Posted on 08/17/2005 8:51:04 AM PDT by spycatcher
Interesting e-mail from reader B.G.: "I believe your skepticism regarding Lt. Col. Shaffer’s memory – 'whether the otherwise obscure name of "Mohammed Atta" might have become part of their recollections after the fact because it became so famous' – deserves your reevaluation.
"I would contend that whatever Shaffer knew about Mohammed Atta and the Brooklyn cell would have been reinforced in, and not 'become part of,' Shaffer’s memory on and in the days immediately after 9/11. Other elements of the story, such as having three meetings to transfer this information cancelled at the last minute, and the resulting feelings of frustration, would suggest that these inter-related memories were more strongly ingrained in his memory—at the time they occurred—than other things of which he was also aware. There’s also the issue of associative memory—Able Danger was engaged in linking information and as a liaison Shaffer undoubtedly understood the nature of its work—in that (if Shaffer indeed has a strongly associative memory) his conciously recallable memories would have expanded as he probed his memory for relevant information, after the stimulus of hearing Atta’s name and seeing his face immediately after 9/11.
"It would be worthwhile to ask Lt. Col. Shaffer if he has a visual memory. It has been my experience that many of those who do not have a visual memory (and they vary in the way the function) do not appreciate or understand the associative power that a person’s memory may possess. If Shaffer’s memory (and thinking) is visually based, it’s likely that he had a flood of associated memories triggered by seeing Atta’s face on TV after the 9/11 attack."
If any of the radio talk-show hosts who will be interviewing Lt. Col. Shaffer today is reading this, it might make for an interesting question -- does he have an associative memory? How can he be sure about Atta's name when it was among a list of 60 others? Not to mention the other three hijackers he mentions?
He's bending over backwards to be perceived as "fair" and since in reality he's being unfair (in his evaluation of who is credible, who has weight, etc) it's not working.
just needs an ano-optic neurectomy........
"I KNOW TONY SHAFFER" [John Podhoretz] Just got off the phone with someone who claims to have gone through counterintelligence training with Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer in 1986, and speaks with enough impressive detail to sound credible. The source says Shaffer was an impressive guy, not a nut, knew what he was doing -- and says it's hard to tell exactly what was going on with Able Danger. The theory, for what it's worth: maybe some of the information used in the Able Danger "data mining" set off red flags and blinking lights among Pentagon lawyers because there were problems with the way some of the data had been originally been collected. Maybe all the legal "i"s and "t"s hadn't been dotted to ensure that the privacy of U.S. citizens and legal residents of the U.S. was being respected. Thus, this may not have been a case of "wall" paranoia but rather a case of legal prudence on the part of Special Operations Command lawyers.
And to buttress your criticism of me, Andy, this source agrees with you that the small group of Able Danger-ites would have known the 60 names backwards and forwards -- and that Shaffer and his fellows would have greeted September 11 with particular horror because of what they knew.
I offer this just to expand out the general database of knowledge here. None of it answers the two questions that make no sense as yet:
Are 9/11 Commission staffers lying when they say Shaffer didn't mention Atta during his discussion with them in Afghanistan in 2003?
Did the Pentagon withhold critical Able Danger files from the 9/11 Commission in February 2004? Posted at 11:21 AM
WHAT'S IN A NAME? [Mark Steyn] I'd like to second Andy's point re Mohammed Atta's name. He's the only one of the 9/11 hijackers I can mention in a column without checking first. Call me a schmuck, but even now I find the rest of the batting order confusing: be honest, can you tell your Ahmed al-Ghamdi from your Ahmed al-Nami or your Ahmed al-Haznawi or your Ahmed al-Gore? (For the benefit of the 9/11 Commission, one of these was not a 9/11 hijacker.) How about your Waleed al-Shehri from your Wail al-Shehri? You can't tell the players with a score card.
On any list of Arab suspects, Mohammed Atta's stands out because it's closest to a Western form. Two names, no intervening al or bin. The surname could be Italian - like Tony Danza, who like Mr Atta is also believed to have spent time in Brooklyn. I think it's highly likely that, if you were going to remember any name on a terrorist watch list, it would be this one.
If JPod is going to question memory, the more interesting question is why, until they were handed their cue cards, Lee Hamilton and the other Commissioners apparently had no memory of this "Able Danger" unit or its work. Unlike Andy, I'm no expert in this field, but simply because I don't want to sound like a chump in interviews I'm pretty much on top of the Mohammed Atta timeline, its contradictions and its gaps. Isn't that the least Americans are entitled to expect from the grandees in whose name the "definitive" "non-partisan" report on 9/11 is issued? The sense you get from the Commissioners' statements last week is that they left way too much of this stuff to anonymous staffers to fillet. Maybe they should have spent less time in make-up for CNN. Posted at 12:00 PM
Well, Pod-person, given that the 9/11 Commission has changed their story a few times about Able Danger, and also spiked the Mary Jo White memo, a rational person would conclude that the more likely possibility is that the Commission is lying somewhere in this story. And you should quit trying to attack Weldon and the intel officers and instead rip into the Commission for such an abject failure as to not fully examine a data mining operation that identified four hijackers a year before 9/11.
pod is in deep. he will double down when the blue dress surfaces.
Podhoretz has his sources. Has he been getting an earfull from someone who doesn't want this story out there?
Can someone get Pod a sack for the parts of his anatomy Steyn just handed him? LOL
For a long time, it's been clear that John Podhoretz is just a bit light above the shoulders to be relied upon to write too regularly.
There is something beneath the surface here that the commission and intelligence insiders don't want coming out.
Couple that with the fact the State Dept is now saying it opposed allowing bin Laden to move from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996 tells me the covers are starting to come off the Clinton administration's incompetence and "wall" construction which severely hindered our counter-terror activities.
Looking at who the previous administration has marched out, Richard Clarke, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, Sandy Berger, Jamie Gorelick, it tells me they were trying, a long time ago, to stop any bleeding from the community.
Now, with Able Danger out and starting to come open, I expect to see a lot of tail covering. The question is, will the MSM see this as too big a story NOT to go after? Or are they that loyal to the libs they'll attempt to leak this story out in managable chunks hoping to minimize its importance and neuter its impact?
LOL. It's like Mark Steyn just told JPod to keep quiet and "put some ice on it."
Are 9/11 Commission staffers lying when they say Shaffer didn't mention Atta during his discussion with them in Afghanistan in 2003?
This is an excellent example illustrating why I said Podhoretz's straining to be "fair" is off base because he is so reluctant to point a finger at the correct target. Any reasonable person watching the 9/11 Commission in action would not say it doesn't make sense that they would lie. It makes perfect sense.
That's not to say we can say beyond a reasonable doubt they have lied, but Podhoretz acting like it's a way out possibility is the type of thinking that puts the rest of us at risk.
Good grief, the commission saw fit to ask Rice and Ashcroft and the rest questions based on tabloid lefty rumors (one example: Ashcroft flying private planes before 9/11 hinting he was avoiding commercial flights because the administration really had knowledge of the type of attack in the planning and let it happen---completely outrageous, completely false, yet that is what they saw fit to "investigate").
You called it
Seems McCarthy's been spanking him alot lately -- as has Ponnoru.
NRO, if you ever deign to read this or any other NR related thread, please dump this obnoxious fool.
"The sense you get from the Commissioners' statements last week is that they left way too much of this stuff to anonymous staffers to fillet"
Back when I was working for the DOD in the DC area, I had the chance to serve as a staffer on a number of reasonably high-level studies (e.g. Service Secretary-level, OSD Assistant/Under/DEPSEC-level, etc.). In more than one instance, it was the staff--myself included--that actually wrote 99% of the final reports. That's not to say the study principals didn't sign off on the final report, but there was considerable room for the staff to put their imprint on it. It was also the staff that often decided who would brief the study principals and what other background material they considered. That's the way it's done in DC.
He's been doing that a lot lately.
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Yeah, and in this case the Commissioners were spending all their time bashing critics on TV.
Podhoretz needs an enema if he keeps talking like this!
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