing this for 5 years based on skills learned from Bosnia. The 911 Commission is now trying to change the subject to communications failures during Katrina. I can’t wait to the new and improved commission next week!
http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/smo/docs/ifor/bosch04.htm
,,,,, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) was not widely practiced in intelligence circles prior to Operation Joint Endeavor. The 165th MI Battalion’s document exploitation team at Camp Lukavac provided this unique service by producing a daily newsletter called the Night Owl. A U.S. military editor with eight contract linguists staffed the Night Owl and exploited and translated Muslim, Serbian, and Croatian television, radio, and newspaper reports of events in the area of operation. The newsletter was available on the Internet and hundreds of its articles were included in the Task Force Eagle databases. Of noteworthy mention were its incisive accounts of public reaction to IFOR’s presence. Avid supporters and users of the newsletter included the U.S. embassy and the IFOR Information Campaign staff at IFOR headquarters in Sarajevo. An important and new contribution to the intelligence effort, the Lukavac team paved the way for future OSINT operations……
Monday Morning Intelligence with the New York Tim
Well that was a unceremonial thud to a building story if I ever saw one!
[…] Rep. Weldon has responded to the 9-11 Commission’s brazen dismissal of Able Danger today: “For the 9/11 commission (search) to say that this did not exist is just absolutely outrageous. It’s a total denial of the facts,” said the Pennsylvania Republican. […]
The “Able Danger” Cover-Up Continues
Based on what we know so far, it is 100% accurate to say The September 11th Commission is LYING when it claims the following:
Former members of the Sept. 11 commission on Wednesday dismissed assertions that a Pentagon intelligence unit identified lea…