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The Pentagon has purchased and arranged for the destruction of 9,500 copies of a book so it can protect classified information it contains. Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer's memoir "Operation Dark Heart" had become a headache for the Defense Department which determined after it had gone to print that it contained classified information. The book recounts the Army Reserve officer's experiences in Afghanistan in 2003 while working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. An option being explored with the book's publisher was for the Pentagon to purchase the 9,500 copies of the book's first run so they could be destroyed. Pentagon spokeswoman...

A 2009 NCIS investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s activities while in Afghanistan reveal that there is clear evidence Bergdahl was “going over to the other side with a deliberate plan,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night. Shaffer, a former military intelligence officer and Fox News contributor, said two senior sources told him that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation included a forensic review of his computer, which show Bergdahl’s apparent intent to travel to Uzbekistan. “He was going to go off to Uzbekistan,” Shaffer told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “He had made contact...

White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes was dealt two major political blows, each on the same day. On one front, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (Ret.) appeared on the O’Reilly Factor and broke some shocking news about the case of Bowe Bergdahl. On another front, legal watchdog Judicial Watch has reported that it has obtained documents as a result of its FOIA lawsuit against the State Department. Last April, Rhodes was revealed as the author of the infamous ‘smoking gun’ Benghazi email that instructed then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to claim a demonstration took place in Benghazi before the...

IMPORTANT LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER: Operation Dark Heart On September 24, 2010, we published Operation Dark Heart. We have been receiving letters of concern that we changed the text due to government censorship, and that the government "burned" the books from our initial printing. The true facts are that the government bought the first printing in its entirety and we destroyed and recycled those copies at their request. The changes we made in the text were made at the request of the author. The Department of Defense in fact wanted further changes to the book which we refused to make....

9/11: Why would the Pentagon buy and destroy copies of a book by a former Army intelligence officer? Could it be perhaps because it contained information on how the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented? The impulse to dismiss this as just another conspiracy theory is overwhelming. Yet the fact is that the Pentagon bought and destroyed 10,000 copies of a book, "Operation Dark Heart," written by Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient and career Army intelligence officer, that contained a chapter on a pre-9/11 intelligence operation, Able Danger. In a statement, the Pentagon said it "decided to...

A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program known as "Able Danger." At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report -- or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified a year before 9/11.

Caption on YouTube: Book Burning is no longer the sole shame of Nazi Germany. On September 25, 2010, the Obama administration (through the Pentagon) burned all 9,500 first run copies of Anthony Shaffer's memoir "Operation Dark Heart". Based on his experience as a Lt. Col. in the US Armed Forces, Operation Dark Heart was deemed a threat to national security after it had already passed an Army review and had already been published. Burning books that have already been published seems like an obvious affront to free speech and seem particularly dangerous coming from the Obama administration, which has sought...

Has everyone seen this? It seems that the US government has successfully put into action a plan to purchase, and burn, 10,000 books by a US Army reserve Colonel, called "Operation Dark Heart" about his experiences as an undercover agent in Afghanistan. Since when did the United States government get into the book burning business? Has this ever happened before? These guys truly are the gang that couldn't shoot straight -- remember the book Spycatcher? The United Kingdom government tried to ban it and block it, but it was published in Australia instead and sold an incredible number of copies,...

On the eve of Sept. 11, Fox News has learned the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has attempted to block a book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining project called "Able Danger." In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could be breached if "Operation Dark Heart" is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to block key portions of the book that claim "Able Danger" successfully identified hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks........ Click here to read...

Nine years after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government still hasn’t combed through its own files on al Qaeda’s rise. The must-read piece on terrorism this week comes from Philip Shenon, writing at The Daily Beast. Shenon writes about a cache of intelligence documents stored at the National Security Agency (NSA) that received a cursory review by the 9/11 Commission because they were only discovered shortly before the Commission’s final report went to the presses. It is a story that Shenon tells in his 2008 book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. It is a story...

Anthony Shaffer, the author of a new Afghanistan war memoir, figures on selling 10,000 copies of his book before it has even been released. The buyer would be the Pentagon, which objects to some of the material in the book and has offered to buy the entire first print run to keep it out of circulation.

The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing - 10,000 copies - of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources. "Operation Dark Heart," which was scheduled to be published this month by St. Martin's Press, recounts the adventures and frustrations of an Army reservist, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who served in Afghanistan in 2003, a moment when the attention of Washington and the military had shifted to Iraq.

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of...

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit....

I've created an Able Danger Podcast blog to generate a podcast feed so folks can subscribe to this feed and easily obtain any Able Danger audio (mp3) files. Here is the podcast feed for the Able Danger podcasts. The link to this feed is easy to find at the top left corner of my main blog, QT Monster, just above the Able Danger blog roll. Folks can subscribe to this podcast feed through iTunes. From the iTunes interface pull down the Advanced menu, click on subscribe to podcast, and in the dialogue box paste the URL for this podcast feed:...

Sources close to the ongoing Department of Defense investigation into the controversial Able Danger data mining intelligence program, which purportedly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the worst terror attacks in US history, say the mystery person who actually obtained a much-disputed photograph of Atta for the Able Danger team has now been identified. Ever since the Pentagon-ordered destruction in 2000 of 2.5 terabytes of data unearthed by Able Danger – allegedly including a chart featuring Atta’s photograph that revealed terrorist links and patterns when clicked on – skeptics have long raised doubt about the...

The first 20 minutes or so of the Able Danger conference call was previously posted here. The next three audio clips are here, here and here. Attending this conference call with Congressman Weldon were: AJ Strata from The Strata-Sphere, Dana from Common Sense Political Thought, Curt from Flopping Aces, Mike of Able Danger Blog, QT Monster, Rory O’Connor, Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill, Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Some traditional intelligence officials, however, seemed either skeptical or jealous of LIWA's capability. At one conference, "Able Danger" analysts identified four major al-Qaida hubs - the Middle East, East Africa, Balkans and the Far East - in about 90 minutes."Because we weren't an intelligence organization, we got a lot of bad press," he said. "Folks thought we were running fast and loose with the data."By April, the "Able Danger" team was told to end its support of SOCOM. During the month's long work stoppage, SOCOM's patience ran out, and the military command transferred the work to a Raytheon facility in...

Able Danger identified Mohammad Atta and at least 2 other 9-11 hijackers more than a year before the 9-11 attacks. Why was the data that connected Mohammad Atta as a possible terrorist threat to the United States destroyed, and why wasn't this information shared with the FBI so the 9-11 attacks might have been prevented? 1. Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, explains that there wasn't any prohibition against sharing Able Danger information with the FBI. One of Dr. Cambone's colleagues says, "...we share in Army intelligence and DoD intelligence, we share information with the FBI...

China Study Rocks The Hill and Unleashes The Purge: While Cambone tried to link the data purge to this 90-day rule, Weldon and the other witnesses (with first hand knowledge) pointed to the LIWA China Study that was being done in parallel to the Able Danger study. I have stated all along this was the lynchpin, the source of all later cover ups and mistakes and lost opportunities. We all know the story so I will not repeat it here, but what we learned from the hearings is how far up this went. Weldon let slip that the initial China...