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FAYETTEVILLE, TN (WAFF) - Lincoln County Sheriff Murray Blackwelder said the suspect in the slayings of six people in Tennessee and Huntsville called 911 after killing his wife, her son, brother and father, and two other people Saturday morning. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Blackwelder said when sheriff's deputies arrived at one of the crime scenes, they found Jacob Lee Shaffer on the front porch with his estranged wife's 9-year-old daughter, who was physically unharmed. He then made unprompted statements that lead people to search both the homes of Tracie Shaffer and her father Billy Hall, where they found...

Democrat Mark Udall is still narrowly ahead of Republican Bob Schaffer in the race to become Colorado’s next United States Senator. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds Udall up 47% to 43% this month. When “leaners” are included, it’s a three-point advantage for the Democrat, 49% to 46%. Last month, Rep. Udall enjoyed a nine-point lead over Shaffer. In May, he led by six. Prior to May, the race had been essentially even. Udall and Schaffer are competing for the right to replace Republican Senator Wayne Allard.

Subject: Learning Over the Years How to Balance Family and Work in an Industry Not Even Their Own Company Executives Understand By Renee E. Taylor (ATAW/AR) To you, my husband is a truck number, just a large, blue or red metal object that mysteriously gets your freight from point A to point B. One of thousands of tiny dots that appear on your computer screen as you sit in your air conditioned office which you leave each night to return to your wife, children and pets. A large, blue or red metal object that dispatchers and planners seen as an...

Despite the fact that the 2008 presidential primaries have been anything but uneventful, in terms of other campaigns across the country, it seems as if everyone else is off to an incredibly slow start. Even though it’s already May, there are still many hot-races that haven’t even come close to moving into full swing.

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of...

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...

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:

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!

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...

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

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....

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.

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.

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.

Everything you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask, or the answers were classified…) about the controversial Able Danger data mining project, which identified four 9/11 hijackers a year before the terror attacks. 1. Did Anthony Shaffer, or anyone on the Able Danger team, obtain a photo of Mohamed Atta from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), as Shaffer’s interview with Government Security News (GSN) states? The photo of Atta came from an information broker who provided it and others. Shaffer’s comments were made to GSN based on his knowledge at the time, which came from his knowledge...

A petition has been posted here to demonstrate support for a congressional investigation into Able Danger. If you support seeing an investigation please sign the petition. And then you can spread the word here: http://www.petitiononline.com/cgi-bin/mailpage.cgi?weldon/petition.html

WASHINGTON - A top-secret military program set up six years ago to probe the Al-Qaida terrorist network is provoking fierce new debate about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh did not learn of Able Danger until the summer of 2005.  Commenting on the Wall Street Journal op-ed that he published Wednesday November 17, Louis Freeh told me tonight that he and his commanders had no knowledge of the facts of the Special Operations Command's data-mining program, code-named Able Danger, before the remarks by Shaffer and Phillpot in the media and eventually before Senators Specter's Judiciary Committee.More, Louis Freeh, now a private attorney for MBNA, said that since the Able Danger revelation no one at the 9-11 Commission has called him to update the record...

Roger Hedgecock was the substitute host on Rush's show yesterday. Close to the end of the second hour Roger had a few words to say about Able Danger. The audio file is up at QT Monster's Place.

That used to be the primary question of Able Danger, but now that we have seen what the DIA has done to the primary whistleblower, the questions have to run deeper than the incompetence of the Omission Commission. The Defense Intelligence Agency stripped Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer of his clearances over a series of old and bogus charges relating to the use of pens and pads of paper from more than twenty years ago. That effectively ended his career in civilian intelligence work, although it doesn't affect his status in the Army Reserve. The DIA's attack on Shaffer on transparently...

This dismissive and apparently unsupported conclusion would have us believe that a key piece of evidence was summarily rejected in less than 10 days without serious investigation. The commission, at the very least, should have interviewed the 80 members of Able Danger, as the Pentagon did, five of whom say they saw "the chart." But this would have required admitting that the late-breaking news was inconveniently raised. So it was grossly neglected and branded as insignificant. Such a half-baked conclusion, drawn in only 10 days without any real investigation, simply ignores what looks like substantial direct evidence to the contrary...

A completely unexpected interview tonight on the JerryDoyle Show. Jerry Doyle questioned Mr. David Hawkins about Able Danger, the financing of Al Qaeda, John Deutsch, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gen.Wesley Clark, the destruction of Lt. Col. Shaffer, the marginalizing of Rep. Curt Weldon and something called the French-American Foundation. Really strange stuff. The audio (mp3) is below.

<p>The Army Reserve officer who went public with details about a secret military unit called Able Danger is being fired from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency, a move that also could end his military career.</p>

Direct link to video: rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e110905_weldon.rm (14:59 into video; Requires Real Player) "But we have something new..... Dr. Bob Johnson is a professor and IT expert. Dr. Bob Johnson was the manager and operator of the Garland Unit of Data Mining separate from the Army's [leeway?]. Dr. Bob Johnson has not talked to any of the Able Danger players since the efforts that were taking place in '99 and 2000 and Dr. Bob Johnson told me that his unit also identified Mohammed Atta not by photo but by name before 9/11.." Other points: -Garland's Data was sent to SOCOM. -Able DAnger's...

Weldon is asking for a criminal investigation of the Able Danger coverup.

Ed, in record breaking speed that to me clearly denotes selective retaliatory attention, the DIA's SAB has affirmed the revocation of Tony's security clearance. Unfortunately DIA has seen fit to completely disregard our submissions, and Cong Weldon and Hunters' formal requests to refrain from acting against Tony. This was the final stage of the process. There are no more administrative appeals left with respect to the clearance. A response to the indefinite suspension will be filed tomorrow. I expect that Tony will receive a notice of termination also in record breaking speed. That will take effect no sooner than thirty...

With Saddam Hussein’s trial underway, this would be an appropriate occasion to re-visit the persevering efforts that led to that historic day in December 2003 when the Butcher of Baghdad was pulled from his rathole. One of the intelligence techniques employed was the same used by the Able Danger to identify Mohammed Atta. “Data mining is the slang for it,” Captain Timothy Morrow explained to me. That is, slang for the methods he and his small team employed. Captain Morrow served as intelligence officer for 1/22nd Infantry and credited LTC Russell and Col. Hickey for allowing his staff the leeway...

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, they do and have talked about it. They've been up and testified before congressional committees and briefed people on a classified basis. What's been in the press is that some people feel that everything they say should be on an unclassified basis and the judgment apparently was made by the people involved that that would be unhelpful to our country. But in terms of talking to people about it, they've done it extensively. The interesting thing about that is it's such an interesting story, of course it's something that occurred well before this Administration came in, back...

But I think that they're both important. And we give the Able Danger story a considerable amount of time here just as we did Congressman Weldon in the newsletter which you so thankfully subscribe to, and you quoted it here. The Able Danger thing is going to not go away because Weldon's not going to let it go away.

Slade Gorton claims to already know the results of the Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. He says they will agree with him - that Able Danger was historically insignificant. That it "didn't have anything to do with 9/11" at all! Let's hope Mr. Gorton is in for a rude awakening. If not, it begs the question, how does he know so much about classified proceedings in the Senate that the American public has not been allowed to hear for ourselves? From Lou Dobbs last night: DOBBS: Congressman Curt Weldon claims a secret Pentagon project known as Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta...

9/11 CitizensWatch joined the families in calling for current and former administration leaders, as well as National Security Director Condaleeza Rice, to testify under oath and in public. Rice did so, on the condition that the Commission could not ask any other cabinet-level official to appear, and the Commission acceded. Not a single executive branch official or federal agency employee was issued a subpoena to testify, though several resisted. After long periods of foot-dragging the agencies reportedly complied, but only after public exposure and commentary. Commission reluctance to hold individuals responsible for their perceived failures meant that key testimony was...

Did Snell debrief Phillpott? Yes. Was he working for Jamie Gorelick? No. Not any more than he was working for Slade Gordon or any other member of the Commission, as opposed to the Commission staff. He was working for Philip Zelikow, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission staff who hired him as Senior Counsel.

Rush Limbaugh: Congressman, that's how it works. He's put some pressure on somebody's turf. Somebody who just wanted to sit there and just go along with life and not upset any apple carts. He's talking about Lt. Tony Shaffer is who he's talking about here. When I spoke to him for his interview in The Limbaugh Letter he was this agitated and you can tell that he's not going to let this go. And for all this talk about the Democrats and their culture of corruption. Let me tell you that the culture of corruption is in these career positions...

After the DIA has decided to run a smear campaign on LTC Tony Shaffer and to destroy his credibility, apparently for his revelations about Able Danger, the credibility of the agency itself has come under serious question. A CQ reader wishing to remain anonymous but with personal knowledge of the situation the Defense Intelligence Agency sends this description of the senior leadership at the agency: Deputy Director of DIA is Mark Ewing. He won't be in that position for very long, seeing as how he recently put in his paperwork to resign. This action comes after he had a spat...

'Able Danger' Officer's Clearance Revoked By KIMBERLY HEFLING The Associated Press Friday, September 30, 2005; 4:13 AM WASHINGTON -- An officer who has claimed that a classified military unit identified four Sept. 11 hijackers before the 2001 attacks is facing Pentagon accusations of breaking numerous rules, allegations his lawyer suggests are aimed at undermining his credibility. The alleged infractions by Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, 42, include obtaining a service medal under false pretenses, improperly flashing military identification while drunk and stealing pens, according to military paperwork shown by his attorney to The Associated Press.

Mark Zaid: ...the letter I received in the verbal conversation I had with the Defense Dept. were that Tony Shaffer was not authorized to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I, until I hear otherwise, would interpret that he is no longer able to make any public statements. J. D. Smith is a little bit different. He's not a current employee of the Defense Dept., but there were insinuations that some of what he worked on was classified even though he was on an unclassified project and he does still maintain a high level security clearance. And it's just not...

Able Danger program discussion.

Press Conference of Rep Curt Weldon: 9/11 Commission and Operation "Able Danger" 9/11 Commission suppressed the evidence September 17, 2005 US House of Representatives Email this article to a friend Print this article WELDON: Good afternoon. I'm Curt Weldon, and I'm here to provide a response to the 9/11 Commission in their statements this week about Able Danger and the outrageous statement made by Slade Gorton that it just didn't exist. And it is absolutely outrageous, especially from a commission that I supported, that spent $15 million with 80 staffers to give the American people and the Congress a full...

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.

Sept. 11 commission rejects Atta claim DEVLIN BARRETT Associated Press WASHINGTON - Former members of the Sept. 11 commission on Wednesday dismissed assertions that a Pentagon intelligence unit identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as an member of al-Qaida long before the 2001 attacks. The ex-commissioners also criticized the government for not putting in place changes recommended last year in homeland security and emergency response. They pointed most notably to the failure to improve communication systems, which they said might have saved lives after Hurricane Katrina. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., had accused the commission of ignoring intelligence about Atta while it...

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with GSN on August 23, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the military intelligence operative who collaborated with Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) to draw worldwide attention to the Able Danger intelligence unit, described Able Danger’s origins, explained how it tracked terrorists as they visited individual mosques around the world, discussed the CIA’s refusal to cooperate with the program, acknowledged the supporting technical role played by the Raytheon Company, and described Able Danger’s ultimate demise.