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.
What's kind of sad is that he was at the bottom of this before it happened. He talked about the information he got from LIWA for his 1999 trip to Russia, information that the CIA couldn't provide. That was his first clue that our intelligence structure was dysfunctional. Or maybe that was his second clue since by 1999 he surely knew that the man in the Oval Office was doing little to mount a serious response to the growing threat of terrorism.
It must really hurt him to know this could have been stopped.
It was interesting watching his face, especially during the last witness, Dugan. A lot of shaking of the head.
Hey rodguy .. SO glad to see you're OK .. power's back and everything ... I was also stunned that my friends west of Homestead in the country fared very well... never lost power or trees (Katrina took care of that). The Doppler shots of that whole area and the Keys looked like you all were getting pounded and hurt BAD. Keep dodging!!
Another thread mentions 'cobweb' as the guy who shut Schaffer down. Who's 'cobweb'?
He'd left service when Rummy called him back to work to help re-make the DOD. Calls him the 'snake-eater'.
I'm going to watch him right now...I had only read the transcripts.
In March, 2000 or thereabouts; armed federal agents came to Orion Corporation to confiscate all data from Able Danger. Smith had some of the data in the trunk of his car (since it was unclassified) and that is the only reason it was preserved (presumably some of the charts, etc.)
Federal Agents!!! That would indicate the Justice Department was involvement, would it not?
I am glad I did not dream this, if I did we have the same dreams LOL!
No one in DOD seemed to have any objections at the time. I may be wrong, but if DOD had reservations they would have gagged him right then.
And while the documents Berger stole & destroyed may have nothing to do with this, he had to have given some good information to get such a light sentence. We all know that had it been anyone of us, we would be behind bars right now.
Also Joe Wilson & Valerie Plame seem to have disappeared. Wilson was putzing himself around to anyone who would give him face time. Is anyone aware of the status of the SP investigation? Our threads regarding that concentrated on who was the source? Who was what's-her-name (too early to pull it out of my brain) protecting? I am not saying the two are related, BUT there could be a person or two in the center of both stories.
I don't have the answers to your questions, but I too believe that the information that Berger stole is directly related to AD.
Soooooo, Rummy called Snake-eater back. Mmmmm, interesting. If Shoomaker approved (even as subtle as approval by no objection), it had to be with Rummy's knowledge. At least one would think.
Wow, this may be a chess game. A carefully orchestrated chess game.
I didn't know about that group meeting in secret or that he was the snake eater. Thanks for that information.
I don't know who cobweb is.
Is it revolution time yet? I keep hearing "you can't HANDLE the truth!"
I can't help but thank God for the internet. I don't even want to fathom what our government has gotten away with over the last 200 years before the "uneducated mass" could educate themselves.
I missed this detail. Do you have a source for more info? (No doubting you, just want to learn more).
Justice Department, Clinton's Justice Department
The following is from an anti-Bush site I found while Googling.. It references the WaPo, but I will not register. I have found several references to this, but I cannot confirm or deny the truthfulness of it.
March 2000 - An FBI agent, reportedly angry over a glitch in Carnivore that has somehow mixed innocent non-targeted emails with those belonging to Al Qaeda, destroys all of the FBI's Denver-based intercepts of bin Laden's colleagues in a terrorist investigation. [Source: The Washington Post, May 29, 2002]
BTW-found this article. A must read with our hindsight.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/06/05/curbing.terrorism.02/
Looking at headlines for that time period, I found an interesting story:
See post #590. Very interesting.
How did I miss that detail (sound of me hitting myself on head) ?
A bunch of somebodies dropped the ball and now the institutions are looking for a new pair of Kimmel(s) and Short(s).
The first part of your sentence is certainly true. But, as for looking for scapegoats, my impression has been that there's been a reluctance to blame anybody for intelligence failures leading to 9/11, even in private, and even when fully justified. I can't think of anyone who's been taken to task - except of course Bush, which given the current Democratic Party and the makeup of the news media is a given. Even the housecleaning at CIA - assuming there is one - is probably more a result of Tenet spouting off about WMDs, rather than an effort to improve intelligence gathering.
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