Posted on 08/22/2005 4:13:55 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret defense intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.
The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement today that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command. "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000."
His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta.
Colonel Shaffer went public with his assertions last week, saying that analysts in the intelligence project had been overruled by military lawyers when they tried to share the program's findings with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2000 in hope of tracking down terror suspects tied to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Di Rita said in an interview that while the department continued to investigate the assertions, there was no evidence so far that the intelligence unit had come up with such specific information about Mr. Atta and any of the other hijackers.
He said that while Colonel Shaffer and Captain Phillpott were respected military officers whose accounts were taken seriously, "thus far we've not been able to uncover what these people said they saw - memory is a complicated thing."
The statement from Captain...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I had asked that question on another thread. to do this, they needed pools of hotel records, credit card records, immigration records, a bunch of other stuff to qualify a intersection of data down to a modestly short list of possible hits. where did they get it all from?
BUMP.
" This is incorrect, I can't explain why but it had to do with the difference in a visa, a work permit or something like that."
Atta supposedly had a green card. So based on the moronic thoughts of at the time and driven by the memos (wall) Jamie Gorelick sent out, the DoD lawyers and apparently DIA lawyers told the AD team and liason officer LCT Shaffer they could not talk with the FBI regarding Attas "because he was to be treated with the same rights all Americans had". This is at the heart of this whole matter. Yes the Lawyers in the Defense Department went along with the directives handed down by the DoJ. They are on record as to saying paraphrased. They (DoD/DIA) where breaking any civil laws, therefore the AD team was simply told on three occasions to cool it. And Shaffer was told by his DoD Major General to not approach the FBI, with a similiar warning.
I don't follow your logic.
Improperly, I bet.
Might be related to nascent plans for Total Information Awareness
(((PING))) Navy Captain backs Shaffer's story.
"Originally from Detroit, Michigan"
There is your answer. His mother probably beat the shit out of him while he was a kid and made him sware on a stack of bibles that he would never do anything to harm the democratic party.
Bit extreme but one never knows in these matters.
Yep. Also notice Bill lives outside the U.S. "to be closer" to Webster Hubbles daughter (evil laugh).
As a matter of fact, has Plame made it back from France yet?
Picture Sandy Burger in the national archives stuffing documents down his pants. Does this ring a bell?
Thanks for the ping!
" As a matter of fact, has Plame made it back from France yet?"
Last I heard of that bitch was she was on some old broken down ore freighter loaded with yellow cake uranium, leaving some Nigerian port on it's way to Iran.
Because the NY Times reports it now, three years from now, in 2008, it will be "old news", "so what", "that dog won't hunt".
If memory serves, in the immediate run up to the Presidential election De Rita was point man for the "US lets tons of explosives in Iraq get stolen" story. He did a great job then of controlling the damage and lies.
Maybe Defense Dept is worried about getting hurt by this themselves. Might also explain the NY Times uncharacteristic zeal.
Yeah, this helps alot. Whew ;)
Yep, sure seems that way to me...
Very good question.
I recall Lt. Col. Shaffer saying something about two-and-half terabytes of databases. He mentioned the Internet and commercial pay databases. But I doubt that credit card usage can be had except from Visa, MC, AmEx, etc.
Of course, the pay databases may have records from tens of thousands of businesses and credit card purchases.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
Thanks nutmeg. This is very interesting.
Is it believable that the information could have been extracted from databases using pattern analysis, yes (former database designer so I know it is possible). And then there is this interesting tidbit from a New York Times article titled C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11 by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau ( February 24, 2004)
American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.
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