[Prime Choice]

all of the paper trail for this is gone? how is that possible, in the age of computers, where are the backups and the file copies?

That's just the thing. It isn't possible. Whenever something is removed, trace indications are consistently left that it once existed and is now gone. This is true of classified documents, computer data, the works.

Something stinks here. I'm getting the very real feeling that we were set up.

[oceanview]

I am so fed up with this kind of stuff. everything is gone: the reports, the servers containing the data, backups, etc.

[konaice]

That's just the thing. It isn't possible. Whenever something is removed, trace indications are consistently left that it once existed and is now gone. This is true of classified documents, computer data, the works.

Knowing what a pack rat the military is, I suspect you are correct, and something will be found.

However remember that this was largely a computerized operation, and even a few backup copies of terabytes of info can be over written, and the devices pressed into service for payroll records or supply orders. Nobody has time or money to try to go thru every reel of tape, every obsolete disk drive stored in some dusty warehouse on the back lot of some military archives.

I hope the backup copies were not here:

[Fruit of the Spirit]

"Whenever something is removed, trace indications are consistently left that it once existed and is now gone."

Maybe the two-star general who told Shaffer to shut up destroyed them.

[servantoftheservant]

That's just the thing. It isn't possible. Whenever something is removed, trace indications are consistently left that it once existed and is now gone. This is true of classified documents, computer data, the works.

What do you mean? You think Able Danger never existed, or the Atta documentation never existed?

Anyway, it IS possible to erase data, both document and digital. Why do you say it isn't?