Able baker charlie Danger!
The, formally, compartmented classfied project Able Danger has
suddenly become an emerging political football. Or has it, few seem to
want to run with it after the handoff
The Right's Strange New Retreat - Who called the blogs off on 'Able Danger'? By Mickey Kaus. Sometimes with a topic like this it helps to go all 'old school' on it. That means asking Who, What, Where, When, Why.
Who: is Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 11 Sept. al
Qaeda cell. Who is also Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa,two mid rank
military officers, and the 9/11 Committee - now the 9/11
Public Discourse Project). Where is Brooklyn NY, Fort Belvoir VA,
Afghanistan, and Washington DC. It really does help to know where you
are as you consider a particular episode. When involves points in every
year between 1999-2005.If it helps to know where at any given point it
is crucial to know when. Causality is funny like that.The critical
What: Mohammad Atta was identified by U S Intelligence as being part of
Al Qaeda; "the Brooklyn cell" prior to 11 September 2001
Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00 - New York Times ,
Atta Intelligence Omitted From Report - Yahoo! News .
In response to this initial set of disclosures and storys the 9/11 Public Discourse Project released a four page public statement on 12 Aug. I'll quote a little of this here:
21 Oct 2003 Philip Zelikow, the
executive director of the 9/11 Commission, two senior Commission staff
members, and a representative of the executive branch, met at Bagram
Base, Afghanistan, with three individuals doing intelligence work for
the Department of Defense. One of the men, in recounting
information about al Qaeda[base ']s activities in Afghanistan before 9/11,
referred to a DOD program known as ABLE DANGER... memorandum, prepared
at the time, does not record any mention of Mohamed Atta or any of the
other future hijackers, or any suggestion that their identities were
known to anyone at DOD before 9/11. Nor do any of the three
Commission staffers who participated in the interview, or the executive
branch lawyer, recall hearing any such allegation.
... Nov 2003, shortly after the staff delegation had
returned to the United States, two document requests related to ABLE
DANGER were finalized and sent to DOD.
... Feb 2004, DOD provided documents responding to these
requests. The records discuss a set of plans, beginning in 1999, for
ABLE DANGER, which involved expanding knowledge about the al Qaeda
network. Some documents include diagrams of terrorist
networks. None of the documents turned over to the Commission
mention Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers.
... {In} 2004, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) and his staff
contacted the Commission to call the Commission[base ']s attention to the
Congressman[base ']s critique of the U.S. intelligence community. No
mention was made in these conversations of a claim that Mohamed Atta or
any of the other future hijackers had been identified by DOD employees
before 9/11.
... Jul 2004, the Commission[base ']s point of contact at DOD
called the Commission[base ']s attention to the existence of a U.S. Navy
officer employed at DOD who was seeking to be interviewed by Commission
staff in connection with a data mining project on which he had worked.
July 12, 2004, as the drafting and editing process for the Report was
coming to an end (the Report was released on July 22, and editing
continued to occur through July 17), The officer being interviewed said
he saw this material only briefly, that the relevant material dated
from February through April 2000, and that it showed Mohamed Atta to be
a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn. At the time of the
officer[base ']s interview, the Commission knew that, according to travel and
immigration records, Atta first obtained a U.S. visa on May 18, 2000,
and first arrived in the United States (at Newark) on June 3, 2000.
In June of this year nearly a year after these last events Rep.
Weldon gave an interview with a newspaper in his district bringing it
up publicly, and has been hawking this topic ever since. He has a book
on the market at the moment. After the first round of coverage he
arranged for his source Lt. Col. Shaffer (along with a Navy Capt. Named
Phillpott) to be interviewed by selected press. (Aug 2005:) From the
Washington Post article
Officer: 9/11 Panel Told Cells Identified
: addressing the vagueness of the revelations "Able Danger "wasn't
about dates and locations. It was about associations and linkages.
That's what the focus was," Shaffer said." Problem is probably no one
can say what that means because no one can say much about the catagory
of meaning all this data mining information fits into. From the NYT
Officer Says Pentagon Barred Sharing Pre-9/11 Qaeda Data With F.B.I. - New York Times
"During the interview in Mr. Weldon's office, the former defense
intelligence official showed a floor-sized chart depicting Al Qaeda
networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed
version similar to the one prepared by the Able Danger team in the
summer of 2000." I read elsewhere that he has been showing this chart
to people for months now and only here is it established that this one
is just a recreation of the first from memory.
Why. Reading from a column by Mark Steyn "Atta way to blow 9/11 panel's credibility".
Note bien : that's the idea. Steyn focuses on Felzenberg's (9/11
commission spokesperson) comment ["t]his information was not meshing
with the other information that we had." Felzenberg is referring to the
commissions belief that Atta hadn't come in country or applied for a
visa yet. Steyn attempts to portray this as the commission being
blinkered at the least or willful more probably. He describes it as
odd. Some people actual feel bound by facts. Steyn for his part,
no less oddly, kicks up a cloud of Atta might have, could have, can't
be proved not [to have been in the U S] dust. All of which demonstrate
the validity of the average Elvis sighting.
I'm not sure where all this leaves us [Metafilter has a thread,
Operation Able Danger | MetaFilter ,
going on this now]. The release by Kean-Hamilton seems to have angered
Schaffer and Phillpott, but considering the amount of interviews
and material considered for the 9/11 report, their statements coming in
after the draft had been written and after their earlier interview had
lead to a review which didn't really substantiate what they were
saying. I don't think the commission is at fault - given this set of
facts. It seems also that Able Danger ran into problems with domestic
intelligence collection legality, but probably has continued under some
agencies aegis with even deeper classifaction and different rules.
11:50:28 PM  ;;
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