Able Danger: Hold The Phone

Now this is where the story gets interesting:

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.

For the last week, all people had to go on was Rep. Weldon's comments, and many folks could discount them because Weldon was shilling a new book that touts the benefits of data mining as an intel tool, which is one of his pet projects. Now, we have someone involved in the actual project, but his comments contradict nearly everything that the 9/11 Commission has stated about information related to Able Danger to this point.

John Podhoretz explains:

So now we have some manifest contradictions:
He says he told 9/11 commission staffers about this in Afghanistan in 2003. They dispute it. So somebody isn't telling the truth.

The Able Danger papers shown to the 9/11 Commission at the Pentagon after the Afghanistan meeting did not feature anything mentioning Atta. So the 9/11 Commission says. So either the Commission staff is lying. Or no paper mentioned Atta and Shaffer is just wrong. Or the Defense Department misplaced the paperwork mentioning Atta. Or somebody at the Defense Department deliberately didn't give the Commission the material.

In the first case, if the 9/11 commission staff is lying, the hell to be paid is going to be colossal. Among other things, it could shake the current State Department to its foundations, since the 9/11 commission staff director, Philip Zelicow, is one of Condi Rice's most trusted aides.

In the second case, if the Defense Department withheld critical information on this matter, it's almost impossible to imagine the intensity of the bloodletting that will follow.

With nothing more to go on than Shaffer's name and his statement, I think it's appropriate to remain skeptical.

Ah to be young and skeptical. It's interesting to see leading journalists on the right continue to act skeptical about the information being developed about Able Danger, instead of taking everything at face value. It's also interesting to compare and contrast that reporting and analysis with the analysis and reporting of a Rather famous episode of media myopia (Rathergate), which saw absolutely no skepticism on the part of the media about those forged memos.

Jim Geraghty also echoes the need for skepticism and why everything needs to be double checked for veracity:

The reason I’ve been writing about this – and so many readers have been reading about it, and clamoring for more information – is because it’s so darn big.

* It would completely change the way we view our intelligence agencies. They weren’t bumbling before 9/11 – at least, Able Danger wasn’t.
* It would be a useful lesson for fighting terror from now on: Listen to the data-mining guys.
* This would be a smoking gun, proving that the single most significant impediment to effective counterterrorism before 9/11 was “the wall.”
* It would prove that the wall was worse than we ever imagined, rendering military intelligence’s tracking al-Qaeda moot, because they were forbidden by law from passing their findings on to anyone who take action on it.
* It would utterly destroy the 9/11 Commission’s reputation. A report that ignored a revelation like this is worthless.
* Everyone who said Jamie Gorelick belong testifying before the Commission instead of on it would be platinum-level vindicated.
* The Clinton administration Justice Department’s rejection of Mary Jo White’s objections to the wall would look unforgiveable.
* Everyone would have intense questions about what role, if any, Hillary Clinton played in recommending Jamie Gorelick for her Justice Department job. This is the sort of thing that can ruin a party’s reputation and derail a 2008 campaign.

And don’t even get me started on how much worse this makes Sandy Berger look.

The fact is that we need to get to the bottom of this, and we should not hold back because some people on the Left or the Right might get offended at the questions or the skepticism because basic information has not been verified. If everything about Able Danger proves to be accurate, it does change everything, and there will be hell to pay. It would also raise questions on what the Bush Administration did to alter or amend the policy after taking office, or a reevaluation of the policies on information sharing.