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Banned
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Originally Posted by stevo
If you think the posted article is full of reasonable points and you agree mostly with it - that only goes toward proving that the left's thinking is in line with how the terrorists think. Remarkably similar to the latest al-qaeda tape where Al-Zawahri's message is strikingly similar to michael moore rhetoric. yawn.  |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/po...gewanted=print
August 17, 2005
Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.
The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.
Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned.
"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.
He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.
"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.
The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the program to acknowledge his role publicly.
At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.
The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."
The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.
Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.
Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.
Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.
Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.
The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.
A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."
"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."
Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.
"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."
"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."
Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from Internet sites and from paid search engines like LexisNexis.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...2319-2001Sep26
White House Drops Claim of Threat to Bush
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 27, 2001; Page A08
The Bush administration appeared to back away yesterday from its claim that a threat was lodged against Air Force One on the day terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
After news reports Tuesday said administration officials could find no record of such a call, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked yesterday if the White House believes Osama bin Laden was trying to kill the president. Fleischer had said at a Sept. 13 briefing that a threat, "using code words," had been phoned in against Air Force One. He quoted the caller as saying, "Air Force One is a target." ............
........... On Tuesday, the Associated Press quoted administration officials as saying they now doubt the call was made. "They've been unsuccessful in trying to track down whether there was such a call, though officials still maintain they were told of a telephone threat Sept. 11 and kept Bush away from Washington for hours because of it," the AP said.
The "CBS Evening News" reported Tuesday that the call "simply never happened," and said White House staffers "apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail."
Bush was criticized for flying to Louisiana and Nebraska before returning to Washington, and White House officials had disseminated their belief that the threats were specific and credible. Vice President Cheney said Sept. 16 on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he had urged Bush to stay away, in part because of a threat against the plane.
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Quote:
http://slate.msn.com/id/1008371/
<h4>Whopper of the Week: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Dick Cheney</h4>
Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, Sept. 28, 2001, at 11:11 AM PT
"They also made it clear they wanted to get us up quickly, and they wanted to get us to a high altitude, because there had been a specific threat made to Air Force One. ... A declaration that Air Force One was a target, and said in a way that they called it credible. ... So they wanted to get us up quickly. They also wanted to get us up with fighter air cover."
--White House senior counselor Karl Rove, quoted by Nicholas Lemann in the Sept. 28 New Yorker.
"We have specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets of these attacks."
--White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Sept. 12 briefing.
"Q: [It was] yesterday reported that some of the people in the Pentagon were a little bit skeptical about your comments yesterday that the White House and Air Force One were attacked--were targets of attack, given that the plane had come from the south. What do you--
"Fleischer: Who are these people?
"Q: Well, I don't know. They weren't my sources, so--
"(Cross talk.)
"Fleischer: No. There's--I wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true.
"Q: Can you confirm the substance of that threat that was telephoned in ... that Air Force One is next and using code words?
"Fleischer: Yes, I can. That's correct."
--White House "press gaggle" with Ari Fleischer, Sept. 13.
"Vice President Cheney: The president was on Air Force One. We received a threat to Air Force One--came through the Secret Service ...
"Tim Russert: A credible threat to Air Force One. You're convinced of that.
"Vice President Cheney: I'm convinced of that. Now, you know, it may have been phoned in by a crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way to know that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to me."
--NBC's Meet the Press, Sept. 16.
"Finally, there is this postscript to the puzzle of how someone presumed to be a terrorist was able to call in a threat against Air Force One using a secret code name for the president's plane. Well, as it turns out, that simply never happened. Sources say White House staffers apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail."
--CBS News reporter Jim Stewart on the Sept. 25 CBS Evening News.
"[Administration officials have] been unsuccessful in trying to track down whether there was such a call, though officials still maintain they were told of a telephone threat Sept. 11 and kept Bush away from Washington for hours because of it."...............
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stevo, the huge volume of information that you must avoid even contemplating, in order to swallow the lies and misinformation of your commandante and his cohorts is ever growing.
The "liberals", as you label them, are simply ordinary Americans who refuse to drink the kool-ade that these pukes mix up and distribute in the rare moments when they are not concocting or disseminating their latest lies.
They even resorted to making up the lies as excuses for Bush's 9/11 "cut n run", as he hopped from FLA....west to two AFB's until early evening.
Can you not even consider that, as long as they continue to lie, spin, stall, mislead. and cover up, that they demonstrate neither integrity or credibility.
When you bash those of us who are weary of this, and apologize for their horrendous attacks on the truth, it makes you look foolish.........
You may not comprehend this, but those who can "connect the dots" are not "liberals", they are people who are tired of the constant, "my dog ate my homework" bullshit from this administration! |