Was the software developed to find Chinese/American political connection? Not likely in the Clinton era... So what was the purpose of the software? AlQaeda was hardly on the map at that point.
Clinton was much more worried about members of the VRWC than he was about members of AlQaeda. And he wasn't worried about the Chinese. What was the software created to find? Sounds odd.
ABLE DANGER has been described as focused upon data-mining for terrorism links, but presumably the software itself could take inputs on any subject at all and search for linkages.
MY SPECULATION: My guess is that some patriotic AD contractor thought (quite plausibly) "Gee, this powerful software might help turn up espionage or losses of sensitive technologies, let's see what we can find." They probably thought they were doing a great demo for the Pentagon to say "look at what else this super-duper software can do for you!" Unfortunately for them, and the country, they came up with all sorts of Clinton and DNC officials tied to shady deals with China, and the DOD Clinton/Gorelick lawyers freaked out and shut down the whole program. [raising Condi Rice's name in this context has been an obvious smokescreen -- in 2000 she had not been in power and could not have been involved in shady dealings with China -- but plenty of Democrats were!!!!]
The Chinese have long been a "target" of MI investigations. The "purpose" of the software was to create the classic linkage charts long used by MI/CI in thier investigations (i.e. who is connected to who, etc...). by using databases and data mining, the process is expedited and linkage errors can be reduced. Al Qaida was very much on the map in 1998!
Clinton was much more worried about members of the VRWC than he was about members of AlQaeda. And he wasn't worried about the Chinese. What was the software created to find? Sounds odd.
Regardless of what some might believe, the CinC is NOT involved in day to day investigations - he may even be totally unaware that an investigation is ongoing until the very end! It is highly unlikely that Clinton even knew of AD's existence in 1998,99...
CENTCOM, whose AO includes the middle east (and Central America IIRC), would have, in the normal course of intelligence/counterintelligence operations, gathered "tons" of information - most seemingly unrelated - regarding terrorist threats to the US. Placing those pieces in the database, and gathering more depending on where the clues led eventually led to the identification of the terror cells. Furthermore, Chinese espionage activities against the military has always been a concern. Thus, information regarding such activities would also have been included.
However, as you stated, " Clinton was much more worried about members of the VRWC". IMHO, if he DID have knowledge of the existence of AD at an early date, it was as a part of a briefing by the military (a la "We're working on a new program to identify foreign terrorists and spies") and, since the VRWC was not mentioned, it was ignored.