" Able Danger identified threat data in Yemen related to the Aden port in a brief given on October 10, 2000. The attack on the USS Cole in Yemen occurred two days later and may have been preventable. 17 people died as a result of the attack.
· Commander Kirk Lipold, the commanding officer of the USS Cole at the time of its attack, told Weldon that he had three options for refueling venues, was never briefed on any intelligence indicating that there might be danger at the port of Aden for an American naval vessel, and that had he been told, he would have refueled elsewhere.
Weldon also related a bizarre development that occurred last August, after the Able Danger story first broke. 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, whom he has never met, “called my office and told my Chief of Staff to tell Congressman Weldon that ‘she had done nothing wrong.’ Senate Judiciary staff has informed me that Ms. Gorelick made similar calls to Senator Specter’s staff with the same message.”
To date, Weldon has made no accusations of specific wrongdoing against any Gorelick or any other individual.
Meanwhile, as has been chronicled here, DIA officials have smeared LTC Shaffer and effectively destroyed his career since he volunteered Able Danger facts to the 9/11 Commission staff. “What kind of signal do we send when a decorated intelligence officer has his career sabotaged as retribution for telling the truth?” demands Weldon.
“The 9/11 Commission did not do its job, did not complete its assignment, either through gross incompetence or deliberate omission. If the evidence were to point towards some sort of cover-up, the American people would be outraged beyond description.” Weldon and others knowledgeable about the affair say that Able Danger principals such as Shaffer, who have thus far been effectively muzzled by DOD, must be allowed to be heard in order to finish the work the 9/11 Commission left undone, “either accidentally or intentionally.”
Instead their testimony has been blocked by DOD at the highest levels, most notably by preventing them from speaking at recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.
“It is outrageous that DOD gagged witnesses who were all prepared to testify in open session,” says Weldon, who as Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is accustomed to more respect and cooperation from the defense establishment. “Apparently the Department of Defense does not share my deep respect for the Committee and its authority to serve the American people through effective oversight.”
DIA spokesman Commander Terrence Sutherland denied that DIA had smeared or gagged LTC Shaffer. “Show me the gag order,” says Sutherland, who maintains that it is DOD, and not DIA, which is at the center of the Able Danger affair. And in response to my repeated queries, Commander Gregory Hicks, spokesman for DOD, could only tell me that, thus far, “I am not getting any responses yet. When I do, I’ll let you know.”
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Commander Sutherland: show me where your agency was given and complied with orders to cooperate fully and stand behind and WITH your professional officers/employees in search of THE TRUTH??
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FYI, Weldon is openly mentioning the name of Dr. Philip Zelikow, now Counselor to the State Dept., as a possible link to the blockade of Able Danger truth telling and seeking.
His bio:
Counselor of the Department
Philip Zelikow, Counselor of the Department, is a principal officer who serves the Secretary as a special advisor and consultant on major problems of foreign policy and who provides guidance to the appropriate bureaus with respect to such matters.
The Counselor conducts special international negotiations and consultations, and also undertakes special assignments from time to time, as directed by the Secretary. Dr. Philip D. Zelikow was appointed Counselor of the U.S. Department of State in February 2005, where he serves as a senior policy advisor on a wide range of issues to the Secretary of State.
Before his appointment as Counselor, Dr. Zelikow served as the Staff Director of the 9/11 Commission.
Formerly a trial and appellate attorney in Houston, Zelikow served as a career foreign service officer overseas, in the Department, and on detail to the NSC staff. He then taught at Harvard University and at the University of Virginia, where he was, until his current appointment, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs.
A former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-2003), Dr. Zelikow also directed the privately-sponsored Carter-Ford Commission on Federal Election Reform, which led to the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Dr. Zelikow received his BA in history from the University of Redlands, his JD from the University of Houston, and his MA and Ph.D. degrees in international law and diplomacy from Tufts University’s Fletcher School.
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Where's my absolute fave, Rummy, on this? Where's another fave, Condi, on this? (I admire them both profusely.) Where's Negroponte on this?
The inmates truly are running the asylum