Able Danger: Gorelick, the Wall, and Data Mining

Captain Ed examines Gorelick's role in establishing the wall of separation between the intel and law enforcement apparatus of the US government. He critiques those who think that Gorelick was not in a position to impose the separation.

The Washington Times has a good op-ed that details the timeline and raises the usual round of questions and thinks that the ball is in the Pentagon's court to divulge what it knows about Able Danger and its results. The Pentagon has been lukewarm on that count. Also, if actual members of the Able Danger team stepped forward to testify as to what they uncovered, that would go a long way to unraveling this controversy.

Meanwhile, the New York Post claims that data mining techniques similar to those purportedly used in the Able Danger program were responsible for tracking down Saddam Hussein.

Link analysis makes connections out of seemingly random data and organizes it in easily recognizable visual form, says terrorism expert Evan Kohlman.

The technology is now at the center of the furor on Capitol Hill over claims by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and veteran Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer that Able Danger, a program run for nine months by the U.S. Special Forces Command, produced a chart of known terrorists in the United States in 2000 that included 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and three other future hijackers.

Although the Atta claims are being denied by the 9/11 commission and, less forcibly, by the Pentagon, experts inside and outside the government say there is no doubt that Able Danger's technology is now widespread in the intelligence community and is considered an effective counterterrorism tool.

Its biggest known success came when members of Alpha Company of the 104th Military Intelligence Battalion assembled a color-coded chart of the families that were likely protecting Saddam.

A man on that chart was eventually identified as a major figure in Saddam's post-fall circle, and when that man was arrested, he led U.S. forces to the farmhouse outside Saddam's hometown of Tikrit where the ex-tyrant was found hiding, military officials said.

UPDATE:
Jim Geraghty is reporting that several people have emailed him that the National Geographic program on 9/11 may have made oblique references to Able Danger. The resource list behind the special suggests an avenue of research into those references.

UPDATE II:
Michael Ledeen comments that Weldon got the support of Hastert and Hoekstra before going public with his accusations. Ledeen seems to think that there is more smoke (and potentially a huge firestorm to boot), but that Shaffer is the public face for the moment. He also notes But it's clearer and clearer that the 9/11 Commission wasn't the final word on this subject. How true. And Mike Kelly notes that this opens up the door to the conspiracy theorists out there. The whole idea of the 9/11 Commission was to establish an airtight definitive study of 9/11, but since Able Danger appears to have been excluded, it lets the conspiracy minded loons out there to make all kinds of assertions and accusations. He has a point. The Commission has done a great disservice by not doing the job it was directed to do, which was to examine all of the evidence, even the parts that were not in total agreement with its preconceived narrative (the intel failures scenario).

UPDATE III:
Jack Kelly, in his piece entitled Dangerously Disabled, writes that the Commission's actions are suspect in this area, considering its exclusion of the White memos, the 1996 State Department warning, and German reports that called for better monitoring of OBL and al Qaeda related groups. No kidding. There is no satisfactory answer as to why these items were excluded except for the potential embarrassment of Gorelick and the Clinton Administration which failed to act on the White memos or the 1996 warning. In other words, politics trumped the Commission's mandate.

UPDATE IV:
Strata sphere is doing fine work on Able Danger, questioning motivations, examining evidence, and trying to piece together the puzzle.

UPDATE V: UPDATE'S REVENGE:
Thoughts Online makes some valid points, ones which are echoed in my coverage:

Recriminations about what might have been are a waste of time and energy. We know the country wasn't taking seriously enough the threat from terrorists. We know both the Clinton and Bush Administrations had opportunities to pre-empt the attacks and failed to do so. What is important now is what we do going forward to identify and kill the terrorists that are doing their best to kill us.

Thus, the only aspect of the Able Danger story that matters is the part that is getting the least attention, and that is whether the techniques the team used to identify the likes of Atta are still in use today. If they are, great, let's keep using them and look for ways to improve upon them. If they aren't, why not?

Here's my take. This was a bipartisan screwup - a cluster@^%$ - which both political parties failed in their oversight of the intelligence community and failed to ensure that the intelligence agencies had all of the capabilities at their disposal.

It would appear that parts of Able Danger live on. Similar techniques were used to capture Saddam Hussein - connecting the dots and family relationships to narrow the search area.

From a historical perspective, it would be interesting to know whether Able Danger worked, because it would show that the intel community didn't completely drop the ball. They did obtain raw data that could have been converted into something actionable.

It is my hope that the failures leading up to 9/11 are never repeated, and if it takes the flogging of Able Danger to do so, then this nation is safer for it.