Guest blogged by David Edwards
While we are not certain of Representative Weldon’s motives, he does manage to keep the “Able Danger” story in the news. In this interview with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, Weldon asserts that intelligence from the “Able Danger” group could have prevented the bombing of the USS Cole and the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001.
Weldon was also quoted in an article published earlier today by Eric Rosenberg of Hearst Newspapers:
“They saw information that led them to unequivocally understand that something was going to happen in the port at Yemen involving an American entity,” said Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
“Two days before the attack, they were jumping up and down because they knew something was going to happen … at the port of Aden,” Weldon told a Capitol Hill news conference.
Real patriotism doesn’t have a chance of recognition by this administration, unless it involves killing a whole lot of Muslims.
Please check into this…if true…it clearly points AGAIN that this adminsitration links to 9/11, etc:
… GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy and point out that such scenarios are “blue sky thinking” that often occurs in political planning sessions.
…A confidential memo circulating among senior Republican leaders suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."
….The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/...cle_7639.shtml
ask cheney under oath ,PNAC "no never heard of it" LOL
That’s because the COUNTRY who people have been duped by; Israel was behind the USS cole bombings…..Cheney helped them, he’s been working for someone else for years…the Likud party of Israel has been and always WAS behind everything……….the truth will set ye free….
Having FAITH in the truth will set you all free….
Re-open 9-11…
Doug E.
…Margaret G said on 11/10/2005 @ 12:57pm PT…
Real patriotism doesn’t have a chance of recognition by this administration, unless it involves killing a whole lot of Muslims.
or AMERICANS
Let’s go with this and see where it leads us. If the Clinton administration ends up implicated equally with the Bush administration, so be it.
Partisanship must not be allowed to stand in the way of the truth. Partisanship (in particular a need to avoid being called "partisan") is the reason that the 2000 and 2004 elections have been allowed to stand. Bush is and always has been an illegitimate president.
If Weldon’s motives are suspect, that will come out in due time. Meanwhile let’s look at his facts and let the chips fall where they may.
Sounds like Able Danger is a whole lot of egg on the face of the Dems, the GOP, AND the Pentagon. No wonder it was covered up. Its embarrassing to the upper leadership of every one of the key power elements involved.
Why isn’t this THE story for the media? They can make EVERYONE look bad with this story! A true libertarian’s gold-mine showing just how bad government is!
Even though Able Danger pinpointed the terrorist leaders of 9/11 (and probably a whole lot of other people as well – the program probably wasn’t that accurate since it relied on statistical methods), it doesn’t mean the government actively supported 9/11 occurring. In other words it doesn’t mean the conspiracy of 9/11 involved active government support. Of course it doesn’t preclude that from being the case either.
Mainly I see Able Danger as justification that the patriot act is a load of crap, and all of the information the government needed to stop 9/11 already existed before 9/11. The government just needs a better way to sort the information it already has.
Btw, Weldon was quite upset during his press conference on wednesday – rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e110905_weldon.rm I guess it will stay on cspan only for 15 days, so watch quickly! (worth looking)
I agree with Robert Lockwood Mills.
Even if Weldon’s motives are to pin whatever horrible truth is uncovered onto the Clinton admin, I say we do everything we can to facilitate him in his quest — even if Weldon’s is a "politically" tainted one — because the facts, if uncovered fully, may reveal a truth we might otherwise never come to know, so long as there is a Republican Congress who believes the chasing down those facts may lead us right to the doorstep of the dark players within the Bush administration and all their neocon partners in crime.
9/11 was an inside job… Supported by countless evidences.. for those who care to research the subject..
You think the "Crazies In the Basement" aka the Neocons couldn’t do something that crazy? Read about declassified Operation Northwood and than PNAC… Once that done.. Your mind might be open enough to do some actual research on the subject..
And let’s not forget also that this administration "sacrificed" or "wasted" 2000+ US lives and 100k+ civilians on a war argued with lies and fantasies so they can push their ideology.. (Read PNAC and learn about their dream of an American Empire.. and how going into Iraq was so vital..)
I feel that, even if Able Danger doesn’t prove the inside job allegation, an investigation into it and into the 9/11 commission might just lead to the bigger picture..
Neoliberals or Neocons, democrats or republicans… I hope those responsible will be exposed…
That’s because the COUNTRY who people have been duped by; Israel was behind the USS cole bombings…..Cheney helped them, he’s been working for someone else for years…the Likud party of Israel has been and always WAS behind everything……….the truth will set ye free….
Having FAITH in the truth will set you all free….
Re-open 9-11…
Doug E.
………………………………………………………………
Of course it couldn’t have actually been muslims since we know islam is a peaceful "religion". Go and crawl back under the rock you came from. This site obviously attracts freaks.
LEL google "dancing Israelis".
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,630,000 for dancing Israelis. (0.28 seconds)
times say 10 freaks per site…
who’d have thunk ?
I have to say that I’ve been looking askance at the Able Danger story from day one, in large part because FOX and Weldon have pushed it so much. At least in the chat rooms that I have seen and the BBS posts on Yahoo, it’s fairly clear that Republicans are using this as a way of saying "Clinton blew ANOTHER chance at getting bin Laden, of stopping terror in its tracks," etc. Remember, Weldon is a part of the Republican slime machine, and other big "breaking stories" he has been behind have not only not panned out, but also have required him to go into hiding for a bit so that he wouldn’t have to eat crow publicly.
I cannot prove it from the texts I have read, but something smells very fishy about the Able Danger reports. They remind me of Frank Snepp, certainly an agency man AFTER he left the CIA, who had the profits on his book blocked but the text left intact, and who was allowed to make a small fortune speaking to colleges across the country. Evidently the Agency wanted Snepp to get his message out — "we were winning in Vietnam." (Poor Frank Marchetti, on the other hand, who uncovered some of our most unethical covert coups d’etat, had significant parts of his text censored, was prohibited from public speaking engagements about his book, and had his royalties taken away). There’s something wrong with these Able Danger guys, something as fishy as MacPherson’s "Ossian:" the find is TOO big, TOO all-explanatory, TOO sweeping in a field where the BEST information is only fragmentary and the picture is pieced together only after very long, hard work. There seems to be TOO much exposure of what methods are used to indirectly infer the likelihood of terrorist activity, TOO many "disclosures" of the existence of secret intercepts (hoarded jealously by the National Security Agency), and a deafening silence from Republicans and the right media about the breach, in public, of our intelligence capabilities. Only when someone like you, Brad, a former Agency guy like Larry Johnson, or some hidebound nitpicker as myself goes line by line over the text, will we find out if these guys stand up to scrutinty.
If Weldon’s motive here is to "get Clinton," it might work insofar as Able Danger could expose neglect on the part of his administration. That adds up.
What doesn’t add up is that Bush diverted resources from pursuing Osama in AFGHANISTAN to invade IRAQ, meanwhile Osama is still running around free somewhere. Does Weldon want to remind us all of those uncomfortable truths?
If he’s carrying the administration’s battle ax here, the strategy’s going to backfire.
I think, since investigations cost lotsa money, that they should be used to uncover information that can help us repair damage.
Like the damage the Iraq war a.k.a. "war on terror" is doing.
So, I would limit the inquiry to the lies and cover up conducted to get congress and the american people to go for the invasion of Iraq.
The war to eradicate WMD in Iraq was a ruse and we all know it now.
What remains unknown is why … the motives … the agenda.
The investigation should focus on that so we can heal up the breach quickly.
What about Weldon’s motives? The question to ask is not why Curt Weldon began this investigation (which could have been for any of a dozen reasons) but why he persists. Why he called this "the most important issue of my life" just this week. And why he said that Able Danger is infinitely more important than Watergate and the Plame affair. Let’s speculate that Weldon began the investigation to prove that Clinton planned the Iraq war. I am sure there are many such plans lying around—to invade Canada, Mexico, or anybody else; that’s what planners do. Remember the Bay of Pigs, which was planned by Eisenhower and carried out (read: botched) by Kennedy. Why does Weldon persist? Surely it is not to discredit Clinton while protecting Bush, because if that were the case he would by now have called off the dogs, because it is by now clear that Bush is culpable if indeed he "merely" carried out (and botched) someone’s erstwhile plans. To me all the signs point to one thing: Weldon has stumbled upon an important issue; he sees this as a chance to do something great in his life; and he is willing to pursue this to the end, let the chips fall where they may.
I’m sorry, but Weldon is full of crap. First off, his previous allegations relied on Ghorbanifer, an Iranian who was deemed wholly unreliable by the CIA on numerous occasions. That didn’t stop Curt, no, he kept on driving the conspiracy highway and now wants people to believe in Able Danger. His only support so far has been 2 guys who Curt thinks that since they support each other’s story, that is confirmation.
This is spun as a continuation of the anti-Clinton hysteria because the reason the information wasn’t used by the gov’t was Jamie Gorelick’s wall memo. Which memo had nothing to do with this DoD unit sharing its info with any Agency if they in fact had any info that could have been reliably culled from mountain of data that had been assembled. Don’t forget that one reason this unit was disbanded was when they identified Condoleeza Rice as a security risk. When the story is trumpeted by Newsmax and Worldnet you should be highly suspicious of the info.
Frankly, I don’t know what Weldon’s "motives" are either, but I’m glad he’s keeping Able Danger in the news (even if it’s only the "main stream" media).
Personally, I don’t think George Bush had much to do with the War in Iraq, especially after reading "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives" by Zbigniew Brzezinksi. I mean, that book was published in 1997, and quite directly it lays out the argument of why we [had] to invade Central Asia. Whether I agree with Brzezinksi or not, this book is frighteningly intelligent and visionary. Anyhow, George Bush, in my humble opinion, was simply the flunky in Office when the decision was made by people much more powerful than himself that the time was right to invade Central Asia. All we needed was justification.
I’ve also been reading "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert. It’s a lot of conspiracy theory stuff, but it’s still an interesting read. If one tenth of one percent of what Ruppert digs up and reports on is true, "Crossing the Rubicon" is the most frightening–and enraging–book I’ve ever read.
When America is attacked again–and, like many, I believe it’s bound to happen, sooner or later–my guess is it will be a maritime attack, and here’s why: as wages in the maritime industry free-fall, thanks in total to two men, Mike Sacco and Auggie Tellez, more and more "professional" sailors abandon the industry, leaving it to "turnkey" sailors and foreign nationals (most of whom are good guys who escaped from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, to find work here).
Sailors have direct and uninhibited access to massive ships pulling into American ports–Long Beach, Baytown, Charleston (LNG facility), et cetera–carrying the most lethal toxins known to man, so basically they’re riding on massive, potential bombs. You don’t have to detonate a tanker to cause a catastrophic disaster. You simply have to be incompetent—or cunning—enough to slam it into the rocks someplace like Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale).
If the Exxon Valdez disaster wasted 1,200 miles of otherwise pristine coastline in Alaska, consider the kind of devastation a similar incident would have in the Lower 48. "Operation Drydock" exposed, if I recall correctly, twelve sailors who had direct links to al Queda, so it’s obvious those nut-jobs have considered maritime attacks.
Second only to ships flying "Flags of Convenienence," like Norweigan Cruise Line vessels, for example, infiltrating the corporate-funded, allegedly mafia-managed scab union–Seafarers International Union–would be the most direct path for anyone who had ill-intentions toward the United States to bring the economy to its knees. Terrorism, like blood, follows the path of least resistance.
Okay, so that has nothing to do with "Operation Able Danger." But I’ve already said it, and I’m not taking it back now.
I encourage everyone to read a blog entitled: Sodomizing American Taxpayers (a vulgar title, sure, but it’s still worth reading). It won’t take long to figure out why we all better start paying a lot more attention to what’s taking place in the maritime industry.
If indeed Mike Sacco, the president of SIU, is a "Mafia captain," guilty of labor racketeering, as his sailors allege, then we’d better pressure the government to get him the hell out of there. Any way you cut it, he’s pissing off rank-and-file sailors who drive tankers loaded with nasty chemicals into American ports each and every day–and you don’t want those guys pissed off any more than you want to fly on an airplane piloted by a drunk, especially if you live along the coast.
God Bless America!
God Bless Organized Labor!
Screw the Mafia!
Wow…Rawstory’s got a VERY good article this morning:
B.Y. professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC
I feel compelled to post this snippet from Dr. Steve Jones’ (the Brigham Young Professor – KestrelBrightEyes link in #20) paper because it is VERY IMPORTANT to circulate everywhere:
Dr. Steve Jones’ paper
[Regarding the molten metal found at Ground Zero after the buildings collapsed:)
"I would very much like to see an analysis of the elemental composition of the metal, and could do this myself if a small sample were made available according to scientific courtesy.
Any reader who knows of chemical analyses or even photographs of this molten metal found below the rubble piles of WTC 1, 2 and 7 is invited to speak out and contact the author.
This could lead to an experiment crucis."
Maybe 6 or 7 can start circulating this plea for help!
Hey LEL
The moslems don’t have the sophistication to ever pull off such bullshit. Go put in a search engine "false flag attacks" and you will see……Likud israelis pop up all over the results.
Why not muslims…..or moslems….Are you getting stale now with your psyops?
Doug E.
I believe I am correct in stating that Congressman Weldon’s motive in pushing the Able Danger story is entirely…human. His motive springs from many sources. I recall him stating, and this recollection is not ironclad, that one of the 9/11 pilots was a neighbor of his. Also, and this is a firm memory, Mr. Weldon lost many friends in the 9/11 attacks on the Towers. Weldon is/was a volunteer firefighter and was friendly with many of those who responded to the emergency calls from the Trade Center. Finally, Weldon is responding to the blatantly unjust treatment being accorded to Shaffer by the DOD and the DIA. I truly believe that Weldon’s interest in the Able Danger story is pure, and that he, unlike that raft of prostitutes which comprises most of the rest of official Washington, will draw conclusions apart from partisan considerations, and direct his hearings in the direction that the evidence leads him. It is imperative to write your Congressperson and Senator and pressure them to force the Pentagon to ungag Colonel Shaffer and the other Able Danger witnesses.
For Jim W.: Hope you’re right about Weldon. Until further notice, I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Jim W, #22:
I’ve been thinking about this a bit, and agree with you. Weldon’s motive is genuinely human. At this point he doesn’t stand to gain, politically or financially, from coming forward with this, and his background would indicate that he is doing it for the right reasons.
I don’t know what his intent is and how far he’s willing to take this thing, but I think its important to support where ever he’s going.
All this talk of pre 9-11 intelligence is irrelevant, in the light of the fact that the 6 of the alleged hijackers turned up alive on sept 12. Or that on 9-11, NORAD failed to intercept 4 planes, tho it had plenty of time to do so. This failure provides some evidence for the identity of the real 9-11 perpetrators.
Brian, #25
You gotta walk before you can run.
Get a clue. The first article below should be enough for all to realize
that Weldon is worthless. He meets secretly with Ghorbanifar?
Absolutely no credibility after that. Here’s another clue: check
Weldon’s leadership PAC out for likely profiteers from a big government
capitalization in "open-source intelligence gathering" software and
hardware.
A time line of News Articles:July
20, 2005
WASHINGTON – House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Peter
Hoekstra and Rep. Curt Weldon met secretly in Europe last week with an Iranian
exile who CIA officials charge has passed worthless or bogus
intelligence to the United States, current and former U.S. government officials
said.The Paris meeting appears to be the latest in a string of incidents
in which players outside the intelligence community try to affect American
foreign policy by highlighting threats that the CIA and other agencies find
dubious.[. . .]Weldon, R-Pa., claims in a new book that the Iranian
exile, whom he calls "Ali," told him of dramatic Iranian-sponsored terrorist
plots against the United States.But the CIA says that it has
wasted hundreds of hours checking the claims of Ali – whose real name is
Fereidoun Mahdavi – and that they are a mix of fabrications and
embellishments of press reports, according to a letter from the CIA to
Weldon.The meeting was disclosed by current and former U.S. officials
who requested anonymity because they said they did not want to anger Weldon or
Hoekstra.Mahdavi is a longtime associate of Iranian arms
merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar, the officials say. Ghorbanifar, a
key figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, has had two CIA "burn notices"
issued on him, meaning agency officers are not to deal with him.
August 14, 2005
In a particularly dramatic scene in Weldon’s book, Countdown to Terror, the
Pennsylvania Republican described personally handing to then-Deputy
National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, just after Sept. 11, an Able Danger
chart produced in 1999 identifying Atta. But Weldon told TIME
he’s no longer certain Atta’s name was on that original
document. The congressman says he handed Hadley his only
copy. Still, last week he referred reporters to a recently
reconstructed version of the chart in his office where, among dozens of names
and photos of terrorists from around the world, there was a color mug shot of
Mohammad Atta, circled in black marker.
August 17, 2005
An Army intelligence officer said Wednesday he told staff members from the
Sept. 11 commission that a secret military unit had identified two of the three
cells involved in the 2001 terrorist strikes more than a year before the
attacks.Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who said he was associated
with the "Able Danger" unit, said that during a 2003 meeting in Afghanistan, he
mentioned that the unit had identified Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta
along with three other hijackers as terrorist suspects.
August 17,
2005
A former member of a classified Pentagon intelligence unit told CNN on
Wednesday that information he tried to provide to the commission investigating
the September 11, 2001, attacks never made it to the panel’s
members.Publicly identifying himself for the first time, U.S. Army
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said he worked this year with Rep. Curt
Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security
committees, and they determined "there was a significant amount of
information that was totally deleted or not provided to the 9/11
commissioners."Shaffer was part of the task force that supported Able
Danger, an intelligence unit that was looking for al Qaeda
terrorists.The lieutenant colonel said Able Danger uncovered information
in 2000 about lead hijacker Mohamed Atta by searching through public databases
and looking for patterns.Shaffer declined to be specific about
what kind of documents linked Atta to al Qaeda, saying intelligence units
continue to use such processes.
August 19, 2005
The former intelligence officer who says that a Defense Department program
identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers before the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks said yesterday that many of his allegations are not based on his
memory but on the recollections of others.Lt. Col. Anthony
Shaffer, who has been on paid administrative leave from the Defense Intelligence
Agency since his security clearance was suspended in March
2004, said in a telephone interview that a Navy officer and a civilian
official affiliated with the Able Danger program told him after the attacks that
Atta and other hijackers had been included on a chart more than a year
earlier.But because he was not intimately familiar with the names and
photographs of suspected terrorists, he did not realize that hijackers
were listed until it was alleged to him after the attacks, Shaffer
said. All of the charts that could support his claims have disappeared, he
said."I did see the charts and I did handle the charts, but my
understanding of them was like a layman," Shaffer said. "We had identified them
as terrorists. . . . But even now I do not remember all the names."
August 22, 2005
House Republican leaders approved in advance plans by a military
intelligence official to go public with details of a top-secret
Pentagon project code-named Able Danger.Army Reserve Lt. Col.
Tony Shaffer says the data-mining project identified Mohamed Atta and three of
the other September 11 hijackers as members of an al Qaeda cell more than a year
before the attacks."I spoke personally to Denny Hastert
and to Pete Hoekstra," Col. Shaffer said. Mr. Hastert, Illinois
Republican, is speaker of the House, and Mr. Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, is
chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence."I was
given assurances by [them] that this was the right thing to do. … I was
given assurances we would not suffer any adverse consequences for
bringing this to the attention of the public," Col. Shaffer
said.
September 30, 2005
Shaffer says he showed his government credentials during two
incidents in 1990, when he was drunk, and 1996, when he was
pulled over by police. The military says he misused his credentials,
but Shaffer says he was not told he should not have used them. He also said he
has joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober for 13 years.As for
the pens and other office supplies taken, he blamed that on
"youthful indiscretions" more than 20 years ago.According to the
paperwork, the alleged infractions against Shaffer also include:
Falsely claiming $341.80 in mileage and tolls fees. He said he filed
travel expenses based on what he was told by human resources staff.
Obtaining $67.79 in personal cell phone charges. He said the amount was a
legitimate expense accrued so he could forward calls.
Going over his chain of command to do briefings. Shaffer said he was
providing briefings to higher-ups on projects even his direct superiors did
not know about, and he received superior review ratings for that time.
Showing irresponsibility with $2,012 in credit card debt. He said he paid
off the debt, and Zaid said DIA dropped the issue.
October 3, 2005
"I’ll agree that DIA investigators have been dredging up whatever they could.
But the news stories, and Shaffer’s lawyer, have only been reporting part of the
story. I imagine that Shaffer’s real problem is revealing the existence of Able
Danger in the first place, together with other compartmented programs that he
has also made reference to in numerous interviews: Stratus Ivy, Dorhawk Galley,
and Able Providence. Shaffer likely had to sign a "non-disclosure" agreement
related to his clearance for each of these. I’m all for conscientious government
officials going public when they believe their agencies are secretly breaking
the law, but you’ve got to admit, Shaffer’s biggest problem seems to be his
ability to keep a secret, hence why would the government grant him a security
clearance."
Hey Clueful,
Regarding Able Danger, ask yourself why Weldon has hung Zelikow and Hadley out to dry. Hint…they’re Bush Administration Republicans and it wasn’t the media or the Dems that exposed their machinations involving Able Danger, it was Weldon and Shaffer. Weldon may be a fool on certain issues (Ghorbanifar, for instance), but I take him for an honest fool. He’s uncovered a huge scandal with Able Danger. Why isn’t this Administration eager to help get to the bottom of this? The American people (should) want to know.
If there wasn’t something to it, why did the Pentagon stop 2 of the witnesses from testifying at the hearing?Richard Clarke’s book about the Clinton and Bush administrations speaks well of Clinton and George Tenant…..But a total lack of interest in terroism from anyone in Bushco. Clarke doesn’t seem to be partisan, just obssesive about his job. He also wrote of Bush rudely telling him to link 9/11 with Iraq. I never could figure out from a common sense point of view how Cheney having all the planes doing war games could fly. That’s not in a VP’s job description.
Disabling Able Danger
Washington Post: Early Warning Blog
William M. Arkin – September 28, 2005
In April 2000, Able Danger, only months old, was abruptly shut down. Caught violating Reagan administration Executive Orders and Defense Department and Army regulations restricting intelligence agencies from collecting information on United States "persons," the highly compartmented cell within the Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) was halted in its effort to use data mining and link analysis to characterize the worldwide nature of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
[…]
The real story here is how another renegade intelligence effort subsisting on hyper secrecy ran afoul of regulations first implemented in the Ford administration when U.S. intelligence agencies were caught collecting information on community, religious and labor leaders, civil rights protestors, and anti-Vietnam war demonstrators.
[…]
Shaffer and others use words like "out-of-the-box" and "entrepreneurial" to describe the LIWA intelligence collection. The buzz words suggest, of course, that other intelligence efforts were in-the-box and boring, that only the LIWA and other compartmented workers were motivated and insightful enough to take chances, that if the lawyers and the bureaucrats and the Clintonistas and the other villains had just gotten out of the way, there would have been no 9/11. If only…
But in 2000, the problem was also a pretty simple one: An off-the-books intelligence effort once again abused the "force protection" justification to collect information on Americans. Military commanders, mindful of the law and regulations, shut down the operation.
[…]
…the open source label tends to hide the real problem the Able Danger sponsored effort ran into.
"They were not only using advanced data mining technology, they were also looking at data that no one else was looking at," Shaffer says.
According to military sources familiar with the Able Danger legal side, the effort stepped over the line when LIWA contractors purchased photographic collections of people entering and exiting mosques in the United States and overseas. One source says that LIWA contractors dealt with a questionable source of photographs in California, either a white supremacy group or some other anti-Islamic organization.
"There are records of who goes where regarding visits to mosques," Shaffer told Government Security News. "That was the data that LIWA was buying off the Internet from information brokers." It was stuff no one else bothered to look at, says Shaffer.
[…]
Thomas Gandy, Army Director of Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence, said at the September 1 Pentagon briefing that the problem with LIWA’s work was that "it was a gobbling up of a lot of data from a lot of sources and put (it) in one pile." Thus there was a "commingling of U.S. person data" with other data. The contractors and software specialists did not take precautions to tag data from different sources or to segregate information about wholly innocent Americans of Islamic faith from others who were not US persons.
Disabling Able Danger
Washington Post: Early Warning Blog
William M. Arkin – September 28, 2005
In April 2000, Able Danger, only months old, was abruptly shut down. Caught violating Reagan administration Executive Orders and Defense Department and Army regulations restricting intelligence agencies from collecting information on United States "persons," the highly compartmented cell within the Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) was halted in its effort to use data mining and link analysis to characterize the worldwide nature of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
[…]
The real story here is how another renegade intelligence effort subsisting on hyper secrecy ran afoul of regulations first implemented in the Ford administration when U.S. intelligence agencies were caught collecting information on community, religious and labor leaders, civil rights protestors, and anti-Vietnam war demonstrators.
[…]
Shaffer and others use words like "out-of-the-box" and "entrepreneurial" to describe the LIWA intelligence collection. The buzz words suggest, of course, that other intelligence efforts were in-the-box and boring, that only the LIWA and other compartmented workers were motivated and insightful enough to take chances, that if the lawyers and the bureaucrats and the Clintonistas and the other villains had just gotten out of the way, there would have been no 9/11. If only…
But in 2000, the problem was also a pretty simple one: An off-the-books intelligence effort once again abused the "force protection" justification to collect information on Americans. Military commanders, mindful of the law and regulations, shut down the operation.
[…]
…the open source label tends to hide the real problem the Able Danger sponsored effort ran into.
"They were not only using advanced data mining technology, they were also looking at data that no one else was looking at," Shaffer says.
According to military sources familiar with the Able Danger legal side, the effort stepped over the line when LIWA contractors purchased photographic collections of people entering and exiting mosques in the United States and overseas. One source says that LIWA contractors dealt with a questionable source of photographs in California, either a white supremacy group or some other anti-Islamic organization.
"There are records of who goes where regarding visits to mosques," Shaffer told Government Security News. "That was the data that LIWA was buying off the Internet from information brokers." It was stuff no one else bothered to look at, says Shaffer.
[…]
Thomas Gandy, Army Director of Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence, said at the September 1 Pentagon briefing that the problem with LIWA’s work was that "it was a gobbling up of a lot of data from a lot of sources and put (it) in one pile." Thus there was a "commingling of U.S. person data" with other data. The contractors and software specialists did not take precautions to tag data from different sources or to segregate information about wholly innocent Americans of Islamic faith from others who were not US persons.