Able Danger: Witnesses now allowed to testify (DOD changes mind)

ABLE DANGER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] In from Specter's committee office: Washington, D.C.--Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, will hold a second hearing on Operation Able Danger on October 5, 2005.

In the initial hearing held on September 21, 2005, the Department of Defense refused to produce five key witnesses relating to the identification of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. The Department of Defense has now changed their position and will make the witnesses available in a public hearing. The Committee will focus on obtaining corroborating evidence as to what occurred with the pre-9/11 charts and information which were allegedly destroyed by order of DoD personnel.

"You should look further into the earlier shut down of Dr Preisser's data mining. In 1999 the team looked Chinese espionage and found links that ran to the DNC and up.
Briefed it to Congress and had US Marshall's come in and close them down.
In 2000 they were shut down again.
Both times by the Clinton Admin.
There may still be something going on, so Rumsfeld's offer of a special briefing is understandable.
Arlen Specter wants a public hearing to get an uproar going.
Actions by the current admin may look bad, but remember that the seniro folks probably never heard about AD until after it broke in the news, and then the mid-level drones would have gone into full CYA mode.
The tragedy is that the 381-10 restrictions on intel activities (based on an Executive Order (EO) 12333) originally permitted use of publically available info. The restrictions on use of public data only started and became more strict when it turned out that you COULD get to interesting things using public data. Things that could embarrass politicos.
The bureaucrats and politicos then turned off the intel operators and analysts. And after the tragedy on 9-11 the commission blamed the operators and analysts that they had squelched.
Sucks to be in this line of work, don't it?
I can say no more.
charlie32 | Email | Homepage | 09.21.05 - 10:08 pm | # "
Link http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/09/able-danger-hearings-update.html

Look at comments

It suggests to me that a backroom deal has been struck as to what the witnesses will say, and what they will avoid

I disagree.

ex-President Clinton has recently gone public with his Bush-blame.

Bush, who previously withheld his blame of Clinton, is no longer silent and has retaliated.

I suspect that the order to allow the witnesses to testify came from Bush himself. The gloves are off; Clinton shoulda kept his mouth shut.

Did you know admiral Schaeffer (I think thats his name) one of the men scheduled to testify lost his security clearance due to a $67 cell phone bill? Yet Sandy Berger did not lose his! That fact alone sends a cold chill down my spine!

Not only was it a $67 phone bill but it wasa $400,000 investigation into the phone bill.

Our tax dollars at work.

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