One of the more infuriating aspects of the entire story was the fact that our intelligence tools were shut down because the test program for this technology unearthed possibly incriminating information about the Clintons and their administration. One of the many posts I have on this aspect of the story is here. I am dredging up this old news because it probably plays into some of the current news involving the Clintons and their ties to Chinese spies (i.e., illustrates the nexus of Clinton greed and Clinton naiveté’). This is because the Able Danger program was rapidly (and possibly illegally) shut down because its sister technology demonstration program, investigating US connections to Chinese technology, came up with high level names.

It was this unfortunate and accidental discovery connecting China’s efforts to acquire our technology with high ranking Clinton administration officials that triggered a complete shutdown of the data mining efforts against al-Qeada. The fear of this technology was so prevelant someone decided chasing terrorists was less important than covering someone’s butt. We never learned who was connected to the Chinese spies (outside Condi Rice, who would not be someone the Clinton administration would work so hard to cover for).

The reason I bring this up is to echo what Mac Ranger is saying about the Clintons and the myriad of China scandals that dogged their administration, and where never really investigated.

While the MSM continues to largely ignore the reemerging ‘China Gate scandal’ that I believe will either fatally wound or will outright derail her candidacy, it’s really time to call Hillary Clinton in her constant denials of culpability.

The word is very different from the loose and wild days of the Clinton administration. We take things much more seriously since 9-11, since we now appreciate how what seems to be trivial can have terrible consequences. The problems the Clintons had with Chinese agents spreading large amounts of money around dogged them constantly (and Al Gore and is fundraiser at a Temple known for frugality and rejection of personal gain). Will the pliant MSM cover for the Clintons again? Honestly I doubt it. They did their job once and it cost them their reputation and respect of the country. I doubt they see any reason to do it again.

A daughter of Rep. Curt Weldon did public relations work for a Serbian family with ties to an alleged war criminal and tried to help one member get a visa to visit the U.S., a newspaper reported Thursday.

Got that? Weldon’s daugther (not Weldon) did PR work for a Serbian Family (not Milosevic or his family). The family she worked for had ties to someone else (not Milosevic and without any evidence Ms Weldon knew about all this when she did the work). Ms Weldon tried to get one family member a Visa to visit the US – though we don’t know the relationship of the member wanting to visit with the member(s) who had ties to some ‘alleged’ war criminal. This is pure, unadulterated rumor mongering mascarading as news. AP should have its press credentials pulled for this crap. More tenous and stretched connections:

A State Department cable shows that Karen Weldon tried to help the wife of Serbian tycoon Bogoljub Karic get a visa to visit Florida, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The department – noting the request came from a congressman’s daughter – opposed the visa and cited Karic’s alleged links to “terrorist activities.”

Clearly Ms Weldon had no information on this connection. Why? Because the work was in 2004 and the news about possible problems came out in 2006:

In March 2003, Karen Weldon’s firm received a $20,000-a.m.onth contract from the Karic family foundation to burnish the Karics’ image and help them establish a “Serbia House” in Washington. The Karics were once referred to as “the Rockefellers of Serbia.”

Bogoljub Karic was charged in February with embezzling Serbian state funds and now is missing. State Department officials said they could not comment on whether Milanka Karic received the visa she sought.

The real question is who in the FBI leaked this information? My guess it is someone who helped close down the Able Danger contacts between SOCOM and the FBI. Someone is definitely trying to get some payback on Weldon. And the only thing he really shook up was the fact that DoD, and possibly DoJ lawyers (Gorelick), were involved in possible illegal destruction of information on terrorists and military secrets being leaked to China. Recall that the Able Danger data purge was in response to connections between Clinton Administration names and China’s access to our military secrets. The Able Danger purge was an incidental victim of a panicked attempt to cover up the find. So I am not surprised there is an FBI leaker to the AP. What I am surprised is the AP is obliging this revenge game so common in DC.

Back in November, Chris submitted a FOIA request for all documents and emails that could be located related to Able Danger. He was routed from the Pentagon to SOCOM, back to the Pentagon, asked to resubmit his request, then told he had submitted duplicate requests. Last week, his request was finally denied. DOD refused to turn over a single document, but admitted there were at least 9,500 pages of data responsive to his request! Considering that DOD has maintained all along they have not been able to find much material on Able Danger, and has been slow to respond to requests for documents on Able Danger from both the Congress and the 9/11 Commission, this is quite a surprise.

Indeed it is.  I wonder if this will kick off another round of congressional hearings?  Able Danger fell off the radar screen because of some deal behind the scenes. I still maintain the Able Danger story should be exposed, not to understand our intel capabilities, but to understand if some high level political appointee was able to shut down our national security efforts because some information was too uncomfortable.  That still worries me that politics can trump security.  Anyone wishing to see all my Able Danger posts can find them here.

An FBI informant testified today that Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man lived in the Central Valley town of Lodi before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The man testifying in Sacramento today at a terrorism-related trial was Naseem Khan. The man he was referring to is Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden’s physician and top deputy.

But there was no corroboration of Khan’s testimony that al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, lived in Lodi’s largely Pakistani community and regularly attended the mosque there in 1998 and 1999.

SOCOM and DIA (Philpott and Shaffer, respectively) went searching data mining options inside the DoD in the fall of 1999 be part of SOCOM’s mission to find Al Qaeda members world wide. They selected LIWA Orion in that same timeframe with initial results coming out in January-February of 2000.

In December 1999, Kleinsmith got a visit from Special Operations Command (SOCOM) officers interested in the program. By February 2000, the effort was in full swing.

We now know the China study pre-dated the Able Danger effort by a good 3-6 months.

In the summer of 1999, the first test data mining project at LIWA searched for links to high technology transfers to China. The effort was a smashing success as the information dragnet pulled in a mother lode of names, places and hardware descriptions. But once that information made its way to Capitol Hill in November 1999, government officials got nervous, according to Center for Cooperative Research (cooperativeresearch.org).

Summer can be thought of as late as August. So the China study’s data was ‘stale’ per the 90 day rule once the report was making waves up on the Hill in November. In our conference call, Representative Weldon mention that he and Dan Burton had tried to subpoena the Chine study information to get a copy, which seems to be the next set of events discussed in the article:

Next, federal marshals showed up at LIWA with subpoenas issued from Congressman Dan Burton’s office, Kleinsmith said. Government officials wanted copies of the data mining results.

According to the Center for Cooperative Research, the data included former Secretary of Defense William Perry and then Stanford University provost, Condoleezza Rice, among others. Other reports identified then Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and former Democratic National Committee chairman, Steve Grossman.

“I spent the weekend making 30,000 pages of copies,” Kleinsmith said. He said his group stored two copies in a safe and sent six boxes of material to the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel and a congressional liaison office.

With the data mining capability declared a success, LIWA closed out the test project.

It would be helpful to know when this close out happened. The order to purge data came down in April of 2000.

By April, the “Able Danger” team was told to end its support of SOCOM. During the month’s long work stoppage, SOCOM’s patience ran out, and the military command transferred the work to a Raytheon facility in Garland, Texas, and continued the effort.

By that time both sets of information would have been past their 90 day ‘stale date’. Yet Kleinsmith testified at the hearings that there was some time before the data hit the 90 day mark and when the order came down to destroy. A time period where there was some attempted push back.

The article does end with the proper questions:

One of the million-dollar questions in Washington is who ordered the shut down.

“Nobody will admit sending down the order to do it,” he said. “It came from somewhere up in the Pentagon.”

Many speculated that Richard Shiffrin, the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel at the time, was to blame for the decision. Shaffer’s testimony claims Army lawyer Tom Taylor cut off Army support for the project.

Critics speculate that politics played a role in the death of “Able Danger” because of fallout from the China study. Others, including Shaffer, blame it on shortsighted Pentagon bureaucrats.

Again, I must have missed something about Shiffrin (discussed here and here). My understanding is he worked with Bob Johnson and is one of those who finds the order to purge data, efforts and contractors (very, very extreme action over some old data) laughable. This inaccuracy bothers me a bit. Mainly because I could be wrong. If anyone who knows which is right please let us all know!

There are two new names in this piece worth exploring: Steve Grossman and Tom Taylor…

Bloggers on the line:

Dana from Common Sense Political Thought
Curt from Flopping Aces
Mike of Able Danger Blog
QT Monster
Rory O’Connor
Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill
Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto

And of course yours truly.

This was a really fascinating opportunity to talk directly to the Congressman and finally ask questions that I have been speculating about, and which now are being confirmed more and more. The Congressman was very approachable and very open – which was interesting to say the least.

The call began by a very detailed opening statement by the Congressman going through the history and highlights of Able Danger. Since much of this is available on many sites and news articles, I will (as usual) focus on what was new or confirmed.

As is well known, the Congressman is frustrated that even after 9-11, and even though most of the damage to Able Danger’s potential was done in 2000, the current administration is still doing more CYA than hard nosed assessment. He does not feel it is the intent or wishes of the Cabinet or President to throw up road blocks. But there are enough well connected and respected people, and top level DC careerists, with serious power who could be embarrassed that the drive is to stomp this story down and hope (or assume) they have it all fixed.

Let me jump to a tidbit that came at the end of the conference call. Weldon noted that the DIA held an agency wide conference recently in Florida – pulling many of their people in from their posts – and a top level DIA person said one of the Agency’s top priorities was to shutdown the Able Danger story. Not terrorism – Able Danger.

I live and work in DC and that has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. If people wanted this story to go away they would fix all the problems – none of which involve classified material or details. All the problems surrounding Able Danger are related to people misusing their positions to hide personally embarrassing information. In the Clinton years it was apparently studies regarding technology leaks to China. In the Bush administration it appears to be bad decisions, turf wars and protecting empires. But in all cases, national security is second to the DC CYA.

Weldon is surprised at the push back he is getting now. It seems the DoD has convinced themselves they have fixed the problems. In my opinion they are in denial because the excuses they give make no sense. Cambone has got to be the biggest incompetent fool if he thinks the proper response to data reaching its 90 day anniversary is armed guards taking data and SW, closing down successful intelligence efforts, and stopping successful contracts mid term. That is not how the government deals with stale data. And those orders do not typically emanate from the Pentagon or higher.

It seems Justice and DoD are aware there are problems, but instead of showing off how things have been corrected to Congress (which is normal behavior when you want to show you are worthy of more funding) they are rationalizing and resisting detailed oversight.

Weldon does have pre 9-11 data which was not found in Garland as I suspected. This is the data he had run and which surfaced a lot of Atta hits. But he speculates (and I agree 100%) SOCOM could have more copies of the original Able Danger data from 2000. The purge was only at LIWA since that is where the China Study was done. The problem was what was defended for destroying the China data ended up snagging our leads on tens of terrorists world wide.
And the intimidation of witnesses is real. There are statements by two people of threats by Cambone’s staff to lose security clearances in phone conversations. The fact information from Tony Shaffer’s security clearance were lifted and made public has caught the attention of numerous other potential whistleblowers. The administration’s reliance on bumblers like Cambone and others makes it more likely the story will stay alive as people lose their livelihoods through loss of clearances. Or even worse – personal smear campaigns.

Many who saw or had a chance to listen to the hearings will recall when Weldon confronted Cambone with testimony from a very senior, retired intelligence officer – well respected in the community – who talked on a plane to a Cambone staffer (Butch Willard I believe) who said Cambone’s team saw the Able Danger story dying.

Turns out the guy behind Cambone was the guy on the plane (who jumped in his seat when Weldon relayed the claim) and the senior intelligence agent was also in the audience a few rows back. My guess is Cambone was pretty shook up on that one.

As we know from the last conference call with Mark Zaid Zelikow’s testimony in closed session never covered any classified material. So it seems it was more an attempt to hide out from the press than anything else. Zelikow is Condi Rice’s top deputy and he may be trying to protect her from his problems – which of course will end up doing just the opposite. Never hide things in DC.

Weldon is concerned some staffers of the 9-11 commission may have taken it upon themselves, after hearing the details of how Able Danger was disrupted prior to 9-11, to keep the lid on this because it would cause too much discomfort for too many people. It’s not an unreasonable theory and could explain the disconnect with people Weldon knows and respects (e.g., 9-11 Commissioner John Lehman) and the efforts to divert rather than divulge at lower levels.

As I have been posting for a while now, the first and largest problem Able Danger ran into was the blowback on the China technology transfer study done by the same people at LIWA and Orion who did Able Danger. The data mining effort ruffled major feathers and is the reason we lost critical intelligence data on terrorists in early 2000. In the Clinton years it was political appointees cooking up alibis – like the 90 day retention angle – to destroy data, disband solid intelligence work and toss out productive contractors.

It seems in the Bush administration it was the opposite problem, with career bureaucrats taking matters into their own hands and covering their tracks.
Weldon was heavy into the China issue as a member of the Cox Committee investigation in the late 1990′s. This committee did all their work in closed session and determined, unanimously (dems and reps) serious damage had been done to our technology edge over China. Much of it came from wavers being issued by the Clinton administration for all sorts of joint business ventures. That topic is a whole series of posts in itself.
The Cox Committee had one problem – consensus. While the conclusion was unanimous, the answer to how it happened would have broken the committee along partisan lines. So Weldon went off and started to look at it himself, and I believe he eventually coordinated with General Hamre to see what the data miners at LIWA would turn up.

Well, they turned up Universities, where technology is openly discussed and a natural target for Chinese agents and front companies. Lots of universities do research work for DoD and NASA, as well as some operations (the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in CA and the Applied Physics Laboratory in MD are both tied to universities – Caltech and Johns Hopkins – and do a lot of classified work). If there is a weak point in our technology security it is the openness of the University environment. So China targeted these weak points and interesting names come up associated with these universities. Like William Perry and Condi Rice.

As I have said many times, data mining SW looking at China technology connections which did NOT make these connection would be deemed seriously broken. So I doubt anyone who knew what data mining is would be surprised. That is why analysts look at it and have to detect serious connections. Connections like Johnny Chung:

During one visit to the White House, he handed a $50,000 check to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret A. Williams.

I mean even Google can do that kind of search. So why would this cause such panic? Well, it was an election year and not too long after the impeachment hearings. Whatever, the disruption and chaos that followed was not due to any 90 day rule on data retention. Data that is exempt from that rule in 2 out of 3 allowed exemptions.

Interesting side note: Weldon had charts from other efforts that pulled together a timeline of key events and types of leaked technology. These now reside in a Bill Gertz book, and I think the book was ‘Betrayal‘.

Anyway, in 1999 the LIWA effort looked promising to expand on all the work to date and find out more on the ‘how’ we lost technology secrets to China. Then the hammer came down hard.
The news of the problems at LIWA definitely echoed throughout the intelligence community. Apparently the LIWA shutdown and purge was also meant to send a signal. Bob Johnson in Garland caught wind of this purge and took a different tact. He went to his father the Congressman, who went to Weldon and joined forces with him to go to DoD and Congressional leaders and salvage Able Danger in Garland using Raytheonn as the new contractor. It worked for a while until people were shuffled around in DIA and SOCOM and support collapsed. Apparently people like the current number two at DIA who did not have the spine to run a program that had garnered so much attention. Maybe that is why he ran from the room when Shaffer tried to brief him in 2001.

The wide raning discussion covered the USS Cole, the post 9-11 mistakes and successes, the 9-11 commission which I expect other bloggers to go into detail on. I do think the reason the Able Danger warnings about the Port of Ayden were not taken seriously is because other more established elements in the Intelligence community kept trying to dismiss this upstart technology, which did have the political black eye from the China fiasco. In a world of conflicting intel, the tried and true wins out over the new kid on the block.
After the China Study uproar I doubt anyone wanted to have Able Danger or Data Mining associated with their work.
And that is the crime here. Someone panicked, purged our national security apparatus of critical information, tools and personnel to cover their political discomfort. I asked the Congressman if the DoD can fix that problem without legislation and he said no. There are going to be more hearings and the pending report on the IG investigation into the Tony Shaffer retribution.

This story is not dead yet. And the DoD cannot convince America it has corrected these serious, dangerous flaws until it comes clean with what happened – no matter who gets embarrassed. Because, that is EXACTLY how we got into this mess in the first place. People covering up uncomfortable information. This problem cannot be fixed if this is still being practiced to this day, on the very topic which demonstrated the dangers of what could happen.

UPDATE:

One thing to recall from the hearings is how effective Able Danger was post 9-11. The Able Danger mission was to identify Al Qaeda for possible action if the time came. The time came 9-11, and it is easy to speculate Austin Bay may have evidence of what Able Danger’s impact from what this 2002 Al Qaeda message says

STOP RUSHING INTO ACTION AND TAKE TIME OUT TO CONSIDER ALL THE FATAL AND SUCCESSIVE DISASTERS THAT HAVE AFFLICTED US DURING A PERIOD OF NO MORE THAN SIX MONTHS. THOSE OBSERVING OUR AFFAIRS WONDER WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO US. PREVIOUSLY, THEIR ERRORS WERE NOT DISCOVERED UNTIL SUCCESSFUL OPERATIONS HAD BEEN COMPLETED. BUT TODAY WE ARE EXPERIENCING ONE SETBACK AFTER ANOTHER AND HAVE GONE FROM MISFORTUNE TO DISASTER.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1386/feed 16 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1385 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1385#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:08:52 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1385 A few of us bloggers were asked to do an hour on Able Danger by Dirk Thompson who was hosting a show out of Columbus, OH on WTVN 610 AM.

The bloggers were

Mike from Able Danger Blog (who arranged the event)

Captain Ed Morrissey

Rory O’Connor

It was a fun discussion ranging on various aspects of Able Danger. It is amazing how fast an hour can go (especially with commercials, news, traffic and weather thrown in). It was an experience I shall never forget. Of course I got the bad phone line and was a bit hard to hear! I feel like Mike Wazowski from Monster’s Inc when he gets on TV and Magazine covers.

Anyway, for those interested the audio segments are up at Able Danger Blog.

The good Captain, Mike at Able Danger Blog and Rory O’Connor shared the stage for a radio interview for a station in my Mom’s home town area, Columbus, OH.

Being my first radio interview – it was wild! Who knew what this blogging would lead to. Stay tuned, tomorrow I am on a conference call with Representative Curt Weldon thanks to the efforts of Mike at Able Danger Blog.

The usual suspects showed up on line:

Captain Ed
Mark Coffey of Decision ’08
Mike of Able Danger Blog
QT Monster
Rory O’Connor
Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill
Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto

The bloggers were excellent, Mark Zaid was open and honest, and Mike deserves a lot of kudos for getting this set up. Mark and Tony are looking for donations to help their cause. More on that once something is set up and I can point to it. But if anyone can help find some financial support for these good folks please help. Update: here is the address for donations:

Mark S. Zaid, Esq.
Krieger & Zaid, PLLC
1920 N Street, N.W.
Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20036

Mark Zaid’s status update:

Tuesday’s hearing was the culmination of delayed hearings with Mark covering Tony’s side on whistle blowing, etc. The DIA did try to stop Tony from testifying in uniform. Wednesday’s House hearings were on Able Danger with open and closed sessions. There are some chances for more house hearings, and the DoD Inspector General’s report will be out sometime in May – hopefully it will be unclassified. Mark is submitting a complaint regarding Tony Shaffer’s situation and hopefully that will be out on the blogs in a week or two.

Highlights:

Mark was not in the classified hearings, and apparently neither were any Congressman. Three people stayed for the closed hearing testimony: McKinney, Saxon and Weldon. Zelikow testified but some felt there was nothing classified in his testimony, so the committee may have it reviewed and the unclassified sections made public.

Rory O’Connor asked about Zelikow (9-11 Commission) denying his meeting with Shaffer. Apparently Zelikow’s denial was a miscommunication or confusion by someone else – he has never denied meeting Shaffer.

Senator Specter’s counsel was at the meeting because the FBI has changed their story since his meetings. At the time of Specter’s meetings the FBI submitted statements saying the attempted meetings had happened – since one of their agents has stated as such. Now 2-3 more agents are willing to come forward (per testimony on Wednesday), but the FBI has done a 180 and now say there were no attempted meetings. Go Figure.

Beyond the 3-4 agents and Shaffer, Philpott and his boss Col Worthington were the ones to attend the meetings for SOCOM, and there may even be some documentation showing the meetings being scheduled. Why the FBI is denying this is beyond me. The FBI have not been to any hearings and no affidavits have been generated, just submitted reports.

The one lawyer in SOCOM Tony Shaffer suspected as being the source of the cancellations has denied this to Shaffer and Shaffer believes now the source of the cancellations came from some place else, unknown.

Pierre asked Mark why there was resistance in Congress and the media. Mark responded no one knows, no one can figure it out, but embarrassment – at least at DIA – is one factor (me: but that w0uld not explain, necessarily, the data purges and cancelled meetings in 2000). Bill Huntington is a name that keeps appearing as someone to watch in DIA.

Capt Ed Morrissey asked if Able Danger was getting impacted by the NSA story, if that could be causing cold feet or upheavals to investigate by Congress. Mark Zaid he had not heard that at all, but he was talking about communications with folks around NSA who might not really know.

Mark did remind us that the significance of Atta was not appreciated at the time. He was 3 ‘tiers’ down from the Blind Sheikh Rahman of WTC I fame. The question always is what would have happened if Atta’s name had made it to the terrorist watch list since he entered the country under his real name. In my opinion – nothing. The FISA Court was still in the way of acting.

Bluto asked why was there a lack of interest in the press. Again, Zaid commented he was not sure but there was some folks doggedly following it: Tony Snow from Fox, Lou Dobbs from CNN, they got a lot of time from Chris Mathews at MSNBC.

There were lots of other questions which I did not catch (from QT Monster and Mark Coffey to name a few).

In summary I think Mark is missing an opportunity. The best record of events exists in the blogs, hopefully mine being one of those sources. While there were suggestions to expand the events around the USS Cole, my feeling is you the best that will come of this is clearing the Cole’s Captain’s name – but it will not light a fire under the press or Congress. Stories need to ‘unfold’ into interesting areas.

And while I knowingly wince at the mention of Able Danger being slowed by bearucrats tossing out Orion’s much better commercial SW for a less capable in-house version, thus limiting or delaying the application of this technology, and the sympathy I have learning MITRE is the company that came in and (again) competed with industry to provide a lesser, more expensive solution – this inside baseball is not going to move the story. MITRE always slows down progress and always tries to recreate commercial capabilities. No shock there.

What this story needs is some revelations that solidify the possibility Able Danger, if left alone, had a very good chance of stopping 9-11. The story that will bring in the press and the Congress is the scandal of a CYA effort by skittish political appointees that ended up deleting national security data that could have stopped 9-11.

All other stories are of incompetence, or a pre 9-11 mindset. This one would be of arrogance and stupidity. There would be little room to give these people a break. Prior to 9-11 many tried to warn us and many, without malice or even negligence, did not see the threat that big. But deleting data to cover up a report on China – that is a different story.

If true. It may not be true and this may not be much of a story beyond government still works the way it always did.

When I see them, here will be the links to others covering the conference call:

Captain Ed
Mark Coffey of Decision ‘08
Mike of Able Danger Blog
QT Monster
Rory O’Connor
Pierre Legrand from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill
Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto

Audio Feeds of the hearings from QT Monster
A transcript of these audio feeds being developed at Flopping Aces
PDF files of the opening statements at Able Danger Blog
My four part analysis (of which only Parts II, III and IV are important)

There are numerous other live blog posts, reporting, etc. which I do not have the time to catalogue (but people are free to link-trackback to if they wish). QT Monster has the most extensive record of posts and articles out there.

In my review of the audio tapes I identified 54 news worthy items of interest. These are things that were previously speculation and now being confirmed, additional information that changes or expands what we believed to be the truth about Able Danger, and some new revelations. These items are contained in the three parts of the analysis I did as follows: my post on Part II covers items 1 – 15, Part III covers 16 – 35, and Part IV covers items 35-54. I will refer to these in this post so I do not have to repeat what is written already.

Fair warning: I am interpretting statements based on my knowledge of working in the Federal Government, extrapolating some comments as well, and speculating what it could mean. It is possible I read too much into a comment – though I have tried to check myself. I will do so again once the full transcript is out.

Going into these meetings I felt we needed answers to 5 pivotal questions:

(1) Who ordered the purging of the China Study data, that ended up including the purging of the Able Danger data as well in the spring 0f 2000 when Atta and the other three 9-11 terrorists had been identified (and then lost due to the purge)?

(2) What was the rationale used for ordering this data purge?

(3) Who put the stop to meetings between the DIA and FBI in the late summer and fall of 2000 to alert the FBI of possible terrorists in the US?

(4) Where any of the terrorists known at that time linked to 9-11?

(5) Who ordered the destruction of Lt Col Shaffer’s Able Danger files at DIA in 2003-2004?

I am afraid we did not get answers to all of these, at least in open session. Who knows what happened in the closed session.

I am going to highlight briefly the big new items that I gleaned from the hearings, and then embark on some speculation using this new information to develop a theory. Being a science based person speculation is the first step to facts, something to put out and test against what we know. It is how a clear picture evolves as we add new information and cycle through the speculation and testing. I am happy to say my earlier speculations have been confirmed, much of what I assumed is now becoming established as what happened. So we shall see how I do this next round.

Success and Failure: (Item 28 Apparently Able Danger an enormous success, post 9-11. I am getting the feeling, mostly from the awe in Cambone’s voice and his clearly honest comments, that it is a bit of a legend in intel circles under its current designation. Cambone let on that Able Danger’s products played a huge role in the rolling up of Al Qaeda after 9-11. My feeling is it is this successful period after 9-11, where the technology showed how we can reach out and touch the ones we want, that makes those who lived through the 2000 mess really frustrated. The post 9-11 success meant it was possible to have another huge success before 9-11, without the loss of 3000 lives.

Think of it as if Apollo 13 happened before we landed on the moon, and we covered it up until afterward the first moon landing. The Apollo program would be considered an historic success, and naysayers complaining about some near miss that happened in the march to the moon would be swimming against a strong current. We seem to have that here with Able Danger – the horrific screw up in 200o is overshadowed by what it did as we went on the offensive.

“Cam-Boners” On Reason For Purge: I was seeing so many wet-tissue thin alibis by Cambone for why the data was purged in 2000 I coined the term “Cam-boner” for when his excuse was so lame it was ripped to shreds by logic or Weldon or Shaffer. All of Cambone’s Cam-boners are associated with the reasons for the data purge. Cambone wants to pin this purge on lack of Federal Forms (Item 10). The truth is there was no real problem holding the unclassified data (Item 49), but even if there was an issue Cambone testified it was easily taken care of in the second incarnation of Able Danger in Garland, TX (Item 15). One form was related to data retention and the other was related to authorizing LIWA to work for SOCOM-DIA. But neither was a huge obstacle or a reason for what really happened.

The real Cam-boner here is it was not simply a data purge. It was not simply an effort to deal with stale information. Because all that required was the data purge. But not only was the data purged, but the LIWA efforts on two data mining studies were shutdown in midstream and a contractor had their contract closed, their unclassified data illegally confiscated and people put out of work. Those kinds of draconian actions are not take because some data was hitting its 90-day birthday.

UPDATE:

I direct folks to the top of page seven of Shaffer’s written statement and how Kleinsmith argued the data purge was not required by statute and how he was ordered, with the threat of jail, to purge the data anyway.

END UPDATE

This is confirmed by the people at Garland who have the proper two little forms which allows them to hold identical data beyond 90 days without question. No change in content, just two little forms in the file cabinet (Items 22 and 24, Item 39). So what was the reason to shut down LIWA and Able Danger 1.0?

China Study Rocks The Hill and Unleashes The Purge: While Cambone tried to link the data purge to this 90-day rule, Weldon and the other witnesses (with first hand knowledge) pointed to the LIWA China Study that was being done in parallel to the Able Danger study. I have stated all along this was the lynchpin, the source of all later cover ups and mistakes and lost opportunities.

We all know the story so I will not repeat it here, but what we learned from the hearings is how far up this went. Weldon let slip that the initial China study report made it well outside of LIWA and Orion, up past the Army chain of command, beyond the Pentagon and hopped the Potomac to reach Capitol Hill (Item 54). Trust me when I tell you how stunned I was to hear that the China study report was seen by many in Congress – including Congressman Weldon himself. He briefed others on it. And it was this report containing nationally known names that caused the data purge.

There is no doubt of that now. Kleinsmith testified to the fact the order came from above his chain of command (Item 38). The fact the SOCOM folks were in an uproar means the order was above LIWA and SOCOM, putting it in the Pentagon or higher. Who was involved in this?

Well one person does come to mind: Jamie Gorelick. Another Weldon bomb shell was that no only did Gorelick contact him last summer to claim she “did nothing wrong”, apparently she called Sen Specter twice to convey the same message (Item 31).

Now we can connect some dots. The China study hits Capitol Hill and obviously echoes down Pennsylvania Avenue as Democrats (and possible Reps) wonder if the town is going to be heading back into a second impeachment. My guess is it wasn’t because of sufficient number of Republican names (like Rice), but the Clintons are not taking any chances. Gorelick has roots in the Pentagon’s General Counsel Office and they devise a plan to destroy the study using the 90 day rule. This is put into effect, but somehow the Able Danger data is caught up in the mess because the two efforts share the same people and timeframes. What is required for China to disappear is necessary for Able Danger too. That includes purging data, contracts and personnel. DIA and SOCOM grudgingly end up allowing this to happen (but not without a 6 month battle) when they are allowed to open Garland.

And now, in hindsight, many are probably feeling they made a pact with the devil. If Able Danger was successful post 9-11, then its potential pre 9-11 must be eating away at some good people. So we have a battle between alarmists (needed the data purged) and pragmatists (who were convinced to let things slide) and the outraged (those who cannot live with what happened). Make no mistake – most people in DC are in the middle right now. But they apparently are being pushed towards the outraged.

Shaffer As Symbol To Others: The biggest Cam-boner of the hearings was when Cambone claimed he was not aware of any intimidation. Well Weldon and Shaffer let out some very, very serious charges.

Ever wonder how the DIA found out that Shaffer, as a 15 year old boy, absconded with government pens. Ever wonder how this event became part of the government’s charges to strip Shaffer of his clearance, job, salary and health benefits. Well, it appears this is information from Shaffer’s security clearance files and his interviews. This is one of the most damning things to leak about a person. All of us who have clearances bared our souls to Uncle Sam on all the things we did (and did not get caught doing) so we could never be blackmailed. Every dirty secret you would not tell your parents, spouse or kids. If we could do it, we wouldn’t confess these things to God. And this is where that information came from. It is a clear signal to all involved the brass knuckles are out and the 9mm is aimed at your kneecaps (Item 35).

More than that, the DIA was questioning Shaffer just recently on what he had told the DIA Inspector General which is looking into the DIA’s actions against Shaffer. This is absolutely forbidden to do in these cases (Item 42).

But Weldon may have just caught Cambone with his pants down. Apparently one of Cambone’s staff, Butch Willard (ph), told a former intelligence agent that Cambone’s group was out to kill the Able Danger story. This bombshell was dropped right after Cambone testified no one was against bringing the Able Danger story to light (Item 25).

The lynchpin to understanding what happened to Able Danger is understand the events around Question 1, The China Study reaction. We cannot allow discomfort for partisans and political appointees to trump national defense ever, ever again. We have clearly mixed feelings in the government to get this story put away and protect what is apparently a really great success story. Those who screwed up in 2000 are still in play since Shaffer’s files were destroyed in 2004. There are people in the DIA (Mark Ewing possibly) and the Pentagon and now apparently on Capitol Hill who were possibly involved with the disruption our national defense in an effort to kill the LIWA China stud. One candidate is a 9-11 Commissioner. What will come of this now I do not know – but after 9-11 and 3000 lives lost we deserve assurances this cannot happen ever again.

UPDATE II:

In looking through Shaffer’s statement I am surprised at how closely I nailed Able Danger – because I had seen it all before. I am a maverick in how I approach problems. I do things few if any dare to do use new technology. Not because I am more gifted or smart, simply because I am less concerned about ‘image’. Here is how I described what Able Danger probably was last August:

I do contract work for the government and many times have I had to go into meetings, boards of reviews, commissions, with these people and try and to explain they have missed something or gone down the wrong path It is not easy and never pleasant. It is simple human nature to not want to hear you are wrong or in error, and so is not limited to govies. But it can be accentuated in these people because they weild so much decision power, and they really cannot afford to be seen as wrong.

So I can envision this upstart, prototype data mining methodology being given the evil eye by the old guard. Why do you think the FBI and FAA computer systems belong in museums representing 1990 technology? Able Danger was a demonstration effort to show the power of data mining, therefore it was not supposed to actually be ‘operational’ – a conceptual state a system must attain through process and paperwork, not simply capability to produce results.
…
Able Danger was probably lucky because Atta and his gang were very clumsy and nearly caught many times. They were easy to mine out of the static of information. But AQ adjusts as we adjust, and the utility of data mining is going to dissipate – all pro-active measures relent to new counter measures. So we had our golden shot with this methodology and we blew it.

I doubt anyone who mistakenly decided to ignore Atta feels good about this. But that does not give them the excuse to cover up their actions and hide this information. And it doesn’t give the 9-11 commission any alibi for dismissing it out of hand – which I no doubt believe is what happened. Enough excuses and enough worrying about which party’s image is going to get hurt. Get to the bottom of this and let the chip’s fall where they may.

Then go read Shaffer’s statement (which rings as true as everyday I have worked for the Feds) and see how the infighting erupted, the empires were threatened, the old guard tried to steal, bribe or take down the upstart. See the petty fuedal system which is the Federal Government at work too many times.

update: I am attempting to identify the big news using bold font.

The first posts on this subject are Part I, Part II and Part III.

As before, I am listening to part 2 of the hearings at QT Monster. As context I will use the post QT liveblogged as a reference. We pick up at the 4:35 PM Eastern mark in the live blogging timeline.

36th Item: We come in the middle of the response about the 90 day rule on data. The problem is this doesn’t make sense since the data was there much longer than 90 days. The corrective action is to process the proper forms. Somehow that was fixed easily in Garland (the data set contents had not changed), but in LIWA it caused the deletion of the data, then the firing of the contractor in mid performance, and then it closed down the LIWA support for SOCOM. Sorry, not buying it. The purge was a response to issues in the China study. The result was a massive upheavel. This data retention issue is a lame smoke screen. Moreover, if there was a data problem then SOCOM would have been called in to ask them what they wanted to do, since THEY were paying for the whole thing. The fact the general in SOCOM was not informed and was not happy is another sign protocol was not followed. It is obvious SOCOM could have taken responsibility for the data and washed LIWA’s hands of the problem – but that would entail informing them. Someone wanted that data purged and the entire effort closed down and they had the political muscle to make it happen. It took some equivalent effort to restart in Garland, I am sure. This is not about data retention forms. Cambone admits it was done in Garland, but he never once explains why it was not simply corrected at LIWA. The guy is just incompetent.

Second Panel Now Being Seated with Kleinsmith (LIWA), Shaffer (DIA), JD Smith (ORION)

37th Item: Kleinsmith was Chief of Intelligence for LIWA, who Cambone named as the one and only person to decide to purge the data. Kleinsmith does acknowledge LIWA was not an intelligence group which made the Able Danger work a bit different for them – but not much. You still have security clearances and you still deal with the US government contractors – and many people have worked all sides. Not sure why he is making a big deal about this. He does point out LIWA had many customers accessing their data mining technology (he and Dr. Preisser).

38th Item: BINGO! Kleinsmith’s Opening Statemen: Now we get to the prime pivotal issue: what caused the data purge in the first quarter of 2000. LIWA had the experience and expertise through all their other support efforts. Kleinsmith also goes out of his way to say their group had the backing of their full chain of command (hinting I suspect that to change their direction would have had to come from higher than that level). They generated dozens of charts and determined there was a significantly ‘large footprint’ of possible terrorists in the United States. In essence they were on a roll, and then it happened. In the middle of their efforts word came down to cease support to SOCOM because there were “intelligence oversight concerns”. This is simply BS since these tools and methods had been used numerous times and I doubt overseas terrrorist would trigger a problem. What this means it the people responsible for the purge had determined the alibi they would use to purge the data. That implies a cadre of people somewhere planning how to get this effort stopped and this data deleted. Kleinsmith testified the order came from well above his chain of command – INSCOM (ph). So this WAS NOT a decision by Kleinsmith as Cambone testified earlier. It eminated from somewhere in the Pentagon which is truly amazing. You have a small, tiny group doing a prototype effort in a fairly small area of the military (LIWA) and somehow someone in the Pentagon detects this tiny effort and works to shut it down. Not clean up the data retention problem – shut it down. And this caused what can only be seen as a Battle of the Brass because it took 6 months to find a way to restart the program at Garland. Except I doubt it was a battle inside the military, I bet it was a battle between the military and the political appointess – some coming from the Pentagon’s General Counsel Office (Gorelick’s old stomping grounds). SOCOM was fighting the stoppage as well. So there we have it, the order to purge came from outside Able Danger, above LIWA and SOCOM, and therefore from the Pentagon (if not higher still).. Kleinsmith was ordered to do this – it was not his decision.

39th Item: The attack on the USS Cole seemed to be a breaking point on those trying to tamp down Able Danger. Someone finally woke up and probably decided the PR problems in early 2000 were nothing compared to a sobering attack on the US Navy – and how they responded to that.

Now Lt Col Shaffer’s opening statement.

40th Item: Shaffer challenges Cambone’s assertion Able Danger was simply a planning exercise (and not an operational one). Truth is, planning systems are used operational to track progress and update the plans, so no system lives only on one side of the fence. Another “Cam-boner” (by the way, I reserve the rights to that little play on words!).

41st Item: Shaffer challenges statements regarding the FBI and attempts to set up the meetings.

42nd Item: Wow. DIA questioned Shaffer about his testimony today, asked him what he said to the Inspector General (that is a big time no-no) and went to court to strip Shaffer of DIA counsel in closed session. OK Cam-boner is either a real idiot or covering up. First they leak information from Shaffers security clearance papers and interviews, and then they ask him what he said to the IG who is investigating DIA for possible harrassment? Shaffer is going into the closed session without counsel and under protest. Brave move.

JD Smith’s Opening Statement. I am going to go live blogging from here on since it is nearly 11:00 AM and my readers probably want something to read! I’ll fix the typos later folks.

43 rd Item: JD Smith worked at Orion through August 2000 (in Mclean, VA – my home town!). All support was unclassified and offsight. There was no access to classified information from Orion. All tasking was from Dr. Preisser at LIWA. They had no knowledge of the code name Able Danger. Orion simply collected open source, unclassified data and delivered products including charts. Basically he is pointing out that the 90 day retention problem probably did not apply to Orion. What Smith does confirm is the ‘Brooklyn Cell’ was so named because the center of the linakges was to the Blind Sheik Rahman of WTC I fame. It is this connection that runs out to Mahomed Atta. As I said in the previous post, anyone trying to re-run a data mining analysis who doesn’t seed the starting point with Rahman is going to miss Atta – period.

44th Item: JD Smith confirms they were tracking Atta through multiple names (which he used). Apparently they were able to discern all other persons with similar names and also identify aliases for Atta. My guess is Atta was possibly one of the core players in the Hamburg cell, while Rahman was the center of the Brooklyn cell. The timing is right for that to be the case.

45th Item: Shaffer states that in the three attempts to meet with the FBI, it was SOCOM who failed to show up the first two times. The FBI special agent called Shaffer wondering why they would not come to the meetings. Shaffer talked to Philpott and Philpott were being told by their legal attornies not to show up. So the direction to stop is only known to SOCOM folks (who was only testifying in the closed session). Philpott alluded to Shaffer that passing terrorist leads to the FBI could be misused (The Gorelick and FISA Walls of course) and rebound on SOCOM. The example was the WACO experience, but the mechanisms were probably the Gorelick and FISA Walls. Could be something else because all these acts and regulations and policies fed together to make communicating leads like this illegal. Federal organizations orking together to identify threats to Americans was (and may still be) illegal. Not the negligence of not stopping attacks – the act of trying to stop attacks is illegal.

46th Item: Shaffer’s recollection (albeit second hand) is the information of interest involved the Brooklyn Cell and that members may be in the US legally. An interesting question to ask is did the analysts move a person from one cell to the other if their connections or location changed? Anyway, from previous testimony the topic of the aborted meetings did not include the 9-11 terrorists, which leads me again to believe Atta, at this time, was tied to the Hamburg cell.

47th Item: Shaffer discusses a parallel effort he was doing with the FBI on a target in Europe to demonstrate why some of the ‘excuses’ that were coming out of SOCOM and the LIWA order to purge were not believable. By having a concurrent program doing basically the same work it does make the case the concerns were hyped. LIWA and SOCOM were following what even they thought at the time was bad advise. What we need to know is who was giving this bad advise and how high up it went.

48th Item: Weldon is faced with a final 10 minutes to get all three witnesses to state they all three agree with Louis Freeh that the Able Danger information could have prevented 9-11. That is stunning. Even McKinney is taken aback by this (for different reasons obviously).

49th Item: JD Smith drops a bombshell: no information was collected in US persons, only persons of interest (re terrorists). There were linkages being developed and US names would come up – but no information was collected on these US names! This is really big news. If Able Danger holds the name “John Smith” in its databases and there is no way to identify which John Smith (DOB, SSN, Address, Phone, etc) then Smith is right – that is not collecting or holding information an a US person because there is no direct link to a specific person. They probably argued this ad nasuem against the purge orders.

50th Item: Another JD Smith bombshell. Smith was not there when the officers came to clear out Orion (which is strange since he was he PM) but those coming for the data claimed the data was classified – but that is not possible. Someone was really bending and breaking rules to get this data destroyed. The data was not classified. Kleinsmith dodges a confirmation question on this matter – not sure why?

51st Item: Bob Johnson and Shiffrin from Garland maintain that all that was required to hold the data was the proper form in the file – which is clearly how Garland solved the issue after the LIWA purge. Someone needs to ask why LIWA had to be shutdown over stale data as opposed to simply remedying the issue the way Garland did. Shaffer sites the fact that publically available data is an exception to the 90 day rule! Nuff said. There are additional exceptions for tracking terrorists. Kleinsmith comments that he was barred from working on the data to clean it up! What a joke. But he does confirm there were products from LIWA going to SOCOM as I suspected.

52nd Item: McKinney opens up a really interesting angle about parallel operations in other areas of the government (CIA). Shaffer responds about the CIA finding regarding terrorists – but they were walled off (CIA would not coordinate).

53rd Item: Kleinsmith discusses Maj General Lambert’s (SOCOM) anger that someone had ordered LIWA (Kleinsmith) to destroy the data since it was ‘his’ data (for SOCOM. But Kleinsmith does add something: the data could have been reconstituted, but the analysis would have to be redone. If the issue was data retention past 90 days, why was the order to shut LIWA down? They could recapture the data, cleanse it were necessary and start over (basically what happened in Garland). No, this was not about retention of publically available, unclassified data. There were hundreds if not thousands of steps to take on this before purging and closing the whole thing down.

54th Item: Weldon gets to the nub and asks Kleinsmith if he was aware of the parallel LIWA China study and how the results had identified nationally known figures and that was why there was such a push on the 90 day rule. Kleinsmith says he was part of that as well – in fact four them worked both China and Able Danger. Another Weldon bombshell! The names uncovered made their way to CAPITOL HILL! How is that? Again, this is a small, backwater technology demonstration program – why would anyone run to the Hill? Kleinsmith says the result is a lot more attention than he has ever experienced. Hold the presses – is this a bi-partisan CYA from Congress??? The China report needed to disappear and the best way to get that done was through this lame 90 day excuse. These people KNOW what was in that report. Weldon recalls it and claims other members on the Hill saw it. It tied innocent, well known names to key technology lapses to China. 2 of the 3 (Shaffer, JD Smith) testify people want this to go away. Follow the China study, that is the lead to the people who deleted critical national security information in a sad attempt to not look bad.

That’s it folks. I want to do a summary post on all the big items in this which will come later today or tonight. Unfortunately I think we will need some key leaks from the closed session to track down who panicked over the China story and destroyed our leads on the 9-11 terrorists. Because if Able Danger was such a huge success after 9-11, as Cambone claimed, it had all the potential to be a huge success prior to 9-11.

update: I am highlighting what I think are important items with a bold font.

I decided to start a fresh post as a slog on through these hearings. You may want to check out Part I (which has nothing in it really) and Part II (which takes us through Cambone’s opening statement). As before, I am listening to part 1 of the hearings at QT Monster. As context I will use the post QT liveblogged as a reference.

3:13 PM Eastern, questioning begins

16th Item: New Director of DIA seems to be allowing more investigation. Weldon first called Cambone when learning of Able Danger – the irony.

17th Item: Weldon in his ‘question-statement’ confirms the Brooklyn cell, one of five focused on by Able Danger, had four of the highjackers, (Atta, Hazmi, Midhar and Shehhi) and that in September of 2000 SOCOM tried to pass this information (the Brooklyn Cell info) to the FBI Washington Field Office (with which apparently Lt Col Shaffer was discussing data mining research opportunities). It has been hard to confirm the 9-11 terrorists were in the information SOCOM had at the time in the second phase after the purge of the LIWA data sets. But Weldon is clear on this point finally.

18th Item: Weldon now has 3 FBI Agents who can testify to the attempts to set up the meeting. That is pretty good confirmation.

19th Item: Weldon is right about one thing (and I was half right about my guess Able Danger data still existed!). If Cambone and his people did not check the Garland facility then this is a whole new ballgame – if the powers to be want it to be a new ball game. Apparently Garland and much more extensive data sets than LIWA (makes sense, the took over and went farther than LIWA) and possibly could reproduce everything LIWA had. The purge was only at LIWA and Orion as suspected.

20th Item: Weldon’s claims that they reran this second repository of pre 9-11 data and had numerous hits on Atta (hopefully the real Atta which, in hindsight, they should be able to easily match with his now known activities and locations) is enormously helpful to his cause. It is not earth shattering Atta was on radar screens of various intelligence groups. But the fact it has been missed in the 9-11 Omission study and now apparently is being covered up a bit might give this story legs.

21st Item: Meehan (D) is trying to rescue Cambone credibility through irrelevant, soft ball questions. The question is why? Why would a Democrat Congressman try and help a Bush administration figure look better in a public forum like this? After all the left’s efforts to find fault with the Bush administration, why is Cambone being helped by the lefty???

22nd Item: The name of “Mr Shiffrin” arises again. We heard this first when Weldon went ballistic over the reprisals being taken against Shaffer. I think I even have some background in the guy, if it is the right guy. Weldon recounts how the meeting with Cambone in the spring of 2001 (which Shaffer probably attended) included Shiffrin. Shiffrin is the person who states unequivocally that there was no reason to destroy the LIWA data on terrorists (or China for that matter) because it contained information on US persons. I still think it was because it had information on certain US persons close to Clinton. The second time we heard about Shiffrin is when Weldon let out he was in contact with Dr. Bob Johnson – Head of the Garland facility. Shiffrin would eat Cambone’s lunch with all Cambone’s silly claims about legal issues regarding the data sets.

23rd Item: Weldon says the more dramatic testimony was in the closed session – drat.

24th Item: Cambone has guts. He just claimed Able Danger was so important that, after having ‘problems getting it up and running’ at LIWA it was reconstituted at Garland. What a crock of bull! Not having the proper data handling paperwork and cross support agreements is NOT what stopped LIWA. These minor obstacles could just as easily been worked for LIWA as they were for Garland! There is no magic in Federal forms. Cambone just insulted everyone with an ounce of knowledge on how the government works. Clearly there was something very dramatic at LIWA that caused the entire effort to be uprooted – and it wasn’t missing forms.

25th Item: Holy Cow! Weldon has a signed affidavit from a witness that talked to one of Cambone’s staff recently and who said Cambone’s group was going to ‘kill this story’ and Shaffer had no credibility. The name is Butch Willard This is right after Cambone claimed no one was not trying to ‘bring the information forward’. If Weldon is right, Cambone just perjured himself and is in hot water now. The witness is an ex intelligence officer (woman). They moved all this to the closed session!

26th Item: Weldon confirms that the reason Able Danger LIWA was shutdown was the fact that the parallel China study would embarrass some high level people in the country. More importantly, Weldon clearly states ‘The Army” was told to shutdown LIWA-Orion. No officer in the Army can do that. The order came from the Pentagon, or possibly another Federal area. This is also huge. Unfortunately, before Cambone was forced to respond Weldon went off on the Yemen tip.

27th Item: Two committee staff members interviewed Bob Johnson and the notes will be added into the record. Wonder how to get that information!

28th Item: Another huge item. Cambone calls Able Danger a success because it was used in ‘the campaign’ or military planning exercise. I once worked on those planning systems collectively called GCCS. So what this comment tells me is Able Danger did its prime mission – it identified Al Qaeda members and cells so they could be taken out. What Cambone is saying is Able Danger played a role in our rolling up of Al Qaeda world wide, in Afghanistan, in places like Yemen. It means its impact was quite positive in the end. That could explain why so many have tolerated those crude acts in 2000. Able Danger might just of allowed us to quickly find and neutralize many, many Al Qaeda members after 9-11, and may have led us to folks like Shaikh Mohamed Khalid. Inside the intel community, Able Danger’s success could be legend for all we know. All speculation, but Cambone was pretty clear about the respect of this program and where it products were used.

That’s it for tonight folks. Maybe Part IV tomorrow.

Found a little time for some more listening.

29th Item: Army searched more than 15 modern, open source databases – which are more expansive – and using the tools of today. They looked at Nov 1999 to May 2000 thinking that was the period of interest. They did not apparently come up with ‘the’ Atta we all know from 9-11. Now the one problem I have with this is data mining is part art. tweak a few search parameters and you get a different result. And I suspect they did not seed the process correctly. These people forgot the Brooklyn cell was built around known people from WTC I, where linkages began with these people and spread out from there. And that is how you can trip over Mohamed Atta. The newer systems may be able to discern like named individuals and throw away a link that an older system may have found and accidentally linked in Atta. That is why luck is always part of this. The re-runs using new data mean very little. In fact, since the panelists say they took Garland data to the newer SOCOM facility, ran it and apparently did not get a ‘Brooklyn cell’ shows me they botched these re-runs. No one should have missed the Brooklyn Cell since many of them are known terrorist.

30th Item: Weldon admits his data sets are pre 9-11 but after the USS Cole. And of course his results were different – this is not a repeatable process like folks are used to with computer systems.

31st Item: WOW! Another Weldon bombshell. Gorelick not only called Weldon to say she did nothing wrong, she called Arlen Specter TWICE to say she did nothing wrong! Why is Arlen Specter covering for Gorelick?

32nd Item: Weldon’s list of witnesses is now up to 8 because someone retired and now feels freer to testify. If the witnesses testify to the pressure as well as the details this could really blow up in someone’s face.

33rd Item: Cambone is trying to defend those who did the research under his guidance. Good sign. It means that this is likely not a nefarious cover up – just Cambone’s incompetence. I have dealt with a lot of PhD’s in my time – most are great. But they are not technically sharp, they are theoretically sharp. So the common sense and basic knowledge to know how SW responds to data sets is typically not their forte’. Cambone may honestly just not know what he is doing. I agree with him, the people under him are not the enemy. But incompetence is. Cambone is truly an idiot because he claimed no one’s career has been at risk due to this. No one in their right mind is going to believe that BS regarding Shaffer.

34th Item: The five Able Danger terrorist ‘cells’: Mauritania (ph), Aden – Yemen, Malaysia, New York -Brooklyn, Hamburg-Germany. Hard to see how Atta was missed in Hamburg?

35th Item: Another big no-no and Weldon bombshell. No wonder people are running scared. I have always wondered how anyone in the DoD would know about Tony Shaffer taking pens (US Government Property!) to take back to school. Who would waste the time to investigate to find this out unless it was easy to find. Weldon let the cat out of the bag: Shaffer’s interviews for his clearances. The background checks you have to go through for clearances are quite extensive. Interestingly enough it is best to admit all your youthful digressions because the intent is to determine if someone can blackmail you and turn states secrets. That is why many people have admitted to drugs, petty theft, truancy, you name it. People admit to affairs. Because once the government knows then you cannot be blackmailed and you are actually less a risk than someone who tries to hide things in their past. Well it turns out the pen stealing is in Shaffer’s record – probably as a joke regarding how clean he was. But what is clear is someone went into his security clearance files, where all his personal dirt was volunteered as part of his effort to protect this country, and used it against Shaffer. Now I know why there is so much concern about testifying. This is as serious as the Clinton’s going through the FBI records of Bush administration employees and Democrat Senators leaking hints about someone’s background check. Because a background check does not necessarily catch admissions of bad behavior – past and current. This is serious. Very, very serious. No one will be comfortable knowing someone leaked this information from what is supposed to be air tight files.

Correction: The panel is not ‘under oath’ but also cannot lie when testifying.

OK, finished the first half of QT’s recordings. I will start a new Partr IV sometime tomorrow and plan a summary post of the highlights at the end.

Goodnight all.

update: I am highlighting what I think are important items with a bold font.

For reference I am listening to part 1 of the hearings at QT Monsters. As context I will use the post QT liveblogged as a reference. I will not repeat anything she has written, though I will expand on points or pick up new points.

Hearings Begin (2:39 PM Eastern)

The opening remarks by the Chairman and Co-Chairman foreshadow the conclusions: no one did anything wrong. Which I have a hard time believing. Whoever overreacted to the China Study results which implicated some Clinton Administration and well known Republican names clearly panicked in destroying the terrorist study data as well as the China study data. We may be seeing loose ends loosely tied up, quietly.

First Item: The opening statement determines the “alleged Atta chart” was developed at a stage when the data was not being used for “operational purposes”. This conclusion confirms earlier reporting that Atta and others showed up in the early test runs which were used to show potential. Shaffer and others recall the names (and some pictures) in a report from Jan-Feb. But it could mean more. The term “operational” is key to these kinds of systems. The “operatoinal” status would be achieved once the data was in SOCOM, merged with classified intel and integrated as the baseline ‘battlefield intelligence’, which involves some steps of authentication and other determinations. Being a technology demonstration for most of its existance, Able Danger was probably NEVER operational. All that means is the data was not taken seriously and promulgated throughout the intel community as actionable. I find this precise use of the word “operational” very telling. But the Chairman is admitting Able Danger had identified 9-11 terrorists – no doubt.

Second Item: Able Danger’s decendant program is alive and well at SOCOM – thankfully.

Ranking Leaders’ Opening Statements (2:45 PM)

Third Item: Vi is correct, Meehan is trying to play down Able Danger calling it ‘small, short in duration, disjoint and uncoordinated’. In other words ignored because it was new to the community. This a lame excuse for arrogance found in tenured approaches and people.

Fourth Item: Reiz (sp?) stated Able Danger ended in late 2000 (not early 2001 after Bush was sworn in).

Testimony of Stephen Cambone plus Panel 1 witnesses (2:52 PM)

Fifth Item: Cambone is doing his CYA in his opening statement by describing his investigation last year. Not being an eyewitness to events this is window dressing and irrelevant. They looked and did not find much. But we all know they did not look everywhere (Garland for example) and much was destroyed. The investigation did cover two contractor sites (Orion-SRA (LIWA) and Raytheon (Garland). But I will tell you how bogus this was. Cambone stated 90 personel conducted over 6500 hours of investigation. Do the math and each person spent 72+ hours (less than two weeks) investigating, interviewing and writing the results and then reviewing the combined results. Not a lot of time.

Sixth Item: No one in the first witness panel has first hand knowledge of Able Danger.

Seventh Item: The review did not find any charts or data with “Atta” from the period prior to 9-11. Nothing on Hazmi, Midhar or Shehi – the three other prime 9-11 terrorists. Why doesn’t the investigation results ever discuss these three? Very strange.

Eigth Item: More word smything: Cambone says they “did not find that the department deliberately failed to share Able Danger information with the FBI”. What is this ‘deliberately failed’ garbage? Who deliberately fails? They failed but not deliberately? They are hiding something.

Ninth Item: Jan – Mar 2002 was the first phase prior to the purge which had ‘the chart’ – which is well known but nice to have it confirmed. This was the LIWA-Orion phase I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The second phase used Raytheon and the Garland site. One thing comes out clearly: these two phases were the development or ‘campaign’ phase Cambone discusses – building the capability and doing initial runs. The effort goes ‘operational’ after all this is completed and the capabilities are now at SOCOM (I would guess). So the people we have heard from were the ones building the capability – which then went operational with I would guess a smaller sustaining engineering group maintaining the systems and someone out acquiring data. All this says is the key data was lost before the thing went ‘live’. Geez, 9-11 sort told us that much.

Tenth Item: Cambone claims it was the LIWA Intelligence Oversight Officer who determined that the Able Danger data had to be destroyed (I guess along with the China study data). I seriously doubt that. The data was the property of a SOCOM general and no oversight officer is going to destroy a general’s data without telling him. Is Cambone being spun or is he doing the spinning? Cambone said the officer looked at LIWA support for SOCOM and determined this was not proper. Except JD Smith and others have said it was the China Study that triggered the purge, which I seriously doubt was for SOCOM. I mean 95% confident it was not. This is bogus and inconsistent with what the blogosphere has learned since last summer. It was not LIWA-SOCOM issues with data – why is Cambone making these inaccurate statements?

Then he goes on to some truly silly claim about a “Required Terms of Reference” authorizing cross support between LIWA and SOCOM not being in place. But this would not cause destruction of data! I believe all that represents is paper work between two government organizations to move funds – nothing more. That is a real stretch of an excuse to destroy data. That TOR bit is a smoke screen. We need to know about the China study data, who owned it and who ordered it destroyed.

Eleventh Item: He does admit that 9-11 terrorists were on a chart in 1999 used to demonstrate and train people. Then he goes on to make some lame statement about how that data still had to be assessed to filter out the false positive linkages to Al Qaeda. I mean – duh! We all know the raw runs with unvalidated linkages is what came out of LIWA-Orion. It was the fact those sets with 9-11 terrorists never got out of LIWA-Orion and to SOCOM and the operational phase that IS THE ISSUE!

OK – Cambone is really a disaster and its late. I will pick it up again tomorrow – possibly late in the day. Check out Top Dog’s find at Able Danger were DIA admits they destroyed Shaffer’s Able Danger data which did not fall under the same excuses used in 2000 at LIWA. And apparently the DIA did not follow proper recording processes for destruction of this classified data. That’s a big time no-no.

Picking it back up for a short bit. Top Dog at the Able Danger blog is reviewing the written statements and has more on who at DIA was a thorn in Shaffer’s side.

Twelfth Item: Cambone said the investigation attempted to use contemporary tools and data sets (post 9-11). But this effort is really not trivial and further calls into question the 72 hours per ‘investigator’ and illustrating that this may not have been in-depth.

Thirteenth Item: Cambone mentions one chart from the period (late 1999 to early 2000) by Orion that has the name & picture of Mohamed Attif or Ajaf (sp?) but not Atta. Of course in Germany Atta was going by the name Mohamed el-Amir! Cambone says this does not prove anything – which is ridiculous. With the name and picture is personal data like phone, address, drivers license, credit card, etc. This is the information that should be part of the data sets and kept with the individual. How is it Cambone’s investigators simply looked at the name and did not check the underlying personal information? Is he another Inspector Clousseau? I am agreeing with Mac Ranger on this and wishing Cambone had just not opened his mouth.

Fourteenth Item: Cambone says the FBI agent has not confirmed that SOCOM had cancelled 3 attempted meetings between the FBI and SOCOM to pass data. Why would the FBI agent know who cancelled the meetings or why? He then goes on to say the DoJ denies such claims. Of course, they would not know who cancelled the meetings or why on the DoD side. Then Cambone goes on to say they found no one who ‘admitted’ cancelling the meetings on the DoD side. Big surprise there. One thing people know how to do instictively is CYA. Except for the fact you have an FBI agent, a Lt Col at DIA and a Navy Captain at SOCOM all saying three scheduled meetings were magically cancelled on them, there is nothing. This is a bad smoke screen. Then Cambone talks about a chatroom for coordination being set up. Well, Cambone must be pretty dumb because everyone knows you cannot post classified material, like leads on terrorists, to a website chatroom. Does he think we are all naive out here in the hinterlands? Then he slides in the comment ‘the chatroom was not actively used’. Duh.

Fifteenth Item: I don’t get this Cambone guy at all. First he claims the LIWA-Orion data set was a problem due to the mingling of US Persons data and was deleted, then he says by the time Garland-Raytheon stand up in the summer the problem is fixed – basically admitting it was a simple paperwork issue – and the data is retained and passed to SOCOM. He is conflicting his own testimony by stating the DoD has the authority to hold data on US persons. So why not fix the paperwork instead of purging the data?

That ends Cambone’s opening statement. More this afternoon.

Top Dog did point me to one of his posts from November on a key person to watch: Mike Ewing who was the Deputy Director of DIA during Able Danger in 2002 and when Shaffer’s Able Danger data went missing in 2003-2004.

Again, I am not saying Ewing did anything wrong, but he should be testifying.

There are a couple hours of audio to go through – so please be patient and I will get to them as soon as possible. I still have a day job!