BUT, IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY ABLE DANGER WAS ENDED... [John Podhoretz]
...it may have been due to the fact that its "data-mining" work led it to name Condi Rice as a potential Chinese agent -- evidently due to the fact that she had provost of Stanford University.
That's according to my paper, the New York Post: "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, The Post has learned. The private contractors working for the counter-terrorism unit Able Danger lost their jobs in May 2000. The firings following a series of analyses that Pentagon lawyers feared were dangerously close to violating laws banning the military from spying on Americans, sources said.
"The Pentagon canceled its contract with the private firm shortly after the analysts — who were working on identifying al Qaeda operatives — produced a particularly controversial chart on proliferation of sensitive technology to China, the sources said.
"Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the veteran Army officer who was the Defense Intelligence Agency liaison to Able Danger, told The Post China 'had something to do' with the decision to restructure Able Danger.
"Sources said the private contractors, using sophisticated computer software that sifts through massive amounts of raw data to establish patterns, came up with a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the U.S.
"The program wrongly tagged Rice, who at the time was an adviser to then-candidate George W. Bush, and former Defense Secretary William Perry by linking their associations at Stanford, along with their contacts with Chinese leaders, sources said."
This will, I am sure, launch a thousand conspiracy theories, but here we have the downside of "data mining," not to mention super-secret programs that surface years later with explosive allegations.
Now, really, this is my last Able Danger post of the weekend. I swear.
Posted at 08:53 AM
"This will, I am sure, launch a thousand conspiracy theories . . ."
Me too.
And the 'really bad information'(illegal) contains the necessary information in order to connect-the-dots.
Quite a nut-buster... and the stuff that cover-ups are made of???
No, the program worked perfectly. It was the human factor that didn't. The system merely spews out info. It's up to the humans to study and understand the info.
But, consider that the "Chinese connection" (linking officials to Chinese influence) that this data mining found was also (more importantly) establishing HILLARY CLINTON associates and campaign donors with the Chinese.
Remember, at the time of the chart and the presentations and the 9/11 planning (when the Islamic terrorists already got in-country and were attending flight training), it was STILL Clinton in office.
First, the program did not come up with Rice & Perry while data-mining on al-Qaida but on Chinagate.
Second, data-mining doesn't determine the guilty or even the suspencts, but like old fashion jawbone & gumshoe investigative techniques it comes back with name of those "at the scene". Human been would have to then sifted through that raw data and determine who had a good reason to be there and who didn't before anyone would be "tagged".
More simply, Rice & Perry may have had good reason to be associated with those in Chinagate, BUT Atta could only have had bad reasons to be associated with al-Qaeda.
If this was the reason Able-Danger was shutdown, it's transparently pretextual.
Maybe it was because Chelsea Clinton was attending Stanford at the time and you couldn't point the finger at the college where the First Kid was studying.
Data mining just brings up names for further investigation. It doesn't name someone as a "potential agent." It just depends on what parameters you establish to gather the pertinent information. I seriously doubt that Condi Rice was ever identified as a potential agent. She had clear reasons to be involved with the Chinese with no further investigation being necessary.