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There has been some speculation in the blogosphere that the data miners were TOO good at their work, meaning that in addition to finding links between Islamic terrorists and US citizens, that they also found links between US politicians and foreign nationals, and that those links involved major $ transfers. [Remember Sen. Fred Thompson's trying to connect dots between Clinton campaign fund donations and what appeared to be big foreign spenders w/links to Chinese intelligence services? The mysterious transfer of Loral space technology to China (a major Dem. donor was involved), and China's interest in acquiring control of both the Panama Canal and facilities in the port of Long Beach? This is the kind of stuff that data mining is intended to look at...]

I would say that the bureaucracy in both the FBI and the DoD knew something about this data collection effort that transcended legal boundaries, and they either completed what they needed to find out (unrelated to Atta), or they found out out something they were not supposed to know. For example, perhaps the mining effort was being used against Clinton's political enemies, but instead found out about some Clinton malfeasance. Tinfoil hat off, I don't know.

Regardless, it should be put in the context of then-upcoming 2000 election, not just 9/11 - if this was done late in the year FOLLOWING Bush's win, it will be a very serious charge indeed. This would mean that there a deliberate effort to keep the Bush WH from have access to the material and the science. If it was earlier, I would think it became too hot to handle politically. Note that it was the civilian contractors involved who dictated the data be destroyed; we have still not heard who they were or who they were actually working for - if they reported to the Reno DoJ, the DoD, the CIA, etc. The contractors were not military employees beholden to the nation itself.

So, at this point, while we know it generated info on Atta, we have no clue what else was contained in those 2.5 tetras. It has come to light because of Atta, but my feeling is that he is a merely a symptom, not a cause. This could indeed become a huge scandal if anyone can honestly get to the bottom of it.

I know that Weldon is sincere, but as for 'Magic Bullet' Specter and the others politicos looking into it, I am not hopeful we will ever get to the truth. There are too many powerful people in DC that could be implicated if someone begins asking the right questions. As for the witnesses and hands-on employees, those guys had better be watching their backs; people can get killed for knowing about this sort of thing...

I'm going to take a stab at this. There may or may be sinister motives assigned to the ordering of the destruction of the information the team gathered.

Some military personnel might have assignments of an information gathering nature. Long before the Gorelick wall was established, instructions were given, and the military was very clear about this, that information gathered about U.S. citizens could not be disclosed. Now, there may have been a clause relating to criminal activity, but that is not the point here. It is possible that in the gathering of information, even though some of it was public source, many names of U.S. citizens might have been gathered, and they may have had no involvement whatever in criminal matters.

At some point, the military authorities or their legal advisors may have concluded that there was too much information gathered which was in violation of U.S. privacy laws, and in violation of established Pentagon directives on the gathering of information of U.S. citizens by a military unit. Thus, the information was ordered destroyed, possibly because it became a matter of domestic surveillance by military personnel. It was against the law then, and I believe it is still against the law.

Just a guess though, just a guess.

"Can some insightful Freeper please hypothesize about what was really going on here?"

Gorelick and Clinton built a wall between domestic and foreign intelligence. There was always such a divide created by law---to protect US citizens from the "bad boys" in the CIA, etc. However, Gorelick went way beyond the law to build the wall to extreme heights, crippling our security. The probable motive of the organized hard left people who control Bill and Hillary was, in my opinion, to facilitate terrorism.

The Able Danger group stumbled on Mohammed Atta as a very suspicious Arab in the US that might be a terrorist. They were not sure about it or anything. They didn't see 9-11 right around the corner or anything. But they had huge suspicions and wanted to investigate, watch him, etc.

They were completely prohibited from doing so by Pentagon lawyers. It was upsetting, but they went on with their lives and sort of forgot about it (hoping for the best). Then 9-11 came and they realized what had happened.

While the main burden of this falls on the Clinton administration, the level of current coverup seems to clearly indicate that the Bush administration must have also made some mistakes related to this case. Hence, the complete coverup.