Replies

"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."

What is not where you left it? A Single document? A box containing numerous documents? 15 boxes of copies of original documents?

"Shaffer told C-Span he had "one full set of Able Danger documents in my holdings from the DIA."

Does this mean "his full set" of all the documents are now missing from where he keeped them at the DIA?

This is either very sloopy reporting, or something is not on the level.
Furthermore as indicated by some, if the documents where typed on any word processor, that implies files that should be stored on one or more computers, perhaps in one or more directories on a system. It could even mean a group that worked on this project all have copies of the originals on other systems etc.. And of course if the particular systems are multiuser systems, e.g. UNIX, Linux or an IBM mainframe type OPS, there should be backups on other disks, tapes etc..
I am sure they where not working on just one windoze based system on this project. Or where they?

Something is truely not right here. If I was a system administrator on the projects computer(s), I would have made backups using programs that where secure, no body would have gotten at them unless they literally removed the whole hard disk's file systems(s), thereby destroying heaven know what other project data that would have been backed up on the same tar files or other tar files for instance. What the hell kind of people work at these facilities?

"Shaffer told C-Span he had "one full set of Able Danger documents in my holdings from the DIA."

Does this mean "his full set" of all the documents are now missing from where he keeped them at the DIA?

I was wondering the same thing. I assume that if he had no idea where to locate a full set of documents, he would have said so.

if the documents where typed on any word processor, that implies files that should be stored on one or more computers, perhaps in one or more directories on a system. It could even mean a group that worked on this project all have copies of the originals on other systems etc..

Now hold on there bucko....

Remember the project was shut down. That means everything is rounded up and put into boxes and shipped to the archives.

If you work for DOD, you DO NOT KEEP COPIES of critical stuff on "other systems" unless specifically told to do so. Its a court marshal offense.

Further big operations like the DOD do not keep obsolete computers very long, certainly not as long as a private citizen. When your unit is closed down you generally erase your drive, then the assets disposal teams come in and they yank the hard drive, totally destroy it, and sell the rest of the computer for surplus.

So if there are copies, (and there probably are) they are authorized copies in archival form left with the proper people.

Now if Klintoon had a way to reach those people they could easily place a few boxes in the wrong place in the warehouse, and that step alone will make them very hard to find.

What the hell does the O\S have to do with backup systems? I've seen no backups on Unix as well. Hell, I've seen backups that have been corrupt since the day they started backups and therefore there are no backups. Personally, I do triple backups on my software (as well as offsite) and I run Windows. I dare say I run a better backup system than most Unix shops.

Oh, btw, Windows has been multi-user for a long time. They don't have to be which is why they took over the world: no more IT shops dictating policy (which software you install, when you can work, when you can use a tape drive, etc.). Thank God that communism failed and centralized IT went with it. Same mentality IMO.

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.