Redstate

Holy Smokes!  Snell looks like a one-man 'cleaning' crew.....kinda like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction.

Nice understatement about the tinfoil rustling gently, streiff....

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't understand all of the mouth-foaming around here about the Able Danger story.

Let's assume that Weldon is a reliable source (which is a big assumption).  Let me get the sequence of events straight:

1.    Bad guys sneak into America through multiple means

2.    Ultra-Secret Pentagon project, perhaps using advanced data mining, ID's at least one bad guy as possibly being a bad guy inside of the United States

3.    Pentagon group does not tell FBI.  Possibly because they ID'd a bunch of people, possibly because of legal restrictions, possibly because the Pentagon doesn't want to reveal their super-cool techniques

4.    New president elected

5.    More bad guys sneak in

6.    FBI and CIA get scattered reports of more information about bad guys

7.    New President gets briefing "Head Crazy Bad Guy Determined to Strike Inside the United States" using info from #6

8.    New President and his CIA director (who also belonged to the old President) do very little to find out more.  Commander-in-Chief does not push Pentagon for info, perhaps unaware of Ultra-Super-Duper-Double-Secret Able Danger

9.    Meanwhile, super-secret Able Danger people are doing... what?  Chillin?  How about their chain-of-command?  Wasn't there somebody in DIA or SOCOM with access to Able Danger and PDB?

10.    Bad guys attack, killing thousands of innocent Americans, ending extremely short Pax Americana and causing recession

11.    War

12.    President appoints a commission, run by a Republican, to investigate how steps 1-10 happened

13.    Another War

14.    Commission releases a spy novel/report, which leaves out almost-forgotten-Ultra-Secret Able Danger project.

15.    Years later, Crazy House Republican tells world about Mega-Giga-Secret Able Danger project.  Obviously, nobody sane would keep this information to themself, especially if the Pentagon is actively using an incredibly powerful data mining system to track terrorists inside the US.  Definitely something we want in the NYT.

What are people at RedState.org ticked about?  Step 14.  That makes a lot of sense.

I don't see how this new sequence of events supports the righty-tin-foil "Saddam, Bin Laden, and Hillary Clinton got coffee in Prague to plan 9-11" theory any more than the lefty-tin-foil "Bush Knew and did nothing so that he could become dictator" theory.

before you go.

First, you aren't funny.

Second, no one is mouth-foaming.

Third, you obviously haven't read the either the links in this story or in the previous story.

Fourth, you have already been warned.

Fifth, say hi to all the fellas on The Pile™

this is potentially astonishing.  Thank you streiff.

-TS

I blogged a bit about the Cal Dreaming phenomenon here. It was in response to Kevin Drum's asking "what the hell is wrong with Democrats these days?"

Guess I should put it in a diary...

I speculate on the reasons why Able Danger was dismissed so easily in this post

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/494

But it is not hard to realize how a new program that got lucky while it was still being demonstrated could be dismissed.

In this post I not only lay out why it makes no sense for the Able Danger report to be dismissed at all in 2000, but indications in the 9-11 commission report itself of bias towards the Able Danger report and the DoD in general.

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/497

This thing reeks from stem to stern.  And what is clear is the screw up in 2000 can be laid at two people's feet (according to the 9-11 commission):  Berger and Clarke

This is like the "Magician's Nephew" when the Uncle, in the face of the glory of a new creation only heard roaring and cacaphony.

Leftists are as blind as the Uncle. When faced with corruption on their part, they simply deny the plain facts before them. It is really quite sad, in a way.

The 9-11 Commission's job was to find and connect all the intelligence dots that obviously didn't get connected prior to 9-11, and then recommend how we can connect the dots better and faster next time. It wasn't part of their job to erase the dots they didn't like, before connecting. Doing that, implies that their conclusions were arrived at well before the investigation was complete--something the Left endlessly accuses President Bush of doing with Iraq.

.... the wall comes tumbling down.

The Clinton administration missed the boat on the 9/11 attack, everyone knew it, but couldn't link the unconnected points together. It now looks like the big missing keystone DOT that the Jersey Girls were looking for has been found.

It must be remembered that the purpose of the 9/11 commission from the Democrat perspective was to get Bush before the 2004 election. So the parts that didn't fit the story the commission wanted was any DOT that pointed to the Clinton Administration.

The biggest DOT of all has is exposed. PDD-24, China-gate, the Gorelick wall and Sandy Berger's pants all connect together. Strange that Richard Clarke didn't know anything about Able Danger.

The Gorelick wall was erected in 1995 with PDD-24 to block the Clinton Chinagate campaign funds scam from being investigated by the FBI.

Connect the dots. We need an investigation of the investigators to find out why the American people were lied to.

But data mining of open source information for strategic and tactical purposes goes way back. I know, I built several of these systems for unnamed users back in the mid-80s.

It is a very effective means of terrorist hunting, since the terroists are such media friendly talkative types.

To dismiss what Able Danger found out of hand would be naive, especially if you were inside the government and could ask the proper questions of the investigative team.

I only hope we have similar teams doing this today.

others attended the same meetings:

your quote:

Mr. Felzenberg confirmed an account by Mr. Weldon's staff that the briefing, at the commission's offices in Washington, had been conducted by Dietrich L. Snell, one of the panel's lead investigators,...

and the remainder of the sentence:

...and had been attended by a Pentagon employee acting as an observer for the Defense Department; over the commission's protests, the Bush administration had insisted that an administration "minder" attend all the panel's major interviews with executive branch employees.

These "observers" and "minders" should come forward to shed light on these issues.  Obviously, if this is an ooops that Weldon found, Felzenberg & Snell are CYA'ing; and the DoD and Administration "minders" could call them out on it.

Colleen Rowley and Curt Weldon. It should start pronto, since Weldon's allegations seem much more specific and broader than Rowley's. Namely, Rowley was looking at one piece, from one lonely outpost, with minimal local support, while the Able Danger crew was at the center of a seemingly self-hampered bureaucracy looking at everything.

As far as comparatively important dots go, the Able Danger dots seem vastly more important.

What did we do to ourselves and who did it?

"The Gorelick wall was erected in 1995 with PDD-24 to block the Clinton Chinagate campaign funds scam from being investigated by the FBI."

10ksnooker,  

I'm sorry, but you just blew about five circuits in my widdle head.  Could you, would you,  expound on that point?  

Thanks  //PSG

We had actionable intelligence and ignored it.

Followed by the cover up commission.

Weldon has said he plans to get his committee to begin hearings when they return from recess. I agree. Weldon has much more specific information and should take the lead. It would be nice if the committee would let him head up the investigation.

I do believe we have found the Clinton legacy.

There might be other information that ABLE DANGER has about Atta.  I wonder... just what did this program ferret out on the guy?

We know SOCOM has gotten a lot more authority in the war on terror.  I have to wonder if ABLE DANGER was how SOCOM made its bones with Rumsfeld...

To dismiss what Able Danger found out of hand would be naive

To someone who understands data mining, that is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. But I assure you that 95% of the people in the country, and 80% of the people in the government, have no clue what it is or what it can do. When you describe it to them, they think you are nuts, and they give you a hundred reasons why it can't possibly work.

There are little pockets in the government (places where they answer the phone "Hello?") that understand this stuff well. They've been doing it a long time and they know it works. But it's always in some Spooky place where they can't tell anybody about it. So nobody outside the Spooky Places knows anything about it.

Until recently, the only serious commercial application was the fraud detection stuff that watches the transaction streams from Visa and Mastercard looking for "out of the ordinary" transactions. Wal*Mart is a big user now, but they aren't talking either; it's part of their Secret Recipe for beating the world on inventory turns.

It is slowly creeping into use as people see competitors or others that they trust adopting it. But in 1999, I could see the average FBI guy dismissing it as a crock.

I doubt the FBI guy would dismiss the CIA guy telling him how it all worked and what it could do. It wouldn't take much to show it dance.

But ... It would also be pretty easy for Clinton White House lawyers to blow it off. Same goes for the 9/11 commission, especially since it didn't fit the 'blame Bush' template they were working against.

If the 9/11 investigators were truly interested in finding out what had happened and how to fix it, I would bet they could have called on some CIA or NSA expert types to brief them on the concepts of data mining open source materials for terrorists.

As to commercial use, it is a function of cost. The cost per cpu cycle and data bit stored has now come down to where mortals can afford it. There also is the cost of informnation input, which in days gone by was done with optical scanners and OCR conversion. The Internet has dramatically lowered the input costs. I have it on really good authority that it was used, just as Able Danger used it, way back when it would cost $100 million to build one system. The workstations used for data reduction and anaylsys would cost upwards of $50k each. Sold a lot of them.

But you are right about the public. And that is the rock the guilty will hide under. It makes no sense to the general public how this could possibly work.

MIT has had an active project called haystack which focuses on the client side software. They have even produced an eclispe plugin for software applications. There are several associative search and data mining tools that are now commercially available.

The beauty of the technique with terrorsts is they are so media friendly -- because they have to be.

So many mistakes, no wonder he was lost.

1. Bad guys come in on Visas - no sneaking
   
   
2. New intelligence gathering method using data mining on public information ID's the two ring leaders who are also two of the pilots on 9-11, plus two other key players also probably leaders and pilots.  They do this one year ahead of 9-11
   
   
3.  Pentagon group is told not to tell FBI, and is told not to monitor people in the US.  Even though the FISA laws do not apply to visa holders.  Plus, no one monitors the four AQ members even thouhg the entire national security apparatus is on the hunt for AQ cells in the US (according to Berger and Clarke)
   
   
4. Thankfully, yes.  
   
   
5. It was clear the ring leaders of 9-11 (2-4 of the ones identified by Able Danger) were the only ones who knew the mission up until the final day.  The others were mindless soldiers.  Without the leaders and the plan they had no actions to take - typical liberal rationalization.
   
   
6. Yes, but they never seem to follow the 4 found in the summer of 2000 - why is that?
   
   
7.  Yep, a schockingly obvious briefing that Bin Laden wanted to attack us.  Duh.  No plans, and no mention of the four people identified in 2000.
   
   
8. that is because, fool, Able Danger was disbanded in January 2001 under direction of Clinton's administration and budgets....
   
   
9.  See number 8 and realize why ignorance is not bliss.
   
   
10. You mean 9-11, with planes flown by two of the people identified in the summer of 2000, maybe all four.  And the only one;s who knew the plans....
    
    
11.  You would prefer waiting for more attacks?
    
    
12. Yes.  But on that commission is Gorelick, who worked with Bergler, who purloined and accidentally destroyed Clarke's memos from the same time period when Able Danger identified the four terrorists.  And somehow, Bergler was purloining these Clarke documents at the same time the commission was getting their first breifing on Able Danger.  And the two people who were completely responsible for counter terrorism in 2000 were Bergler and Clarke (at least that is what they stated to the commission).
    
    
13.  You would prefer Saddam armed himself and terrorists with WMDs first?
    
    
14. Yes, the commission left out the part where Clarke and Bergler missed an AQ cell in 2000, using a law Gorelick established to stop all investigation of the cell.  They did not even simply track them?  Why is that?
    
    
15.  It seems you are afraid to face the possibilities that Bergler/Clarke/Gorelick might have tried to cover something up?

Why would a PR crazy administration squash a chance to bust an AQ cell in 2000, right before an election, to show off their national security bona fides?  Why did they not go after the cell?  hmmmm.

Hope you come back and at least read this lesson on how to be informed and curious to new information.

Yes.  This was simply an new application of technology and methodologies used in other intel and commercial areas.  The use was on public domain information on people in the US.

My guess is it ran into a posse comitatus backlash.  Which would be understandable.

No one wanted 9-11.  But a lot of short sighted decisions gave it to us.

... His movements and some of his associations. What the spooks knew from following him around, or eavesdropping on him is anyone's guess. I think the infamous Iraqi agent Prague meeting was probably spook work.

The Able Danger program likely had many parts, the spooks and classified intel plays a big role in the whole -- as it always does.

Good chance that it helped a lot.

I think these disclosures will play out, along the lines you specify, but I remain leery of connecting the dots all the way to the worst conclusions. It's bad enough that we have found the Clinton legacy to have been idiotically misplaced attention, I don't think it will extend straight to criminal neglect, even though monday morning quarterbacking and second guessing get there.

Clearly, DOD is more on the ball than the rest of the hierarchy, and there need to be bright lines separating the military from the civilian spheres, but the non-military intelligence and investigative agencies are simply taking a well justified beating with every disclosure.

I wish Weldon well, and his committee is the right approach, certainly instead of another "blue-ribbon independent commission".

It's time for some congressional accountability, and I hope Pat Roberts joins in soon as well from the Senate side.

The targets were foreigners, and newspapers are fair game to any intel group. The breakdown came in the handoff. Able Danger went to the FBI with the actionable intelligence information, the Gorelick wall went up and the FBI never engaged.

The FBI doing the domestic side would preclude possee comitatus being a factor.

Here's the latest on the Corner - courtesy of JPod:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_08_07_corner-archive.asp#072781

And here's the money quote on follow up from the AP/NYT story:

"Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his House counterpart, Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, are looking into the issue."

This may get very interesting very soon.

Now, what was that about Karl Rove and Plamequiddick . . . .??????????????

I don't think this was necessarily intentional, nor criminal, I think it was the product of the climate in the Clinton White House. Was it negligent, yeah I would go there.

You would have thought that after the WTC was attacked in 1993, the Kobar towers were leveled in 1996, two of our embassies were destroyed in 1998, UBL declares war on the US in 1998, the Clinton White House may have gotten the hint, but guess not. The Clinton White House simply didn't care about the terror problem, turned it over to law enforcement, and hoped it would go away.

In the end it didn't go away and we missed the chances to take the terrorists down when they were weaker.

I agree with you, it should not come into play.

neither should FISA since it doesn't cover visa holders.  I meant that was the irrational excuse someone likely came up with to squash Able Danger and make them do their research outside the US (which is what they did after being rebuffed in their request to alert the FBI).

What other rational would stop a PR hungry administration from taking out an AQ cell handed to them on a silver platter?  They did not even TRACK these people. It all got squashed!

This is the one rationale that could make sense.  It was started by the DoD so it was all tainted evidence based on a supposition of posse comitatus being used by the defence.

The 9-11 commission report says just the opposite, and sites statements by Bergler that FISA waivers were going fast and furious.

Check this out for details (below the updates)

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/497

From NRO online

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_08_07_corner-archive.asp#072781

In a story filed at 7:10 PM, the Associated Press is now confirming all the particulars of what will now forever be called the Able Danger disaster. The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts.

And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta.

And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies.

I was very skeptical of this Able Danger stuff about Atta, thought it was just sme way Rep. Curt Weldon was trying to sell a book. No longer. This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer -- the fact that, as Andy McCarthy alluded to, the "intelligence wall" set up by 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick when she was in the Justice Department did, in fact, cause the linchpin of the 9/11 attacks to evade capture by American law enforcement.

So was the staff a) protecting the Atta timeline or b) Jamie Gorelick or c) the Clinton administration or d) itself, because it got hold of the information relatively late and the staff was lazy?

We deserve answers.

I need more time to get through your whole post, let alone the entire 9/11 report (which I've refused to buy or read so far, mainly out of the principle that if they had to say that much, much of it wasn't worth saying), but one of the lines you quote really sticks out in its outrageousness:

"The Department of Defense is the behemoth among federal agencies. With an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire."

I'm gonna test the limits here, using the Hanna-Barbara cartoon method, but who the &^## wrote that piece of (*!&#(@# comment?????????

That's so far beyond bias it's disgusting. What do you call a statement that combines anti-intellectual laziness, sloth, and irrelevant sneering? Whatever it's called, maybe the congress should re-examine where it came from.

Good god!

Yeah, you can tell that line caught my eye right away.

We was had....The 9-11 commission was a joke.

I'm about to engage in the kind of KOS-esque tin-foilish behavior I loathe. Forgive me.

President Clinton, in an address to the nation, publically fingered Al Qaeda and Bin Laden after the Cole bombing. Yet he wasn't briefed about Able Danger's findings? Hmm. Remember that Louis Freeh was persona non grata in 1999, so there may have been more reasons than one to keep this from the FBI. Of course, Waco is another good reason not to pursue this (at least according to the report). Maybe he was briefed, and this is why Berger stuffed his pants.

This is rank speculation, and I already feel dirty.

One other point. The Lodi and Portland cells are proof that rolled-up Al Qaeda cells don't make news. The initial reaction is to criticize the administration for falsely accusing innocent Muslims. Then when they're proven guilty, people quickly forget. A cell that isn't caught can lead to a catastrophe. The current government should be given some credit for the lesser reported prosecutions. They're big, whether the NYT thinks so or not.

The Clinton White House cared more about the Gore White House than the terrorists. Don't rock the boat mentality.

How else do you explain the Cole bombing non-reaction?

of a lot of things-the 9-11 commission first and foremost, but also how screwed up the Clinton administration was regarding intelligience and information sharing.

I am curious to see this one unfold.

If we're just finding out about this 9/11 detail now, what might we find out about Iraq down the road? Nudge, nudge Mr. Hayes.

A lot of people have a lot invested in covering up the full truth about Iraq and Al Qaeda.

What did the FBI have to do with the ATF operation in Waco? All they did was screw up the ending. If the FBI had been involved from the beginning, I bet there wouldn't have been a need for a fire.

Speculation and discussions are how you arrive at conclusions. I don't see anyone drawing hard conclusions yet. When that happens I think we will all know.

Yep, Presidnet Clinton fingered a lot, he just didn't do anything significant about the terrorists plotting and planning to blow up NY city. The Gorelick wall was specifically designed to funnel all sharing of intel through her desk at the Justice Department, so the FBI didn't get to decide.

When you examine the trail of the terrorists, WTC 1993, Khobar towers 1996, two African embassys 1998, UBL declares war 1998, Cole bombing 2000, looks to me like President Clinton wasn't too big on terror fighting -- Or he just had a long string of loses.

If you wanted to show off why you keep Clinton/Gore going you start rolling up AQ terrorists...

Where's the down side?

........some of us have thought all along. And I am really glad to see you guys understand how to decipher it, because average "Joe America", like me doesn't know or understand this stuff. We just scramble to speculate based on character of the elected official as we are exposed to them. Many of us have "common sense" speculated that the ball was dropped by the Clinton administration, and kicked "out of bounds" to the Bush Administration.

I hope and pray that you are correct about the "Gore White House" theory, as some of my more "Far right" friends have determined the Clinton's were much more knowledgeable of the raw data as the Co-Presidents that they were, than I personally dare to think?!?! I hope that kind of speculation is absurd, but regardless I hope we can keep Bill out of the World Order Political realm, and he is gearing up for that as we all know.

President Bush was thrown a curve ball, and the majority of us believed that, and it is really nice to see strong evidence to support it. Hopefully the tail is no longer wagging the dog and all the agencies, FBI, HLS, CIA, etc are learning to cooperate, communicate and develop the strategies to at least be prepared for the worst.

IT IS NEVER CROWDED ALONG THE EXTRA MILE

10ksnooker wrote:

"The biggest DOT of all has is exposed. PDD-24, China-gate, the Gorelick wall and Sandy Berger's pants all connect together. Strange that Richard Clarke didn't know anything about Able Danger.

The Gorelick wall was erected in 1995 with PDD-24 to block the Clinton Chinagate campaign funds scam from being investigated by the FBI.

Connect the dots. We need an investigation of the investigators to find out why the American people were lied to."

This is such an excellent point, and its got me thinking.

I'm wondering if the Gorelick Wall had something to do with Oil for Food and Mark Rich as well. Mark Rich was tied recently to the Oil for Food program, but I don't remember how much traction that story got.

Now IF Mark Rich was making money from that corrupt program, and in the meanwhile his wife was donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons, then is it such a stretch to think that perhaps Chinagate wasn't the only reason for the existence of the Gorelick Wall? That perhaps the Clintons knew that Rich's money that was being donated to Hillary's Senate campaign and Bill's library was coming indirectly from Saddam through Oil for Food profits?

Speculation, I know, but the Mark Rich thing has stuck in my craw since Clinton pardoned him. Far fetched maybe, but when it comes to Bill and Hill, I believe that they are capable of any amount of deceit.

but I think this does shed some light on what was in Sandy Berger's pants, and makes his actions-which we know were likely to protect the administration in some capacity-seem more unerstandable, if not more relevent and unethical.

I never bought that what he left with was inconsequential stuff-he fully understood the importance and rules regardig the handling of top scret information-he broke those rules for a reason.

I'd just as soon this story not get tied up with residual crackpot theories on Vince Foster and the Mina airfield as well as the prolific number of real scandals in the Most Ethical Administration in History™.

Sticky this story at the top of the site for awhile. This story isn't going away.

And NROonline is all over it as well - here's the TKS post from this morning:

http://tks.nationalreview.com/archives/072802.asp

RS - keep this the lead for a while - let's treat the Sheehan story and NARAL with the attention they deserve.

Captain Ed has another post up on this that is very interesting:

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005200.php#comments

He has a post that contains all of his commentary and coverage of the Able Danger issue here:

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005198.php#comments

Congress needs to get on this immediately, and Bush needs to get out on front of this as well. We need to strike while the iron is hot...

Pin this Able Danger story to the top of the page Red State, this is much bigger than Rathergate.

...Elliott Spitzer's deputies."

So is Debra Cohn, Former Special Counsel to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick.

FWIW.

I have a new bumper sticker for those Volvo-drivers who love those so much:

"The 9/11 Commission lied about why the people died".

...how did you do that web page transition??

I understand, are you asking about the html tags?

...to the discussion, but I refer to the "transition effects" when you click on the link (like blinds, etc.)

Imagine the vertical text is written horizontally

<

a

space

href=

url

>

Your text describing the website

<

/a

>

for nothing.

Don't forget quotation marks on both side of the URL

...but I now see that the effect is embedded in the source page:

META http-equiv="Page-Enter" content="RevealTrans (Duration=2, Transition=23)"

META http-equiv="Page-Exit" content="RevealTrans (Duration=2, Transition=23)"

...'nough of this.  Back to the thread.  Thanks,