It's at least as bad as I recall... this avatar kind of says it all:
On second thought, I think they are more unhinged than in the past- the Left really does seem to be losing their collective minds. Or whatever passes for them...
Posted on 09/20/2005 9:08:30 PM PDT by bobsunshine
Able Danger: Pentagon Spikes Witnesses While Shaffer Reveals New Source
The New York Times reports this evening that the Pentagon has blocked its military witnesses from testifying on Able Danger at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings tomorrow. Senator Arlen Specter registered his surprise but plans on holding the hearings anyway (h/t: AJ Strata):
The Pentagon said today that it had blocked a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks.
The announcement came a day before the officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ...
Mr. Specter said his staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that "credibility has been established" for all of them.
"There are quite a few credible people who are prepared to testify that Mohamed Atta was identified long before 9/11," he said. "Now maybe there's more than one Mohamed Atta. Or maybe there's some mistake. But that's what we're trying to find out."
The Pentagon might think that withdrawing its witnesses will keep Able Danger from breaking wide open, but they will find themselves sorely mistaken. This only demonstrates that the program found something that the Pentagon still wants hidden. If that includes a finding that their program not only found Atta and other AQ terrorists over a year before the attacks, but also predicted the USS Cole attack three weeks before it happened, and that the Pentagon shut down the program anyway, eighteen Senators will want to know why.
In fact, the withdrawal of the witnesses clearly shows that the story has substance and isn't a case of mistaken identity. Had this just been an identification of a second Mohammed Atta, as Specter postulates, the Pentagon should have no problem putting its witnesses on the stand. Nothing about a mistaken identity would create a classification problem for the hearing tomorrow.
QT Monster has a transcript from tonight's interview of LTC Tony Shaffer on the Jerry Doyle radio show. Shaffer says Donald Rumsfeld himself gave the order to stop the witnesses from appearing at the Judiciary Committee hearing:
JD: Well, when you say DoD, where's this coming from at DoD? Is this instructions to DoD from higher ups? Is this people in DoD who are afraid of what information gets out? I mean who is the person who's making this happen? AS: What I will tell you is I was told by 2 DoD officials today directly that it is their understanding that the Secretary of Defense directed that we not testify tomorrow. That is my understanding.
However, Shaffer says that former Major Eric Kleinstadt, now a civilian contractor, will still testify at the panel. Kleinstadt received the orders to destroy the Able Danger database. Specter's insistence that the hearings go forward probably hinges on Kleinstadt's ability to testify to the information that got destroyed, who ordered its destruction, and why. From that point, the committee could unravel an entire command sequence that will uncover how Able Danger got missed by the 9/11 Commission.
Another interesting fact got mentioned in Shaffer's interview. He spoke about a Dr. Eileen Pricer. One of the more mysterious potential sources of the Able Danger story involved a female PhD that could corroborate Shaffer and Phillpott, the woman who actually developed the Atta identification in the first place. I Googled Eileen Pricer and got just one hit -- but it's a doozy.
It turns out that Dr. Pricer testified before a closed session of Congressional subcommittee on national security exactly one month after 9/11. That testimony isn't available, but Rep. Christopher Shays mentions her on the record in the next day's public testimony:
Mr. Shays. In a briefing we had yesterday, we had Eileen Pricer, who argues that we don't have the data we need because we don't take all the public data that is available and mix it with the security data. And just taking public data, using, you know, computer systems that are high-speed and able to digest, you know, literally floors' worth of material, she can take relationships that are seven times removed, seven units removed, and when she does that, she ends up with relationships to the bin Laden group where she sees the purchase of chemicals, the sending of students to universities. You wouldn't see it if you isolated it there, but if that unit is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, which is connected to that unit, you then see the relationship. So we don't know ultimately the authenticity of how she does it, but when she does it, she comes up with the kind of answer that you have just asked, which is a little unsettling. Unsettling? Christopher Shays described Able Danger thirty-one days after the 9/11 attacks. What else did Eileen Pricer tell the Congressional subcommittee on national security on October 11, 2001? Did Pricer tell Shays that the information no longer existed but did at one time?
Senator Specter should invite Christopher Shays to have a seat on the witness bench, and he should also start issuing subpoenas for the witnesses that the Pentagon wants to silence. We need answers, and we need to know that our country will fight terrorism with every tool at its disposal.
My support for Bush is gone if this is true.
What a good point. How many billions a year do we the taxpayers funnel to intelligence agencies?
And yet the General Militia of Flight 93 used their good common sense to arm themselves with whatever they could scrounge on the plane -- when they were denied any other weapons -- and took down a flying missile headed straight to the nation's capitol.
This is sickening,I thought Bush was an honest man,obviously not.
During November 1998 until February 2001 Atta lives in a four room apartment at 54 Marienstraße in Hamburg. He shares this flat with a number of other al-Queda operatives. According to the site, during the 28 months Atta's name is on the apartment lease 29 Middle Eastern or African men register this address as their home address.
It is immediately under surveillance by the German intelligence because of connections to businessman Mamoun Darkazanli that connect to Said Bahaji (one of the two persons on the lease together with Atta).
9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed visits but despite the fact that he was wanted by the US since 1998 the US apparently fails to tell Germany what it knows about him [New York Times, 11/4/02; Newsweek, 9/4/02].
The CIA also starts monitoring Atta while he is living at this apartment, and does not tell Germany of the surveillance. Remarkably, the German government will claim it knew little about the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell before 9/11, and nothing directed them towards the Marienstrasse apartment. [Daily Telegraph, 11/24/01]
Also, Google "Julie Sirrs", and "Robert Wright and John Vincent".
Lot's of dropped balls during the Clinton years.
The Washington Post refers to hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar when it later reports, “In November 1999, two Saudi Arabian men moved into a ground-floor apartment at the Parkwood Apartments, a town house complex near a busy commercial strip in San Diego .” [Washington Post, 9/30/01] Alhazmi's name is on the apartment lease beginning in November 1999. [Washington Post, 10/01] The Los Angeles Times similarly notes, “A man by [the name Alhazmi] moved to the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego in 1999, according to manager Holly Ratchford.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/15/01] Some reports even have them visiting the US as early as 1996. [Wall Street Journal, 9/17/01; Las Vegas Review Journal, 10/26/01] However, FBI Director Mueller has stated the two hijackers did not arrive in the US until the middle of January 2000, after an important meeting in Malaysia. While some news reports mention that the hijackers first arrive in late 1999 [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/02] , over time, mentions of the lease beginning in 1999 will slowly fade from media accounts.
And what about Johnelle Bryant...
According to Bryant, who has worked at the government agency for 16 years, Atta arrived in her office sometime between the end of April and the middle of May 2000, inquiring about a loan to finance an aircraft.
Then there is this:
The FBI also told the owners of the Norman flight school in 1999 that the FBI knew then of other pilots who had visited the Norman flight school that the FBI also knew were training for airplane attacks on public buildings including Mohammed Atta as well as Bin Laden’s own personal pilot.
Atta was known to have aliases and false passports:
Spanish police last February arrested Algerians Khaled Madani, 33, and Moussa Laour, 36, on suspicion of furnishing phony passports to, among others, al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta. According to a February 29 Associated Press dispatch, Binalshibh revealed Madani's identity to interrogators at the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Appreciate the info- thanks!
Watch Bush's approval numbers drop even more. I'm tired of them taking the high road! The Democrats are harping all over Katrina with "Bush's fault!" Did the Republicans do that with 9/11??? No... but they freaking SHOULD HAVE!
War Eagle auboy!
I do think the dems in the state leg has alot to do with historical voting. Have a feeling though that the voters are waking up. Birmingham/Jeff Co is helpless...don't think I need to tell you why.
War Eagle back atcha, del4hope!
I saw that (rope a dope) in another thread. I pray you're right!!!
One in the first link was even talking how Bush ignored the Hart-Rudman report...you know the report commissioned by Clinton that recommended putting FEMA under the DHS, which caused the Katrina delays due to red tape? That is definitely the WRONG thing for them to bring up right now, but they don't realize it.
Rove strikes again, LOL!
Hilarious. I could only read a few posts -- life on DU is hazardous to one's mental health, as evidenced by the lunacy of the inmates there..... my favorite post was one alleging that if "neocon embeds" during the Clinton administration hadn't blocked AD info from getting to the great Richard Clarke, HE would have told Bill Clinton all about it and the world would have been saved..... YUP, that's the most plausible theory we've seen in a long time, the "neocons" had DoD "embeds" in the '90s making sure that Bill Clinton and Richard Clarke could not address terrorism effectively..... YUP, real braniacs in the DUmpster!
....especially when the high road can get us killed.
It's at least as bad as I recall... this avatar kind of says it all:
On second thought, I think they are more unhinged than in the past- the Left really does seem to be losing their collective minds. Or whatever passes for them...
Hours after Lt. Col. Shaffer revealed that he'd been muzzled, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told the New York Times that open testimony on Able Danger "would not be appropriate."
Oh goody...this is going to come out as a screaming headline in the NYT, LOL! Dang...I love Karl Rove!
later
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