Able Danger: Why Did Pentagon Spike Testimony

Captain Ed wonders why the Pentagon sought to keep employees from testifying about Able Danger before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He believes that the Pentagon is in ass-covering mode. Why?

Now, there is good reason that the Pentagon doesn't want classified information being released in the course of testimony, and that's a legitimate issue. The question of whether Able Danger did uncover the 9/11 plot, and the USS Cole attack planning well in advance of both attacks will necessarily involve discussion of classified materials and practices. That can be discussed behind closed doors for national security reasons. However, if the testimony is limited to process and practice, as opposed to the underlying nature of Able Danger itself, one can determine how and why that data was not passed on. And, it is the failure to pass on information that is crucial to this investigation - why did the warnings not get passed on to those that can act on them.

Now, the Pentagon is playing politics with this issue, when they knew that the Committee would be conducting public hearings. Sec. Def. Rumsfeld needs to address the Committee as to why they're not cooperating.

The witness list for the hearings includes former Army Major Eric Kleinsmith, who would testify as to the destruction/shredding of Able Danger related information. According to some earlier reports, more than 2.5 terabytes of data were destroyed relating to the program. That's a huge amount of information. Now, the official explanation is that this was a routine process, but one has to wonder why it was destroyed if Able Danger did pick out 9/11 related hijackers well ahead of the attacks and whether that information was included in the information that was destroyed.

Tom Maguire thinks he has figured out why the Pentagon may be downplaying Able Danger, which he first noted August 10:

The obvious whipping boys of summer would be Clinton/Berger/Gorelick, for fostering an overly legalistic approach to the War on Terror; Bush/Tenet/Rice for failing to draw this information from the system in the summer of 2001, when we were at a high terrorist threat level and Tenet's hair was on fire; and Gen. Hugh Shelton and the Pentagon. Gen. Shelton (ret.) was Chairman of the JCS in Jan 2001 - if he heard and downplayed the Able Danger briefing then, he and the Pentagon might prefer to see it buried now [emphasis added].

It is quite possible that the Pentagon itself downplayed the Able Danger information, and now doesn't want to be the scapegoat. This is well past the time to figure out who was to blame. It was a cluster$^@# since we had data that could have stopped the threat before it materialized.

The real issue is whether we're using similar techniques to stop terrorists now. Has anyone actually learned from the mistakes of 9/11 to make sure that we're not caught unawares? I doubt it. These are huge bureaucracies we're talking about (DoD,CIA, NSA, etc.) and it doesn't matter that they have to answer to the National Security Advisor or the Intel Tsar, or the President himself. Intel can be pigeonholed or spiked at any intermediate level within those organizations before anyone at the top has the ability to act on them. The issue is whether the organizations know enough to make sure that intel flows freely to the policy makers, and I fear that we are still running into roadblocks.

UPDATE:
Dr. Sanity was liveblogging the hearings, such as they are, and raises some truly disturbing issues. AJ Strata follows up, and notes that Rep. Weldon states that Lt. Col Shaffer's security clearance was revoked only two days ago, which is right on the eve of the hearings. Retribution? Quite possibly, since his security clearance was simply suspended to that point.

What is the Pentagon trying to hide? Why are they trying to hide this information. Is the underlying information so embarrassing that there are serious attempts to keep this out of the public eye? Dr. Sanity:

From my perspective, listening to this testimony, it seemed that someone or some group went to a considerable effort to destroy all evidence of Able Danger in mid-2000. When it resurfaced again in 2004; similar attempts to suppress and destroy informtion were immediately implemented.

Folks, this is serious stuff.

No kidding.

Technorati: Able Danger, weldon, and 9/11