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.
"I am only guessing at best."
Most if not all are making guesses. And if someone here works for the DIA chances are they would not say much if anything.
I suspect each agency has it's own set of rules regarding electronic publishing, data backup, etc.. As mentioned elsewhere, it could simply be possible, if the project AD was working on indeed did get closed down. Pertenent documents in the form of reports would have been printed out, distributed to those designated to keep them, then the hard disk data erased. But I still maintain, depending on the nature of a given project, one does not neccessarily erase hard disks (surface destruction of the bytes forcing for instance every byte location on every track, sector, and cylinder of a disk to read a NULL character, or a zero or all ONES, etc.. There are mainframes that continue to hold vital information accumulated for years, that are vital to defense/security. It is to easy to just say a project is shutdown. Sometimes projects/operations are dormate, ready to start up on a moments notice if required. I am sure we shall never gain the details nor should we of what type of operation AD was involved in as far as what type of tools it used. What though is hard for me to buy is that Schaffer would have let anyone know other then a really well known friend within the DoD ranks what he was storing and where.
The only alternative, is it is a inside DoD job, where someone in the Pentagon with high enough authority was able to get access to the 15 boxes of materials that are supposedly held in a secure location, within the Pentagon,
and pilfered the stuff, without being noticed, hard to do, but perhaps possible if people where paid of to cooperate.
But somehow I don't believe that would have happened.
Lets remember Sandy the Burgler was viewed by video for a number of days, they in essence set up a sting. They let him sign stuff out, sneak it out then not return it and sign it back in. Surely secure areas in the Pentagon and other military installations must have adequate security monitors.
Then again, like you say. We are all guessing.
To quote from Jamie Gorelick's law firm bio: "Ms. Gorelick is the co-author of the leading treatise on the maintenance of corporate documents, Destruction of Evidence(Wiley 1983). Do you suppose this expertise is what brought her to the attention of the document shredders that occupied the WH in the nineties?
"- they never existed
- they were lost (unlikely)
- they were purged
if they were purged, when would that have occurred?
Case 1. How terrible. What is Weldon trying to pull off?
Case 2. Agree. And if "his copy(s), where, they still exist within the DIA. Which means those at DIA can be obtained.
Case 3. Who knows. A little pet project, that you spend a few years on, piss away a few mil, then just scrape it. Don't think so. Assuming what the good Colonel has said is truthfull. Surely he would not make up such a story, to many folks on either side of the political spectrum at the DoD, DIA would have made it clear he is off his rocker etc..
Unless I have a complete misunderstanding of what AD was doing as so far disclosed, it was an ongoing military operation to assimulate and analysis data on suspect terrorist. Why would anyone just destroy all the info. It was safe at the DIA.
the administration, the pentagon, has been silent on this so far. if all of a sudden, we see a statement from the pentagon this week about "no supporting documentation can be found", on the heels of this CSPAN revelation - then I fear we will have the answer - it was purged. then the issue becomes, when and by whom?
" Yes, but your guesses look better than mine! lol
A lot better Uncle."
Perhaps what I write will be proven to be complete baloney in this case. Who knows. But it just seems AD was doing specific things on tracking terrorist for the DIA, and it is hard to believe if what the good Colonel has made public, that all the data would be still available at the DIA. Heck it is only a few years ago that the project was "active". And due to the nature of the project, and data assimulated/stored, I don't think the DIA would just dump the crap into a NULL file. As the colonel indicated, he has copies of the originals that are currently with the DIA.
So maybe outside this little quark about his copies being misplaced, things still are on the burners. Guess we shall see soon what the deal is on that issue.
And the silence from the administration and other members of congress is very, very frustrating.
Hint on trail...think Treasury Department.
JEDI.
"establish a direct link between Saddam and al Qaida"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/985906/posts
http://www.geocities.com/republican_strategist//Iraq-Bin-Laden.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1464863/posts
"the administration, the pentagon, has been silent on this so far. if all of a sudden, we see a statement from the pentagon this week about "no supporting documentation can be found", on the heels of this CSPAN revelation - then I fear we will have the answer - it was purged. then the issue becomes, when and by whom?"
I'm with ya on this stuff. I'm just playing devils advocate to some degree. But I bet it will not be that the projects information was purged. I bet it will be that GWB said, lay off for some reason. That is, this administration for whatever reasons does not want to disturb the current status quo regarding the 9/11 Commissions Report. I only know something really stinks in Denmark over this whole issue.
Or it is a stunt to make it look like Clintoon really was a failure as we all know, but to put doubt into the publics mind that find out about the Able Danger story, and to make them think who in 2008 to vote for. Could be just a little beltway trick some of the DoD are going along with.
FReeper - rodguy911
I find Shaffer credible on the basic features of AD and cannot see what his motivation would be to put his neck on the block if he did not think this was (a) very important, and (b) subject to cover-up.
It seems incredible to me (but I'm far from DOD or even government work) that there are no computer files, back-up tapes, etc. somewhere. As for paper records, Shafer has referred repeatedly to around 20 boxes that existed as of the date the program was terminated in Feb. 2001. I'd think those have to be in a secure storage facility somewhere and the problem is where, BUT there have been hints that the head of DIA and/or the "two star" General with whom Shafer butted heads may have wanted this whole thing to go away forever at the beginning of the Bush administration..... could any senior officer(s) in DIA have the authority and ability to totally eradicate all the records on AD? I'd think that records had to be preserved even when a program is terminated, but maybe someone wanted it all to disappear.
I wonder what kind of storage polices SOCOM might have for electronic and paper files, and whether there might be a lot of this stuff buried in a secure warehouse in Tampa???
Finally, from what Shaffer has said so far I don't see any reason to think this info was shared with the NSC or Sandy Burglar, etc. I'd love as much as anyone here to see Sandy Burglar fry (and he should fry just based upon what we know for sure he did), but if top officials in the DIA were squashing attempts to share AD info with the FBI then I wouldn't assume that they allowed it to be shared anyplace else, either. Based on what Shaffer has said about his running up against a 'wall' of the two-star who ordered him to shut up and keep the info to himself, I doubt it ever got out of the DIA and SOCOM before the time Shafer met witht the 9/11 Commission.
As I said, I'm far from DOD or even government, that's just my two cents based upon reading most of Shafer's interviews and a lot of commentaries about them....
It was great sharing with you folks. But I gotta sign off for the night and fly some carrier ops out of the Persian Gulf in my Super Hornet. I have a lot of add on stuff for Microsoft Flight Simulator, military aircraft, many airbases built up that do not have fully functional parking and LSO, that I use tools to add this stuff. I sort of built up an area where my nephews base is located in Al Anbar. I fly to it and slow buzz em, sort of to keep watch over him and his Marine buddies if you know what I mean. Can't be there with them for real. But am in spirit.
So do have a pleasant evening morning, be talking with you in the future.
Semper Fi.
On the National Geographic program, "Inside 9/11", broadcast this evening, there was a reference to intelligence officers working at McDill Air Force Base in 2000. They had a chart which included pictures of Mohammad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi. They decided they could not act on this information because the persons involved were in the country on valid visas. This squares exactly with the Able Danger story. Now, what were National Geographic's sources for this, and where are the charts? And how can the media avoid such inconvenient facts?
Re #73: Nice collection of morons.
we were asking that on the live thread as well. did they simply cut that segment in based on the able danger revelations of recent weeks (I think they did), or did they produce that segment months ago and have some other source for this that no one else has ever heard (I don't think so, a story like that would have gotten out).
I saw that interview this morning.I understand that there are more docs available. During the interview, he only said that the set of docs that he turned over to the 911 Commission was never recovered.
Tony Snow has also intimated, from his conversations with Schaffer, that there are like 20 boxes of docs.
But the real key will be this female analyst that he's mentioned.
I disagree, this documentary had to be in the can for awhile. And this is the first time I've heard a reference to Air Force people at McDill Air Force Base. Neither Weldon nor Shaffer have mentioned this. I think it's important. I would hate to see it go down the Memory Hole because people in the media are too damn lazy to do any investigating and prefer to read press releases.
Will you do it wearing a thong in a tub of jello? It's pay per view time!
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