Nov 25 2005
Able Danger, Clinton Lawyers
I always hesitate in referencing Global Research as a source since at can be a bit conspiratorial at times. But they do base their wild claims on solid facts and have broken news on Able Danger before. So I will roll the dice again with them in this post.
Able Danger, a relatively small data-mining operation, claims it identified several terrorist cells in this country and elsewhere before the 9/11 attacks. It also claims that members identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers in mid-2000. They further claim that they warned defense officials about activity in Aden, Yemen. They advised against entering the Port of Aden two days before the attack on the U.S.S. Cole on October 12, 2000, which left seventeen American sailors dead.
According to Able Danger participants, this vital information about terrorists in our midst was never allowed to get to those who may have used it to thwart the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They claim they tried three separate times to present it to the FBI and were barred three separate times from doing so by attorneys for the Clinton administration.
This is the first time I have seen anyone agree the barrier between Able Danger SOCOM and the FBI were Clinton appointee lawyers. Up until now the reference has been to Pentagon lawyers, but not military (uniformed) lawyers.
I had predicted as such and built my case in this post which links the China data mining debacle, which caused the purge of Able Danger data in April-May 2002, to Clinton appointees in the Pentagon. A good round up post on what we think we know is here.
To synopsize the history a bit, in the summer of 2000 Capt Phillpott of SOCOM and top member of Able Danger contacted Lt Shaffer of DIA who had been the liaison between the classified SOCOM side of Able Danger and the unclassified side that was the Army’s LIWA and their private contractor Orion in the early stages of the program before the data purge.
Shaffer had contacts in the FBI, due to some discussion about possible data mining work for them, and Phillpott wanted to contact the FBI to present information on possible Al Qaeda terrorists believed to be in the US at that time (a year before 9-11. They tried three times to set up meetings between Able Danger/SOCOM and the FBI and each time Clinton’s lawyers interfered and stopped the meetings.
A recent key Able Danger advocate has stepped forward to also call for an investigation and airing of the Able Danger history:
Why did this information never get to the FBI? Former Director Freeh has remarked that the Able Danger information was the kind of intelligence that could have prevented the hijackings. What the 9/11 Commission did show was the lack of communication between the different agencies because of a “firewall” set up to hinder such communication. It has been charged that the person responsible for that wall was none other than Jamie Gorelick, who was part of the Clinton administration, and who was the lead Democrat on the 9/11 Commission.
It is important to know what happened. If honest and open analysis had unearthed uncomfortable information regarding Clinton’s administration connections to China, the answer was not a cover up and destroying all data associated with the technology that made the connection. Especially data on Al Qaeda terrorists which had nothing to do with the China studies being done in parallel.
If we cannot protect the results of efforts by the good men and women simply trying to do their job and protect this country from attack when challenged by short sighted political appointees – we are in real trouble in this country. We need to know what happened with Able Danger and how people could use their positions to destroy critical and possibly life saving information.
UPDATE:
Trying out the Wizbang Carnival of the Trackbacks on this post.
AJ–
A BIT conspiratorial? Global Research supports the terrorists.
If they want to know about Able Danger, it is only so they can find out what our government knows about the terrorists.
But, I’ve made that point before.
Sandy Berger destroyed Able Danger documents IMHO. According to his court conviction he had stolen and destroyed the 2000 millennium terror plot. The question remains was Able Danger a single part of the 2000 plot.
The New American Link
• Hamburg Cell. Mohammed Atta, Ramzi bin al Shibh, and their roommates in Hamburg came under surveillance by German intelligence and the CIA in 1998 because of their association with al-Qaeda operatives in Hamburg who had been linked to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Those operatives included Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammad Haidar Zammar, Said Bahaji, and Mounir al-Motassadek. The CIA station chief in Hamburg, Tom Volz, who posed as a U.S. embassy employee, actually tried to recruit Darkazanli as an informant in late 1999 and 2000. CIA agent David Edger shadowed the Hamburg Cell for several years, before returning to the U.S. in 2001 to take a professorship of political science at Oklahoma University at Norman, coincidentally, just a few blocks from an apartment where an al-Qaeda cell operated that included 9/11 terrorists Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Zacarias Moussaoui.
Snapple,
I know they are flakey. I also know the sprinkle some facts not well known before into their conspiracy theories (They were 100% correct on the Weldon interview you last posted on). The only thing I was pointing out was the claim they lawyers who stopped Able Danger from meeting the FBI were Clinton appointees. Not too many people have made this leap (obvious as it is).
Ordinary logic suggests that after 9-11 the people who really knew about Able Danger told the Administration what Able Danger had found, and the information was probably reconstituted somehow, someplace.
This is only my personal opinion; I don’t work for the government. But Shaffer only worked on Able Danger briefly for his reserve duty, if the media is accurate. He was not an important person on this project.
To me, there are some things more important than bashing Clinton’s guys.
Government secrets is one of those things.
It is my opinion that it was really a huge mistake for Weldon to tell that this program and capability even existed.
Weldon’s book did not impress me at all. It was silly.
He even bashed the head of the DO of the CIA, who tried to give him a little advice about not consorting with enemy agents.
And that DO chief was the guy who got Libya to turn over their WMD. So he was a pretty cool dude.
According to you, a lot of Libya’s program was a collaborative effort with Iraq and N. Korea.
I think the CIA is a lot smarter about what is going on than Congressman Weldon.
BigDog, on Able Danger I am a conspiracist until hearings are held and a plausible explanation for why AD team member warnings, both as to the USS Cole and 9/11, were ignored. If you would care to know how deep I believe the conspiracy goes, reference my comments appended to AJ’s September 8th, 2005 Able Danger post (“Able Danger, Recent Document Destruction”) in which I posit an Able Danger connection to the 2000Millenium bomb plot. AJ scoffs at my “silly” arguments, but he doesn’t rebut them. Maybe they’re not worth the candle, I will be the first to admit, but AJ has so far failed to explain the inconvenient fact of the Bush Administration’s involvement in covering up the scandal.
Snapple, “…government secrets is one…” (a thing more important than bashing Clinton’s guys). I agree, but in the same vein, isn’t Sandy Berger’s joke punishment (two years probation, three years revocation of his security clearances, and a whopping $50,000 fine), recommended by Bush’s DOJ, and ratified by a Republican magistrate, a major scandal? If the Clintonistas were so lax on national security, why didn’t Bush’s men make an example of Berger? Remember, Berger, was National Security Advisor, one of the top men responsible for keeping the nation’s secrets, and he was caught red-handed deliberately destroying code word protected classified documentation. How does this guy merit a renewal of his clearances while Colonel Shaffer is forever debarred from handling classified information? It’s the same as if the chief archivist of the National Archives was caught in flagrante delicto destroying the nation’s founding documents, and given a three year sabbatical to work on his conservation techniques. Berger’s probation and the revocation of his clearances, as others have pointed out, are a scam. They’ll be over just in time for him to serve in the next Democratic administration. The New American is correct, the executive branch of this administration is actively obstructing Congress’s investigation into Able Danger. Why?
[…] AJStrata put so well: It is important to know what happened. If honest and open analysis had unearthed […]