Senate May Hold Hearings on Able Danger, Info-Sharing Thursday, August 25, 2005


WASHINGTON — Aides to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., are actively discussing scheduling a hearing on "Able Danger" and the larger issue of information-sharing between the Pentagon and the FBI, FOX News has confirmed.

Able Danger is the code name for a military-intelligence unit that apparently learned a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and other terrorists were already in the United States.

One of the central Able Danger claims — that military lawyers blocked the sharing of the Atta information from the FBI in the late summer and early fall of 2000 — will be a focus of the committee if a hearing takes place, FOX News has confirmed."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166800,00.html

Not only did the military lawyers block this information done by this intelligence unit from being passed onto the FBI....they had the information redacted and destroyed. So, there won't be any written backup. However, there will be the testimony, of the 12 or so members of Able Danger, who will attest to the fact they had the name of Mohammed Atta and his cell in Brooklyn and tried to get the information passed on. Shaffer said he was adamant to the point of near subordination in trying to get the information passed onto the FBI.

Plus, he and maybe one other member told this to the 9/11 Commission.....and yet, they didn't bother to call the members in, interview them or look further into it. The Commission called for "documents." Documents that had been destroyed and they were never going to get. In other words, they dropped the ball and weren't the least bit interested in telling the whole story.

Perhaps after this, it will be time for an investigation into the 9/11 Commission and their biases.

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

"The intelligence officer recalled carrying documents to the offices of Able Danger, which was being run by the Special Operations Command, headquartered in Tampa, FL. The documents included a photo of Mohammed Atta supplied by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and described Atta’s relationship with Osama bin Laden. The officer was very disappointed when lawyers working for Special Ops decided that anyone holding a green card had to be granted essentially the same legal protections as any U.S. citizen. Thus, the information Able Danger had amassed about the only terrorist cell they had located inside the United States could not be shared with the FBI, the lawyers concluded.

“We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn’t exist,” the intelligence officer told GSN.

DoD lawyers may also have been reluctant to suggest a bold action by FBI agents after the bureau’s disastrous 1993 strike against the Branch Davidian religious cult in Waco, TX, said Weldon and the intelligence officer.

“So now, Mr. Speaker,” Weldon said on the House floor last June, “for the first time I can tell our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell.”

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/aug_05/dod_lawyers.html

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007