Hey Steam,

According to CNN Able Danger not able to proved yet. They're still digging, but it doesn't look good for your latest blame Clinton theory you pasted from the pages if Right Wing Wackery...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/22/able.danger/index.html

follow the money trail for the underlying motivation for weldon's pushing this to the forefront:

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/08/21/09/12/coinky-dink-2

LOL!!! So that blog is your news source? LOL!!!

Well there are more people who worked on the program (Able Danger) who are coming forward to cooberate the claims that ATTA and the others were identified in early 2000 - one of which is an active Navy Captain I believe. Not a reservist, but an active duty officer. There are others. This sin't going away so quickly or quietly.

As for what the Pentagon claims, they still haven't said it does not or never existed. They just said they can't find it. Maybe they should ask Sandy Berger what he did with it! LOL!!!

Oh here's a real news source rufus.

Navy Captain Backs Able Danger Claims (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166504,00.html)

she's got better credentials than you, bush apologist. as she said, she's covered this guy extensively over the years.

Madrak came to blogging after work as a Delaware County newspaper editor and insurance investigator.

LOL!!! My blogger is better than your blogger! LOL!!!

Who the Commission Chose to Believe (http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005302.php#trackbacks)

LOL!!! My blogger is better than your blogger! LOL!!!

Who the Commission Chose to Believe (http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005302.php#trackbacks)

Let's just forget bloggers, and go back to CNN. The Pentagon has said (you can believe them Steam can't you??) that they haven't found any evidence of it yet. Notice, that in this posting, and the previous one I made, I said yet. They are still looking of course, and if they find something, I'll say you're correct, but until then, it's looking bleak my friend... Sorry...

pawns of the liberal intellectual elite. Only Newsmax and the Newpspaer put out by the John Birch society are faor and balanced.

Weldon is really going out on a limb on this or he may know a lot more of what wasn't reported by the 9/11 Commission.

Senate May Hold Hearings on Able Danger, Info Sharing Thursday, August 25, 2005

http://www.foxnews.com/images/foxnews_story.gif

WASHINGTON — Aides to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Arlen%20Specter%27%29 ;)), R-Pa., are actively discussing a hearing on "Able Danger" and the larger issue of information-sharing between the Pentagon and the FBI, FOX News has confirmed.

Able Danger (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Able%20Danger%27%29;) ) is the code name for a military-intelligence unit that apparently learned a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Mohammad%20Atta%27%29 ;)) and other terrorists were already in the United States.

One of the central Able Danger claims — that military lawyers blocked the sharing of the Atta information from the FBI in the late summer and early fall of 2000 — will be a focus of the committee's if a hearing takes place, FOX News has confirmed.

Some analysts involved with Able Danger have recently gone public with their findings, saying they were discouraged from looking further into Atta, and their attempts to share their information with the FBI were thwarted, because Atta was a legal foreign visitor at the time.

"This story needs to be told. The American people need to be told what could have been done to prevent 3,000 people from losing their lives," said Rep. Curt Weldon (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Rep.%20Curt%20Weldon% 27%29;)), R-Pa.

Weldon drew attention to Able Danger by speaking about it on the House floor and publicly calling for the Sept. 11 commission to explain why the intelligence information wasn't detailed in its final report.

Some Able Danger analysts, including Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Lt.%20Col.%20Anthony% 20Shaffer%27%29;)) and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Capt.%20Scott%20Phill pott%27%29;)), claim that in October 2003, they told commission staffers of the presence of Al Qaeda operatives in the United States in 2000.

The Pentagon has been looking into what it knew and when it knew it, but spokesman Larry DiRita on Monday said defense officials have not been unable to verify the Able Danger claims so far.

"There appear to be more memories than there is information to substantiate those memories. We're reviewing the matter carefully, but thus far have not found what it is these handful of individuals seem to remember. At a certain point, we'll decide we have looked long enough and welcome anyone else coming forward with additional information," the Pentagon said in a statement.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed Thursday that the department has interviewed both Shaffer and Phillpott as part of its investigation.

But Weldon on Thursday urged the Pentagon not to issue any more statements on Able Danger until its findings are complete.

Weldon said in a statement that doing so "might give the unfortunate impression that its results are predetermined."

The congressman said he spoke to DiRita on Wednesday and that "he was backpedaling left and right," claiming he was misquoted about the status of the search.

"There's something very sinister going on here that really troubles me," Weldon told FOX News on Thursday, blasting the Sept. 11 commission (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Sept.%2011%20commissi on%27%29;)) for not taking the claims more seriously. He said some panel members were trying to smear Shaffer and Able Danger.

"What's the Sept. 11 commission got to hide?" Weldon asked. "The commission is trying to spin this because they're embarrassed about what's coming out. In two weeks with two staffers, I've uncovered more in this regard than they did with 80 staffers and $15 million of taxpayer money."

Sept. 11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean recently told FOX News that the panel is waiting for a response from the Pentagon. Until then, the commission has stood by its work, maintaining that that no documents they received from the military backed up the Atta claims.

Weldon added that at least five people on the federal payroll will testify under oath about the validity of the Able Danger intelligence.

According to Weldon, the FBI in September 2000 set up meetings with special operations officers on three separate occasions to transfer the Atta and Al Qaeda (search (http://java_script_:siteSearch%28%27Al%20Qaeda%27%29;)) information, but the transfers never took place.

Weldon said not only was Specter planning hearings on Able Danger, but that he also spoke with House Speaker Dennis Hastert about focusing more attention on the matter.

"When this is over, the Sept. 11 commission is going to have egg all over their face," he said.

FOX News' Catherine Herridge, Molly Hooper and Liza Porteus contributed to this report.

Weldon is really going out on a limb on this or he may know a lot more of what wasn't reported by the 9/11 Commission.

I don't think Weldon is going out on a limb there, he probably heard that there was something behind these claims, and wants to get down to the bottom of it. I can't blame him for that. That being said though, the investigations aren't turning up much of anything yet. But the Pentagon cronies are still looking for this "information" if it does indeed exist, I'm sure they'll find it. But if it doesn't, then it doesn't right?

I doub't it means it 'never' existed if they don't find anything. Who knows what happens in DC and why. Who knows who it serves if they can't find the charts they are looking for. Who knows if a deal was struck to protect those who this would hurt. I guess we can only wait and see. However it would seem rather strange that these people came forward about a phantom issue - especially considering that some of them are active military. I don't know what purpose it would serve them. I also think this would put them in way over their heads if they were fabricating it.

I doub't it means it 'never' existed if they don't find anything. Who knows what happens in DC and why. Who knows who it serves if they can't find the charts they are looking for. Who knows if a deal was struck to protect those who this would hurt. I guess we can only wait and see. However it would seem rather strange that these people came forward about a phantom issue - especially considering that some of them are active military. I don't know what purpose it would serve them. I also think this would put them in way over their heads if they were fabricating it.

...are a couple of things that we can agree upon in your above statement. One of them being that if they don't find it, this doesn't mean that it never existed. You're right, we don't know what records get destroyed and for what reason, but I'd be willing to go out a small limb here, and say that the chances of the military destroying something like this would be slim to none.

I think that if they are fabricating this story, then there is someone behind the scenes pulling strings helping them along, and I highly doubt that they will face any repercussions from it and or would be more than set-up for the rest of their lives financially. There are a lot of shady people bankrolling things over on the right side if the aisle (on the left as well). Just remember how much money these folks dumped into digging up dirt on Clinton, and it may be such that this is happening again, especially when the chips are starting to be down against their golden boy George W. Bush. Why not trot out more rumor and innuendo about Clinton, and try to lay blame at his feet for 9/11, and this would make Bush look better. And just for the record, no, I don't think 9/11 was Bush's fault either.

It's c&p but so what. It has more info about the Commission and how they originally claimed they were not told of AD. Other interesting tidbits too.

Able Danger's hidden hand

By Jack Kelly
August 15, 2005

The report of the September 11 Commission, once a best seller and hailed by the news media as the definitive word on the subject, must now be moved to the fiction shelves.
The commission concluded, you'll recall, that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon couldn't have been prevented, and that if there was negligence, it was as much the fault of the Bush administration (for moving slowly on the recommendations of Clinton counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke) than of the Clinton administration.
Able Danger has changed all of that.
Able Danger was a military intelligence unit set up by Special Operations Command in 1999. A year before the September 11 attacks, Able Danger identified hijack leader Mohamed Atta and the other members of his cell. But Clinton administration officials stopped them -- three times -- from sharing this information with the FBI.
The problem was the order Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick made forbidding intelligence operatives from sharing information with criminal investigators.
"They were stopped because the lawyers at that time in 2000 told them Mohamed Atta had a green card (he didn't) and they could not go after someone with a green card," said Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, who brought the existence of Able Danger to light.
The military spooks knew only that Atta and his confederates had links to al Qaeda. They hadn't unearthed their mission. But if the FBI had kept tabs on them (a big if, given the nature of the FBI at the time), September 11 almost certainly could have been prevented.
What may be a bigger scandal is that the staff of the September 11 Commission knew of Able Danger and what it had found, but made no mention of it in its report. This is as if the commission that investigated the attack on Pearl Harbor had written its final report without mentioning the Japanese.
Mr. Weldon unveiled Able Danger in a speech on the House floor June 27, but his remarks didn't attract attention until the New York Times reported on them Tuesday.
When the story broke, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, Indiana Democrat, co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, at first denied the commission had ever been informed of what Able Danger had found, and took a swipe at Mr. Weldon's credibility:
"The September 11 Commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of the surveillance of Mohamed Atta or his cell," Mr. Hamilton said. "Had we learned of it, obviously it would have been a major focus of our investigation."
Mr. Hamilton changed his tune after the New York Times reported Thursday, and the Associated Press confirmed, that commission staff had been briefed on Able Danger in October of 2003 and again in July of 2004.
It was in October of 2003 that Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives and destroyed some. Mr. Berger allegedly was studying documents in the archives to help prepare Clinton officials to testify before the September 11 Commission. Was he removing references to Able Danger? Someone should ask him before he is sentenced next month.
After having first denied that staff had been briefed on Able Danger, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said no reference was made to it in the final report because "it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks," the AP reported.
The only dispute over Atta's whereabouts is whether he was in Prague on April 9, 2001, to meet with Samir al Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer.
Czech intelligence insists he was. Able Danger, apparently, had information supporting the Czechs.
The CIA, and the September 11 Commission, say Atta wasn't in Prague April 9, because his cell phone was used in Florida that day. But there is no evidence of who used the phone. Atta could have lent it to a confederate. (It wouldn't have worked in Europe anyway.)
But acknowledging that possibility would leave open the likelihood that Saddam's regime was involved in, or at least had foreknowledge of, the September 11 attacks. And that would have been as uncomfortable for Democrats as the revelation that September 11 could have been prevented if it hadn't been for the Clinton administration's wall of separation.
The September 11 Commission wrote history as it wanted it to be, not as it was. The real history of what happened that terrible September day has yet to be written.

Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette.

The problem with all the "fact finding" that is still going on is that nobody gives a $hit about the facts. It's all about how we can blame the other side. We need to know what mistakes were made and how to correct them, not who to blame. Pre 9/11 the world was different and the level of threat and credibility was worlds from today. The right needs to stop yelling "Clinton" and the left needs to stop worrying about Halliburton and get our intelligence commmunities up to speed with the reality of a post 9/11 world.

The problem with all the "fact finding" that is still going on is that nobody gives a $hit about the facts. It's all about how we can blame the other side. We need to know what mistakes were made and how to correct them, not who to blame. Pre 9/11 the world was different and the level of threat and credibility was worlds from today. The right needs to stop yelling "Clinton" and the left needs to stop worrying about Halliburton and get our intelligence commmunities up to speed with the reality of a post 9/11 world.

Stop trying to make sense...it is...frightening.

/book have you thinking I guess?

a few reminders Steam:

a)the farcical 911 commission was only put together to half@$$edly investigate only after the WH realized politically they had nochoice (remember that 'only those with something to hide mantra?)

and

b)regardless of the truthfulness of AD and it's implications....if the commission had actually been allowed to investigate thoughly; i.e. the policy making decisions/makers...Bush et al in the WH would've come out covered in more mud than anything the right has yet come up with to blame Clinton ex post facto for.

The problem with all the "fact finding" that is still going on is that nobody gives a $hit about the facts. It's all about how we can blame the other side. We need to know what mistakes were made and how to correct them, not who to blame. Pre 9/11 the world was different and the level of threat and credibility was worlds from today. The right needs to stop yelling "Clinton" and the left needs to stop worrying about Halliburton and get our intelligence commmunities up to speed with the reality of a post 9/11 world.

I thought that was the point of the 9/11 commission, and as far as I know, they did their job, and did it well, and then when they brought their recommendations to W and the White House, they balked, at first, and then got behind their recommendations later on.

The right needs to stop worrying about Clinton, at least until Hillary gets elected to President.

We can still worry about Halliburton and others because the government seems to be spending our money willy nilly, and not getting any receipts for it. I'm sure we should just turn a blind eye to everything else because we might have another terrorist incident, and rally behind the Prez right? Come on, there is more going on in our country right now than this one issue if you haven't been paying attention.

The reality is this. Sooner or later, there is going to be another terrorist attack in this country. When this will be, I don't know, you don't know, and certainly if the terrorists are smart enough, the US Government and its allies won't know either. If you have one person, or a group of people who are willing to give up their lives to achieve destruction and mayhem, chances are good, you won't stop them. I think this is the reality of the situation, and it was before 9/11 and will continue to be forever. The US has enemies. Some seen, and some unseen. It's hard to identify terrorists because it could be me, it could be you, it could be any of the 250 some odd million people living in the United States.

What 9/11 did was to bring reality to America in general. In the past, we had been relatively isolated from terrorism because of our location. The whole globalization of the world brought terrorism to our doorstep. Remember, European nations, and others have been deluged with terrorist activities for a very long time, and they have lost many more people than the US has in terrorist incidents. We always thought that it couldn't happen to the US, but it did, and I'm sure it will again. I hope not, but I have to realistic about this, that it will indeed happen again sometime in the future. And we'll be relatively helpless to stop it, as we were the first time.

I thought that was the point of the 9/11 commission, and as far as I know, they did their job, and did it well, and then when they brought their recommendations to W and the White House, they balked, at first, and then got behind their recommendations later on.

The right needs to stop worrying about Clinton, at least until Hillary gets elected to President.

We can still worry about Halliburton and others because the government seems to be spending our money willy nilly, and not getting any receipts for it. I'm sure we should just turn a blind eye to everything else because we might have another terrorist incident, and rally behind the Prez right? Come on, there is more going on in our country right now than this one issue if you haven't been paying attention.

The reality is this. Sooner or later, there is going to be another terrorist attack in this country. When this will be, I don't know, you don't know, and certainly if the terrorists are smart enough, the US Government and its allies won't know either. If you have one person, or a group of people who are willing to give up their lives to achieve destruction and mayhem, chances are good, you won't stop them. I think this is the reality of the situation, and it was before 9/11 and will continue to be forever. The US has enemies. Some seen, and some unseen. It's hard to identify terrorists because it could be me, it could be you, it could be any of the 250 some odd million people living in the United States.

What 9/11 did was to bring reality to America in general. In the past, we had been relatively isolated from terrorism because of our location. The whole globalization of the world brought terrorism to our doorstep. Remember, European nations, and others have been deluged with terrorist activities for a very long time, and they have lost many more people than the US has in terrorist incidents. We always thought that it couldn't happen to the US, but it did, and I'm sure it will again. I hope not, but I have to realistic about this, that it will indeed happen again sometime in the future. And we'll be relatively helpless to stop it, as we were the first time.

At no time have I ever said we wouldn't be subjected to further attack. I have no doubt that it will continue. I also believe it is a military force that is used by the governments in the middle east to enforce their policy and attain their goals. What I would like is an end to that type of political behavior and the only way to do that is to change the way these governments take care of their business. That is what this war is about. Terrorists are difficult to identify but the source of that terrorism is not. We have to stop it at it's source by political means or failing that, militarily, and it can be stopped militarily. It just requires more destruction than we have so far been willing to commit. We will lose that reluctance when living through it becomes unbearable. the world will be a much better place if we are successful in the current method, however long it takes to reach it's goals.