Almost too good to be true (with updates)

Voice of the Taciturn ^ | August 30, 2005 | Captain V

[hansel]

From WTOP via Strata-Sphere Blog:

The Pentagon appears to have reversed its position on Able Danger, the Army intelligence collection team.

A Pentagon spokesman now says “there’s no reason to doubt the specific recollections” of the growing number of team members. The team members say the project had pre-Sept. 11 intelligence on al Qaida, which Defense Department lawyers prohibited them from sharing with the FBI.

If I was a betting man:

· AD charts and other records have been found on Army, DIA (and probably one other agency) computer systems.

· Enough supplemental material exists (besides the charts) to point more fingers at DOJ and other agencies, as well as those who can’t really suffer immediate consequences (out of government)

· The people who have this information are not the same ones who were throwing up road blocks and applying pressure to kill this all off. Watch for subtle shifts in the power structure. Maybe not resignations (yet) but a much lower profile for some formerly popular individuals.

Update I: Now it may be strictly coincidence (ahem), but I have it on good authority that at least one agency related to the ABLE DANGER controversy is seeing movement at the upper echelons. The #3 executive, the head of a major directorate, and several other seniors are making for the door. Hmmm. Maybe I should have put money down on this after all.

Update II:

I mentioned in previous posts that one of the more common analysis tools used in the IC is Analyst Notebook. I assumed that that was the likely tool used in ABLE DANGER. A few days ago one of the ABLE DANGER team mentioned "drilling down" into the data, which started me thinking that AN wasn't the tool used.

Those suspicions were confirmed today via the Strata-Sphere. ABLE DANGER used Spire and Starlight. Both are VERY powerful tools for rendering data graphically. You want movie-style computer wizardry, Starlight is it. The trouble is that it takes a lot to run the bloody thing. Few have fully mastered its capabilities.

Technical issues aside, this brings still more bodies into the picture who could testify that ABLE DANGER did indeed exist. Starlight is a DOE/PNNL application. Program managers, contracting people, engineers who had to install and run Starlight . . .

posted by Captain V at 17:00  

[ScaniaBoy]

Here is a thread where the author tried to debunk AD based on the different spelling of Atta's name.

However, as I pointed out in post #40 in that specific case it wouldn't have mattered. Atta's name (whether he used Mohammed Atta or M el Amir) would have turned up anyway.