Dangerously disabled

[Tigermike 3,053]

Jack Kelly: Dangerously disabled

There's more to know about what the 9/11 Commission said it didn't knowSunday, August 21, 2005

Since I wrote about the top-secret intelligence unit last week, Able Danger has gained a face, and other pertinent information about 9/11 that didn't make it into the 9/11 Commission's final report has emerged.

Able Danger was established by the Special Operations Command in 1999. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer was the liaison between the Defense Intelligence Agency and Able Danger.

Then speaking anonymously, Shaffer and another intelligence officer told The New York Times and the Associated Press that in the summer of 2000, Able Danger had identified Mohammed Atta and the other members of his cell as likely al-Qaida operatives. Shaffer said he tried three times to pass this information to the FBI, each time to have the meetings cancelled at the insistence of Pentagon lawyers.

Shaffer and the other officer, a Navy captain, also said they told members of the 9/11 Commission staff about Able Danger and what it had found. Shaffer outed himself after the commission issued a statement saying Able Danger was not "historically significant."

Staff director Philip Zelikow had been briefed on Able Danger in a meeting in Afghanistan in October 2003, but Mohammed Atta was not mentioned at that meeting, the statement said.

Atta was mentioned by the Navy captain in a meeting with staff the following July, but the information was discounted because the officer had no documentary evidence, the statement said.

The commission said also that it had asked the Department of Defense for information about Able Danger, and the information the Pentagon supplied made no mention of Atta or his cell.

This could well be true. Shaffer says the information the Pentagon handed over -- two briefcase-sized packages -- was less than 5 percent of the Able Danger files.

But since Shaffer was the guy with whom commission staff met in Afghanistan, and Shaffer is adamant that he told them about Atta, there can be no innocent explanation for the statement claiming he did not. Either Shaffer is lying, or the commission is.

The New York Times reported Wednesday on something else that wasn't in the 9/11 Commission's report, a 1996 warning from State Department analysts that permitting Osama bin Laden to move from Sudan to Afghanistan would make him more dangerous. (Sudan claims it offered to turn bin Laden over to the United States. Clinton officials dispute this.)

It isn't clear that the commission was aware of the top secret memo, which was obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to the Times.

But the commission did receive a copy of the blistering memo from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White warning that the rule Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick made forbidding information sharing between FBI intelligence officers and criminal investigators was "the single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism."

"It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White's memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick," wrote New York Post Washington bureau chief Deborah Orin.

Nor is there a good reason why the commission should not have been aware of this, reported by the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin in March 2001:

"German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Laden," said the summary of a report that had appeared in an Arabic newspaper in Paris. "They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Laden. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies."

Yet there is not a word of this -- not even a footnote debunking it -- in the 9/11 Commission's report. Curious, when one recalls that Atta's cell was based in Hamburg before it moved to the United States.

"The commission never bothers even to supply the dots that might connect outside their preferred narrative," said Ed Morrissey, who reported on the German arrests in the Weekly Standard Wednesday.

In last week's column, I said commission spokesman Al Felzenberg initially denied the commission had been briefed on Able Danger.

That was incorrect. It was commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton who made that denial. What Felzenberg denied -- and still denies -- is that the commission was briefed on Atta in 2003. I regret the error.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05233/556990.stm

[DKW 86 7,440]

The real scandal was how in the world did Gorelick ever get on the commission.

[TrueBlue72 0]

I am truly puzzled! How could an "independent" commission be so loaded with anti-war zealots and even one of the main perpetrators of the problems that allowed the 9/11 horrors to become a reality. I hope that its "findings" will result in more diligence by the administration to prevent those who were a part of the problem from ever again being allowed a place on such a commission.

[TexasTiger 13,016]

The real scandal was how in the world did Gorelick ever get on the commission.

175414[/snapback]

The real scandal was that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program that had been tracking Atta's movements and 7 months later Atta oversaw the largest attack on American soil:

A small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed, according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the program. The former official asked not to be identified.

In their efforts to locate terrorists, the operation's technology analysts used data mining and fusion techniques to search terabyte-sized data sets from open source material - such as travel manifests, bank transactions, hotel records, credit applications - and compared this material with classified information.

By charting the movements and transactions of suspected terrorists, the operation linked Atta to al-Qaida. Between fall 1999 and early 2000, the intelligence team concluded that Atta, and two others, were likely part of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn.

http://www.timesherald.com/site/printerFri...newsid=15032471

But those facts don't fit into your agenda.

[Tigermike 3,053]

The real scandal was how in the world did Gorelick ever get on the commission.

175414[/snapback]

The real scandal was that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program that had been tracking Atta's movements and 7 months later Atta oversaw the largest attack on American soil:

A small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed, according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the program. The former official asked not to be identified.

In their efforts to locate terrorists, the operation's technology analysts used data mining and fusion techniques to search terabyte-sized data sets from open source material - such as travel manifests, bank transactions, hotel records, credit applications - and compared this material with classified information.

By charting the movements and transactions of suspected terrorists, the operation linked Atta to al-Qaida. Between fall 1999 and early 2000, the intelligence team concluded that Atta, and two others, were likely part of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn.

http://www.timesherald.com/site/printerFri...newsid=15032471

But those facts don't fit into your agenda.

175805[/snapback]

And you are absolutely positive "that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program,,,,,,"

Why would he "right after taking office" axe that particular program? How do you know it was Bush swinging the axe?

[TexasTiger 13,016]

The real scandal was how in the world did Gorelick ever get on the commission.

175414[/snapback]

The real scandal was that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program that had been tracking Atta's movements and 7 months later Atta oversaw the largest attack on American soil:

A small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed, according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the program. The former official asked not to be identified.

In their efforts to locate terrorists, the operation's technology analysts used data mining and fusion techniques to search terabyte-sized data sets from open source material - such as travel manifests, bank transactions, hotel records, credit applications - and compared this material with classified information.

By charting the movements and transactions of suspected terrorists, the operation linked Atta to al-Qaida. Between fall 1999 and early 2000, the intelligence team concluded that Atta, and two others, were likely part of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn.

http://www.timesherald.com/site/printerFri...newsid=15032471

But those facts don't fit into your agenda.

175805[/snapback]

And you are absolutely positive "that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program,,,,,,"

Why would he "right after taking office" axe that particular program? How do you know it was Bush swinging the axe?

175814[/snapback]

Oops. I'm so embarassed. I had absolutely forgotten that the first few weeks after Bush took office he was so hungover that he continued to let the Clinton administration make the decisions.

[Tigermike 3,053]

The real scandal was how in the world did Gorelick ever get on the commission.

175414[/snapback]

The real scandal was that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program that had been tracking Atta's movements and 7 months later Atta oversaw the largest attack on American soil:

A small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed, according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the program. The former official asked not to be identified.

In their efforts to locate terrorists, the operation's technology analysts used data mining and fusion techniques to search terabyte-sized data sets from open source material - such as travel manifests, bank transactions, hotel records, credit applications - and compared this material with classified information.

By charting the movements and transactions of suspected terrorists, the operation linked Atta to al-Qaida. Between fall 1999 and early 2000, the intelligence team concluded that Atta, and two others, were likely part of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn.

http://www.timesherald.com/site/printerFri...newsid=15032471

But those facts don't fit into your agenda.

175805[/snapback]

And you are absolutely positive "that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program,,,,,,"

Why would he "right after taking office" axe that particular program? How do you know it was Bush swinging the axe?

175814[/snapback]

Oops. I'm so embarassed. I had absolutely forgotten that the first few weeks after Bush took office he was so hungover that he continued to let the Clinton administration make the decisions.

175819[/snapback]

Or it could have been that the program was axed by one of the computers that the Clinton clan screwed up on their way out. And BTW, President Bush could not work in the Oval office for several months, they were removing stains of some kind.

[TexasTiger 13,016]

The real scandal was how in the world did Gorelick ever get on the commission.

175414[/snapback]

The real scandal was that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program that had been tracking Atta's movements and 7 months later Atta oversaw the largest attack on American soil:

A small group of Defense Intelligence Agency employees ran the Able Danger operation from fall 1999 to February 2001 - just seven months before the terrorist attacks - when the operation was unceremoniously axed, according to a former defense intelligence official familiar with the program. The former official asked not to be identified.

In their efforts to locate terrorists, the operation's technology analysts used data mining and fusion techniques to search terabyte-sized data sets from open source material - such as travel manifests, bank transactions, hotel records, credit applications - and compared this material with classified information.

By charting the movements and transactions of suspected terrorists, the operation linked Atta to al-Qaida. Between fall 1999 and early 2000, the intelligence team concluded that Atta, and two others, were likely part of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn.

http://www.timesherald.com/site/printerFri...newsid=15032471

But those facts don't fit into your agenda.

175805[/snapback]

And you are absolutely positive "that right after taking office, Bush promptly axed the program,,,,,,"

Why would he "right after taking office" axe that particular program? How do you know it was Bush swinging the axe?

175814[/snapback]

Oops. I'm so embarassed. I had absolutely forgotten that the first few weeks after Bush took office he was so hungover that he continued to let the Clinton administration make the decisions.

175819[/snapback]

Or it could have been that the program was axed by one of the computers that the Clinton clan screwed up on their way out. And BTW, President Bush could not work in the Oval office for several months, they were removing stains of some kind.

175820[/snapback]

Bushco was just warming up the BS machine with all those vandalism stories:

The White House vandal scandal that wasn't

How the incoming Bush team nudge-nudged a credulous press corps into swallowing a trashy Clinton story.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Kerry Lauerman and Alicia Montgomery

May 23, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- The "scandal" broke benignly enough, with an item in Lloyd Grove's dishy Reliable Source column in the Jan. 23 Washington Post, three days after the inauguration of George W. Bush.

"Incoming staffers of the Bush White House," Grove wrote, were "apparently victims of a practical joke." Bush aides in the Old Executive Office Building (EOB), adjacent to the White House, discovered that "many computer keyboards in their work spaces are missing the W key -- as in President Bush's middle initial."

Some W keys were discovered "taped on top of the doorways," while others were broken.

The report was more cute than cutting, with Grove quoting former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who quipped: "I think the missing W's can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work."

But within two days, Grove's playful item had morphed into one more full-blown Clinton scandal. Suddenly newspapers and TV news shows were featuring extensive reports of Clinton administration "vandalism," stretching from the EOB offices of former Vice President Gore to the West Wing. Reports alleged expletive-ridden graffiti, sliced computer and telephone wires, file cabinets glued shut, presidential seals steamed off doors, stolen pictures and so-called porn bombs, which were never exactly described.

The technological problems the vandals wrought were so severe that, according to a report in the New York Daily News, "a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing."

"Phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices," a disapproving Andrea Mitchell reported on NBC News. The message seemed clear: The trailer-trash Clintons and their staff had enjoyed one last bacchanal at taxpayer expense.

Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."

While cautious GSA staffers won't issue a blanket exoneration of the Clinton team, Bernard Ungar, the agency's director of physical infrastructure, told Salon the media clearly exaggerated the extent of the damage. According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar's conclusion, "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the ardent Clinton foe who requested the GAO review, has tried to interpret the agency's findings to mean no "record of damage" had been compiled, not that no damage had occurred. But the lack of records "cataloging" any damages -- which Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer promised in January the White House would compile -- would seem to suggest one thing: Widespread acts of vandalism never occurred.

So how did the vandal scandal that wasn't get blown into a media firestorm?

"Certainly people inside the [bush] administration fed this story," says an angry John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff. "At least they got what they wanted out of it."

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/...dals/print.html

And the "librul media" played right into their hands.

[Tigermike 3,053]

Getting to the bottom of Able Danger

Linda Chavez

August 24, 2005

Did a small intelligence group within the Defense Department identify hijacker Mohammed Atta as a member of a terrorist cell operating in the U.S. almost two years before he and 18 other terrorists killed 3,000 Americans? And if so, why didn't this explosive information make it into the 9/11 Commission report, which was supposed to be the definitive analysis on the worst terrorist incident in American history? Depending on whom you talk to, this story is either proof that the Clinton administration was asleep at the switch while terrorists were planning their attacks during their tenure, or it's a case of false memory syndrome. The Defense Department seems to be leaning toward the latter explanation, reading between the lines of official statements.

The controversy began earlier this summer when Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, first made public the allegations that a small unit within DoD, aptly named "Able Danger," had identified Atta as a potential threat in early 2000 and tried to pass the information on to the FBI but were prevented from doing so. Weldon said he relied on information provided by people familiar with Able Danger, including some who had seen a flowchart representing suspected Al Qaeda cell members in the U.S. that included a picture of Mohammed Atta. To make matters worse, Weldon's informants said that they had briefed the 9/11 Commission staff about Able Danger's findings prior to the release of the commission's report.

Two men have come forward to say they were involved with Able Danger, an Army reserve officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and Navy Captain Scott J. Phillpott. Both men confirm that the intelligence operation identified Atta in early 2000. A third man, a contractor who worked on the project, has also said that he actually possessed a copy of the chart described by Rep. Weldon and others until last year, when he moved and could not remove it because it had become stuck to the wall in his office at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland.

Stung by the assertion that the 9/11 Commission had ignored important information, the now-defunct group's chairman, former Gov. Tom Kean, called for a Pentagon investigation into what Able Danger uncovered about Atta and others involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Now, although Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita says the Defense Department will continue to investigate the matter, he cast considerable doubt on whether the story is credible. "We have not been able to find anything that would corroborate the kind of detail Lt. Col. Shaffer and Congressman Weldon seem to recall," DiRita told The Washington Times this week.

Is it possible that those involved with Able Danger are misremembering such important information? It's hard to say. Memory can play tricks, particularly if a story fits with a preconceived notion. It's also possible to confuse dates and names. In talking about this issue recently on "Eye on Washington," a public affairs show that airs on PBS stations around the country, I recently conflated some "facts" in trying to explain why this case resonated. I noted that what upset many people about this story was that the Able Danger unit was not allowed to share information about Atta with the FBI because Defense Department lawyers prevented it. "Guess who one of those top people at the Defense Department at the time was?" I asked. "A woman named Jamie Gorelick, who happens to have sat on the 9/11 Commission," I asserted. But I was wrong, at least partly.

Jamie Gorelick was general counsel for the Clinton Defense Department, and she was also someone whom many people blame for making it more difficult for intelligence agencies to share information with law enforcement when she was deputy attorney general under President Clinton. But she had left the Clinton administration in 1997, long before Able Danger was in operation, so I was wrong.

We may never know exactly what Able Danger discovered in early 2000, but we do know that there is plenty of blame to go around in missed opportunities to prevent the horrible attack on this country. Let's hope that in the future we spend less time pointing fingers and more time ensuring it never happens again.

Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Townhall.com member organization.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindach...c20050824.shtml

[DKW 86 7,440]

tex, how did you miss the point this time?

Gorelick wrote the memo stopping two different agencies from sharing the info that could have stopped the 9-11 Attack.

I will give her that she recused herslf on the day of questioning the FBI Agent about it.

I still think that between the Clinton Adm not taking it seriously in the hand over documents, The Gorelick Memo, and the Bush and Clinton Adms overlooking the Able Danger work there was ample blame to go around.

Still want to know how Gorelick got on the commission when her memo was likely the most smoking of all the guns.

[TexasTiger 13,016]

tex, how did you miss the point this time?

Gorelick wrote the memo stopping two different agencies from sharing the info that could have stopped the 9-11 Attack.

I will give her that she recused herslf on the day of questioning  the FBI Agent about it.

I still think that between the Clinton Adm not taking it seriously in the hand over documents, The Gorelick Memo, and the Bush and Clinton Adms overlooking the Able Danger work there was ample blame to go around.

Still want to know how Gorelick got on the commission when her memo was likely the most smoking of all the guns.

175836[/snapback]

A "memo." Do you know the background on that whole issue? Familar with the Church Committee? If that "memo" was so glaringly problematic, could not a Bush administration person have written a "memo" that superseded Gorelick's? Couldn't the Republican controlled Congress have passed legislation superseding it? And if they had, and if they were sharing info, but the group tracking Atta had been disbanded, they wouldn't have key info on Atta to share, would they?

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around, but this ridiculous focus on Gorelick is pretty partisan and irrational considering there was no groundswell against her memo that resulted in a different course of action at the time, even though there obviously could have been. If you do something that I have the power to easily overturn and don't, why should I point my finger at you after the fact?

[DKW 86 7,440]

Gorelick Memo was a PC gone overboard happenstance. The underlying idea was privaacy but the result was chaos.

[Tigermike 3,053]

tex, how did you miss the point this time?

Gorelick wrote the memo stopping two different agencies from sharing the info that could have stopped the 9-11 Attack.

I will give her that she recused herslf on the day of questioning  the FBI Agent about it.

I still think that between the Clinton Adm not taking it seriously in the hand over documents, The Gorelick Memo, and the Bush and Clinton Adms overlooking the Able Danger work there was ample blame to go around.

Still want to know how Gorelick got on the commission when her memo was likely the most smoking of all the guns.

175836[/snapback]

A "memo." Do you know the background on that whole issue? Familar with the Church Committee? If that "memo" was so glaringly problematic, could not a Bush administration person have written a "memo" that superseded Gorelick's? Couldn't the Republican controlled Congress have passed legislation superseding it? And if they had, and if they were sharing info, but the group tracking Atta had been disbanded, they wouldn't have key info on Atta to share, would they?

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around, but this ridiculous focus on Gorelick is pretty partisan and irrational considering there was no groundswell against her memo that resulted in a different course of action at the time, even though there obviously could have been. If you do something that I have the power to easily overturn and don't, why should I point my finger at you after the fact?

175843[/snapback]

There you have it folks, if not for excellent preemptive work by Bill Clinton (whenever he took time to pull his pants up) & Ms. Gorelick's great foresight and the democrats, the entire United States would have been overrun by bomb toting Islamic fanatics.

[CCTAU 3,344]

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around, but this ridiculous focus on Gorelick is pretty partisan and irrational considering there was no groundswell against her memo that resulted in a different course of action at the time, even though there obviously could have been.  If you do something that I have the power to easily overturn and don't, why should I point my finger at you after the fact?

Hmmm. Just for the record, we've never seen that tactic before. When demons do it, its investigation and truth hunting. When repubs do it, it's partisan and irrational.

Kinda funny coming from you!