Wanted to get to this hearing earlier but wouldn’t you know it, had to work. Oh well.
First came the news that some of the most important witnesses would not be allowed to testify:
Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement that open testimony about the program “would not be appropriate – we have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum.” He offered no other detail on the Pentagon’s reasoning in blocking the testimony.
Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the committee, said he was surprised by the Pentagon’s decision because “so much of this has already been in the public domain, and I think that the American people need to know what happened here.”
Mr. Specter said in a telephone interview that he intended to go ahead with the hearing on Wednesday and hoped that it “may produce a change of heart by the Department of Defense in answering some very basic questions.”
While some in the blogosphere appeared surprised, I was not. This technique of intelligence gathering is obviously classified and may even be currently operating as Dr. Sanity speculates:
****SPECULATION**** This point leapt out at me as the possible explanation of why the DoD is currently so aggressively trying to shut down exposure of Able Danger. What if we are actively tracking and/or following other people who were on that chart, and that any revelations about that information would be a tip-off and interfere with ongoing intelligence operations? ***END SPECULATION****
I will be going back to Dr. Sanity alot during this post since his post summarizing the meeting today is excellent, with a capital E.
Also, it appears that Rumsfeld offered to produce these witnesses in a closed hearing but was shot down:
According to Fox News’ Catherine Herrige, Secretary Rumsfeld offered to give the Committee a closed briefing but his option was declined by Committee Chair Specter.
While I am disappointed that the hearings could not include Shaffer and the rest of his crew I am absolutely certain this will NOT go away.
Now on the hearings.
First Curt Weldon:
He went over the information that many of us already know, when it began, what it was started for and when it was disbanded.
A few things jump out at me during the testimony, the fact that Shaffers security clearence was REVOKED 2 days ago. It was suspended before but now they revoked it. Something doesn’t smell right.
He then goes on to talk about the fact that the person who was supposed to get the date, General Lambert, was never informed that the data had been destroyed.
He then moves on to the fact that there was no reason for the data to be destroyed since it was all information collected from the public domain.
Another interesting fact that I had not heard before was that the charts were prepared by the Orion Corporation and that some of the charts included Chinese, Russian, and Al-Qaeda information.
Then the Commission called Mark Zeid who is the lawyer for those witnesses not allowed to testify.
Most interesting part of his testimony was the fact the DoD did not know that Shaffer had some of the charts that they believed were destroyed, and he had them in 2004. Of course this is when is clearence was suspended and when he could no longer get into his office the stuff was mysteriously destroyed.
Then Erik Kleinsmith testified who works for Lockheed-Martin but at the time was in Army Intel.
The Able Danger program was supported quite well up until April, 2004 when it was shut down quite quickly. He was then told to destroy all data which he did in May & June 2000. He was told this was due to Army Regulation 381-10 and was told his butt would land in jail if he did not follow orders.
There was also a discussion about these regulations and if he believed that due to Waco the Army and the DoD were being overly sensitive to breaking the law.
Dr Sanity has this on another interesting tidbit from Zaid:
ZAID then made some comments about another individual who was not permitted to testify himself (Mr. Smith, who used to work for Orion):
In March, 2000 or thereabouts; armed federal agents came to Orion Corporation to confiscate all data from Able Danger. Smith had some of the data in the trunk of his car (since it was unclassified) and that is the only reason it was preserved (presumably some of the charts, etc.)
Smith had one of the charts on his wall with the picture of Atta purchased from the CA contractor, which he would point out to many after 9/11. That chart was inadvertantly destroyed when it was taken off the wall where it had been taped for 3 years.
I will be going over the testimony with a fine tooth comb tomorrow but for now this stuff is mind blowing. Someone or somegroup went bezerk in mid 2000 and wanted all this data destroyed, why? Is it because of Waco? Is it because of the mistaken data collection of Rice during an election year? Probably a little of both. But what really gets me is that during the 9/11 Commission Jamie Gorelick was protected.
First, one cannot help but think that the existence of the “Wall” preventing intelligences sharing was a key ingredient in preventing connecting the dots of 9/11. That the main architect of the Wall in both the DoD when she was there; and in the Department of Justice later, on was 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick is pertinent. Was there an attempt on the part of 9/11 Commission members and/or staff to protect one of its members? Were there attempts on the part of members of the Clinton Administration to cover-up this important information (Berger’s activities in the National Archives to name one).
And none of this information came out, in fact when news got around that Shaffer still had some data guess what? It was all secretly destroyed from his office.
Couple all this with Sandy Bergers inexplicable theft from the National Archives and you get the feeling that there is alot of protection going on for people in the Clinton Administration.
I’ll leave you with some thoughts from Andy McCarthy:
Now it turns out that volumes upon volumes of documentation from the program were ordered destroyed in 2000. That also appears to have been a rather widely known fact (the guy who did the deleting voluntarily testified at the hearing). If that was the case, why were these witnesses assailed the way they were? And why did we continue hearing about how the Pentagon was looking under every rock but not finding anything when, in fact, it had to have known that the entire quarry had intentionally been destroyed five years ago?
What is unfolding here is an embarrassing story. Data mining efforts harvested some information on US persons (essentially, citizens and permanent resident aliens) in the course of investigating al Qaeda (and later, Chinese proliferation). But Atta was not a US person. There was no impropriety in collecting information on him, nor does it smack of any McCarthy-era list-making ? these are the lists everyone knows we are allowed to make and should be making. There is no question that al Qaeda was being investigated by other arms of government at that time ? and that such lists were being made.
..That destruction is said to have been over the objection of Able Danger officials but at the insistence of the lawyers ? notwithstanding that it was known to contain potentially valuable information about al Qaeda (which had only recently blown up two of our embassies and would soon bomb one of our navy destroyers).
It is, moreover, alleged that, even though the documentation had been destroyed, an Able Danger briefing was given to Gen. Shelton (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) in January 2001. And it came up in a briefing given to Stephen Cambone ? then a top advisor to Sec?y Rumsfeld and now undersecretary for intelligence ? in around March 2001.
Weldon testified this morning that two weeks ago, at an informal briefing to House members, a Pentagon lawyer said that there had been no need to get special clearance to destroy Able Danger materials because they were open-source, not classified. Now, the Pentagon is blocking the Senate from conducting its oversight function by claiming it is worried about disclosure of classified information ? even to the point of declining to allow witnesses to testify in closed session.
Finally, Weldon repeated today that he told then-Deputy National Security Adviser (now NSA) Steve Hadley about Able Danger and gave him a chart with Atta on it right after the 9/11 attacks. He added today that Rep. Dan Burton came with him to see Hadley on that occasion. He also reported that Hadley conceded to him, in a conversation about 3 months ago, that he recalled Weldon providing the chart. Yet, we have still not heard a word from Hadley ? who could have put a lot of these claims and counter-claims about the credibility of the witnesses to rest weeks ago by simply confirming or denying Weldon?s version of events.
This is all very strange, and the business about Rice and Perry coming up in the data mining for Chinese spying does not come close to explaining it away. Plus, to keep our eye on the ball for a second here, it?s very likely we had Atta identified long before 9/11 ? a fact of enormous significance.
As I have been saying since this thing started, this is going to be huge and I will add, will NOT be going away.
Check out Mac’s Mind, SoCalPundit, The Dread Pundit Bluto, Intel Dump, Boxer Watch, Michelle Malkin, A Blog For All, & Reaganities Unite for more.
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The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XXIV
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XXIII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XXII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XXI
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XX
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XIX
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XVIII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XVII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XVI
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XV
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XIV
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XIII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update XI
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update X
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update IX
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update VIII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update VII
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update VI
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update V
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, update IV
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update III
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update II
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger, Update
The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger

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