Sandy Berger, caught stuffing Socks.
Posted on 08/21/2005 2:52:23 PM PDT by wagglebee
Documents detailing the work of a top secret military intelligence unit that identified lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta before the 9/11 attacks have disappeared, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency's liaison for the group, code named Able Danger.
"There's some troubling things that have happened both to me and the way the [Able Danger] information [was handled]," Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer told C-Span's "Sunday Morning Journal." "Shortly after I talked to the 9/11 Commission, there was some issues going on about the documentation. Right now as it stands this minute, to my knowledge, the documentation I had . . . we don't know where it is."
"It's not where I left it back in March of 2003," Shaffer said, which was "in a Department intelligence facility in the Northern Virginia area."
Shaffer told C-Span he had "one full set of Able Danger documents in my holdings from the DIA."
The Able Danger whistleblower had said previously that a member of the team had delivered two briefcases full of documents to the 9/11 Commission - but Commission spokesman have said they have found nothing that mentioned Atta by name.
What parsing. . .how about. . .just his initials? Or by his last name. . .how about a 'project code name'.
This is as cheap as 'the meaning of 'is' and who is the spokesperson for this Committee? 'Who are they who speak in unison?
My feeling is that it DID get to the FBI and Bubba....except it went to hand picked persons. (Kinda like "Hand picking" Wilson for the Niger Tea Party.) In reality, I think we can refer to them as Hand Picked "Dem Loyalists".
"What I do not understand and perhaps I assume more credit is due to the 'National Archive filing system'; but I would like to think everything is 'catalogued'. . .by number or 'something' and that they can certainly figure out at least, 'what' papers went into Burglar's pants. At least."
My understanding is, that anyone with proper authority, clearance level can sign out materials, then when finished with them sign the materials back into the custody of clerks.
Now, the stuff available at the National Archives, are not the originals. At least that is my understanding. They are copies of originals. So no one can gain access to the original information. So if this is correct. I really don't understand the whole issue with Sandy Burger removing things he was not supposed to or for that matter destroying things.
It would not make any difference. I may be completely wrong.
Perhaps some one can help all of us that may not understand just how the National Archive retrieval system operates to fill us in. If it turns out the NA allows someone to remove an original document from the archives, then yet again we have a bunch of as*hole* working in the beltway that are totally beyond comprehension.
Sandy Berger, caught stuffing Socks.
I listened to this part of the interview.
Shaeffer said that Able Danger was run out of Tampa. A-D is a classified project, and the documents are classified. He mentioned the difficulty with shipping documents back and forth at "this" level of security.
He said he was the laison in Washington, so he had one copy of every single A-D document. He said they were stored in a "SCIF" in the area. For those who don't know the lingo, I'll just say this usually a room that is a very large safe.
These documents would all have been under strict control. They would not necessarily have been on computers. And if they were, those computers were classified, and if declassified you will NOT find pieces of the documents on them (if the security people did their job correctly, and they CAN do the job correctly).
It seems remarkable to me that these could go missing -- but then again, he didn't suggest they were lost, he sounded like he thought they would be found.
It is possible they were transfered somewhere else. There should be a paper trail indicating the turnover of responsibility for the classified documents.
I don't believe the project has been shut down. I believe it is still running, and that this is part of why people are being careful about what they say. A lot could still be classified, and we might not ever know about it.
Maybe someone did say it was shut down. That might be a ruse.
I hope this clears up some of the questions.
The Clintons stole the dishes, the silver and the "W"s off all the computer keyboards as they left the White House.
Do we think they would be dumb enough not to make "arrangements" for any damaging evidence to this adminstration left behind?
I think we should look at Berger's role at the archives as an inside job. He was not monitored properly. I have found only two archives that keep a record of what I searched. Both of them were profoundly efficient. I was monitored continuously at those archives...personally and/or via video.
and I always thought it was Hillary that ran over Buddy!
Evidently the poor pup was also used by the Clintons.
"Where I work we supply information to our customers in a quote or bid that may remain in limbo for up to three years and then suddenly it becomes an order. We need to retrieve the exact information contained in that proposal which could amount to a lot of information. The employer has already payed for the services of the employees to create this information and losing it means money."
I'm with ya on all points. I simply was echoing the stuff Konaice presented. Where once a project is terminated, then after whatever is deemed useful to save lets say in printed form or perhaps on CD's/Floppies/other tape transport media etc., are then put in crates, moved to secure wharehousing facilty, then the original stuff on the hard disks is wiped according to rules of that particular agency.
Which would apply in the case, perhaps those terebytes of raw data the young lady and others daily where assembling then running analysis on, whatever, was simply destroyed once the project was finished. I am only guessing at best, obviously. But if it turned out the main work was done on say a mainframe computer, one would not simply pull some particular hard drive(s) that may have been rather large physically and stored them in crates somewhere. That seems to be the issue that is surfacing here.
Hillary's dresser drawer?
Ever try to follow your footsteps in the mud? You can never repeat it exactly and one would soon discover that you walked the same path twice. That's how Berger got caught.
the clintons left office before 9-11 occurred. they could not have known to purge this data from the DIA. they sent Berger in to the archives after the fact to clean some of it out. why didn't the Bush DOJ prosecute him vigourosly?
all I am saying is, that we know Clinton's hands are dirty here. but I am also interested in why our guys seem to be part of smoothing this all over.
"Weren't there a bunch of computers stolen from the FBI at one time?...with important info on it."
Perhaps yes. I do know a Chinese Physicts stole CD and hard drives (from PC) at the Sandia National Laboratory, and Sandy Burgler did nothing to prevent the stuff from ending up in mainland China. We tend to forget about that fiasco.
Put it in Clinton terms prior to Monica's dress. Clinton reasoned that there was no way Monica could prove he had sex with her. There were no witnesses and what were the odds she had a dress with his semen on it... He figured slim and none. So he denied it.
Then came the zinger that She had saved the Dress to protect herself.
Consider the Able Danger guys who want the story out. The first task is to convince the Clintonistas that the whistle blowers have no proof.. That the Clinton gang has destroyed all proof. In other words all dresses have been drycleaned.
But what if everything has not been destroyed? What course of action will they follow. What will the guilty parties believe. What they believe is most likely will determine their defense.
It seems to me the Able Danger people are setting a trap. They put out conficting information.. and then reverse that information.
That leaves the guilty parties two options... confess and take the consequences, or lie and hope to get away with it. The object of those on offense is to get them to lie and get caught. That takes disinformation and results in the defenders taking a gamble... that they will lose.
So, would that also mean that any data collected by Able Danger would be received by the National Archives regardless of whether it was overwritten or erased later from the computers of the Able Danger group after they operation was shut down?
As I have also heard, the copies retrieved by Sandy Berger would not have been the originals, only reading copies. So was Sandy Berger from the generation before computers were an everyday part of a kids life, probably yes and that could mean he was unaware they were only copies and so the story goes, he stuffed them down his pants.
The 911 Commission which had already decided to smother the Able Danger information which was embarrassing to Gorelick who was on the 911 Commission as an obstructionist for the Clinton's would not have cared what Berger did or what was lost believing it was all according to plan.
"Where are the documents?"
Probably where the Rose Law Firm billing records were being kept. Hmmm, Maybe they are in Hillary's pants? Any volunteers? :)
That leaves the guilty parties two options... confess and take the consequences, or lie and hope to get away with it. The object of those on offense is to get them to lie and get caught. That takes disinformation and results in the defenders taking a gamble... that they will lose.
However, I'm not sure if there were actually any laws broken in this case. It was a stupid and tragic error, but was it illegal. I have a feeling that the Gorelick memo was designed to cover-up illegal activities, but these had nothing to do with terrorism; if that is the case, then the Gorelick memo was not in itself illegal.
If this is the case, then then the purpose of disclosing Able Danger would be to permanently discredit the Clinton administration. In doing this, disinformation becomes less important.
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