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Joe Sestak's campaign-finance report reads like a list of invitees to an Oval Office meeting with Bill Clinton. The former three-star admiral, trying to oust Republican Curt Weldon from his U.S. House seat in the Philadelphia suburbs, has received financial support from a dozen top insiders from Clinton's two terms in the White House. So many onetime Clintonites are among Sestak donors that the Weldon campaign yesterday cited it as proof of its claim that Sestak, with no previous electoral experience, is little more than the tool of a Democratic Party effort to oust GOP incumbents in swing districts throughout...

SAMI AL-ARIAN ADMITS CONSPIRACY IN PLEA AGREEMENT " There is no conspiracy to support terrorism ."  - Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for Tampa chapter of Council on American Islamic Relations From what I’ve been able to gather, there seems to be enough evidence to prove a web of conspiracy . Let’s have a look and see if that’s true! American Muslim Council (AMC)1. Former Spokesman: Faisal Gill.2. Founder: Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi.3. Former Director: Erik Vickers 1. Faisal Gill Former spokesman for the American Muslim Council (AMC) Former director of government affairs for the Islamic Free Market Institute (Islamic Institute) in Washington, D.C.,...

Former federal terrorism investigators say a piece of luggage hastily checked in at the Portland, Maine, airport by a World Trade Center hijacker on the morning of Sept. 11 provided the Rosetta stone enabling FBI agents to swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them. A mix-up in Boston prevented the luggage from connecting with the plane that hijackers crashed into the north tower of the trade center. Seized by FBI agents at Boston's Logan Airport, investigators said, it contained Arab-language papers revealing the identities of all 19 hijackers involved in the four...

The transcript from United Air Lines Flight 93 cockpit voice recorder played for the the jury in Zacarias Moussaoui's case in their consideration of whether or not he should be sentenced to death following his September 11th terror conviction. http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/flight93transcript.pdf Special Coverage: U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/terrorism/cases/index.html#moussaoui

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Several members of President Bill Clinton’s national security team are hosting a Washington fund-raiser tonight for retired Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr., the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon in November. Officials at Sestak’s campaign headquarters in Media will not comment on the event, though an invitation sent out to potential donors and obtained by the Daily Times lists Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger as a host. "As a general rule, campaigns don’t comment on fund-raisers or people who hold them," said Sestak’s campaign chairman, Myles Duffy. Berger, who served as Clinton’s second-term national security adviser, pleaded guilty last year...

The Anchoress, in her post, 7:28 minutes of American Reality, pointed to us to post #19 and post #22 of a thread at Luciane.com. The video is a British BBC summary of what happened on 9/11. President Bush is catching a lot of flak for so doggedly going after the terrorists but the only thing that will stop them is to kill them and, for the ones that we don't kill, we need to make them social pariahs in their own countries.One of the things that we've done wrong in the War On Terror is not to de-Islamify the enemy. I don't...

WASHINGTON - The Russian government had sources inside the American military command as it planned and executed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to Iraqi documents released as part of a Pentagon report. The Russians passed information to Saddam Hussein on U.S. troop movements and plans during the opening days of the war, according to the report Friday. The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources "inside the American Central Command" and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam...

March 23, 2006 — Following are the ABC News Investigative Unit's summaries of five documents from Saddam Hussein's government, which the U.S. government has released. The documents discuss Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda and more. The full documents can be found on the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office Web site: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm. Note: Document titles were added by ABC News. "U.S. War Plan Leaked to Iraqis by Russian Ambassador" Documents dated March 5-8, 2003 Two Iraqi documents dated in March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of...

CNN is reporting that steps could have been taken to stop the suicide hijackers of 9/11 if Zacarias Moussaoui had told investigators about his al Qaeda ties. Robert J. Cammaroto of the Transportation Security Administration said the Federal Aviation Administration could have banned short-blade knives if they had known terrorists were planning to use them to overtake flight crews.Cammaroto's three-hour appearance in the death penalty proceeding was meant to bolster prosecutors' arguments that airlines could have sufficiently tightened aviation security if Moussaoui, after he was arrested in August 2001, had told authorities about al Qaeda's plan to hijack and crash...

Able Danger is merely the most recent in a litany of controversial allegations championed by Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.). Last year, in a book called Countdown to Terror, Weldon detailed the revelations of an Iranian exile code-named "Ali" who, among other things, described a plot to crash planes into a U.S. nuclear reactor. In the mid-1990s, Weldon made headlines with charges that missing "suitcase-sized" nuclear weapons produced in the former Soviet Union had been secretly buried throughout the United States during the Cold War. Neither allegation has ultimately been confirmed.

Late one night in June, Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.) stood up in a largely empty House chamber and made an incendiary charge. With dramatic rhetorical flourish, he said that a secret military intelligence program called Able Danger fingered Mohamed Atta and two other al-Qaeda hijackers before the 9/11 attacks - and that the government had failed to act. "Not only did our military identify the Mohamed Atta cell, our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring in the FBI to take out the cell of Mohamed Atta," he said. Within days of the attacks, he said,...

NORRISTOWN - Lawyers representing Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and James D. Smith complain they cannot adequately defend their clients without access to classified information pertinent to the case. The lawyers for the "Able Danger" plaintiffs filed a civil lawsuit against the Defense Department and three Pentagon attorneys last month. Shaffer, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee on administrative leave, has alleged that DIA revoked his security clearance and harassed him after he revealed details of "Able Danger," a former Army data mining effort that claims it identified four future Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000. The reservist was awarded...

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit....

I've created an Able Danger Podcast blog to generate a podcast feed so folks can subscribe to this feed and easily obtain any Able Danger audio (mp3) files. Here is the podcast feed for the Able Danger podcasts. The link to this feed is easy to find at the top left corner of my main blog, QT Monster, just above the Able Danger blog roll. Folks can subscribe to this podcast feed through iTunes. From the iTunes interface pull down the Advanced menu, click on subscribe to podcast, and in the dialogue box paste the URL for this podcast feed:...

Sources close to the ongoing Department of Defense investigation into the controversial Able Danger data mining intelligence program, which purportedly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the worst terror attacks in US history, say the mystery person who actually obtained a much-disputed photograph of Atta for the Able Danger team has now been identified. Ever since the Pentagon-ordered destruction in 2000 of 2.5 terabytes of data unearthed by Able Danger – allegedly including a chart featuring Atta’s photograph that revealed terrorist links and patterns when clicked on – skeptics have long raised doubt about the...

The first 20 minutes or so of the Able Danger conference call was previously posted here. The next three audio clips are here, here and here. Attending this conference call with Congressman Weldon were: AJ Strata from The Strata-Sphere, Dana from Common Sense Political Thought, Curt from Flopping Aces, Mike of Able Danger Blog, QT Monster, Rory O’Connor, Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill, Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Some traditional intelligence officials, however, seemed either skeptical or jealous of LIWA's capability. At one conference, "Able Danger" analysts identified four major al-Qaida hubs - the Middle East, East Africa, Balkans and the Far East - in about 90 minutes."Because we weren't an intelligence organization, we got a lot of bad press," he said. "Folks thought we were running fast and loose with the data."By April, the "Able Danger" team was told to end its support of SOCOM. During the month's long work stoppage, SOCOM's patience ran out, and the military command transferred the work to a Raytheon facility in...

Able Danger identified Mohammad Atta and at least 2 other 9-11 hijackers more than a year before the 9-11 attacks. Why was the data that connected Mohammad Atta as a possible terrorist threat to the United States destroyed, and why wasn't this information shared with the FBI so the 9-11 attacks might have been prevented? 1. Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, explains that there wasn't any prohibition against sharing Able Danger information with the FBI. One of Dr. Cambone's colleagues says, "...we share in Army intelligence and DoD intelligence, we share information with the FBI...

Security: What are we to make of the apparent fact that a 9-11 conspirator has more interest and confidence in a secret intelligence operation that could have prevented 9-11 than does Congress or the media? Not many Americans know who Rep. Curt Weldon is, but Zacarias Moussaoui does. Moussaoui pleaded guilty 10 months ago to conspiring with al-Qaida to turn passenger jets into manned cruise missiles and fly them into buildings. He has denied involvement in the 9-11 attack, admitting only to being trained and involved in plans for future similar attacks. A week ago, Moussaoui's defense team said it...

I had the honor of being on an Able Danger bloggers conference call tonight with Representative Curt Weldon. Thanks to Mike at Able Danger Blog for setting this up. The first Able Danger Conference Call was with Attorney Mark Zaid. Bloggers on the line: Dana from Common Sense Political Thought Curt from Flopping Aces Mike of Able Danger Blog QT Monster Rory O’Connor Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto And of course yours truly. This was a really fascinating opportunity to talk directly to the Congressman and finally ask questions...

Today: February 21, 2006 at 12:26:37 PST Moussaoui Team Seeks Rep. Weldon Testimony By MATTHEW BARAKAT ASSOCIATED PRESS ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - Defense lawyers for confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui said Tuesday they oppose efforts of a Pennsylvania congressman to avoid testifying at Moussaoui's death-penalty trial. Moussaoui's lawyers subpoenaed Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., earlier this month to testify for Moussaoui's defense. Weldon is seeking to quash the subpoena, saying that Moussaoui is a "thug" and that he has congressional immunity from the subpoena. Weldon has said that the government knew more about the Sept. 11 hijackers than it has publicly...

'We were sitting on the north coast watching the fighters come in, and we couldn't do anything about it," Eric Kleinsmith told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.The allusion Mr. Kleinsmith made was to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, but he was speaking of the more devastating surprise attack which took place on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Kleinsmith and the two colleagues who testified with him in open session are convinced that had the information they developed been acted on, not only 9/11, but also the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole...

I had the honor of being on an Able Danger bloggers conference call toniught with Mark Zaid, attorney for many of the Able Danger whistleblowers. Thanks to Mike at Able Danger Blog for setting this up. The usual suspects showed up on line: Captain Ed Mark Coffey of Decision ‘08 Mike of Able Danger Blog QT Monster Rory O’Connor Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto The bloggers were excellent, Mark Zaid was open and honest, and Mike deserves a lot of kudos for getting this set up. Mark and Tony...

How an Egyptian student came to study 1950s America and left determined to wage holy war ___ Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasn’t a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness...

China Study Rocks The Hill and Unleashes The Purge: While Cambone tried to link the data purge to this 90-day rule, Weldon and the other witnesses (with first hand knowledge) pointed to the LIWA China Study that was being done in parallel to the Able Danger study. I have stated all along this was the lynchpin, the source of all later cover ups and mistakes and lost opportunities. We all know the story so I will not repeat it here, but what we learned from the hearings is how far up this went. Weldon let slip that the initial China...

No you're right Tony, and the significance here is that the FBI Director back then, Louis Freeh said in October of last year on national television, that if he had had the Able Danger information the FBI might well have been able to stop the hijacking. In our hearing past week, and we had both classified and unclassified, we had five people that testified under oath that they believed the same thing. That if the data they collected, that if the analysis they did had been able to be passed to the FBI, they agree with Louis Freeh, that would...

MediaChannel.org used the powerful new MediaVision tool to monitor television news coverage of the Able Danger Congressional hearings. To our astonishment CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" was the only news show to give Able Danger any significant coverage. We were so shocked by the lack of coverage that we created an online campaign to try to pressure TV news networks to cover, as Lou Dobbs put it, "what could be the biggest scandal of our lifetime." Click here to send networks an email demanding coverage! So, sadly, here it is. All the TV coverage we could find thus far:

..36th Item: We come in the middle of the response about the 90 day rule on data. The problem is this doesn’t make sense since the data was there much longer than 90 days. The corrective action is to process the proper forms. Somehow that was fixed easily in Garland (the data set contents had not changed), but in LIWA it caused the deletion of the data, then the firing of the contractor in mid performance, and then it closed down the LIWA support for SOCOM. Sorry, not buying it. The purge was a response to issues in the China...

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the...

"WE were sitting on the north coast watching the fighters come in, and we couldn't do anything about it," Eric Kleinsmith told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday. The allusion Mr. Kleinsmith made was to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, but he was speaking of the more devastating surprise attack which took place on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Kleinsmith and the two colleagues who testified with him in open session are convinced that had the information they developed been acted on, not only 9/11, but also the October, 2000, attack on the destroyer USS...

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

I was in DC yesterday for the ABLE DANGER hearing which is why there were no posts. I'm going back tomorrow for the (second) unveiling of Saddam's WMD tapes, which is why there will be no posts tomorrow (I don't have a laptop.) The ABLE DANGER hearing is the subject of my column for Sunday, so I have to be circumspect about it now. But a few observations: 1. Curt Weldon is a national hero. He badgered the Armed Services Committee into holding this hearing. I describe in my column how he humiliated Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for...

Silly me... Here is my take on the hearings. As I suspected - sanitized questions. Stay with me, I'll explain. But before that, one thing got my goat. Cynthia McKinney asking questions? How in the hell does that moonbat get on such an important committee? Anyway, I didn't hear anything today (although some minor points others have noted I find 'difficult' at this point), I haven't heard up to this point. Although I do have privy to some information I can't get into yet (there is a reason I'm anonymouse...). But what I did hear seemed disjointed a bit, and...

General Overview At yesterday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing on Able Danger, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) repeatedly asked witnesses if a chart produced by the Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) / Information Dominance Center (IDC) on Chinese front companies operating within the United States played a role in the dismantlement of Able Danger. The answer was consistently yes. What exactly was this document that was developed and what were the implications of it for the Clinton Administration? As you will see, the information raised serious questions for the Democratic Party and the Clinton White House in regards to the transfer...

REP. CURT WELDON: In the opening hearing, in the closed hearing, we had five people testify that they agree with Louis Freeh. That the information they had could have prevented 9/11 from ever happening. And they testified under oath. The Defense Department said they didn't have any information. WELDON: You know, Zelicow (ph) should have testified in open session, because nothing he said was classified. I don't think he wants to be in open session to let the American people see us question him. We should have had Dieter Snell there. He's the guy that debriefed Scott Philpot. DOBBS: Congressman,...

Program mysteries unresolved By: KEITH PHUCAS, Times Herald Staff 02/17/2006 WASHINGTON - When all the facts about "Able Danger" are revealed, the history of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will be rewritten, according to Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who accused the Pentagon at a Congressional hearing Wednesday of trying to hide the former data mining effort that claims it identified hijacker Mohamed Atta more than a year before the terrorist attacks. In 2000, the Defense Department shut down the program without explaining why and ordered the wholesale destruction of mountains of personal information swept into the project's data sets...

State GOP chairman Stephen Minarik yesterday blasted Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for preventing one of his top aides from testifying at a congressional hearing on pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures, calling him a "horrible hypocrite" on national-security issues. Minarik's attack came in response to a report in yesterday's Post that Spitzer personally intervened with the House Armed Services Committee to get Deputy Attorney General Dietrich Snell out of testifying. The panel is holding hearings on a Pentagon cyber-intelligence program code-named "Able Danger" that had information on 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta a year before the attacks. "Mr. Spitzer must have a feeble...

Audio of the today's entire Able Danger hearing is posted here.

The Pentagon on Wednesday said it found no evidence that a computer data-mining program it operated before the September 11 attacks uncovered information that could have thwarted the attacks if it had been acted on. But a defense intelligence officer and two contractors who worked on the secret program told a congressional committee the secret data-mining operation called "Able Danger" revealed intelligence on September 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and others that should have been a tip-off of the attacks. Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who has spearheaded a probe of whether intelligence from Able Danger was wrongly brushed aside,...

<p>Please take a moment to call the C-Span office to let them know you would like to see the Able Danger hearings today. The hearing starts at 2:30 eastern time today. It is not on their schedule and when I called C-Span they said they did not know if or when they would run the hearing. Then I called Congressman Weldon's office and they are baffled that C-Span is not running the hearing. I told Weldon's office I would put this thread up and hopefully enough people will call C-Span to encourage them to run the hearings live.</p>

The top-secret, military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identified Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, 13 times before the 2001 attacks, according to new information released Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. Able Danger has been identified by Weldon and team member Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer as an elite group of approximately two dozen individuals tasked with identifying and targeting the links and relationships of al Qaeda worldwide. On June 27, 2005, Weldon said that Able Danger had offered in the year before the Sept....

A SECRET US military intelligence unit had terrorist ringleader Mohammed Atta in its cross-hairs before the September 11, 2001, attacks 13 times, a congressman claimed today, citing the unit's records. Data produced by the Pentagon unit code-named Able Danger, which used data mining to investigate the al-Qaeda network, showed Atta's name 13 times, Republican Representative Curt Weldon told a news conference. "Thirteen times we have hits in the data that's still available, that we were told was destroyed," he said, citing recent analyses of data gathered by Able Danger before the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. "They knew...

Rep. Curt Weldon: I've learned some additional things that are new. You saw the Arlen Specter hearing in Judiciary that occurred in September. It's very troubling to me that it appears as though the DOD witness did not tell the truth. We had testimony that all of the Able Danger data-mining material was destroyed. I now know that that's not the case. In fact, I now know there's data still available. And I am in contact with people who are still able to data mining runs on pre-9/11 data. In those data runs that are now being done today, in...

The Able Danger portions of the House whistleblower hearings is posted here.

WASHINGTON - Pre-Sept. 11 intelligence conducted by a secret military unit identified terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta 13 different times, a congressman said Tuesday. During a Capitol Hill news conference, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said the unit - code-named "Able Danger" - also identified "a problem" in Yemen two weeks before the attack on the USS Cole. It knew the problem was tied into the port of Aden and involved a U.S. platform, but the ship commander was not made aware of it, Weldon said. The suicide bombing of the Cole killed 17 sailors on Oct. 12, 2000. If anyone had...

I am now liveblogging the US House Subcommittee hearing on national security whistle blowers. Lt. Col. Shaffer just finished his opening statement. He will be questioned during this hearing. You can listen now on C-Span Radio. The permalink to this post is here.

WASHINGTON — An active-duty military intelligence analyst has told congressional investigators that 9/11 pilot Mohamed Atta surfaced 13 times in a controversial Pentagon computer program before he executed the attacks, The Post has learned. Congressional sources said last night that an officer in the Pentagon's secretive Land Information Warfare Center told the staff of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) about the computer hits.

WELDON CALLS PRESS CONFERENCE IN ADVANCE OF WEDNESDAY’S ABLE DANGER HEARING WASHINGTON, Feb 13 - U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, will hold a press conference on Tuesday, February 14th at 12:00 p.m. in the House Radio/TV Gallery in advance of Wednesday’s House Armed Service joint subcommittee hearing on the Able danger - a Department of Defense planning effort prior to 9/11 tasked to identify and target the linkages and relationships of Al-Qaeda worldwide. Weldon plans to highlight much of his work over the past 9 months on Able Danger,...

It's looking like the Able Danger story (which the 9-11 Ommission Commission totally disregarded) may be about to take off. I'm told that this Wednesday's House Armed Service joint subcommittee hearing on Able Danger will have some surprises.