Thanks to Top Dog and his comment to this post, we learn two things in this Fox News story. The first is the Pentagon is trying to close the hearings – which would be a big PR mistake.

The Pentagon is pressuring the Senate Judiciary Committee to close to the public next week’s hearings on a former secret military intelligence unit called “Able Danger,” two congressional sources have confirmed to FOX News.

Witnesses from the Pentagon are expected to testify at that hearing; that’s why they want it classified. FOX News has learned that committee Chairman Arlen Specter’s office is vigorously resisting the request.

We need to know what happened. If they need a closed session to go into technical details which are classifed- fine. If they need to screen witnesses – fine. But we need to have the discussion of what happened out in the open. And the second revelation points out why.

Weldon said a former Army officer will testify next week that he was also ordered to destroy data that included reference to Atta.

“In the summer of 2000, he was ordered and, or, he would go to jail if he didn’t comply,” the Pennsylvania Republican said. “He was ordered to destroy 2.5 terabytes of data specific to Able Danger, the Brooklyn [terror] cell and Mohammad Atta. He will name the person who ordered him to destroy that material.”

This is huge. As I stated in this last post on this, if the documents were ordered destroyed before the program ended in February 2001, it would look like someone was covering something up.

The order to destroy the documents, apparently after being rebuffed on their attempts to contact the FBI, is not the normal cleaning up of preliminary data and reports we have were told was happening in the DoD briefing earlier this month. This is referred to in the Fox story as well

However, the Pentagon confirmed this month that documents associated with Able Danger were destroyed because of strict regulations governing the collection of data on foreign visitors in the United States.

Ordering the destruction of documents, over the resistance of the document managers and under threat of charges, is not normal. The timeline is becoming clearer [speculation alert].

– Able Danger was initiated in the fall of 1999 to identify Al Qaeda members as part of the US attempt to protect against a millenium attack, and continued efforts into 2000 due to heightened concerns right after the millenium.

– Atta and his cohorts probabley were identified back in February-April 2000, while still in Hamburg.

– When Atta and the others came to the US in the late spring of 2000, alarm bells went off in Able Danger because Al Qaeda in the US was a really big deal at the time – according to Bergler and Clarke and NSA pronouncements.

– Able Danger correctly determined the situation had moved from intel to domestic law enforcement, which meant contacting the FBI and alerting them.

– Someone else got word that meetings were going to be held to alert the FBI to AQ in the US. Again, NSA announcements to watch for AQ in country would make this kind of news stand out, draw attention and draw in related organizations – as it should.

– Then things go south. Someone starts putting up barriers to the meetings and telling Able Danger to back off what they are doing.

– Then someone takes the extreme step and orders the destruction of the documents, over the objections of the document managers (a key role in classified material handling).

The order to destroy was not made by DoD lawyers, per the Pentagon:

The Defense Department did confirm that documents associated with Able Danger were destroyed in accordance with strict regulations about collection, dissemination and destruction procedures for intelligence gathered on people inside the United States.The officials denied that military lawyers ordered the destruction of the documents.

If the military did not order the destruction – who did? More importantly: who could?

My guess is the CIA was also notified of the meetings – why wouldn’t they be? Somehow, some kind of turf war ignited and the Able Danger team was told to get back into their box. They resisted and the orders came down to not only cease their efforts to contact the FBI, but to destroy their data sources.

While it is possible a ranking military official could have given the order to destroy, I seriously doubt it. The orders came from lawyers who were not military. And Able Danger would not have resisted very long if their immediate chain of command was backing them up as much as they could.

That leaves the civilian command, which means the office Secretary of Defense or the White House.

Tom Maguire as a brief post on this subject here.

UPDATE:

Ed Morrissey makes some excellent points in his post on the attempt of the Pentagon to close the Senate hearings from the public.

AJ Strata wonders who ordered the destruction of the data, and notes that the Pentagon’s exclusion of military lawyers from that order somehow strikes an ominous note. He and I differ on this point. Under normal circumstances, the lawyers wouldn’t make that decision anyway. Destruction of classified material gets handled through the normal chain of command, and receiving “orders” to destroy data on a closed program like Able Danger may not really be that unusual. If the lawyers had demanded it, I think that would lend itself to a more political explanation.

I agree with Captain Ed on this point 100%, and almost started posting the same basic comments myself when I recalled Shaffer’s original claim that lawyers squashed the meetings with the FBI and told them to cover up the faces of Atta and others.

I’ll put up another speculation warning now – but it seems the person (or persons) who squashed the meetings and told Able Danger to drop Atta and the others – who were non military lawyers according to unchallenged statements to date – were most likely the ones to go one step further and order the purging of the data. That is a leap of logic, I admit. But I feel more confident in that kind of leap than the 9-11 commission should in their claim there is no ‘there’ there.

More thoughts at Mac’s Mind here. His theory has always attracted my dark side:

…I found that hard to swallow, especially since it began under Clinton. What in the hell did he care about terrorist? He and his administration were all about keeping tabs – on US Citizens, specifically political enemies – that’s what they cared about!

So simply put, in my humble view, Able Danger was a prototype data minining program to spy on CITIZENS. You know, like big brother. Hardly unknown or earth shattering in itself. But if found out would have had devastating effects on what is left of the Clinton Administration legacy. “I feel your pain”…..