Dangerously Disabled
There's been a certain amount of propaganda recently concerning a secret military intelligence unit that's alleged to have ID'd Mohammed Atta as an Al Qaeda operative in early 2000. At issue is the Gorelick wall, established by Justice Department policies enacted under Presidents Reagan and Bush I, though named after a Clinton-era official, which is purported to have prevented these officers from sharing what they knew about Atta with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
The real obstruction appears to be a general named Pete Schoomaker, who directly prohibited the officers involved from informing the FBI of their findings, based on DoD attorneys's determination that Atta's Green Card made him a "US Person". Gen. Schoomaker is now US Army Chief of Staff.
The current administration disbanded Able Danger in February of 2001.
...we tried to tell the lawyers that since the data identified Atta and the others as linked to Al Qaeda, we should be able to collect on them based on SecState Albright's declaration of Al Qaeda as transnational terrorist threat to the US...well the lawyers did not agree...go figure...so we could not collect on them - and for political reasons - could not pass them to the FBI... -- LTC Tony Shaffer, former member of Able Danger.
The real obstruction appears to be a general named Pete Schoomaker, who directly prohibited the officers involved from informing the FBI of their findings, based on DoD attorneys's determination that Atta's Green Card made him a "US Person". Gen. Schoomaker is now US Army Chief of Staff.
The current administration disbanded Able Danger in February of 2001.
...we tried to tell the lawyers that since the data identified Atta and the others as linked to Al Qaeda, we should be able to collect on them based on SecState Albright's declaration of Al Qaeda as transnational terrorist threat to the US...well the lawyers did not agree...go figure...so we could not collect on them - and for political reasons - could not pass them to the FBI... -- LTC Tony Shaffer, former member of Able Danger.
posted by Management at 2:14 AM
9 Comments:
Another officer steps forward on Able Danger
[J.D. Henderson, Tuesday August 23, 2005 at 11:59am EST]
LTC Shaffer's story has been corroborated by another active duty officer. Today's New York Times reported:
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.
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."
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.
Captain Phillpott has admitted that he was the naval officer that briefed the September 11 commission on Able Danger. The commission reported "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."
A defense contractor has also corroborated the claims regarding Able Danger and Atta.
At this point I think we might want to know why the September 11 commission didn't think Able Danger warranted further investigation.
August 23, 2005
Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - 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.
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."
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.
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 so far that the intelligence unit came up with such specific information about Mr. Atta and any of the other hijackers.
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."
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.
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."
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."
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."
LTC Shaffer posts at Intel Dump
[Jon Holdaway, Thursday August 18, 2005 at 12:41am EST]
I put up a post last week about Able Danger and some concerns I had with the story. In the comments section, I received comments from an "Anon" who provided what looked like an insider's perspective on Able Danger. Some of his allegations were potentially explosive (such as briefing AD to senior DOD officials who then blew it off or failed to pass the into to FBI).
According to LTC Tony Shaffer, the individual who has come forward in the press with much of the Able Danger info we have now, he was our own "Anon" (hat tip: Laura Rozen, with an assist to Mickey Kaus). Captain V (aka Voice of the Taciturn) knows Shaffer and vouches for his credibility, and his public statements seem consistent with what I've seen in CT operations. Here's what he wrote:
OK smart guys - with your "smell tests" and "Thats just flat out wrong" opinions shown above - I hope you don't mind, but let me clear up a few things - I was there and I lived through the ABLE DANGER nightmare.
First - yes - The lawyers involved in this (and similar projects) did interpret the 9-11 terrorists as "US persons" - so while you can second guess them all you want - but that was their "legal" call as wrong as it was and is. Unfortunately, the chain of command at SOCOM went along with them (and this, I expect, will be a topic that will become more clear in the near future).
And lawyers of the era also felt that any intelligence officer viewing open internet information for the purpose of intelligence collection automatically required that any "open source" information obtained be treated as if it was "intelligence information"...does this sound like idiocy to you? It did to me - and we fought it - and I was in meetings at the OSD level, with OSD laywers, that debated this - and I even briefed the DCI George Tenet on this issue relating to an internet project.
And yes, Virgina - we tried to tell the lawyers that since the data identified Atta and the others as linked to Al Qaeda, we should be able to collect on them based on SecState Albright's declaration of Al Qaeda as transnational terrorist threat to the US...well the lawyers did not agree...go figure...so we could not collect on them - and for political reasons - could not pass them to the FBI...I know because I brokered three meetings between the FBI and SOCOM to allow SOCOM to pass the informaton to the FBI. And, sadly, SOCOM cancelled them every time...
Oh - and as to your opinion that ABLE DANGER was a precursor to the IDC - you are flat out wrong - and obviously not keeping up with what is coming out in the press. ABLE DANGER partnered with LIWA/IDC to use the LIWA/IDC capability to obtain the data on Atta and the other 9-11 terrorists. I brokered the relationship...
And - wrong again on the IDC using only "classified" databases - IDC used 2.5 terabytes (a whole hell of a lot of data) - all open source - to identify Atta and the others that have been identified. Classified data bases were only use to "confirm" the links subsequent to the open source data runs.
Oh - and DATA MINING is not overt or clandestine - it just "is" - it is something that is done with either open source or classified information. ABLE DANGER used an array of both open and close databases...
So...good try, gentlemen - good to see there is intellectual riggor here...but before you start doubting the story, perhaps you need to do better research.
8.12.2005 11:27pm
Based on his comments on this blog, and further comments he's made elsewhere, this is where I see the controversy currently sitting:
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.
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 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.
Investigators also need to look at SOCOM leadership, including GEN Schoomaker. If they kept the rest of the Army and DOD in the dark on Able Danger and the results of their investigation, preventing effective FBI coordination, then they ought to be identified and questioned as to their reasoning for that decision. And finally, there needs to be a look into what the Army's Information Dominance Center knew about Atta pre-9/11. I know there was an effort after 9/11 to check all databases to make sure this sort of problem didn't occur, but INSCOM may need to check again to see what they put together in support of Able Danger.
LTC Shaffer has gotten the ball rolling. Unfortunately, he's probably just tanked whatever career he has left. Whistleblower protection only goes so far, and the best he'll probably get is some sort of promise not to prosecute for leaking potentially classified information. DOD would do well not to shoot the messenger this time (a familiar military habit) and start look at whether what he's saying is actually true.
One other issue. Laura Rozen points out that one concern by SOCOM may have been over getting caught spying on a US Person. This is a fallacy, either by the original lawyers/leaders who may have thought it or by the rest of us trying to figure out why SOCOM didn't coordinate with FBI. First, Atta and his group, by any legal reading, was not a US Person. He didn't even warrant "special sensitivity". As far as individuals go, only US citizens and Permanent Resident Aliens get protections from intel collection. Atta was a mere tourist. There are no reasonable legal grounds to give a tourist "US Person" status. Second, even if he had protections, there is a glaring exception for investigations into those reasonably believed to be engaged in international terrorist activities (or affiliated with the same). To be overly cautious two levels of analysis deep is not good application of policy to facts and a bad business practice in the CT line of work.
As I've said before, we're still in wait-and-see mode.
Related Posts (on one page):
1. LTC Shaffer posts at Intel Dump
2. More on Data Mining and Able Danger
3. Data mining -- just when you thought it was dead...
4. TIA lives to die another day, Part II
5. Total Information Awareness lives on to die another day
The Omission Commission
The 9/11 Commission Report failed to make any mention of Iraqi operations in Germany that might have been connected to al Qaeda.
by Edward Morrissey
08/17/2005 12:00:00 AM
REPRESENTATIVE CURT WELDON dropped a delayed political bombshell with a special-orders speech last June in which he revealed the existence of a data-mining program at the Pentagon named Able Danger, which he claimed had identified Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers as al Qaeda operatives over a year before the attacks. Almost two months later, an intelligence-community periodical, Government Security News, noted the speech. This caught the attention of New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl, who informed the nation that far from missing the terrorist cell before the 9/11 attacks, military intelligence had identified them with plenty of time to act.
Questions immediately arose about why no law-enforcement agency took action with the information, and why the 9/11 Commission made no mention of Able Danger or the identification of Atta's cell in its final report. The sources for Weldon's revelations insist that the political atmosphere and the attorneys at the Pentagon would not allow the military to share the information with the FBI, believing (1) the existence of the data-mining project would create a political backlash against the Defense Department, and (2) it would violate the policies of the Department of Justice to have coordination between military intelligence and the FBI involving a legal resident in the United States, as they believed Atta to be.
As for why the 9/11 Commission made no mention of Able Danger, the Commission itself seemed completely unable to provide an answer. Weldon's sources claimed that they had briefed the
Commission on two separate occasions, in October 2003 and July 2004, just before the release of their final report. The Commission's spokesman, Al Felzenberg, initially scoffed at that claim. He acknowledged that the Commission had learned of the Able Danger program during the October 2003 briefing, but that Atta's name had not come up at all. "They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell," Felzenberg said. "They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."
A competing series of revelations--from Time magazine, Curt Weldon's book, the Bergen Record, and even from the Commission itself (just four days after stating that they had no recollection at all of the July 2004 briefing)--has cast a shroud of doubt over everyone's credibility, including Weldon. Moreover, it has given momentum for those who felt that the Commission's final report left a significant part of the story untold. Noting that Able Danger, or any other data-mining program, gets no mention at all but that the Commission recommendations include expanding existing data-mining efforts and providing better coordination among them (pages 388-389), critics have begun searching for other data points left out of the Commission's analysis.
THEY MIGHT START with a few cryptic media reports from March 2001 regarding two arrests made in Germany. The BBC and Reuters both noted the capture of Iraqi intelligence agents in Heidelberg. Both reports gave essentially the same minimal data on March 1:
German state prosecutors said on Thursday federal police had arrested two Iraqis on suspicion of spying.
The two men were detained in Heidelberg, according to a German television report. German officials declined to comment on the report. . . . "They are suspected of carrying out missions for an Iraqi intelligence service in a number of German towns since the beginning of 2001,'' said a spokeswoman for state prosecutor Kay Nehm in Karlsruhe.
The Germans did not arrest these Iraqi operatives on a whim. Their counterintelligence operations had tracked them for some time before closing in and capturing the two. At the time, American and British forces had launched air raids on radar stations in Iraq's no-fly zones and the assumption was that the Iraqis may have wanted to hit American forces stationed in Heidelberg in retaliation. However, by March 16, a Paris-based Arabic newspaper had developed more information on the arrests. The Middle East Intelligence Bulletin summarized the report from al-Watan al-Arabi:
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 that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.
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. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. 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.
Interestingly, journalists such as Amir Taheri considered al-Watan al-Arabi to be a pro-Saddam publication--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. 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.
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, the strange coincidence of discovering Iraqi intelligence operations in such close conjunction to known al Qaeda operations should have raised some eyebrows.
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.
In fact, the Commission report notes that three of the four al Qaeda team leaders (excepting Hani Hanjour, who had at that time just begun his pilot training) interrupted their planning to take foreign trips (page 244). Why would these men interrupt their preparations in this manner? Traveling in and out of the United States presented a risk--a manageable risk, as events proved--but having three of the four team leaders outside of their established cells at the same time looks unnecessarily foolhardy from al Qaeda's point of view. It also appears to be the only time after their first entry into the United States that this travel occurred. All three had some German connection to their trips. In fact, Jarrah left Germany the same week that the Germans captured the Iraqi agents.
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, the Commission never bothers even to supply the dots that might connect outside their preferred narrative.
Edward Morrissey is a contributing writer to The Daily Standard and a contributor to the blog Captain's Quarters.
9/11 COMMISSION
Bush Rebukes Ashcroft Smear Tactics
The President took the rare step of publicly rebuking one of his own cabinet members, Attorney General John Ashcroft, for engaging in an unmitigated smear campaign designed to discredit Commission member Jamie Gorelick. During Ashcroft's 4/13/04 testimony he declassified and distributed a 1995 memo written by former deputy Attorney General Gorelick, prompting conservative members of Congress and rightwing pundits to launch relentless attacks against Gorelick. Emerging from his off-the-record session with the 9/11 Commission, Bush told the Commission he was "disappointed" by Ashcroft's actions. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, "The president does not believe we ought to be pointing fingers in this time period." But the problems with Ashcroft's conduct goes far beyond finger pointing. Ashcroft's testimony was a deliberatively deceptive and dishonest attempt to distract the public from his own testimony and his record of ignoring terrorism concerns prior to 9/11 and underfunding the FBI's counterterrorism efforts.
ASHCROFT RESORTS TO PARTISAN SMEAR TACTICS: Ashcroft conveniently declassified the memorandum as part of his partisan and combative testimony in front of the 9/11 Commission. In that testimony he accused Gorelick of creating "the wall" that imposed barriers between the law enforcement and intelligence communities, irresponsibly claiming it was the "single greatest structural cause for the September 11 problem." This unfounded attack on Gorelick, has spawned calls for her resignation from the Commission from the right-wing.
ASHCROFT LIES ABOUT THE WALL: The wall was created, not by Gorelick as Ashcroft claimed, but by the justice departments under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, according to the conservative court that handles intelligence investigations. Those administrations instituted the practice of prohibiting prosecutors from directing intelligence investigations. Nothing in the Gorelick memo prevented the sharing of information between criminal and intelligence investigators prior to 9/11 or since.
ASHCROFT MADE THE WALL HIGHER: Despite Ashcroft's current criticism of the July 1995 procedures, his own Deputy Attorney General, Larry Thompson, formally reaffirmed the directives in Gorelick's memo. In an Aug. 6, 2001 memo, Thompson wrote "the 1995 Procedures remain in effect today...The purpose of this memorandum is to restate and clarify certain important requirements imposed by the 1995 Procedures and the interim measures, and to establish certain additional requirements."
GORELICK'S MEMO MADE INFORMATION SHARING EASIER: It is impossible that Gorelick's memo "specifically impeded the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, investigation of Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi," as Ashcroft charged. Gorelick's memo permitted freer coordination between intelligence and criminal investigators than was subsequently permitted by the 2001 Thompson memo issued under Ashcroft. The Gorelick memo specifically directed agents to share information, including assigning one agent to work on both the criminal and intelligence investigations to ensure the flow of information "over the wall."
FOX NEWS SEIZES ON ASHCROFT'S LIES: The most persistent launchers of unfounded attacks against Gorelick? You guessed it: the fair and balanced folks over at Fox News. During a roundtable discussion on 4/18/04, Fox anchor Brit Hume charged "Jamie Gorelick should be a witness before this commission. She should not be on this commission…this is a howling conflict of interest." Fox host Sean Hannity echoed Hume's sentiments, disgustedly citing "just a ridiculous conflict of interest" and insisting "She should not be there. She should be sworn in and start answering questions as to why she put forward this directive. Isn't that true?" But the rare honor of Most Outrageous Attack goes to Fox political analyst Dick Morris. On a 4/14/04 episode of Hannity & Colmes Morris fumed: "Of all of the public officials in the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, the one who is most directly, in my judgment, responsible for 9/11 happening is Jamie Gorelick." Thomas Kean, former Republican governor and chairman of the Commission, said the attacks against Gorelick were unfounded and that she was "one of the most nonpartisan and bipartisan members of the commission."
Jamie Gorelick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Jamie S. Gorelick)
Jamie Gorelick
Jamie S. Gorelick (born May 6, 1950) was the number two official in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton administration. She was appointed by Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle to serve as a commissioner on the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which sought to investigate the circumstances leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Critics say her duties on the commission represent a conflict of interest, contending that she is the single greatest cause of the organizational failures within intelligence that contributed to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Former acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard said that Gorelick had played a key role in setting the very counterterrorism policies being investigated. During her tenure at the Justice Department, which controls the FBI, she opposed FBI initiatives to work more closely with other US agencies to investigate and prevent terrorism, according to Pickard.
Conservative media pundits such as Rush Limbaugh have accused Gorelick of helping to construct a 'wall' during her years at the justice department. However, government reports cited in the wake of the Able Danger scandal appear to contradict such claims, asserting that the 'wall' has been in existence since the 80's and is in fact not one singular wall but a series of restrictions passed over the course of sixty years.
Gorelick served as Vice Chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association from 1997 to 2003. Before serving as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, she was General Counsel of the Department of Defense and a prominent attorney with the firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin. She also served as an assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Energy from 1979 to 1980.
Gorelick was president of the District of Columbia Bar from 1992 to 1993. She is currently a law partner in the Washington office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.
Must Read! The Neo-Con Able Danger Scandal -- Atta Coverup! UPDATE 5
by Sherlock Google
Wed Aug 24th, 2005 at 09:48:33 PDT
DIA Agents were ordered to put yellow Post-its over Atta's face and the faces of 3 other 9/11 terrorists
"We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn't exist," the intelligence officer told GSN."
Intel agents Tony Shaffer and Scott Philpott have confirmed Rep. Weldon's claims that a chart with Atta's face, soon the photos of 3 other members of the 9-11 terror team, were known to DIA team Able Danger by early 2000.
This diary will show that Pete Schoomaker and Philip Zelikow are two of the main players in this scandal, that Schoomaker or a higher-up deliberately withheld information from the President of the United States that would have prevented 9/11, which I believe shows that they and their neo-con rulers knew a big attack was coming and Let It Happen On Purpose.
Of this there can no longer be any doubt.
Update [2005-8-24 15:35:46 by Sherlock Google]: From the Aug. 10 NY Times on Shaffer trying to include Able Danger in the final 9-11 Commission Report:
The Sept. 11 commission was warned by a uniformed military officer 10 days before issuing its final report that the account would be incomplete without reference to what he described as a secret military operation that by the summer of 2000 had identified as a potential threat the member of Al Qaeda who would lead the attacks more than a year later, commission officials said on Wednesday.
Aug 10 NY Times
Update [2005-8-24 15:35:46 by Sherlock Google]: From the Commission Statement on Able Danger:
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. Nor do any of the staff notes on documents reviewed in the DOD reading room indicate that Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers were mentioned in any of those documents.
A senior staff member also made verbal inquiries to the HPSCI and CIA staff for any information regarding the ABLE DANGER operation. Neither organization produced any documents about the operation, or displayed any knowledge of it.
Update [2005-8-24 15:43:9 by Sherlock Google]: The 9-11 Families respond to the Able Danger news:
A group of Sept. 11 widows called the September 11th Advocates issued a statement Wednesday saying they were "horrified" to learn that further possible evidence exists, and they are disappointed the Sept. 11 commission report is "incomplete and illusory."
"The revelation of this information demands answers that are forthcoming, clear and concise," the statement said. "The Sept. 11 attacks could have and should have been prevented."
Fox News
Zelikow, as Executive Director, managed to keep the Commission from seeing the truth.
Update [2005-8-24 16:49:54 by Sherlock Google]: Here is the Gorelick Memo on The Wall. Read it for yourself and you will see that in no way does it prevent the DIA folks from telling the FBI about Atta getting ready to spring a possible attack:
The Gorelick Wall Memo
We have to learn a whole lot of ACRONYMS here but it's clear that information about a crime that "may be committed" is supposed to be "disseminated" to criminal investigators! Read it yourself.
From JusticeWatch.org:
The "Wall." The "wall" metaphor is shorthand for the recognition that separate authorities govern law enforcement and foreign intelligence investigations targeted against Americans. These authorities, designed to prevent a recurrence of domestic spying by the FBI and CIA, always recognized that international terrorism was both a law enforcement and intelligence matter. Contrary to the repeated mischaracterization by the Attorney General and others, the law never prohibited sharing information between law enforcement and intelligence communities; to the contrary, it expressly provided for such sharing. While the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was interpreted to mean that prosecutors could not direct foreign intelligence wiretaps, as opposed to criminal wiretaps, the 9/11 failures had nothing whatsoever to do with the inability of prosecutors to direct such surveillance.
Justice Watch
Update [2005-8-24 17:19:42 by Sherlock Google]: It was Shaffer who was Anon, not Philpott, here are the links confirming that:
Captain V
Intel Dump 8/18/05
And here is the insubordination quote to the NY Times:
"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.
"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.
----------------------------------
From the Government Security News mag which broke the story:
Did DoD lawyers blow the chance to nab Atta?
By Jacob Goodwin
In September 2000, one year before the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, a U.S. Army military intelligence program, known as "Able Danger," identified a terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, NY, one of whose members was 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta, and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to "take out that cell," according to Rep. Curt Weldon, a longtime Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is currently vice chairman of both the House Homeland Security and House Armed Services Committees.
The recommendation to bring down that New York City cell -- in which two other Al Qaeda terrorists were also active -- was not pursued during the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, said Weldon. That's because Mohammed Atta possessed a "green card" at the time and Defense Department lawyers did not want to recommend that the FBI go after someone holding a green card, Weldon told his House colleagues last June 27 during a little-noticed speech, known as a "special order," which he delivered on the House floor.
Details of the origins and efforts of Able Danger were corroborated in a telephone interview by GSN with a former defense intelligence officer who said he worked closely with that program. That intelligence officer, who spoke to GSN while sitting in Rep. Weldon's Capitol Hill office, requested anonymity for fear that his current efforts to help re-start a similar intelligence-gathering operation might be hampered if his identity becomes known.
The intelligence officer recalled carrying documents to the offices of Able Danger, which was being run by the Special Operations Command, headquartered in Tampa, FL. The documents included a photo of Mohammed Atta supplied by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and described Atta's relationship with Osama bin Laden. The officer was very disappointed when lawyers working for Special Ops decided that anyone holding a green card had to be granted essentially the same legal protections as any U.S. citizen. Thus, the information Able Danger had amassed about the only terrorist cell they had located inside the United States could not be shared with the FBI, the lawyers concluded.
"We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn't exist," the intelligence officer told GSN.
DoD lawyers may also have been reluctant to suggest a bold action by FBI agents after the bureau's disastrous 1993 strike against the Branch Davidian religious cult in Waco, TX, said Weldon and the intelligence officer.
Government Security News
So the responsibility for stopping DIA program Able Danger, which had Identified Atta and 3 other hijackers and linked them to 56 other al-Queda terrorists overseas, has been laid at the feet of Bill Clinton--except he and Richard Clarke were never told about it at all.
That's right. Bill Clinton was never told about Able Danger and the ID of Atta because Richard Clarke was never told about AD. How do I know? He never wrote about it in his book, nor did he testify about it's existence before the 9-11 Commission!
You see Richard Clarke was known for being obsessed with Osama Bin Laden and HE was the guy the neo-con moles did not want to find out about Atta and the gang. Schoomaker and the neo-cons knew telling the FBI would inform Clarke and then Mr. Laser Beam himself, President of the United State William Jefferson Clinton, would have gotten involved--and the Pearl Harbor-type attack would never take place (the neo-cons talked about the need for a Pearl Harbor-type attack before the PNAC Plan would be accepted by the American people--so when one presented itself, they let it happen).
General Pete Schoomaker, who was later heavily rewarded by the neo-cons in the Bush Administration, or a General above him, maybe Tommy Franks, blocked the upward motion of the DIA information by having Shaffer and Philpott meet with Pentagon lawyers--lawyers who were rubberstamping ridiculous legal opinions to carry out the neo-con plan. These were neo-cons in the Clinton Administration, covertly carrying out the PNAC plan to let a Pearl Harbor-type attack occur so Iraq and 6 other countries could be invaded.
HOW DARE WELDON AND THE RIGHT WING TRY TO LAY ABLE DANGER AT THE FEET OF BILL CLINTON, WHEN HE WAS DELIBERATELY PREVENTED FROM KNOWING ABOUT IT BY SCHOOMAKER AND THE OTHERS! THEN THE NEO-CONS ENDED THE PROGRAM IN FEB. 2001 ALTOGETHER!
The heroic intel agents of Able Danger repeatedly tried to get the FBI to roll up the cell but were stopped by the secret neo-con cell within the Clinton Administration, especially General Pete Schoomaker and Tommy Franks, in command of Able Danger--and Schoomaker was later asked by Rumsfeld to come out of retirement and replace Shinseki in 2003 as Army Chief of Staff!
Pete Schoomaker was in command of Able Danger and was briefed by Shaffer
Schoomaker, who worked under neo-con Tommy Franks in Tampa, retired in December of 2000. The indicted Larry Franklin was another neo-con in the Clinton Administration.
Schoomaker or a higher up repeatedly told Philpott and Shaffer that they could not inform the FBI as DoD lawyers had opined that Atta's Green Card made him a "US Person", that the so-called "Gorelick Wall" prevented talking to the FBI--even though Atta was part of al-Queda. Shaffer and Philpott were actually ordered to put yellow sticky pads over the faces of the 4 terrorists on their Analyst Notebook chart and act as thought they don't exist. (Analyst Notebook is software).
"The former defense intelligence official, who was interviewed twice this week, has repeatedly said that Mr. Atta and four others were identified on a chart presented to the Special Operations Command. The former official said the chart identified about 60 probable members of Al Qaeda." [NY Times Archive 8/13/05]
Here is Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer as blogger Anon on Intel Dump talking about meeting the DoD lawyers, who had no doubt been ordered by higher-ups to ignore the clear exception to the Gorelick Wall that a terrorist presented:
I was there and I lived through the ABLE DANGER nightmare.
First - yes - The lawyers involved in this (and similar projects) did interpret the 9-11 terrorists as "US persons" - so while you can second guess them all you want - but that was their "legal" call as wrong as it was and is. Unfortunately, the chain of command at SOCOM went along with them (and this, I expect, will be a topic that will become more clear in the near future).
And lawyers of the era also felt that any intelligence officer viewing open internet information for the purpose of intelligence collection automatically required that any "open source" information obtained be treated as if it was "intelligence information"...does this sound like idiocy to you? It did to me - and we fought it - and I was in meetings at the OSD level, with OSD laywers, that debated this - and I even briefed the DCI George Tenet on this issue relating to an internet project.
And yes, Virgina - we tried to tell the lawyers that since the data identified Atta and the others as linked to Al Qaeda, we should be able to collect on them based on SecState Albright's declaration of Al Qaeda as transnational terrorist threat to the US...well the lawyers did not agree...go figure...so we could not collect on them - and for political reasons - could not pass them to the FBI...I know because I brokered three meetings between the FBI and SOCOM to allow SOCOM to pass the informaton to the FBI. And, sadly, SOCOM cancelled them every time...
Intel Dump Blogger Anon
So the brass and Pentagon lawyers blocked the Atta Chart and request for arrest of the "Brooklyn Cell" from going to the FBI, Clarke and Clinton--who would have acted on it--and 9-11 would likely have never happened, with 3 of the 4 pilots and the leader of the gang arrested.
But then the neo-cons stole the election and came into power proper with Bush, Rice and Cheney. Rice, in charge of the transition, demoted Richard Clarke on Jan. 5, 2001, with the assistance of Philip Zelikow, who later became Executive Director of the 9-11 Commission! Like Schoomaker, Zelikow has now been rewarded with a plum job, directly under Rice at State.
Able Danger was then "unceremoniously axed" by the DoD in February 2001 when the neo-cons officially took over the Pentagon, no doubt on the orders of Cheney and Rice.
From the Norristown Times-Herald in Weldon's district:
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.
Norristown paper
August 17 article Shaffer confirms this end date:
The objective of "Able Danger" was to identify and target al-Qaeda and other terrorists. The DIA team used data mining, parallel processing and other cutting-edge computer technology from 1999 through early 2001, Shaffer said.
Times Herald again
Many other counter-terror programs were ended or stalled at the same time, including the use of the armed Predator Drone, which had spotted Osama and could have killed him, as well as new off-shore banking regs that Clinton had passed and FBI investigations of the Saudis and the Bin Ladens. Even though on Jan 31, 2001, the Congress approved the Hart Rudman counter-terror recommendations, including cockpit door hardening, Bush fought implementation by stalling, handing it to Cheney in May and saying he would issue a counter-terror plan--in October 2001, the month AFTER the 9-11 attack.
Rep. Weldon, a proponent of data-mining, had been following the Able Danger program for years and had talked to Stephen Hadley--he of 16-word fame--soon after 9-11, that Able Danger had identified the same terrorists early in the game. Hadley, second at NSC under Rice, sat on the information on Able Danger--which of course he knew about anyway--and then NEVER TOLD THE 9-11 COMMISSION.
Quite clear are the acts of Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9-11 Commission, and the man who helped Rice and Cheney establish the neo-con agenda and demote Richard. Appointed by Bush to the 9-11 Commission to investigate himself essentially--and Bob Kerrey objected strenuously to Zelikow as a conflict (then gave up)--the Executive Director has tremendous power over staff and direction of the Commission and its report.
As Executive Director, Philip Zelikow was directly told about Able Danger, then he and his direct staff covered up the information from the rest of the 9-11 Commission as they have said they were never told about it. When the Able Danger agents called up the Commission 10 days before the publication of the Report, they were blown off for the umpteenth time. Here is the 9-11 Commission's own statement on Able Danger:
On October 21, 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's activities in Afghanistan before 9/11, referred to a DOD program known as ABLE DANGER. He said this program was now closed, but urged Commission staff to get the files on this program and review them, as he thought the Commission would find information about al Qaeda and Bin Ladin that had been developed before the 9/11 attack.
Then Zelikow sat on the Able Danger info. Shaffer on CNN said:
The other thing is Mr. Zelicow (ph) himself gave me his card and asked me to contact him upon my return from the deployment. And I did contact him in January of '04. That's where I was essentially blown off.
I called him. They said they wanted to talk to me. I waited a week, called him back. And they said, "No, we don't need to talk to you now."
Now, Soledad, I'm sorry. I forgot your first part of the question you asked before.
S. O'BRIEN: You know, we're actually kind of running out of time.
SHAFFER: OK.
S. O'BRIEN: But I was essentially asking you if they were lying, which is sort of a yes or no answer there.
SHAFFER: I can't -- I'm just letting you know what I -- what I said. I said, specifically, that we, as through the Able Danger process, discovered two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, to include Atta. Now -- and I -- that was, to me, significant, in that they actually pulled me aside after the meeting and said, "Please come talk to us and give us more details."
Then Zelikow NEVER calls Shaffer or Philpott back!
The flimsy excuses for that are covered in TopDog's recommended diary, and are all lies anyhow:
Rice aide hid disbandment of Atta's trackers from 9/11 report
Finally, here is Lee Hamilton of the 9-11 Commission:
"The Sept. 11th commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of the surveillance of Mohamed Atta or his cell," Hamilton said. "Had we learned of it obviously it would have been a major focus of our investigation."
So there you have it.
If this is e-mailed to 100 people and all the blogs and media by each person here on KOS and we pick this apart endlessly, all the evidence is there.
The greatest scandal in the history of the United States of America.
This has to be the end of the Republican Party as the majority party for some time to come. Either this was all done deliberately, to let the attack happen or cover it up, OR we have the dumbest people in history running our government. Either way, they don't win.
And only we bloggers can blow this thing wide open.
There is much, much more to this but I will post them on updates. And anybody who now doubts Shaffer AND Philpott is carrying skepticism too far and is likely a RW troll absolutely HORRIFIED at the turn the Able Danger story has now taken.
General Schoomaker became the 35th Chief of Staff, United States Army, on August 1, 2003.
General Schoomaker graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1969 with a Bachelor of Science Degree. He also holds a Master of Arts Degree in Management from Central Michigan University, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Hampden-Sydney College. General Schoomaker’s military education includes the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, the United States Army Command and General Staff College, the National War College, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security Management.
Prior to his current assignment, General Schoomaker spent 31 years in a variety of command and staff assignments with both conventional and special operations forces. He participated in numerous deployment operations, including DESERT ONE in Iran, URGENT FURY in Grenada, JUST CAUSE in Panama, DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM in Southwest Asia, UPHOLD DEMOCRACY in Haiti, and supported various worldwide joint contingency operations, including those in the Balkans.
Early in his career, General Schoomaker was a Reconnaissance Platoon Leader and Rifle Company Commander with 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry, and a Cavalry Troop Commander with 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany. He then served in Korea as the S-3 Operations Officer of 1st Battalion, 73rd Armor, 2nd Infantry Division. From 1978 to 1981, he commanded a Squadron in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - D. Following Army Command and General Staff College, General Schoomaker served as the Squadron Executive Officer, 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany. In August 1983, he returned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to serve as Special Operations Officer, J-3, Joint Special Operations Command. From August 1985 to August 1988, General Schoomaker commanded another Squadron in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - D. Following the National War College, he returned as the Commander, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - D from June 1989 to July 1992. Subsequently, General Schoomaker served as the Assistant Division Commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas, followed by a tour in the Headquarters, Department of the Army staff as the Deputy Director for Operations, Readiness and Mobilization.
General Schoomaker served as the Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command from July 1994 to August 1996, followed by command of the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina through October 1997. His most recent assignment prior to assuming duties as the Army Chief of Staff was as Commander in Chief, United States Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, from November 1997 to November 2000.
General Schoomaker’s awards and decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, two Army Distinguished Service Medals, four Defense Superior Service Medals, three Legions of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, two Defense Meritorious Service Medals, three Meritorious Service Medals, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, Master Parachutist Badge and HALO Wings, the Special Forces Tab, and the Ranger Tab.
General Schoomaker and his wife have two daughters and one son.
Weldon wants answers on Atta
By: KEITH PHUCAS , Times Herald Staff
NORRISTOWN - Ten days before publication of the 9/11 Commission report, commission staff discounted information from a military officer linking Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta to a terror cell believed to be operating in New York City more than a year before the terrorist attacks.
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According to a statement released Friday by The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, the two commission staff members who interviewed the officer in July 2004 concluded his story about a Defense Department intelligence counterterrorism program, called Able Danger, that worked to identify and target al-Qaida and other terrorists, was not credible. As a result, the information was not included in the commission's final report published July 22, 2004.
The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, formerly known as the 9/11 Commission, issued the statement late Friday to respond to charges made by Congressman Curt Weldon, R-7th Dist., this week that the commission failed to follow up after being tipped off three times about the defense operation.
The Times Herald broke the Able Danger story in its June 19 edition. The story eluded the national media until early last week.
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.
At that point, Able Danger wanted the FBI, assisted by Special Operations Command, to track the group. But to the team's surprise, SOCOM's legal counsel shot down the idea.
"I tried to broker meetings between Special Operations and the FBI, but SOCOM's lawyers squashed it," the former defense officials said.
According to the former official, the Special Operations attorneys told the team it couldn't perform surveillance on the suspected terrorist. The foreign nationals had green cards, and thus, had the same protections as American citizens from such scrutiny.
Special Operations had advised the FBI during the ill-fated seige of the Branch Davidian compound, in Waco, Texas, in 1993, that resulted in more than 80 deaths after Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raided the compound, Weldon and the official said.
Following the fiery debacle, all the federal participants in the siege, including SOCOM, were harshly criticized. Fear of suffering the fallout if Able Danger backfired, they said, explains the military's reluctance to help the FBI.
"We felt that they were terrorists, and we should have done something about it," the former intelligence officials said. "I believe we could have prevented 9/11."
Wednesday, after becoming exasperated with former 9/11 Commission staff who claimed it didn't know anything about Able Danger, Weldon fired off a harsh letter to former commission members demanding to know why the information had not been considered.
In Weldon's letter, he said his chief of staff actually handed a package on the defense program to one of the commissioners in a Capitol Hill congressional office building April 13, 2004. Also, the congressman criticized the staff for not returning calls from a defense intelligence official with information on the operation.
Scrambling to answer Weldon's claims, commission staff combed through its archives this week for information related to Able Danger.
In its Friday statement, The 9/11 Public Discourse Project said the commission was first told about Able Danger while commission members were visiting Afghanistan on Oct. 21, 2003. While there, Philip Zelikow, then executive director of the commission, and two senior staffers met with three intelligence officials working for the Defense Department. One official mentioned Able Danger and said it was shut down. According to documents the commission received from the Pentagon, Able Danger began in 1999.
In November 2003, commission staff requested Defense Department material about the operation and received documents in February 2004 that included diagrams of terrorist networks, according to the 9/11 project letter.
The commission, however, said it first heard Atta mentioned in discussions about Able Danger on July 12, 2004, during an interview with a Navy officer. The officer told senior commission staff member Deiter Snell and another staffer that he recalled briefly seeing Atta's name and photo in a chart belonging to a Defense Department employee, and said the material was dated "February through April 2000."
According to the commission, Atta first arrived in the United States on June 3, 2001, about three months before the airline he flew crashed into the World Trade Center.
The Navy officer, who said the chart showed Atta to be a member of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn, complained that the identities of other cell members had been removed from the document because Pentagon lawyers were concerned about the propriety of the military's role with the FBI in a domestic intelligence operation.
Eventually commission staffers found the military officer's description and explanation of Able Danger to be wanting and concluded the information was "not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the (9/11) report or further investigation."
Weldon is demanding to know why the Defense Department did not pass information about Able Danger on to the FBI in 2000 and why the commission's staff failed to pursue the matter. He has vowed to push for a full accounting of the controversy, according to a written response issued from his office Friday evening.
Since 1999 Weldon has called for fusing the government's intelligence agencies collection system so they could share information and more effectively thwart terrorist plots. Six years ago, he proposed the creation of a National Operations and Analysis Hub (NOAH) for this effort.
In 2004, President Bush established the National Counterterrorism Center to integrate all intelligence the U.S. possesses on terrorism and counterterrorism.
In a new book, "Countdown to Terror: The top-secret information that could prevent the next terrorist attack on America ... and how the CIA has ignored it," Weldon is critical of the CIA for failing to share intelligence information with other agencies and discrediting information he has offered the CIA.
The congressman said he first became aware of the tremendous intelligence collaboration possibilities after visiting the Army's Land Information Warfare Assistance Center, in Fort Belvoir, Va., where massive amounts of data was mined and fused to profile emerging threats.
Calls to communications director Al Felzenberg at the 9/11 Public Discourse Project by The Times Herald were not returned on Friday. A spokesman for John Lehman, a former 9/11 Commission member, said Lehman did not wish to comment on the matter.
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