Re: 9/11 Answers
Posted: 20 Jan 2013 11:41
Ex-Army Officer Accuses CIA of Obstructing Pre-9/11 Intelligence-Gathering
Sunday, 20 January 2013 07:46 By Paul Church and Ray Nowosielski, Truthout
Offering new revelations about the CIA's role in shutting down military intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal investigators and sharing some degree of blame for the 9/11 attacks.
In the wake of the devastating African embassy bombings of 1998, which left more than 200 dead, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) - responsible for the Pentagon's secret commando units - brought together specialists from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to begin mapping the al-Qaeda network. Based in the Information Dominance Center - also referred to as Land Information Warfare Activity, or LIWA - at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the team's advanced data-mining software found connections between known terrorists and subjects with matching profiles. This highly classified project was code-named Able Danger.
The project first came to public attention in June 2005, nearly one year after the 9/11 Commission released its report, when Congressman Curt Weldon gave a special orders speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Following attacks on Weldon's credibility, five Pentagon whistleblowers came forward to back up his claims, including Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a CIA-trained senior intelligence operations officer, Bronze Star Medal recipient and reserve Army lieutenant colonel with more than 22 years in the intelligence community.
Shaffer now claims the media's focus on the data-collection aspect of Able Danger missed the point. "Data mining kind of became, to use a film term, the MacGuffin," says Shaffer, a reference to a narrative device - often used in Alfred Hitchcock movies - which drives the plot while ultimately having no relevance to it. "That was the throwaway they wanted people to focus on. The overall project was something that covered the entire command structure of [SOCOM]. The project was put together to give the national command authority options."
In other words, the collecting of information about al-Qaeda's cell structures was only meant to be a first step in a larger action to be taken using the data. "It wasn't simply an experiment. My actual assignment wasn't Able Danger. I could never testify to the actual operational objectives assigned to me and my unit for the purposes of Able Danger." The Able Danger project, portrayed in most media reports as a mere data-mining exercise, was in fact fully integrated into a larger military effort to target and disrupt al-Qaeda. Its actual capabilities and objectives remain classified.
Shaffer contends that the most damning revelations lie in that still-classified aspect of the project, the operational side. Asked what the next step was to be against the so-called Brooklyn cell identified by Able Danger which he says included five of the 9/11 hijackers, Shaffer responded, "I can't talk about that."
At the center of the military's intended action was a long-term asset recruited by DIA years before Able Danger, a retired Afghan general who had direct access to al-Qaeda activities in Afghanistan. "We had a clear access point to al-Qaeda we were using for our operational purposes," says Shaffer. "The asset was a separate operation we were going to use for access. We were going to use still-classified capabilities." That all changed when CIA got involved.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14008-ex ... -gathering" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Sunday, 20 January 2013 07:46 By Paul Church and Ray Nowosielski, Truthout
Offering new revelations about the CIA's role in shutting down military intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal investigators and sharing some degree of blame for the 9/11 attacks.
In the wake of the devastating African embassy bombings of 1998, which left more than 200 dead, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) - responsible for the Pentagon's secret commando units - brought together specialists from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to begin mapping the al-Qaeda network. Based in the Information Dominance Center - also referred to as Land Information Warfare Activity, or LIWA - at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the team's advanced data-mining software found connections between known terrorists and subjects with matching profiles. This highly classified project was code-named Able Danger.
The project first came to public attention in June 2005, nearly one year after the 9/11 Commission released its report, when Congressman Curt Weldon gave a special orders speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Following attacks on Weldon's credibility, five Pentagon whistleblowers came forward to back up his claims, including Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a CIA-trained senior intelligence operations officer, Bronze Star Medal recipient and reserve Army lieutenant colonel with more than 22 years in the intelligence community.
Shaffer now claims the media's focus on the data-collection aspect of Able Danger missed the point. "Data mining kind of became, to use a film term, the MacGuffin," says Shaffer, a reference to a narrative device - often used in Alfred Hitchcock movies - which drives the plot while ultimately having no relevance to it. "That was the throwaway they wanted people to focus on. The overall project was something that covered the entire command structure of [SOCOM]. The project was put together to give the national command authority options."
In other words, the collecting of information about al-Qaeda's cell structures was only meant to be a first step in a larger action to be taken using the data. "It wasn't simply an experiment. My actual assignment wasn't Able Danger. I could never testify to the actual operational objectives assigned to me and my unit for the purposes of Able Danger." The Able Danger project, portrayed in most media reports as a mere data-mining exercise, was in fact fully integrated into a larger military effort to target and disrupt al-Qaeda. Its actual capabilities and objectives remain classified.
Shaffer contends that the most damning revelations lie in that still-classified aspect of the project, the operational side. Asked what the next step was to be against the so-called Brooklyn cell identified by Able Danger which he says included five of the 9/11 hijackers, Shaffer responded, "I can't talk about that."
At the center of the military's intended action was a long-term asset recruited by DIA years before Able Danger, a retired Afghan general who had direct access to al-Qaeda activities in Afghanistan. "We had a clear access point to al-Qaeda we were using for our operational purposes," says Shaffer. "The asset was a separate operation we were going to use for access. We were going to use still-classified capabilities." That all changed when CIA got involved.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14008-ex ... -gathering" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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