Able Danger - Pentagon Press Briefing
The Pentagon held a press briefing on Able Danger today [transcript], and the Associated Press was there:
Pentagon Finds More Who Recall Atta Intel
By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 1, 2005; 5:06 PM
WASHINGTON -- Pentagon officials said Thursday they have found three more people who recall an intelligence chart that identified Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta as a terrorist one year before the attacks on New York and Washington. But they have been unable to find the chart or other evidence that it existed.
All eyes turn to Stephen Hadley, who may have received a copy of the chart from Congressman Weldon immediately after 9/11.
Last month, two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Philpott, went public with claims that a secret unit code-named Able Danger used data mining _ searching large amounts of data for patterns _ to identify Atta in 2000. Shaffer has said three other Sept. 11 hijackers also were identified.
In recent days Pentagon officials have said they could not yet verify or disprove the assertions by Shaffer and Philpott. On Thursday, four intelligence officials provided the first extensive briefing for reporters on the outcome of their interviews with people associated with Able Danger and their review of documents.
They said they interviewed at least 80 people over a three-week period and found three, besides Philpott and Shaffer, who said they remember seeing a chart that either mentioned Atta by name as an al-Qaida operative or showed his photograph. Four of the five recalled a chart with a pre-9/11 photo of Atta; the other person recalled only a reference to his name.
The intelligence officials said they consider the five people to be credible but their recollections are still unverified.
"To date, we have not identified the chart," said Pat Downs, a senior policy analyst in the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. "We have identified a similar chart but it does not contain the photo of Mohamed Atta or a reference to him or a reference to the other (9/11) hijackers."
She said more interviews would be conducted, but the search of official documents is finished.
A "similar" chart? All eyes turn away from Hadley, and back to the Pentagon - just what was on this "similar" chart, who produced it, where did the Pentagon find it, and did any of the folks who remembered a chart remember this one, too?
And let's review - Shaffer did not remember seeing Atta on the chart prior to 9/11 - after 9/11, someone jogged his memory. Do these other folks think Atta was on the chart before or after 9/11? The obvious answer would be "before", since Able Danger was shut down in early 2001. OTOH, a colleague might have reminded them, post 9/11, about the Atta chart. Eventually, the transcript should appear here, and we will see if this was covered [transcript, and no - a reporter asked, but the response focused on Phillpott's recollection that he saw the chart in Feb 2000. See EXTRACTS].
And where are the documents relating to Able Danger?
Downs and the other officials said they could not rule out that the chart recalled by Shaffer, Philpott and three others had been destroyed in compliance with regulations pertaining to intelligence information about people inside the United States. They also did not rule out that the five simply had faulty recollections.
Navy Cmdr. Christopher Chope, of the Center for Special Operations at U.S. Special Operations Command, said there were "negative indications" that anyone ever ordered the destruction of Able Danger documents, other than the materials that were routinely required to be destroyed under existing regulations.
OK, what does "materials that were routinely required to be destroyed under existing regulations" mean? Is there some record of Able Danger documents having been destroyed routinely? I am having a hard time believing that we can't learn more about the program than this.
Chope said there is no evidence that military lawyers blocked the sharing of Able Danger information with the FBI.
That may conflict with the reports from Sen. Specter, who seems to be confirming that meetings with the FBI were scheduled and cancelled. A possible answer - some non-military lawyers blocked the meeting - I'll nominate OIPR of the DoJ.
And here is a baffling wrinkle - per the Pentagon, Able Danger did not target individuals, and Phillpott was the "team leader":
Chope also said the nature of Able Danger has been misrepresented in some news stories. He said it was created as a result of a directive in early October 1999 by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Special Operations Command to develop a campaign plan against transnational terrorism, "specifically al-Qaida."
He called it an internal working group with a core of 10 staffers at Special Operations Command. Philpott was the "team leader," he said. "Able Danger was never a military unit," and it never targeted individual terrorists, he said. It went out of existence when the planning effort was finished in early 2001, he said.
Well, the team leader ought to be able to address this. [Per the transcript, the media was also baffled by the distinction between targetting individuals and targetting "transnational terrorism" - terrorists are people, too! But the explanation was opaque.]
UPDATE: Sgt. Sara Wood of the American Forces Press Service was also at the briefing.
Through interviews, DoD officials did find three people who recall a chart with either a photo or a reference to Atta, Downs said. The three are in addition to Army Reserve Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, a military intelligence officer with U.S. Special Operations Command, who originally came forward with allegations that Atta had been identified before Sept. 11.
One person who recalled the chart was a SOCOM civilian analyst; one was an analyst with the Land Information Warfare Activity; and one was a contractor, said Thomas Gandy, the Army’s director of counterintelligence and human intelligence.
And we get this on the background of the group:
Able Danger was started in early October 1999, when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tasked U.S. Special Operations Command to develop a campaign plan against transnational terrorism, specifically al Qaeda, Chope said. It was a 15-month effort in which Special Operations Command worked with different partners, including DoD and the Department of the Army, he said. He stressed that Able Danger was never anything except a planning effort.
“Able Danger was never a special-access program,” he said. “Able Danger was never a military unit. Able Danger was never a targeting effort; it was not a military deception operation. It was merely the name attributed to a 15-month planning effort.”
In January 2001, Special Operations Command submitted the final plan to the joint staff, and Able Danger ended, Chope said. The effort never targeted specific individuals, but was used to determine vulnerabilities and linkages among and within al Qaeda, he said.
That is essentially consistent with other information that Able Danger was shut down in Feb 2001, and with Weldon's May 2002 speech saying that Gen. Shelton received a briefing in Jan 2001.
MORE: Follow the link to the AP story at the WaPo, and you will see that the WaPo presents a side box using Technorati to track the bloggers following their story. Very cool.
I have no idea how long or how often this has been going on - I clicked this story at random, but don't see the Technorati box.
EXTRACTS: We have some extracts from the DoD briefing. A version of the "Two Attas" theory is offered, as one briefer suggests that folks may be remembering a different Mohammed. No one asks about the point that Mohammed Atta went by a different name prior to his US visa application in May 2000:
Media: If these people are credible, what could account for this difference in your view?
Down: I don't know. We've seen a chart with different Mohammed's on them. Is it possible that Mohammed Ajaz, Mohammed -- what's the other one.
Chope: Arateff.
Down: Arateff, thank you. So we have charts with those names but not Mohammed Attah. Is there confusion there? Again, we don't know. We simply don't know.
Here is the exchange on dating the alleged chart:
Media: On this chart, can you say approximately what the date of the chart is these five people recall? And do all of them recall not only Attah, but the other hijackers?
Down: Maybe Tom can help with the details of the interviews, but I believe Captain Philpot says he saw the chart in January, February 2000. That's the general reference point.
That is not Shaffer's story, but it is consistent with Phillpott's version as described by the 9/11 Commission in their Aug 12 statement (on p. 3).
MORE: The NY Times coverage - they have forgotten what Shaffer never knew, which is to say, they describe Shaffer as knowing about the Atta ID before 9/11.
--
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/