Able Danger: 'Something Bigger Here'

New evidence regarding prior government knowledge of 9/11 terrorists

by Rodger Herbst

Four years after the 9/11 attacks, evidence has surfaced of intelligence data on al-Qaeda operatives which was obtained prior to the attacks and destroyed by the Pentagon. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer and Mr. James Smith (a defense contractor at the time with Orion Scientific Systems) along with several others have come forward to state that they remember seeing Mohammed Atta's picture and/or his name in the data that was collected by a secret Pentagon intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" prior to September 11, 2001.

Shaffer noted that at the request of the Able Danger project leader Navy Captain Scott Phillpott, he and Smith repeatedly tried to arrange meetings with the FBI to provide information on al-Qaeda, but each time Pentagon lawyers cancelled the meeting at the last minute. (John Crewdson and Andrew Zajac "Atta known to Pentagon before 9/11" Chicago Tribune, 9/28/05)

For his efforts, Shaffer became a Pentagon smear target. In an interview, Shaffer described how the government spent almost $400,000 to discredit him. In the end, his security clearance was revoked by the Department of Defense (DOD), effectively ending his career. He and Smith are now under the council of Mark Zaid, whose specialty is defending whistleblowers in national security disputes. (www.alternet.org/story/26095)

On June 27 2005, Representative Curt Weldon, R-Penn., Vice Chair of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, delivered a 45-minute speech on the House floor outlining the nature of Able Danger and the data it had developed on al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter, was convened on Sept 21 2005. Five key Pentagon witnesses, including Shaffer and Smith, volunteered to testify, but were gagged by order of the Pentagon.

Committee Chair Specter suggested the Pentagon could be engaging in obstruction. Representative Weldon testified that the former Able Danger team members were prevented from testifying, according to the Pentagon, due to concern regarding classified information, in spite of the claims of the Pentagon to the Armed Services Committee that the bulk of the data was open source, i.e. freely available to the public. DOD lawyers relatedly claimed that no certificate was needed to destroy the massive amount of data.

From a transcript of the hearing, Weldon's words evoke the sentiment of the most ardent 9/11 truth advocate: "My goal now Mr. Chairman is the same as it was then: the full and complete truth about the run up to 9-11.... I promised Michael's wife & kids, and Ray's wife & kids & grandkids, that we would not stop until the day that we learned all the facts about 9-11. Unfortunately Mr. Chairman, that day has not arrived."

Eric Kleinsmith testified that he was ordered to destroy Able Danger's 2.25 terabytes of information, the equivalent of About one-third the contents of the Library of Congress. The data was deleted in May-June 2000.

Representative Weldon testified that he attempted on four separate occasions to brief 9/11 Commission members on a number of issues, including Able Danger. One commissioner who was finally briefed stated the 9/11 commissioners were never briefed by staff on Able Danger, and that the facts had to be brought out. Shaffer and Smith also tried to provide information to the 9/11 Commission, but, according to Shaffer, this information never made it to the panel members. (www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/17/sept.11.hijackers)

In a news release, 9/11 Commission co-chairs Kean and Hamilton said the panel became aware of Able Danger on October 21, 2003, when Philip Zelikow, White House insider and executive director of the 9/11 Commission met with three DOD intelligence officers at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Kean and Hamilton said the official memorandum from that meeting did not mention that any hijackers' names were brought up during the conversation.

According to Rory O' Connor of Alternet, Shaffer noted in a recent interview : "I'm honestly, you know, flabbergasted that there's such resistance on this ... And I don't know exactly which ant hill... we kicked over. We've all kind of talked amongst ourselves on this and there seems to be something else, something bigger here, that maybe we're just so close to that we can't see." (www.alternet.org/story/26095)

Something bigger to be sure, but why can't they see it?