Posted on 09/29/2005 6:37:50 PM PDT by strategofr
The Pentagon has decided to play games with the Able Danger story, virtually confirming the worst suspicions of just about everybody by first acknowledging that five of its team members recall identifying Mohammed Atta as a potential AQ terrorist a year prior to the attacks, and then forbidding these five witnesses from telling the Senate Judiciary Committee about the program.
The only thing that Donald Rumsfeld has accomplished with this strategy is to introduce real bipartisanship to the Judiciary Committee, which broadly scolded the DoD for pulling the witnesses from the hearing at the last minute:
The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday. The only testimony provided by the Defense Department came from a senior official who would say only that he did not know whether the claims were true.
Five men and women in a highly-classified program, a status one only reaches by faithful and excellent service, tell the DoD that the program identified al-Qaeda's lead terrorists over a year prior to the attacks, and they're not sure whether it's true? That may be the most pathetic spin I've heard yet on Able Danger. If almost half the analysts in an intelligence group such as Able Danger cannot be trusted to remember something as significant as that, then the Pentagon has more problems than anyone realizes.
A Pentagon spokesman had said the decision to limit testimony was based on concerns about disclosing classified information, but Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said he believed the reason was a concern "that they'll just have egg on their face."
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, accused the Pentagon of "a cover-up" and said, "I don't get why people aren't coming forward and saying, 'Here's the deal, here's what happened.'"
Biden, as usual, speaks with equal disingeniuty. He understands perfectly well, at least in general, why the DoD won't produce the witnesses. It has little to do with specific intelligence exposure. After all, if the Senators want to discuss how the identifications worked, they would gladly go into closed session for that testimony.
What the Committee and the rest of us want is open testimony about what they found in relation to 9/11 and the known hijackers, who they identified, what they did with that information -- and who insisted on covering it up, both at the Pentagon and on the 9/11 Commission.
None of that comes under the heading of national security -- it falls into the category of covering some high-ranking ass.
Another reason for the sudden bipartisanship is the timeline of events, especially with the sudden stealth mode of Rumsfeld et al. The identification of the AQ operatives came in 2000, and the initial destruction of the data came in April 2000, as Eric Kleinsmith testified.
That would tend to point to the Clinton Administration as an obstructor. However, the program continued, allegedly predicting the USS Cole attack three weeks before it happened. Shaffer kept extensive files until February 2004, when they mysteriously disappeared after a dispute over a cell-phone bill with the DoD. That sequence happened on Bush's watch, and so does this ill-thought brinksmanship with the Senate.
The American people suffered the worst attack on our soil four years ago. We deserve answers about how that attack could have been prevented. The Pentagon has five witnesses that speak directly to that issue who have been prevented from speaking to the representatives of the people. Arlen Specter needs to subpoena those five witnesses, all of the senior officers in the chain of command for Able Danger, and Donald Rumsfeld himself to answer for why the Pentagon will not cooperate. Four years of hiding Able Danger is long enough. Thursday, September 22, 2005
If you are so smart and I am an idiot, then why all these self-contradictions you make?
Wolf, ostensibly an idiot does not do that. Your profile page says that there is nothing we need to know about Puking Dog, but then you spend 50% of your posting activity telling us about you. Thats okay BTW.
You called me an idiot so what?
Ohhhh I get it, thats the trick thats the ticket, you announce you won't respond to my comments anymore, and then leave with a taunt that I'm a idiot.
Rather transparent I would say, so transparent that a primitive 'ol R-60T will do the trick before you can say 'dog'
Wolf
"bttt = Bump To The Top"
But what does "bump" mean? (I'm not being a wise guy. I actually don't know.)
When you go to FreeRepublic.com, you'll see a list of topics, or threads, under discussion. Any reply to one of these threads moves that thread back up to the top of the list. In other words, it "Bumps" it to the top.
BTTT
I'm no expert, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. :-)
SigInt data is not open source. Nice try though.
That's going to be hard to do, if everyone insists on not revealing information which would prove to the voters just what scum they are. While they are promising pie in the sky and a chicken in every pot and whining about how the mean republicans want "tax cuts for the rich" and to cut your Grannie's pension check to pay for them. And most importantly, while the mainstream media is aiding and abetting them in that endeavor.
If you'll look up thread, you'll see I have no problem with a closed hearing, as long as the *conclusions* of the hearing are reported, as opposed to the sources and methods used to gather the information leading to those conclusions, which may be properly classified. I just understood that in this case most of the sources and the methods were not classified.
I'd vote for that. Heck I'd even vote for term limits which would allow them a small number of terms. Say three in the house, two in the Senate. Maybe only one in the Senate. I might even allow an extra term for people elected speaker or president pro tem at the close of the previous term, although just how that might work is hard to fathom. Sort of an Up or Out policy for CongressCritters.
That's a good guess, but it was actually the cheese and the Nazis that made modern france.
If what you have suggested is true, then may it be so.
I didn't think you were a smart ass. I thought you were a party animal! LOL, I love your posts!
Nothing explixit. Just noticed it has not been pursued so aggressively in last day or two.
Just look what they've done to his pole numbers.
He has done the damage to his poll numbers himself. This started in January: illegal aliens to become 'guest workers' doing jobs that Americans won't do; calling our Minutemen 'vigilantees'; big problems in Iraq, no solution, just more of the same; calling us names; doesn't need us. I could go on. How about Gonzales for SCOTUS? POTUS hissy fit at us.
These, and others, he could remedy. Starting by breaking a hole in that bubble. He's a very smart man, and politically wise as well. We would never allow them to pull a Watergate on us again. No way in Hades!
I disagree. When the Challenger blew up, it was grounded 3 years pending a top down bottom up investigation and review/reengineering.
Looking at government as a system, we need to investigate those responsible for security and intelligence failures because they are part of the system.
It's no different than the FAA investigating an airliner crash or Congress investigating the Enron accounting scandal.
These things require investigation. They are not optional.
And in this case, we need not proble sources and methods. We need only examine the decision process leading to destroying data and to failure to communicate threats to domestic investigative agencies e.g. FBI.
I understand. I simply don't agree. This isn't a crash investigation where we need to look for a faulty part. This is a war against an enemy that is not us.
We know what went wrong. Complacency, combined with stovepiping of information flow were sure problems. Those things disappeared in the wake of 9/11. No more complacency and no more restrictions on information flow.
This is not to say that 9/11 might even have been caught ahead of time had those effects not been working against us. People are clever. They find ways around whatever stands in their way.
Many of those things disappeared in the wake of 9/11. For example: Aircraft will never be so easy to hijack any more. It has nothing to do with changes in security methods at airports. It has everything to do with a change in ~attitude~ of the passengers and crew. The pre-9/11 passivity to a hijacking is gone. Today... hijackers even with guns could not kill fast enough to stop a couple hundred passengers from overwhelming them and reducing them to a bloody pulp. Things have changed.
BTTT
But data-mining is the very thing that was stopped by government action, according to those involved in AD. And Shaffer suggested that it was because it may expose the politically powerful in this country. One can assume that the discovered facts exposure would embarrass the political elite in this country - and one can assume that this is the reason that the real facts are being suppressed.
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