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.
There are programs available that can restore a disk's integrity after a partition has been erased. Contrary to popular belief, repartitioning a drive makes it extremely easy to recover an entire hard drive, including previously deleted files.
I don't believe for a second that all of the documents and copies are missing. If they have been destroyed, that would mean that somebody who is very, very knowledgable did it. I would think that at the very least Curt Weldon has copies of some of the documents.
Remember, it was the Freepers who exposed the Rather FORGERIES. So no forgery this time.
We don't know what Sandy Burglar took at this time so I'm OBVIOUSLY speculating but it sure appears to be some kind of coverup. Don't forget, when Sandy got caught, they called Bubba's attorney first...not the FBI.
Yep. Berger would have been looking for memos from a meeting he and Clinton attended that discussed Able Danger.
"I hope this clears up some of the questions."
Thank you very much for that rather detailed transcription.
It could be viewed as clearing up the matter to the extent
perhaps where his copies where being stored in Washington,
may have been moved elsewhere. But if they where his copies, he was responsible for their whereabouts. So no one had the legal authority to remove them from where he had them.
So someone obviously did a dirty deed at this point, e.g. entered SCIF area and hauled the crates of documents out with proper permission without being observed. All fifteen boxes. This is all a bit fishy.
As for you comment regarding AD may still be operative, funny, I had a similar thought some days back.
bttt
Personally, I think it went to Bubba FIRST and than he asked his operatives (incl. attorneys) at the FBI for an opinion about the cell. Outside the pentagon, I'd say Clarke, Berger & Bubba at the least knew.
I would do it in a heart beat to get those hillbillys in jail
"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?"
I'm with ya for hanging both Clintoons by their necks. But lets try to keep things straight here. Are we not talking primarily about Ltc Schaffers saying his copies of the DA stuff are not where he keeped them? If so that has nothing to do with the Burgler goin to the National Archives and taking stuff from the archives. These are seperate issues.
DA operates out of Tampa Fl., perhaps literally inside the CENTCOM facility. Lct Shaffer being a DoD employee who was the interface between DoD and DIA works most probabaly in the Pentagon. The Burgler would not have access to either the Pentagon nor the DIA once he left his position as the National Security Advisor. We should try not to confuse one another. It is confusing as is. Besides by all looks of things. The stuff the AD guys/gal where working on would never had gone to the National Archives. You don't put security agency stuff of that sort where just anyone can sign it out to see what our spooks are up to.
its unclear at this time what able danger docs are missing, and when they went missing. so we have several choices:
- they never existed
- they were lost (unlikely)
- they were purged
if they were purged, when would that have occurred?
I believe he did say it was shut down shortly before 9/11 or after, on another interview. However, it was probably just a pilot project for what is now in full swing under some other name, and about which the less said the better.
This Able Danger team seems to have been a fairly experimental unit. Most likely, their new techniques allowed them to uncover an operation that was intended to be compartmentalized from them. So they would have been shut down, and the records went in the memory hole.
"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?"
In my opinion NOTHING FROM AB would ever go into the NA. AB was an operation inside the Defense Intellegience Agency.
Lct Schaffer was a major in the the Department of Defense, who most likely had a desk in the Pentagon. AB operation was conducted out of Tampa Fl., most probably in a building at CENTCOM. The good major acted as a liason officer between the DoD and the DIA AD operation. It is hard for me to see how anything coming out of a top secret military intellegience operation would find itself being placed into the National Archive. What sense would be in doin that?
I can see mention/reference to DIA work in the NA, in documents. But to store it's work sounds a bit ridiculus. No different then if the CIA stored top secret work at the NA.
If anyone with a sufficient need to know level clearance needed info regarding something in the DIA AD group, then they would have gone to the DIA and taken the proper route to talk with someone. Guess that's my two cents on this.
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.
its no secret, its Poindexter's total information awareness program (recast as something else).
IT for classified information processing is the ultimate in Stalinist centralized IT. I doubt that highly classified information can be stored on a computer connected to a network -- at least nothing that looks like conventional Ethernet and Internet Protocol networking. The Orange Book explicitly did not allow connection to a network.
Thanks for the info. on my question Uncle. You have more knowledge about all this than I do. That's what makes being a FReeper so wonderful.
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