Able Danger - 9/11 commission losing credibility

[Guest BlackJesus]

[b][quote]Give me proof of USA arming Iraq[/quote][/b]


[u]Arming Iraq and the Path to War[/u]

A crisis always has a history, and the current crisis with Iraq is no exception. Below are some relevant dates.

September,1980. Iraq invades Iran. The beginning of the Iraq-Iran war. (8)

February, 1982. Despite objections from congress, President Reagan removes Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries. (1)

December, 1982. Hughes Aircraft ships 60 Defender helicopters to Iraq. (9)

1982-1988. Defense Intelligence Agency provides detailed information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb damage assessments. (4)

November, 1983. A National Security Directive states that the U.S would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran. (1) (15)

November, 1983. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its Branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. (14)

October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act. (16)

November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians. (1)

December 20, 1983 Donald Rumsfeld , then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support. (1) (15)

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. (19)

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application. (2)

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. (10)

May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. (3)

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. (7)

March, 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. (17)

Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq. (1)

February, 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages. (8)

April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas. (7)

August, 1988. Four major battles were fought from April to August 1988, in which the Iraqis massively and effectively used chemical weapons to defeat the Iranians. Nerve gas and blister agents such as mustard gas are used. By this time the US Defense Intelligence Agency is heavily involved with Saddam Hussein in battle plan assistance, intelligence gathering and post battle debriefing. In the last major battle with of the war, 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas. Use of chemical weapons in war is in violation of the Geneva accords of 1925. (6) (13)

August, 1988. Iraq and Iran declare a cease fire. (8)

August, 1988. Five days after the cease fire Saddam Hussein sends his planes and helicopters to northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against the Kurds. (8)

September, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq. (7)

September 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: "The US-Iraqi relationship is... important to our long-term political and economic objectives." (15)

December, 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons. (1)

July 25, 1990. US Ambassador to Baghdad meets with Hussein to assure him that President Bush "wanted better and deeper relations". Many believe this visit was a trap set for Hussein. A month later Hussein invaded Kuwait thinking the US would not respond. (12)

August, 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait. The precursor to the Gulf War. (8)

July, 1991 The Financial Times of London reveals that a Florida chemical company had produced and shipped cyanide to Iraq during the 80's using a special CIA courier. Cyanide was used extensively against the Iranians. (11)

August, 1991. Christopher Droguol of Atlanta's branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro is arrested for his role in supplying loans to Iraq for the purchase of military supplies. He is charged with 347 counts of felony. Droguol is found guilty, but US officials plead innocent of any knowledge of his crime. (14)

June, 1992. Ted Kopple of ABC Nightline reports: "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush Sr., operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980's, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]." (5)

July, 1992. "The Bush administration deliberately, not inadvertently, helped to arm Iraq by allowing U.S. technology to be shipped to Iraqi military and to Iraqi defense factories... Throughout the course of the Bush administration, U.S. and foreign firms were granted export licenses to ship U.S. technology directly to Iraqi weapons facilities despite ample evidence showing that these factories were producing weapons." Representative Henry Gonzalez, Texas, testimony before the House. (18)

February, 1994. Senator Riegle from Michigan, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, testifies before the senate revealing large US shipments of dual-use biological and chemical agents to Iraq that may have been used against US troops in the Gulf War and probably was the cause of the illness known as Gulf War Syndrome. (7)

August, 2002. "The use of gas [during the Iran-Iraq war] on the battle field by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern... We were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose". Colonel Walter Lang, former senior US Defense Intelligence officer tells the New York Times. (4)

This chronology of the United States' sordid involvement in the arming of Iraq can be summarized in this way: The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

[quote]1. Washingtonpost.com. December 30, 2002
2. Jonathan Broder. Nuclear times, Winter 1990-91
3. Kurt Nimno. AlterNet. September 23, 2002
4. Newyorktimes.com. August 29, 2002
5. ABC Nightline. June9, 1992
6. Counter Punch, October 10, 2002
7. Riegle Report: Dual Use Exports. Senate Committee on Banking. May 25, 1994
8. Timeline: A walk Through Iraq's History. U.S. Department of State
9. Doing Business: The Arming of Iraq. Daniel Robichear
10. Glen Rangwala. Labor Left Briefing, 16 September, 2002
11. Financial Times of London. July 3, 1991
12. Elson E. Boles. Counter Punch. October 10, 2002
13. Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. Iranchamber.com
14. Columbia Journalism Review. March/April 1993. Iraqgate
15. Times Online. December 31, 2002. How U.S. Helped Iraq Build Deadly Arsenal
16. Bush's Secret Mission. The New Yorker Magazine. November 2, 1992
17. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia: Iran-Contra Affair
18. Congressional Record. July 27, 1992. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez
19. Bob Woodward. CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War. Washington Post. 15 December, 1986
20. WWW.gendercide.com [url="http://www.gendercide.com"]http://www.gendercide.com[/url] . Case Study: The Anfal Campaign[/quote]

[Guest bengalrick]

i guess you can't address the topic, huh bj??

[Guest BlackJesus]

[quote]i guess you can't address the topic, huh bj??[/quote]

[i][b]I thought I was an artful dodger.... so why would I


as to the topic at hand.......

I am very concerned about the entire commisions list of bullshit lies.... Clinton based and Bush based....

I am not sure who you have look into this in Washington that would be objective... they are all bought and sold assholes...... You would almost have to have another nation look into it..... a neutral nation without anything to gain like Papua New Guniea etc. [/b][/i]

[Guest steggyD]

[quote]May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. (3)

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. (7)[/quote]

From what I understand, that was for medical research. They were given so that they could produce vaccines. What they did with it instead, is questionable. But there is more proof that other western nations provided many more weapons. The anthrax was shipped to their Ministry of Higher Education. But, of course these timelines posted all over leaves that part out.

[Guest BlackJesus]

[quote]From what I understand, that was for medical research.[/quote]

Oh it's always for medical research

[quote]But there is more proof that other western nations provided many more weapons. The anthrax was shipped to their Ministry of Higher Education. But, of course these timelines posted all over leaves that part out.[/quote]

1. The timeline is entitled US arming Iraq
2. of course they did.... But Other nations did not then illegally invade a soveriegn nation (iraq) take it over, form a puppet govt there, and kill 100,000 people

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 12 2005, 11:47 AM']   Oh it's always for medical research
1.  The timeline is entitled US arming Iraq
2. of course they did.... But Other nations did not then illegally invade a soveriegn nation (iraq) take it over, form a puppet govt there, and kill 100,000 people
[right][post="129422"][/post][/right][/quote]

it could be for good reasons after all... considering the proof that 9/11 - iraq connection was not used, b/c it didnt' fit w/ the rest of their prejud... i mean story... if we put the able danger in part in the commission report, then you can also put in the meeting between iraqi intel and atta that was reported by czech intellegence...

but pay no attention to that... you wouldn't be able to say "bush lied" anymore...

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='bengalrick' date='Aug 12 2005, 11:50 AM']but pay no attention to that... you wouldn't be able to say "bush lied" anymore...
[right][post="129427"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

Even if the recent intel proves to be true, and that hasn't been shown yet, we'd still be able to pin the tail on the Republican!

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' date='Aug 12 2005, 01:00 PM']Even if the recent intel proves to be true, and that hasn't been shown yet, we'd still be able to pin the tail on the Republican!
[right][post="129481"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

i take this is a joke... but it was on bush's clock, so point taken...

BUT... the original "wall" that was put up, was disputed passionately in 1995, as you can see in .pdf form [url="http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/testimony/supplementarymaterial.pdf"]here[/url]... gorelick ignored it and dismissed it, and this is the reason that the "wall" that they put up around the intel community... i won't speculate why this wall was put up, and this directly led to the intellegence failures that are so obvious now...

hanging clinton out to dry is not what i want from this... i want to find out why we knew the same guy that drove a plane into the WTC and nothing was done about it...

the 9/11-iraq connection is just something i personally want to figure out for obvious reasons (i have heard it many times)

[Guest bengalrick]

check out this article dated may 25, 2004 by [url="http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13516"]frontpagemag.com[/url]... that plot could be thickening...

[quote][b]How Chinagate Led to 9/11[/b] 
By Jean Pearce
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 25, 2004

As the 9/11 Commission tries to uncover what kept intelligence agencies from preventing September 11, it has overlooked two vital factors: Jamie Gorelick and Bill Clinton. Gorelick, who has browbeaten the current administration, helped erect the walls between the FBI, CIA and local investigators that made 9/11 inevitable. However, she was merely expanding the policy Bill Clinton established with Presidential Decision Directive 24. What has been underreported is why the policy came about: to thwart investigations into the Chinese funding of Clinton’s re-election campaign, and the favors he bestowed on them in return.

In April, CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, who served as the Clinton Justice Department’s deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997, created "a roadblock" to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw.



It’s a story the 9/11 Commission may not want to hear, and one that Gorelick – now incredibly a member of that commission – has so far refused to tell. But it is perhaps the most crucial one to understanding the intentional breakdown of intelligence that led to the September 11 disaster.



Nearly from the moment Gorelick took office in the Clinton Justice Department, she began acting as the point woman for a large-scale bureaucratic reorganization of intelligence agencies that ultimately placed the gathering of intelligence, and decisions about what – if anything – would be done with it under near-direct control of the White House. In the process, more than a dozen CIA and FBI investigations underway at the time got caught beneath the heel of the presidential boot, investigations that would ultimately reveal massive Chinese espionage as millions in illegal Chinese donations filled Democratic Party campaign coffers.



When Gorelick took office in 1994, the CIA was reeling from the news that a Russian spy had been found in CIA ranks, and Congress was hungry for a quick fix. A month after Gorelick was sworn in, Bill Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 24. PDD 24 put intelligence gathering under the direct control of the president’s National Security Council, and ultimately the White House, through a four-level, top-down chain of command set up to govern (that is, stifle) intelligence sharing and cooperation between intelligence agencies. From the moment the directive was implemented, intelligence sharing became a bureaucratic nightmare that required negotiating a befuddling bureaucracy that stopped directly at the President’s office.



First, the directive effectively neutered the CIA by creating a National Counterintelligence Center (NCI) to oversee the Agency. NCI was staffed by an FBI agent appointed by the Clinton administration. It also brought multiple international investigations underway at the time under direct administrative control. The job of the NCI was to “implement counterintelligence activities,” which meant that virtually everything the CIA did, from a foreign intelligence agent’s report to polygraph test results, now passed through the intelligence center that PDD 24 created.



NCI reported to an administration-appointed National Counterintelligence Operations Board (NCOB) charged with “discussing counterintelligence matters.” The NCOB in turn reported to a National Intelligence Policy Board, which coordinated activities between intelligence agencies attempting to work together. The policy board reported “directly” to the president through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.



The result was a massive bureaucratic roadblock for the CIA – which at the time had a vast lead on the FBI in foreign intelligence – and for the FBI itself, which was also forced to report to the NCOB. This hampered cooperation between the two entities. All this occurred at a time when both agencies were working separate ends of investigations that would eventually implicate China in technology transfers and the Democratic Party in a Chinese campaign cash grab.



And the woman charged with selling this plan to Congress, convincing the media and ultimately implementing much of it? Jamie Gorelick.



Many in Congress, including some Democrats, found the changes PDD 24 put in place baffling: they seemed to do nothing to insulate the CIA from infiltration while devastating the agency’s ability to collect information. At the time, Democrat House Intelligence Chairman Dan Glickman referred to the plan as “regulatory gobbledygook." Others questioned how FBI control of CIA intelligence would foster greater communication between the lower levels of the CIA and FBI, now that all information would have to be run through a multi-tier bureaucratic maze that only went upward.



Despite their doubts, Gorelick helped the administration sell the plan on Capitol Hill. The Directive stood.



But that wasn’t good enough for the Clinton administration, which wanted control over every criminal and intelligence investigation, domestic and foreign, for reasons that would become apparent in a few years. For the first time in Justice Department history, a political appointee, Richard Scruggs – an old crony or Attorney General Janet Reno’s from Florida – was put in charge of the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review (OIPR). OIPR is the Justice Department agency in charge of requesting wiretap and surveillance authority for criminal and intelligence investigations on behalf of investigative agencies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The court’s activities are kept secret from the public.



A year after PDD 24, with the new bureaucratic structure loaded with administration appointees, Gorelick drafted the 1995 memo Attorney General John Ashcroft mentioned while testifying before the 9/11 Commission. The Gorelick memo, and other supporting memos released in recent weeks, not only created walls within the intelligence agencies that prevented information sharing among their own agents, but effectively walled these agencies off from each other and from outside contact with the U.S. prosecutors instrumental in helping them gather the evidence needed to make the case for criminal charges.



The only place left to go with intelligence information – particularly for efforts to share intelligence information or obtain search warrants – was straight up Clinton and Gorelick’s multi-tiered chain of command. Instead, information lethal to the Democratic Party languished inside the Justice Department, trapped behind Gorelick’s walls.



The implications were enormous. In her letter of protest to Attorney General Reno over Gorelick’s memo, United States Attorney Mary Jo White spelled them out: “These instructions leave entirely to OIPR and the (Justice Department) Criminal Division when, if ever, to contact affected U.S. attorneys on investigations including terrorism and espionage,” White wrote. (Like OIPR, the Criminal Division is also part of the Justice Department.)



Without an enforcer, the walls Gorelick’s memo put in place might not have held. But Scruggs acted as that enforcer, and he excelled at it. Scruggs maintained Gorelick’s walls between the FBI and Justice's Criminal Division by threatening to automatically reject any FBI request for a wiretap or search warrant if the Bureau contacted the Justice Department's Criminal Division without permission. This deprived the FBI, and ultimately the CIA, of gathering advice and assistance from the Criminal Division that was critical in espionage and terrorist cases.



It is no coincidence that this occurred at the same time both the FBI and the CIA were churning up evidence damaging to the Democratic Party, its fundraisers, the Chinese and ultimately the Clinton administration itself. Between 1994 and the 1996 election, as Chinese dollars poured into Democratic coffers, Clinton struggled to reopen high-tech trade to China. Had agents confirmed Chinese theft of weapons technology or its transfer of weapons technology to nations like Pakistan, Iran and Syria, Clinton would have been forced by law and international treaty to react.



Gorelick’s appointment to the job at Justice in 1994 occurred during a period in which the FBI had begun to systematically investigate technology theft by foreign powers. For the first time, these investigations singled out the U.S. chemical, telecommunications, aircraft and aerospace industries for intelligence collection.



By the time Gorelick wrote the March 1995 memo that sealed off American intelligence agencies from each other and the outside world, all of the most critical Chinagate investigations by American intelligence agencies were already underway. Some of their findings were damning:



In an investigation originally instigated by the CIA, the FBI was beginning its search for the source of the leak of W-88 nuclear warhead technology to China among the more than 1,000 people who had access to the secrets. Despite Justice Department stonewalling and the Department’s refusal to seek wiretap authority in 1997, the investigation eventually led to Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The FBI first collected extensive evidence in 1995 linking illegal Democratic Party donations to China, according to the Congressional Record. But Congress and the Director of the CIA didn’t find out about the Justice Department’s failure to act upon that evidence until 1997, safely after the 1996 election.
According to classified CIA documents leaked to the Washington Times, between 1994 and 1997, the CIA learned that China sold Iran missile technology, a nuclear fission reactor, advanced air-defense radar and chemical agents. The Chinese also provided 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan, used in producing weapons-grade uranium. The Chinese also provided uranium fuel for India's reactors.

In many cases the CIA resorted to leaking classified information to the media, in an effort to bypass the administration’s blackout.



Gorelick knew these facts well. While Clinton may have refused to meet with top CIA officials, Gorelick didn’t. According to a 1996 report by the legal news service American Lawyer Media, Gorelick and then-Deputy Director of the CIA George Tenet met every other week to discuss intelligence and intelligence sharing.



But those in the Clinton administration weren’t the only ones to gain from the secrecy. In 1994, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation transferred military-use machine tools to the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation that ended up in the hands of the Chinese army. The sale occurred despite Defense Department objections. McDonnell Douglas was a client of the Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin, L.L.P. (now called Baker Botts), the Washington, D.C., law firm where Gorelick worked for 17 years and was a partner. Ray Larroca, another partner in the firm, represented McDonnell in the Justice Department’s investigation of the technology transfer.



In 1995, General Electric, a former client of Gorelick’s, also had much to lose if the damaging information the CIA and the FBI had reached Congress. At the time, GE was publicly lobbying for a lucrative permit to assist the Chinese in replacing coal-fired power stations with nuclear plants. A 1990 law required that the president certify to Congress that China was not aiding in nuclear proliferation before U.S. companies could execute the business agreement.



Moreover, in 1995, Michael Armstrong, then the CEO of Hughes Electronics – a division of General Electric and another client of Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin – was publicly lobbying Clinton to switch satellite export controls from the State Department to the Commerce Department. After the controls were lifted, Hughes and another company gave sensitive data to the Chinese, equipment a Pentagon study later concluded would allow China to develop intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles aimed at American targets. Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin partner Randall Turk represented Hughes in the Congressional, State Department, and Justice Department investigations that resulted.



The Cox Report, which detailed Chinese espionage for Congress during the period, revealed that FBI surveillance caught Chinese officials frantically trying to keep Democratic donor Johnny Chung from divulging any information that would be damaging to Hughes Electronics. Chung funneled $300,000 in illegal contributions from the Chinese military to the DNC between 1994 and 1996.



It was this web of investigations that led Gorelick and Bill Clinton to erect the wall between intelligence agencies that resulted in the toppling of the Twin Towers. The connections go on and on, but they all lead back to Gorelick, the one person who could best explain how the Clinton administration neutered the American intelligence agencies that could have stopped the September 11 plot. Yet another high crime will have been committed if the September 11 Commission doesn’t demand testimony from her.[/quote]

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='bengalrick' date='Aug 12 2005, 01:30 PM']i take this is a joke... but it was on bush's clock, so point taken...

BUT... the original "wall" that was put up, was disputed passionately in 1995, as you can see in .pdf form [url="http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/testimony/supplementarymaterial.pdf"]here[/url]... gorelick ignored it and dismissed it, and this is the reason that the "wall" that they put up around the intel community... i won't speculate why this wall was put up, and this directly led to the intellegence failures that are so obvious now...

hanging clinton out to dry is not what i want from this... i want to find out why we knew the same guy that drove a plane into the WTC and nothing was done about it...

the 9/11-iraq connection is just something i personally want to figure out for obvious reasons (i have heard it many times)
[right][post="129512"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

Then I'll suggest something I suggested a long time ago. If you want to understand "terrorism" then you'll have to understand irregular warfare and low intensity operations. Most of what we call "terrorism" arises out of state-sponsored warfare of this nature. Frankenstein almost always gets loose, but that doesn't stop these folks...

[Guest bengalrick]

another source has come forward in this case and his discredited the commissions reports that they never were informed of the name of atta, nor did they have sufficient evidence... they reported that 2 suitcases of evidence of "able danger" was handed over, and this is 1/20th of all the info they had... i guess they both could be lying (weldon and general shaffer)... btw, shaffer could be hurting his career by coming forward... i don't see his motives to lie about it...

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/16/politics/16cnd-intel.html?hp&ex=1124251200&en=0a9cf97378831bba&ei=5094&partner=homepage"]nytimes.com[/url]

[quote][b]Officer Says Pentagon Barred Sharing Pre-9/11 Qaeda Data With F.B.I.[/b]


By PHILIP SHENON
Published: August 16, 2005

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. [b]The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.[/b]

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger [b]had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.'s Washington field office to share the information.[/b]

[b]But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.[/b]

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Defense Department's Special Operations Command had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because [b]they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. "It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.[/b]

[b]The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer[/b], a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the so-called data-mining program to come forward and acknowledge his role.

At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.

The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who was recently called back to full-time duty, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged that it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public.

[b]In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the Sept. 11 commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant." The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about the program, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.[/b]

Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as the program's liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday night was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.

[b]Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department - first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.[/b]

Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance had been suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He noted that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from the rank of major.

[b] Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in news accounts in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.[/b]

The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

[b]A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview today that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."[/b]

[b]"And if these assertions are credible," he continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite request for all information regarding to Able Danger."[/b]

Colonel Shaffer said that he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the terrorist's name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.

"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."

[b]"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."[/b]

Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases. Nor was he aware, he said, which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.

[b]But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from internet sites and from paid search engines such as Lexis Nexis.[/b]

[b]"We didn't that Atta's name was significant" at the time, he said, adding that "we just knew there were these linkages between him and these other individuals who were in this loose configuration" of people who appeared to be tied to an American-based cell of Al Qaeda.[/b]

[b]Colonel Shaffer said he assumed that by speaking out publicly this week about Able Danger, he might effectively be ending his military career and limiting his ability to participate in intelligence work in the government. "I'm proud of my operational record and I love what I do," he said. "But there comes a time - and I believe the time for me is now -- to stand for something, to stand for what is right."[/b] [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//41.gif[/img]   [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//41.gif[/img] [/quote]

i wonder what the heads of the commission will say now... more "sources" are bound to come forward...

able danger, for those that dont' know, uses open sources (we could find the same info if we wanted to) and some classified sources... it is much more involved than that, but if you want to learn more, look up "data mining" and you can learn all about it...

[Guest bengalrick]

[url="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/951nmtfi.asp"]weeklystandard.com[/url]

here is an excerpt of this article:

[i]Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and [b]that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.[/b]

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. [b]They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin.[/b] [b]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.[/b]

Interestingly, [b]journalists such as Amir Taheri considered al-Watan al-Arabi to be a pro-Saddam publication[/b]--not surprising given its Parisian readership. Despite its reporting against its presumed interests, the al-Watan al-Arabi article generated no interest either at the time or afterwards. [b]A scan of the Commission report finds no mention of these arrests in Heidelberg, nor any of the CIA or FBI interviews reported by al-Watan al-Arabi.[/b]

Why should any of this have mattered to the 9/11 Commission? Their report provides the most important reason: The 9/11 plot began its practical planning in Hamburg, beginning in 1999 and assisting Mohammed Atta and the other 9/11 plotters through the summer of 2001. Having discovered two Iraqi intelligence agents conducting "missions . . . in a number of German towns since the beginning of 2001" indicates at least the possibility of more than just a sabotage assignment. Even apart from the al-Watan al-Arabi reporting, [b]the strange coincidence of discovering Iraqi intelligence operations in such close conjunction to known al Qaeda operations should have raised some eyebrows.[/b]

If the 9/11 report is any indication, no one on the Commission considered this connection. In fact, no one knows whether or not the Commission even knew about these arrests. In the years following the 9/11 attacks, there has been much argument about the nature of Saddam Hussein's connections to terror. How could the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission fail to consider this, given the other activity occurring in Germany during this period:


* Mohammed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh meet in Berlin in January 2001 for a progress meeting, around the same time German counterintelligence claimed that they picked up the Iraqi trail.
* Ziad Jarrah, another of the crucial al Qaeda pilots, transits between Beirut and Florida through Germany twice during the 2000-2001 holiday season, flying back to the United States at the end of February.
* Marwan al-Shehhi disappears in Casablanca, then constructs a cover story about living in Hamburg.

_______________

All of this activity in Germany could, of course, just be a coincidence. However, we have no explanation from the 9/11 Commission about why the al Qaeda team leaders who all hailed from the Hamburg cell felt it necessary to travel separately to Germany at the same time that German counterintelligence discovered the Iraqi espionage operation. We have no mention at all of even a coincidental, parallel hostile operation in the vicinity of the al Qaeda team leaders. Just as in the case of Mohammed Afroze, [b]the Commission never bothers even to supply the dots that might connect outside their preferred narrative. [/b]

Edward Morrissey is a contributing writer to The Daily Standard and a contributor to the blog Captain's Quarters[/i]

this will become a story one of these days

i can't believe that people like oldschooler, backer, steggy, and others like me that agree so passionately about this war, arent' all over this story and thread... but i'm gonna keep posting as new evidence comes out... the facts are that the commission didn't connect the dots that they didn't want to connect.. embarrassing the gov't wasn't a high priority for them, and instead they blamed it all on the CIA... its becoming more and more obvious that this story isn't going away and heads ARE GOING TO ROLL... period.

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='bengalrick' date='Aug 17 2005, 12:46 PM']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.
[right][post="132476"][/post][/right][/quote]

You're really working to get some kind of justification for the war, eh?

But, hold your horses, Rick. I want you to think about this for a second. If this were spot on or even close in the "connecting the dots" department, don't you think the admin would have already brought this up in its justification for invasion? CIA interrogates, FBI interrogates, and the admin doesn't get the news? (Please don't say the Clinton admin held it back, etc...)

Need some more independant verification. All this suggests is that the 9-11 Commish was inaccurate, and lots of folks, left and right, already think that.

And, don't forget, the WS is a neocon pub. Gotta factor that in, fwiw.

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' date='Aug 17 2005, 01:02 PM']You're really working to get some kind of justification for the war, eh?

[right][post="132486"][/post][/right][/quote]

homer, honestly i already have my justification... he was a threat and we took him out... after 9/11, a threat was like a bomb on its way to us... most of us felt that way after being violated after 9/11, and saddam had his chances... blah blah blah, right ...but when you hear the leader you stand behind a liar and doing this for a number of other things, i get pissed off... when you come to find out, that evidence was in front of the commission that could have made a link between iraq and 9/11 (definately justifies the war in iraq imo) then it flat out pisses me off... why did they not use any of this information... how can the NYtimes connect the dots and not the 9/11 commission... i do appreciate the humor though sometimes i need it...

[quote]But, hold your horses, Rick. I want you to think about this for a second. If this were spot on or even close in the "connecting the dots" department, don't you think the admin would have already brought this up in its justification for invasion? CIA interrogates, FBI interrogates, and the admin doesn't get the news? (Please don't say the Clinton admin held it back, etc...)

Need some more independant verification. All this suggests is that the 9-11 Commish was inaccurate, and lots of folks, left and right, already think that.

And, don't forget, the WS is a neocon pub. Gotta factor that in, fwiw.[/quote]

for some reason, whenever someone says neocon, i get pissed off... the truth is, last i checked in, i have many neocon traits, so i dont' know what that pissed me off some, but it shouldn't...

anyway, good questions... i wish i knew for sure.. i agree about the independant sources, though the more people that step up, the more it holds water... this guy (shaffer) has just forfeited the rest of his intellegence career, in order to set the record straight... i look at motives, and i dont' see one in his case... weldon seemed to have some, but not this guy... he has hurt himself by coming forward and could have easily have avoided it, by shutting up...

i have said repeatedily that this coverup could very well involve the bush administration in some way... i want to know the truth or at least get as close as we can to the truth...

what gets me though, is that if there was a link, i wouldn't have had to hear for the past year and a half, that our president is a liar and this is an unjust war... homer, if it turns out that saddam and iraq had a direct link to 9/11, would you change your views at all w/ that kind of evidence, assuming that independant sources and many of them confirm that there was a link?

overall, thanks for replying to this thread b/c everyone else seems to be avoiding this like the plague...

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='bengalrick' date='Aug 17 2005, 01:42 PM']homer, honestly i already have my justification... he was a threat and we took him out... after 9/11, a threat was like a bomb on its way to us... most of us felt that way after being violated after 9/11, and saddam had his chances...[/quote]

I think it more the case that most people were willing to give the admin the benefit of doubt about how to proceed in the wake of 9-11. As you know, we disagree on the extent of a threat that Iraq presented.

[quote]blah blah blah, right ...but when you hear the leader you stand behind a liar and doing this for a number of other things, i get pissed off... when you come to find out, that evidence was in front of the commission that could have made a link between iraq and 9/11 (definately justifies the war in iraq imo) then it flat out pisses me off... why did they not use any of this information... how can the NYtimes connect the dots and not the 9/11 commission... i do appreciate the humor though sometimes i need it...[/quote]

Once again, I don't think these revelations prove a relation between Iraq and 9-11. Also, I think you place too much credence in the commission. Remember the process by which the commission came into being. Speaking for myself, once I heard that Kissinger was nominated to head the thing up, my stomach turned. I suspected it would be another rerun of the politically manipulated commissions we've had in the past: Warren, Central American, etc...

[quote]for some reason, whenever someone says neocon, i get pissed off... the truth is, last i checked in, i have many neocon traits, so i dont' know what that pissed me off some, but it shouldn't...[/quote]

You are an ex-Trotskyite-Likudnik-Democrat who believes that might makes right and that there should be an American Empire?

Turn your anger towards discovering just what these folks represent, all the way down to their Straussian roots.

[quote]anyway, good questions... i wish i knew for sure.. i agree about the independant sources, though the more people that step up, the more it holds water... this guy (shaffer) has just forfeited the rest of his intellegence career, in order to set the record straight... i look at motives, and i dont' see one in his case... weldon seemed to have some, but not this guy... he has hurt himself by coming forward and could have easily have avoided it, by shutting up...[/quote]

I agree it is interesting when a person from the intel community feels the need to step forward; it generally demands some attention.

[quote]what gets me though, is that if there was a link, i wouldn't have had to hear for the past year and a half, that our president is a liar and this is an unjust war...[/quote]

You would have heard it from me, because our Pres is a person who deliberately misleads the people (and not only about foreign policy) and because the war [i]is[/i] unjust.

[quote]homer, if it turns out that saddam and iraq had a direct link to 9/11, would you change your views at all w/ that kind of evidence, assuming that independant sources and many of them confirm that there was a link?
[right][post="132517"][/post][/right][/quote]

If conclusive proof were available I would reconsider and probably change my mind. But that proof would have to be more than just some spook coming to the surface.

Of course, your question begs its obverse, because a ton of evidence has been brought to light about just how this admin conducts its affairs, and you still drink the kool-aid. Just how much evidence do you need to be satisfied that you have been lied to, manipulated, and cynically used by a group of folks who don't give a damn whether you live or die, even if you were in uniform?

[Guest bengalrick]

[i]Of course, your question begs its obverse, because a ton of evidence has been brought to light about just how this admin conducts its affairs, and you still drink the kool-aid. Just how much evidence do you need to be satisfied that you have been lied to, manipulated, and cynically used by a group of folks who don't give a damn whether you live or die, even if you were in uniform?[/i]

i haven't seen a ton of evidence... i have NOT been lied to... worst case scenario, we said "there was a threat, and the evidence will fall into place once we go to war"... in other words, worse case, i was misled... i should change that to YOU were mislead (or if you didn't agree w/ it then, then your party was misled)... alot of evidence has came out about this and that, and republicans are still approving of this president in very high numbers (90% of republicans, last i checked... of course, 80% of dem's are against him)... i was not misled b/c i thought the same thing that my president thought... he was a threat and he needed to be stopped... as a matter of fact, i thought that since the first gulf war, but i wasn't as informed or educated then...

YOUR anger needs to be directed towards the guys that would slit your and my throat if they had the chance... if a president that sends soldiers (that volunteer) to fight for our protection (and i agree that being proactive is the ONLY way to kill this threat) is worse than fighting for a God that tells you that anyone that doesn't agree w/ you, should be killed, how can you fight against the president?? thats why i am just taken back that such a smart guy like yourself, would pick to argue against the president... it just doesn't make a lick of sense to me... if you are (and i think you are btw) trying to argue this b/c you want us to do the right thing, then argue points that can help us do better at fighting these guys... but don't call our president a liar b/c of this war, b/c you are calling aroudn 50% of the population nieve and stupid for believing him, and i've taken it a long time, but the evidence is shifting...

you seem like you dont' want clinton to go down... what about 2 days ago when clinton said [url="http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1124206291.shtml"]click here[/url]: [i]"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."

"I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.”[/i]

but then the NEXT DAY, this comes out [url="http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1464835,00050001.htm"]click here[/url] that he knew all about bin laden, and his main goal was to get him out of sudan, even though he knew that things would be much easier to conduct business in afghanistan b/c of the taliban control... and also this [url="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166004,00.html"]click here[/url] [i]The documents also show that intelligence analysts even then believed that bin Laden may have played a role in the Khobar Towers bombings just a month earlier. In that attack, a truck bomb destroyed an apartment building in the Khobar Towers (search) military housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 20 people, mostly U.S. service members, and wounding 372.[/i]

the clinton administration's legacy (that they were so worried about) is now getting lamenaterd for them... clinton committed adultery in the WH while he ignored so many threats from bin laden and al qaeda... his policies and the people he hired led to so many problems in this country, its not funny... sandy burgular and janet reno were a disgrace to this country...

your right about us not having the evidence to concretely link saddam to 9/11 in any way... what this new revolution is bringing to light, is that the timeline that the commission put on atta could be skewed... the czech intel told us that atta met w/ iraqi spys in hamburg, but we didnt' use that b/c it didn't fit into the timeline that the commission came up w/... now that the timeline is getting skewed, it COULD turn out that the intel that we were getting from czech intel, could be right... if saddam was talking to a 9/11 hijacker, that could change many things in the historic records that will be written... more and more will come out of this so we'll see where it goes...

[Homer_Rice]

Rick;

I appreciate your sincerity. You're a worker and I admire that.

Each of us is obliged to do the best we can to understand the world so we can act more effectively in it. I'm relatively satisfied with my orientation towards gaining that understanding over the past quarter century. I'm a worker, too.

That said, I reiterate my main point: you were lied to and manipulated by this bunch. They haven't changed their ways, either. You're being set up again, only now it's Iran.

You do what you have to do, as will I.

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' date='Aug 18 2005, 10:53 AM']Rick;

I appreciate your sincerity. You're a worker and I admire that.

Each of us is obliged to do the best we can to understand the world so we can act more effectively in it. I'm relatively satisfied with my orientation towards gaining that understanding over the past quarter century. I'm a worker, too.

[b]That said, I reiterate my main point: you were lied to and manipulated by this bunch. They haven't changed their ways, either. You're being set up again, only now it's Iran.[/b]

You do what you have to do, as will I.
[right][post="133038"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

i definately respect you to homer.... you have taught me alot, and maybe it doesn't sit well now, but maybe in the future it will... you have me looking for things that i wouldn't have in the past...

anyways, iran is a touchy subject... if we don't do something, israel will... that is almost a guarenteed fact... that would start WWIII... we can't stop israel if the iranians keep builiding up their nuclear program...

plus, the bombs in iraq have gotten much bigger recently, and most military officals are pointing towards iran as the reasoning... they are nothing but trouble and if they are attacked, i hope its by us (i hope we dont' have to) and not the jews... they have it coming, but i hope it doesn't come to that...

iran is another example of the uselessness of the UN imo... we can't sit back and watch them flip us off, while telling us that they want to kill us, and continueing their nuke programs... i guess that is where our ideologies change course... you want us to do better in the future and quit pissing people off and i say we have done pissed them off so long, that we must create an environment that promotes democracies acrossed the middle east, or we'r doomed for another 9/11, that could be worse... its a thin line, but if it works, we will be so much better off.. if we fail, then we're back at square one... i don't think (imo) that us making them happy w/ us will do anything at this point..

i truely wish the UN would do this dirty work too, b/c i don't like america's name getting drug through the mud... but we have to stand up (after 9/11) to threats that seem deemable...

[Homer_Rice]

[url="http://inteldump.powerblogs.com/posts/1124340108.shtml"]From Intel Dump[/url]

[Jamie_B]

Anyone else going to watch this Saturday and Sunday?

[url="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inside911/"]http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inside911/[/url]

[Guest bengalrick]

[i]1. Able Danger was a SOCOM operation. When Shaffer says "Pentagon lawyers" tanked FBI cooperation, my understanding is that it was SOCOM lawyers and leaders (including staffers for current Army Chief of Staff and then-SOCOM commander, GEN Pete Schoomaker) who prevented FBI coordination. From Shaffer's statements, it appears that the concern was not necessarily the "wall", but a fear that this support would lead to a "Waco" style controversy. Remember that SOCOM units were involved in giving advice to FBI and BATF during the Waco siege, and that they took a lot of heat for their participation. It is reasonable that SOCOM would fear getting involved in another domestic incident, but Able Danger was not a threat (FBI terrorism cases in Brooklyn are apples compared to BATF in Waco oranges). My hunch is that what Shaffer is talking about is efforts by either he or Able Danger to talk to FBI directly. I also suspect that the Pentagon and DIA were not fully briefed on Able Danger and had no clue about its full mission until about 2 weeks ago. That would explain the current deer-in-the-headlights response we're getting from them.[/i]

i can sort of buy this explaination... we have to put 9/11 in context, but before 9/11, waco was what were trying to avoid, along w/ Oklahoma city... that would explain how our gov't "didn't know" about this and how clinton didn't have enough intel to go after bin laden...

[i]2. That said, SOCOM is out of its league when dealing with counterterrorism investigations. It may have the mission and assets to hunt down and kill terrorists in the field, but it is not their mission to conduct CT at a strategic level or from a homeland security perspective. SOCOM attorneys may have felt that there were legal problems in coordinating with the FBI (ignorance of what EO 12333 authorizes, misreading of the "wall", misapplication of Posse Comitatus), but that's because they don't normally coordinate with the FBI. However, lawyers at the Army INSCOM, Department of the Army, and DIA levels are very familiar with how to share information with the FBI. Pentagon lawyers familiar with CT and espionage investigations have FBI intelligence officials on their speed-dial. As a former colleague pointed out the other day, Army intel would have gotten material relating to the Atta group in Brooklyn off their desk and into FBI hands immediately.[/i]

so this is saying that the "wall" that was built really didn't matter... what i still don't understand then (and maybe you can help me) is why did the 3 meeting that were supposidely cancelled b/c atta had a green card (was a citizen and we didn't want to piss off the ACLU) not ever go through?? why did a green card stop us from following up on this guy?

[i]I still have concerns with the overall story. LTC Shaffer, who by all accounts is an outstanding officer and straight shooter, may only be able to provide a limited, albeit important, side of the story. Further investigation needs to take place, and it sounds like the questions ought to start with whoever stopped coordination. I've previously speculated that it might have been civilian politicos (SECDEF, NSA) who stopped it, but the SOCOM angle makes more sense. Their attorneys would be normal senior judge advocates, and based on what I've seen of training on intelligence oversight and FBI coordination issues in the Army JAG Corps, these guys most likely didn't know what laws and policies out there actually impinged on intelligence sharing operations.[/i]

i agree that he only has a piece of the picture... more will come out, but we won't know the "whole truth" ever probably...

one thing to add to this, shaffer mentioned somewhere that they(9/11 commission) contacted the wrong department and only got 5% of the documents that were available about able danger... was that done on purpose by some of those in the commission, or did they just mess up b/c it is very complex and secretive (the able danger program)? by doing this, they look more like they missed it, instead of didn't include it... that is a good thing in my eyes (as good as it could be) b/c if they blatently lied about it, then it would seem that they had the agenda already set out and that didn't fit into their preconceived notions...

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='Jamie_B' date='Aug 18 2005, 01:20 PM']Anyone else going to watch this Saturday and Sunday?

[url="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inside911/"]http://www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inside911/[/url]
[right][post="133120"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

thats going to be a crazy show... i will try to watch it b/c the producers make it sound like it will help sooth the soul a little... hard to believe b/c they are going to get into some deep detail...

[Guest bengalrick]

my worse fears could be developing in front of my eyes... the bush administration could very well be involved in the "cover up" for what ever reason...

[url="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/8/18/101813.shtml"]newsmax - hardly the liberal mouth piece[/url]

Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005 10:12 a.m. EDT
[b]Bush Admin. Briefed on Able Danger After Attacks[/b]


Two weeks after the 9/11 the attacks, the Bush administration was told that a special military intelligence unit code named Able Danger had developed actionable intelligence two years earlier that could have foiled the 9/11 plot, a member of the Able Danger team revealed on Wednesday.

Among the Able Danger evidence shared with the Bush National Security Council: a chart put together before 9/11 featuring a picture of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.

Asked why he didn't go public before this week with the news that his group had been tracking Atta during the Clinton administration, Able Danger team member L[b]t. Col. Anthony Shaffer told ABC radio host Sean Hannity:
"Within two weeks of the attack, this colleague of mine ... she took that very poster [with Mohamed Atta] to Congressman [Curt] Weldon," Shaffer said. "And I have to say he took it right to Michael Hadley, I believe, over at the NSC."[/b]

"It's my understanding that he gave him that chart and Hadley had a great deal of interest in it," he added.

[b]Once the Bush administration had been briefed, Shaffer said, he thought the information would be handled properly. "[I felt] that we were good to go - that everything was going to be solved," he told Hannity. [/b]

The military intelligence sleuth stressed, however, "I'm not criticizing the Bush administration here. They're doing everything in their power to prevent this now. I think they're fully behind what we're doing. I think the Pentagon right now is fully behind me trying to get the word out and trying to get to the bottom of this."

Shaffer credited his still unidentified Able Danger colleague with managing the technical side of the program.

"The doctor who put this all together is brilliant. I mean, I cannot speak high enough of her and her brilliance in being able to break the code on this. She was able, through the technology used, to somehow pull out of all this amorphous data usable, actionable information."

"And that's where things kind of got off track," Shaffer explained. "Because at the same time she pulled that out, we then were trying to look at how we could exploit that information. And that's where the lawyers got involved."

Shaffer said that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, this same colleague alerted him to the fact that the Able Danger team had developed intelligence on the hijack team, a detail he hadn't noticed.

"My colleague called me in and said, 'Look, we knew these guys.' And I was shocked. It was like, in the pit of my stomach there was just this sinking feeling, like - we knew. We knew this!"

Congressman Weldon has previously described three attempts by Able Danger to brief the FBI on the Atta intelligence, before being blocked by lawyers at the Clinton Pentagon.

[b]Those lawyers have yet to be identified. [/b]

[Guest bengalrick]

here we go again... [url="http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050822/1/3uexl.html"]yahoo.com[/url]

[i][b]Pentagon says it has found no evidence Atta identified before 2001 attacks[/b]


A Pentagon review has so far found no evidence that a secret intelligence operation identified Mohammad Atta as a member of a US-based Al-Qaeda cell before the September 11, 2001 attacks, a spokesman said.

Representative Curt Weldon and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer have charged that Atta and three other September 11 hijackers were identified as early as mid-2000 through a data-mining program codenamed "Able Danger."

[b]But Lawrence DiRita, a Pentagon spokesman, said a review of materials related to Able Danger has so far turned up no evidence that it identified Atta, the reputed leader of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.[/b]

The spokesman said he did not know whether the material reviewed contained the names of any of the other three hijackers.

"What we have found are mostly sort of general reference to terrorist cells that people were generally aware of," DiRita told reporters.

[b]"But nothing that would seem to corroborate specifically what congressman Weldon and Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer recall, although as you know they don't have what they said they saw. That makes it a little more difficult," he said.[/b]

Weldon and Shaffer have said Atta and three other future hijackers appeared as members of a Brooklyn-based Al-Qaeda cell on a chart that was presented by Able Danger to the US Special Operations Command in early to mid 2000.

They said the group had recommended the information be shared with the FBI, but that the command's lawyers rejected that course of action.

If true, it would have been the first time Atta was known to have been identified by the US intelligence community as an Al-Qaeda member before the September 11 attacks. Providing Atta's name to the FBI might have helped disrupt the attack, according to Weldon.

[b]Neither Weldon nor Shaffer have been able to produce a copy of the chart itself, however.[/b]

Shaffer acknowledged in an interview published Saturday by the Washington Post that his allegations about the chart were based on the recollections of a navy officer and an unidentified civilian official affiliated with Able Danger.

[b]He said that after the September 11 attacks, the civilian employee showed him a chart from 2000 that had the names of Atta and three other hijackers.[/b]

Navy Captain Scott Phillpott, whose recollections Shaffer also said he relied on, told a presidential commission investigating the September 11 attacks in July 2004 that he remembered seeing Atta's name on an Able Danger chart in the spring of 2000.[/i]

ONE PROBLEM W/ THIS STORY... another navy officer is coming forward and threatening his own career... exlain to me why he would threaten his own career, for no apparent reason...


_________________________________


[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/politics/23intel.html?ei=5090&en=4010d072ce411d88&ex=1282449600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print"]nytimes.com[/url]

[i]August 23, 2005
[b]Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks[/b]
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - [b]An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.[/b]

[b]The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement on Monday that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command. "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000."[/b]

[b]His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta.[/b]

Colonel Shaffer went public with his assertions last week, saying that analysts in the intelligence project were overruled by military lawyers when they tried to share the program's findings with the F.B.I. in 2000 in hopes of tracking down terrorist suspects tied to Al Qaeda.

Mr. Di Rita said in an interview that while the department continued to investigate the assertions, there was no evidence [b]so far[/b] (nice out for them imo... they expected another to step up...) that the intelligence unit came up with such specific information about Mr. Atta and any of the other hijackers.

[b]He said that while Colonel Shaffer and Captain Phillpott were respected military officers whose accounts were taken seriously, "thus far we've not been able to uncover what these people said they saw - memory is a complicated thing."[/b]

The statement from Captain Phillpott , a 1983 Naval Academy graduate who has served in the Navy for 22 years, was provided to The New York Times and Fox News through the office of Representative Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a longtime proponent of so-called data-mining programs like Able Danger.

Asked if the Defense Department had questioned Captain Phillpott in its two-week-old investigation of Able Danger, another Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Paul Swiergosz, said he did not know.

Representative Weldon also arranged an interview on Monday with a former employee of a defense contractor who said he had helped create a chart in 2000 for the intelligence program that included Mr. Atta's photograph and name.

The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that Mr. Atta's name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart until last year and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs.

In its final report last year, the Sept. 11 commission said that American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks.

[b]The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission acknowledged on Aug. 12 that their staff had met with a Navy officer last July, 10 days before releasing the panel's final report, who asserted that a highly classified intelligence operation, Able Danger, had identified "Mohamed Atta to be a member of an Al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn."[/b]

[b]But the statement, which did not identify the officer, said the staff determined that "the officer's account was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation" and that the intelligence operation "did not turn out to be historically significant."[/b]

With his comments on Monday, Captain Phillpott acknowledged that he was the officer who had briefed the commission last year. "I will not discuss the issues outside of my chain of command and the Department of Defense," he said. "But my story is consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000. I have nothing else to say."[/i]

i wonder what the hell would be historically significant to these fucking people... "yeah, we noticed one of the hijackers and the rest of his cells, but that isn't important b/c we didn't have enough evidence"... the real question should be (and mentioned in the commission report) "how the hell did this operation turn up these names and how the hell can we use this in the future"... that would be my questions at least...

btw, i know you all will ignore this thread again besides homer, nobody wants to talk about it... but i will just keep posting anyway

[Guest bengalrick]

alright folks... this investigation has taken another turn... today was SUPPOSED to be a senate hearing to find out about all of this, and Rep. Weldon was going to bring forward another witness (this would be 4 or 5 b/c i think he might have had two new ones) but the pentagon blocked the hearing and the witnesses from speaking...

maybe i'll get some dem's to finally post on this thread (besides homer) when i say this: lets subpoena DONALD RUMSFELD immediately and find out what the hell is going on here... i need answers and we all deserve them... if this brings down the bush admin or anyone in, so be it... quit fucking hiding...

spector is on [url="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,169991,00.html"]my side[/url] on this one...

[i]-Pentagon officials blocked five key witnesses from testifying in the Able Danger (search) hearings on Capitol Hill Wednesday, citing security concerns.

"I think the Department of Defense owes the American people an explanation about what went on here," Specter said. "The American people are entitled to some answers."[/i]

[i]-Pentagon officials had acknowledged earlier this month that they had found three people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.[/i]


i strongly feel that dems and reps are hiding the truth b/c both parties will be hurt by this information when it comes out...

considering that this info will probably hurt reps more b/c i look at it this way... if it changes the timeline and shows a direct iraq-9/11 connection, they would want the info to come out... so what the hell is rummie and others hiding then????

i'm still pissed about this, if you haven't noticed....