Posted on 08/27/2005 9:50:24 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob
Today’s New York Post (27 August) carries a story by Niles Lathem entitled “Military ‘Spied’ on Rice.” The good news is that the story ran at all. The bad news is the reporter demonstrated a brass-plated ignorance of how the Able Danger program operated.
The lede from this article says, “Cyber-sleuths working for a Pentagon intelligence unit that reportedly identified some of the 9/11 hijackers before the attack were fired by military officials, after they mistakenly pinpointed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other prominent Americans as potential security risks....”
Able Danger is/was a computer program which does not target or “pinpoint” or “spy” on anyone. The very use of these verbs demonstrates a gross failure to understand Able Danger, and why it is a very powerful investigative tool. To use an example every reporter is well aware of, consider Google News.
This is a computer program that examines a huge data base, namely the entire output thousands of American and foreign news sources. It uses algorithms to find commonalities in that data. That’s how Google identifies the news subjects most often discussed at any time, and comes up with a lead story on that subject and hundreds of others on the same subject. Google “targets” nothing. It simply identifies patterns in the data.
Able Danger works the same way, except with a much larger data base. It might include an arrest record in Bangkok, a speech given in Hamburg, a government document in Iran. The algorithms, however, are similar – find all associations between names, subjects, dates and places. Such a program would naturally show anyone working in international relations, such as Dr. Condi Rice and Dr. Henry Kissinger, as “connected” to China and all other major foreign powers.
That does not mean that such people are “potential security risks.” Once the computer is finished, humans can enter the picture and eliminate false conclusions that the computer – not knowing Condi Rice from Mata Hari – has made. If Able Danger was shut down during the Clinton Administration for developed associations with China, the radioactive names in the data were more likely Bernard Schwarz, Loral, and Mochtar Riyadi, not Condi Rice.
It is good to see more major media examination of Able Danger – what it was, why it was shut down, and why some are trying to bury the story now. It is unfortunate that most of the press doesn’t yet understand how it worked. Think Google News. Multiply by a million. Then you have it.
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
Hence this article. Let me know what you think.
Well done. As succinct as I've seen on the why. Chinagate was the reason. The 9-11 cOmmission knew it. Now, for the truth to out....
Dr. SUSAN Rice
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/7/29/132456.shtml
(snip)
Another ex-Clinton official who played a leading role in bungling efforts to capture and/or neutralize Osama bin Laden has turned up in a key advisory position with the Kerry campaign.
Susan Rice, who served as President Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, had earlier been tapped by Gov. Howard Dean's anti-war campaign.
http://www.emergingmarkets.aem.cornell.edu/whats_new/rice_bio.html
Rice received B.A. in History from Stanford and an M.Phil. from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She also received a D.Phil. (Ph.D) in International Relations from Oxford. She is married to Ian Cameron and has two children.
William J. Perry
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/perry.htm
William J. Perry
February 3, 1994 - January 23, 1997
19th Secretary of Defense
Clinton Administration
110 posted on 08/27/2005 8:45:17 AM PDT by Mo1 (Hey Cindy ... tell us again why Our Country is not worth fighting for)
I think your article is excellent. My antenna went way up when I heard about the China information. I thought immediately that that is why it was shut down, regardless of the information being developed on Atta and the boys. The illegal transfer of technology to China was the real problem for the Clintons, not the danger posed to the citizens of this country about which they cared nothing.
Notice her name is Rice and she attended Stanford.
The Rice connection is nothing more than fluff and we know it.
Well, probably most members of the administration didn't know how it works either. So they were probably thinking (like the MSM) "aak. This program spit out the name of Condi Rice. If the public gets word of this it'll look like we're spying on Rice and Bush. Shut it down! Shut it down!" A large percentage of the older public (and thus a larger percentage of people in the upper echelons of power in Washington) are still clueless about computers and algorithms. It's like my Mother-in-Law who asked me for help one day on her new computer because she couldn't find where the microsoft was.
bttt
hmmmm
Hope we've got many on our side pointing this out!!!
Not much in that article about ABLE DANGER and 9/11....
BUMP!
Hambrecht and Quist....the company that Perry is at rings a bell for nefarious reasons, but I cannot recall....Hambrecht.....Hambrecht...hmmmmm.
Do you think it was Dr.SUSAN Rice and not Dr. CONDI Rice that the Able Danger pickd up on?
Well said Congressman!
The Condi reference is just the same ol' "muddy the water" tactic.
Sad that this needs to be spelled out, but I'm glad you wrote it. Isn't it typical that the critics glommed onto Condi Rice and not, for example, Madam Albright.
I heard one explanation of the shutdown of Able Danger as - when names of Americans popped up the project had to be stopped because "[whatever agency] is not allowed to spy on Americans."
Every report that I've seen indicates the shut-down occurred in early 2000.
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