Officer Says 2 Others Are Source of His Atta Claims

Washington Post ^ | 8/19/2005 | Dan Eggen

[americaprd]

The former intelligence officer who says that a Defense Department program identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said yesterday that many of his allegations are not based on his memory but on the recollections of others.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who has been on paid administrative leave from the Defense Intelligence Agency since his security clearance was suspended in March 2004, said in a telephone interview that a Navy officer and a civilian official affiliated with the Able Danger program told him after the attacks that Atta and other hijackers had been included on a chart more than a year earlier.

But because he was not intimately familiar with the names and photographs of suspected terrorists, he did not realize that hijackers were listed until it was alleged to him after the attacks, Shaffer said. All of the charts that could support his claims have disappeared, he said.

[pinz-n-needlez]

I was thinking of that while I was writing. Did Poindexter's plan include American citizens, too? That's why I said I hope we restart the data mining on *foreign* terrorists. (Although I don't know how you avoid spill over.)

My computer techy son assures me that if I just join the stream of data, and keep on with regular activites we will be invisible in data mining activities. Of course, he may just be teaching me to whistle while passing the graveyard.

I don't know if there's a neat and tidy answer to this conundrum. :-(

Thanks for the reminder.

Pinz

[pinz-n-needlez]

Thanks.

Let's hope we can send Hillary on her way to join his activity.

Pinz

[justshutupandtakeit]

Nonsense. It is clear you don't have a clue here.

[justshutupandtakeit]

You better have your hearing checked.

[pinz-n-needlez]

One of the many threads we were posting on at the beginning of the week brought this out too. If we're led into an argument over whether Clinton could have acted effectively to stop Atta based on AD info, we'll certainly lose. (They'll detail us to death.)

But we've already won the argument that the Commission should have included Able Danger. And the argument that Gorelick had no justification for being *on* the commission is a winnable argument.

Clinton's whiny protestations about terror and bin Laden is doing him in, without any help from the rest of us. lol

Now Bush needs to get proper invetigatory processes in place and listened to.

Pinz

[TheForceOfOne]

The MSM is nervous about our exposing the hidden lies of the last presidency they wish to hang their hat on along with our take over of Congress and soon the Judicial Branch too.

The left is getting its clock cleaned and they're scared to death. This Able Danger story is enemy #1 to the MSM. Propaganda, smears, and lies already in progress.

[oneday]

Excellent analysis, pinz.

"Strategery."

Let's hope so.

[FryingPan101]

"All of the charts that could support his claims have disappeared"

Why would that small inconvenience matter in a Dan Rather world?

[pinz-n-needlez]

LOL Only our side would let a detail like that cause a problem.

The other guys would have recreated a chart that would be 'substantively true,' if not 'completely accurate.' ;-)

That one of the reasons I have faith in these guys. I doubt they would say something like that if they didn't know they had iron clad evidence waiting in the wings.

They all know they are risking their livelihoods, and perhaps their lives, in coming forward. They are professional warriors, which helps too. :-)

Pinz

[TVenn]

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm

9/11 Commission Report


Washington Dulles: American 77. Hundreds of miles southwest of Boston, at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., five more men were preparing to take their early morning flight. At 7:15, a pair of them, Khalid al Mihdhar and Majed Moqed, checked in at the American Airlines ticket counter for Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles. Within the next 20 minutes, they would be followed by Hani Hanjour and two brothers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Salem al Hazmi.11

Hani Hanjour, Khalid al Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed were flagged by CAPPS. The Hazmi brothers were also selected for extra scrutiny by the air-line's customer service representative at the check-in counter. He did so because one of the brothers did not have photo identification nor could he understand English, and because the agent found both of the passengers to be suspicious. The only consequence of their selection was that their checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that they had boarded the aircraft.12

All five hijackers passed through the Main Terminal's west security screening checkpoint; United Airlines, which was the responsible air carrier, had contracted out the work to Argenbright Security.13 The checkpoint featured closed-circuit television that recorded all passengers, including the hijackers, as they were screened. At 7:18, Mihdhar and Moqed entered the security checkpoint.

Mihdhar and Moqed placed their carry-on bags on the belt of the X-ray machine and proceeded through the first metal detector. Both set off the alarm, and they were directed to a second metal detector. Mihdhar did not trigger the alarm and was permitted through the checkpoint. After Moqed set it off, a screener wanded him. He passed this inspection.14

About 20 minutes later, at 7:35, another passenger for Flight 77, Hani Han-jour, placed two carry-on bags on the X-ray belt in the Main Terminal's west checkpoint, and proceeded, without alarm, through the metal detector. A short time later, Nawaf and Salem al Hazmi entered the same checkpoint. Salem al Hazmi cleared the metal detector and was permitted through; Nawaf al Hazmi set off the alarms for both the first and second metal detectors and was then hand-wanded before being passed. In addition, his over-the-shoulder carry-on bag was swiped by an explosive trace detector and then passed. The video footage indicates that he was carrying an unidentified item in his back pocket, clipped to its rim.15

When the local civil aviation security office of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) later investigated these security screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary. They could not recall that any of the passengers they screened were CAPPS selectees. We asked a screening expert to review the videotape of the hand-wanding, and he found the quality of the screener's work to have been "marginal at best." The screener should have "resolved" what set off the alarm; and in the case of both Moqed and Hazmi, it was clear that he did not.16

[pinz-n-needlez]

Thanks.

Maybe we're beginning to understand the definition of 'strategery' here. ;-)

Pinz

[mewzilla]

We need a special prosecutor.

[CDB]

But Sandy Burglar gets to keep his clearance? Fair and balanced? Yeah, right.

[TVenn]

According to the 9/11 Commission Report Hani Hanjour was at the controls of the 757 that crashed into the Pentagon.

According to the FBI this is Hani Hanjour.

According to the 9/11 Commission, this is Hani Hanjour.

Does anyone here believe these are two photos of the same man?

[brivette]

Great post. Great summary.

[pinz-n-needlez]

Thanks. :-)

Pinz

[popdonnelly]

"I suspect current DoD and White House will also try to discredit him."

I'm not so sure of that at this point. It looks like there are some Pentagon weenies willing to discredit Shaffer, but no one at Defense has put the official "shut up" on him yet.

[InterceptPoint]

I've been watching Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer on Hannity and I have to say that he is very well spoken and sounds sincere. But ...

1. This is the only instance that I can think of where a member of the military (administrative leave or not) was going around involving himself in "political matters". This is a first. Very unusual. He is acting like a Pentagon spokesman and talking about matters that the Pentagon and military universally steer clear of. That just doesn't sound right to me even though I want to believe his story. The Pentagon can't let this go on. They either have to pull him in or endorse him. The latter seems very unlikely to me.

2. He was not a member of the Able Danger team. He was responsible (he says) for the interface between the team and other organizations including the FBI. So we still haven't any first hand information. This is very odd. Where are the real players? Why don't they speak up. Why doesn't the Pentagon speak up?

[cgk]

Hani Hanjour is a man of many faces, apparently!

Ever taken a good look at the anthrax letters? I wrote a thread way back when, effectively PROVING the anthrax letters being shown to the public were photocopies of each other, and that we weren't being shown ALL of the REAL letters.

Lots of misinformation about 9/11. I still can't figure why.

[spokeshave]

"He had calls forwarded to his cell phone. Over about an 18-month period, at $.25 per call, it amounted to $67. That was his crime.

Unless that resulted in a potential security breach, that seems a surprising thing to lose a security clearance for a year and a half.

And Sandy Burgler operating a cell phone with camera from deep inside the national security archives gets a free pass.....?

Unbelievable.