The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
Published September 20, 2005
Tomorrow's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Pentagon's top-secret
military intelligence unit known as Able Danger should be quite a show.
Rep. Curt Weldon, who deserves most of the credit for bringing the
formerly forgotten unit to public attention, is promising as much with a
list of potential witnesses who he says will be able to testify that Able
Danger identified ringleader Mohamed Atta and several other terrorists
inside the United States at least a year before the September 11 attacks.
The list includes:
Naval Capt. Scott Philpott, an Able Danger
team leader, according to the Pentagon, who approached the September 11
commission with what he knew about Atta in 2004.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the Defense
Intelligence Agency employee who acted as liaison with Able Danger team
members. Col. Shaffer was the first to come forward with allegations that
Pentagon lawyers rebuffed his attempts to coordinate a meeting between
Able Danger analysts and the FBI. An FBI
agent, who, according to Mr. Weldon, will testify under oath that she
organized the meetings between the FBI and Able Danger analysts to discuss
Atta. A Pentagon employee, who will testify
that he was ordered to destroy 2.5 terabytes of information Able Danger
had compiled, which is roughly equivalent to one-fourth of all the printed
material in the Library of Congress. According to Mr. Weldon, this person,
as yet unidentified, will also name the officer who gave the order.
As the Pentagon acknowledged earlier this
month, destroying sensitive intelligence is not in itself unusual, because
the Pentagon is forbidden to spy on Americans. "In a major data-mining
effort like [Able Danger], you're reaching out to a lot of open sources
and within that there could be a lot of information on U.S. persons," said
Pat Downs, a senior policy analyst in the Office of the Undersecretary of
Defense. We can only assume that the Able Danger chart identifying 60
known terrorists including Atta was lost in this destruction. So far, this
chart is the only known material evidence that would corroborate Mr.
Weldon's claims. The Pentagon has found similar charts, but none which
include Atta. However, as with nearly
everything related to Able Danger, there is some confusion. The employee
who will testify that he destroyed the data will apparently also allege
that a Special Operations Command general, who was in the Able Danger
chain of command, was "incensed when he found out that material that he
was a customer for was destroyed without his approval," said Mr. Weldon.
If true, this might mean that the order to destroy the Able Danger data
came from elsewhere in the Pentagon, which could lead one to speculate
that it was not part of normal procedure. We
hoped the Pentagon would clarify some of the particulars regarding Able
Danger, and so it has. It has acknowledged that Able Danger existed as
well as discovered three other defense employees who recall the unit's
identification of Atta before the September 11 attacks. Its confirmation
of Able Danger, the existence of similar charts and Mr. Weldon's witness
list, do, however, place further pressure on the September 11
commissioners to explain why they didn't mention the unit in their final
report. A new thread concerning the worst
attack on U.S. soil is beginning to come to light. Although it is far too
soon to conclude that this is a major scandal, it should be pursued with
vigor and complete transparency.
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