Posted on 09/01/2005 2:04:41 PM PDT by hansel
Edited on 09/01/2005 4:06:21 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
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
I haven't figured out how to BOLD text yet. If I knew how, I would have bolded:
"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 is right.
Any guesses, fellow FReepers?
I would hope so...I don't know about the Army, but I am storing Air Force research records from 1989 in my office that I have not been allowed to get rid of yet. Good news...thanks. Guess we will have to see who suddenly resigns for "personal reasons" or "to spend more time with his/her family", LOL!
it is near.
Latest on Able Danger on Levin's Show Now.
www.wabcradio.com
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1475098/posts?page=54
bttt!
General request: Does anybody know a Freeper geek who knows about this Starlight program? Sounds cool, and a bit more knowledge might reveal some clues.
Some more pieces of the puzzle. I want to know more about this Starlight program mentioned in the article.
..or who leaves behind an empty canoe.
In this example, an analyst has assembled a collection of approximately 3500 intelligence messages, of four different types, describing a (simulated) situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The four message types include human intelligence reports (IIRs), tactical intelligence reports (TACREPs) describing voice radio communications between military units, reports describing movements of military vehicles (REXREPs), and reports describing radar activity (TACELINTs). As shown above, the material has been organized into two separate Starlight databases, or InfoSets, one containing the REXREPs and TACELINTs (presented as a Starlight Discrete View), and the other containing the TACREPs and IIRs (presented as a Concept View). The analyst has also assembled supporting image and map data to provide a visual context for certain aspects of the information under study. The analyst's challenge is to reassemble these elements into a coherent picture of activity in the region, both to characterize the current situation and for predictive purposes.
Just put a pointed bracket with a B in it in front of the first word you want bold, and a pointed bracket with /B in it after the last wore you want bold.
Many thanks.
SPIRE accepts large volumes of unformatted text, determines the dominant topics and relationships within the text, and presents them in a visual format that is natural for the human mind. This approach allows users to rapidly discover hidden information by reading only the pertinent documents.Spire
Sounds like an awesome program, if only it could be used a lot more widely in our intel agencies! I know that Rep. Weldon says in his book he has been agitating for extensive intel data-mining and 'fusion' programs across all gov't classified databases since 1997-98....he says there are at least 32 major classified databases which are only accessible to their own internal searches. Of course, security and privacy are always big issues, and spy-moles like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen made the various agencies guard their data even more tightly, I'd suspect.... AD only focused upon UNclassified data, as I understand it, but one of Weldon's main points is that data-mining needs to be done across all available classified and unclassified data so that all possible bits of info can be pulled togther.... e.g., someone like ATTA might have left tidbits of data in a dozen or more different databases, some classified and others unclassified..... [are Starlight and similar programs being used much at all for intel analysis and counter-terrorism since the demise of AD??]
One thing I worry about is the fact that names from Arabic, Persian, and a variety of other languages may be translated into English in a variety of ways, I believe. Is there software that can recognize numerous variants of the same name, and especially with all the abu-terrorist, al-bozo, el-scumbag, etc. variations that exist..... can intel agencies really search adequately, and are "watch lists" able to deal with such variations and also mis-spellings???
Thanks for that. I didn't think of just searching for the info. duh
lol
These programs put my little idea to shame. I've been brainstorming over the last couple of days, nonetheless...
save
Thanks for the ping!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.