Posted on 08/18/2005 9:46:51 AM PDT by wagglebee
Two weeks after the 9/11 the attacks, the Bush administration was told that a special military intelligence unit code named Able Danger had developed actionable intelligence two years earlier that could have foiled the 9/11 plot, a member of the Able Danger team revealed on Wednesday.
Among the Able Danger evidence shared with the Bush National Security Council: a chart put together before 9/11 featuring a picture of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. Asked why he didn't go public before this week with the news that his group had been tracking Atta during the Clinton administration, Able Danger team member Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer told ABC radio host Sean Hannity:
"Within two weeks of the attack, this colleague of mine ... she took that very poster [with Mohamed Atta] to Congressman [Curt] Weldon," Shaffer said. "And I have to say he took it right to Michael Hadley, I believe, over at the NSC."
"It's my understanding that he gave him that chart and Hadley had a great deal of interest in it," he added.
Once the Bush administration had been briefed, Shaffer said, he thought the information would be handled properly. "[I felt] that we were good to go - that everything was going to be solved," he told Hannity.
The military intelligence sleuth stressed, however, "I'm not criticizing the Bush administration here. They're doing everything in their power to prevent this now. I think they're fully behind what we're doing. I think the Pentagon right now is fully behind me trying to get the word out and trying to get to the bottom of this."
Shaffer credited his still unidentified Able Danger colleague with managing the technical side of the program.
"The doctor who put this all together is brilliant. I mean, I cannot speak high enough of her and her brilliance in being able to break the code on this. She was able, through the technology used, to somehow pull out of all this amorphous data usable, actionable information."
"And that's where things kind of got off track," Shaffer explained. "Because at the same time she pulled that out, we then were trying to look at how we could exploit that information. And that's where the lawyers got involved."
Shaffer said that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, this same colleague alerted him to the fact that the Able Danger team had developed intelligence on the hijack team, a detail he hadn't noticed.
"My colleague called me in and said, 'Look, we knew these guys.' And I was shocked. It was like, in the pit of my stomach there was just this sinking feeling, like - we knew. We knew this!"
Congressman Weldon has previously described three attempts by Able Danger to brief the FBI on the Atta intelligence, before being blocked by lawyers at the Clinton Pentagon.
Those lawyers have yet to be identified.
"Now this really p!sses me off. Why did they cover for the Clintons? Why did they keep Tenet around for far too long? Why didn't they honor the dead with the truth? Why do we have wide open borders to this day? Why do we have the silliest excuse for airport security, maximum inconvenience and minimal profiling?"
You raise some good points but I'd like to point out some things.
I've seen a lot of ranting and raving about similar operations proposed by the Bush administration. It wasn't but a year or so ago that the Bush administration was under ferocious attack by the 'real conservatives' about monitoring communications and using data mining software to make connections and track terrorists. They backed off these proposals.
I'm not defending Bush or attacking Clinton only pointing out that there are a lot of 'real conservatives' who would have been all over any administration that used this kind of operation. There was a hundred or so threads here on free republic criticizing the Bush administration for even thinking of doing this.
I want to know when the Clinton administration was told about this...and by whom.
waiting for the "above the fold" stories in the SLIMES,WASH POST Boston Globe yada yada
I know. It's a fine line. I am not a fan of the Patriot Act, for one reason and only this reason- eventually, another Janet Reno is going to come along. Then what?
The point remains, though, that action against our domestic enemies as well as our foreign enemies should have happened. The best way to do it is to suspend habeas corpus according to Article 1 Sec.9- not pass unconstitutional laws that can be used against citizens in the future.
However, Bush's loyalty to failures like Tenet, when it was glaringly obvious to a Joe Nobody like me that he needed to be fired ASAP, is mystifying.
Now we know that Able Danger was disclosed to the WH right after 911, and that eventually, that stupid 911 Commission was allowed to proceed anyway. THEY KNEW IT WAS A WHITEWASH THE WHOLE TIME. All of them. The Clinton AND the Bush folks.
Who the hell do we trust anymore? The GOP is really pushing it. This type of info will trickle out eventually. Right now, it's only floating around among us blog geeks, but it will have fallout. What are they thinking?
Not only that, some slimy Democrat is going to throw this back in the face of their opponent during 2006, and the MSM will back them, making it look like only the GOP is dirty. It's stupid politics.
Hell, I'm waiting to see it on A27!
Well I assume the pentagon lawyers were just doing what Gorelick and the top Clintonistas told them to do. So there's not much point in naming the lawyers. This problem was caused by the PC Clinton White House.
LOL! I have a feeling Michael Moore than enough and the MSM don't want anything to do with this story other than perhaps saying that Bush was briefed! That they may talk about leaving out the quote that says he isn't to blame!
This should be the biggest scandal in our history, and would be had a republican president been in office at the time. If this doesn't prove media bias, nothing on earth does.
when one administration leaves are they not supposed to brief the incoming administration ,i believe they call it the transition team or something like that .Has anyone asked if during this transition was the Bush administration advised of the fact there were Al Quaida cells in the country ?What else were they told or not told during this transition which took longer than usual because of the contested election
At the extremes, this could lead to a simple test for employment in the US government:
Are you now or have you ever been a registered Democrat? If not, have you ever voted for a Democrat for national office? If so, turn in your security clearance (if any) and clean out your desk. We will be contacting you, individually, to determine if you are or are not a traitor.
Refusal to comply with these instruction will result in a default judgment of treason and you will be subject to summary execution.
Admittedly, this is way out there extreme, but if we discover that the Clintonistas actively obstructed the US intelligence and law enforcement apparatus in acts that led directly to 9/11 this will be the MILDEST result.
Lynching of all leftists, including all Democrats is the other alternative.
OK. OK. Lynching has too much "PC" baggage associated with it. Instead people will follow the ANC example of how to deal with traitors - necklacing.
To those who are brain dead (ttwabd) this is HUMOR, cynical humor, but humor. Do not try this at home.
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