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Media is a Plural December 8, 2005
Able Danger and Unaccountability
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A December 8 Washington Post article by Dana Milbank, "Intelligence
Design and the Architecture of War," described a question-and-answer
session that followed a recent National Press Club speech by former
deputy defense secretary (now World Bank president) Paul Wolfowitz.

"How do you account for the intelligence failures...in Iraq?"
Wolfowitz was asked.

"Well," he said after a long pause, "I don't have to."

Precisely. That very lack of accountability at the highest levels of
the Pentagon continues to be one of the biggest reasons why the
world's only superpower is losing the war on terror.

Accountability for intelligence failures, Wolfowitz explained, just
wasn't his problem. "And it's not just because I don't work for
the U.S. government anymore," he said. "In my old job I didn't
have to. I was like everyone else outside the intelligence community...
We relied on the intelligence community for those judgments, so the
question is, in a way, how do they account for it?"

To Milbank, the pass-the-buck, laissez-faire attitude exhibited by
Wolfowitz "was an unexpected response from a man who, as the
Pentagon's No. 2, sat atop 80 percent of the nation's intelligence
budget and an intelligence agency that made particularly aggressive
claims about Iraq's weapons."

But after months of chasing the Pentagon for answers about, and
accountability for, intelligence failures relative to the Able Danger
data mining operation - which purportedly identified four 9/11
hijackers a year before the worst terror attacks ever on US soil -
the Wolfowitz "What Me Worry?" response was exactly what I
expected.

Just this week, for example, after literally months of silence, the
Department of Defense finally provided an answer - of sorts - to my
many queries.

That's the good news. Now the bad news: the answer is "No."

More specifically, as this email message from my now-frequent pen pal,
DOD press officer Commander Gregory Hicks, puts it:

Rory - Per our conversation last week, the Secretary, Mr. Di Rita and
Mr. Whitman have all declined your interview request.

R/ Greg

I felt badly for Greg, having read him the riot act a few days earlier
out of frustration at the continued stonewalling by DOD and the related
Defense Intelligence Agency. But I felt worst for the rest of us, since
responding to inquiries, and providing answers about accountability, is
(at least nominally) Greg's job.... Or is it?

Given that 'Information Operations' is a key component of DOD's
ongoing war on the press...ah, global terrorism, and 'Information
Dominance' is its goal, and the 'Fourth Estate' has lately been
redefined as the 'Fourth Front,' it's not surprising that the
information exchange with Hicks and a prior parade of press officers at
DOD and DIA have thus far been strictly one-way.

Still, it's more than a little odd that Pentagon officials continue
to pretend they know nothing about Able Danger. After all, the United
States Army initiated the entire program! Surely the Army is still part
of the Department of Defense?

Nonetheless, months of queries concerning Able Danger elicited nothing
other than this week's denial of my requests to speak to Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, or his spokesmen Larry Di Rita and Bryan
Whitman, or indeed ANYONE in the Pentagon.

My quest began in September, when Hick's predecessor, Lieutenant
Colonel Chris Conway, told me DOD "had nothing" on Able Danger and
my queries should instead be made directly to DIA.

But when I did so, DIA spokesmen Don Black and Commander Terrance
Sutherland each subsequently said my questions should more properly be
addressed to DOD. By the time I went back to DOD, LTC Conway had moved
on, and Commander Hicks had taken his place. But Hicks was also unable
to find any information. So he asked me, "Do you have any more info
on this that can gain us some clarity on it and help define our
search?"

It was hard to believe, I told him, that neither DOD nor DIA had any
data on Able Danger, since "several DIA analyst and officials" had
toured a secret Raytheon-run Able Danger facility in Garland, Texas
"between approximately August 2000 and January 2001.

"Maybe you should query Art Zuelke, the DIA chief of the
Transnational Warfare Group or his colleague, Cal Temple, who was sent
down to find out how the project was working," I suggested. "Or
maybe try the National Reconnaissance Office, since even to enter the
facility one had to have an additional NRO clearance."

Despite the specifics, DOD remained somehow unable (or unwilling) to
find any reference to Able Danger anywhere within its vaunted
information systems.

I had also repeatedly asked for information about the clumsy and
transparent attempts to silence Able Danger whistleblower Tony Shaffer,
a DIA employee who had earned the Pentagon's ire by speaking to
journalists about the program. Shaffer was slated to testify before
Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee on September 23, until the
Pentagon pulled the plug at the last minute and refused permission.

"Why the gag order against Shaffer and other Able Danger
personnel?" I asked DIA spokesman Sutherland.

"I know nothing about it," Sutherland responded. "Show me the gag
order!"

And Commander Hicks could only add, "I am not getting any responses
yet. When I do, I'll let you know."

Meanwhile, Shaun Waterman of UPI learned from Shaffer's attorney,
Mark Zaid, that a letter signed by the DIA's principle deputy general
counsel, Robert Berry, specifically forbid Shaffer from testifying.
After Shaffer had been "told verbally" he would not be allowed to
testify, Zaid had requested the decision be put in writing. But somehow
the spokesman for the DIA was "unable" to find anything out from
the principle deputy general counsel for the DIA.

For that matter, the DIA spokesmen might also check in with DOD flack
Bryan Whitman, who told the press on September 20 that the Pentagon had
blocked testimony by Shaffer and others. Whitman said in a statement
that testimony about the program "would not be appropriate - we have
expressed
our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss
Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum." He offered
no other detail about the Pentagon's reasons for blocking the
testimony.

The Pentagon might also want to talk with Retired General Hugh Shelton,
who confirmed the Able Danger al-Qaida data hunt to Sacramento Bee
reporter James Rosen this week, and said he was briefed twice about it
before Sept. 11 attacks.

"Right after I left SOCOM (Special Operations Command), I asked my
successor to put together a small team, if he could, to try to use the
Internet and start trying to see if there was any way that we could
track down Osama bin Laden or where he was getting his money from or
anything of that nature," Shelton told Rosen, who noted that
"Shelton's assertions are significant because they raise new
questions about the government's knowledge of the al-Qaida network
before the Sept. 11 attacks, and about the subsequent findings of the
9/11 commission, set up by Congress to probe the attacks. "

Shelton said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, now Army chief of staff, set up a
team of five to seven intelligence officers after Shelton was promoted
to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1997 and Schoomaker
succeeded him as Special Operations commander. Schoomaker briefed
Shelton on the program's progress in late 1997, and then sometime
between 1999 and 2001, Shelton received a more extensive briefing from
Defense Intelligence Agency officers involved in the program.

In its final report, the 9/11 commission said it had not identified any
of the 19 hijackers before the attacks. But Able Danger operatives like
Tony Shaffer say they tried unsuccessfully to bring it to the attention
of the Commissioners.

How do the 9/11 Commissioners account for their intelligence failures?
They don't. Instead they simply deny them, as Thomas Kean, Lee
Hamilton, Tim Roemer and Slade Gorton have done repeatedly ever since
the Able Danger story first broke in August. Why? Because - like Paul
Wolfowitz and his former boss Donald Rumsfeld - they don't have to.
Not yet at least.



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Posted by roc @ 5:47 pm
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Able Danger II
4 Comments»
I wouldn't call it a 'laissez-faire' attitude - its precisely
the opposite.

Thanks for your work, more generally.

Comment by Bill Bergman - 12/9/2005 @ 8:12 am

Excellent reporting, Rory.

Comment by Bill Fisher - 12/10/2005 @ 8:48 am

This deliberate obfscation is no surprise from this administration,
obviously the most deceitful and damaging administration in our
history. Look at the record in terms of our economy, our freedoms
supposedly guaranteed by the constitution, our ecology, our reputation
world wide, our education, etc., etc., all going down the tubes.

The answer: A democratic congress elected in '06 and immediate
impeachment of these dishonest, phony, uncultured baboons who are
running things in Washington.

Gerry Long

Comment by gerrylong - 12/10/2005 @ 6:05 pm

Was 9/11 Designed As The Pretext To War?
I have suggested before that the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria,
and Iran had been considered by the think tank PNAC. Zbigniew
Brzezinski in his book "The Grand Chess Game," also described
Eurasia as perhaps the most critical strategic place on earth in terms
of control of energy production. If these plans to invade Afghanistan
and Iraq were in their advanced stages of articulations, it wouldn't
be hard to imagine, that when evidence surfaced of an attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that there would be a strong
desire to suppress the intel. Many times in the past when giant
international banking concerns saw an opportunity to make billions off
of money transfers in the build up to war, that just such convenient
disasters were caused to set the war wagons in motion. It wouldn't be
much of a stretch of the imagination to envision that 9/11 was such a
convenient disaster to set the current war wagons in motion. Consider
also that our defense industry was stagnating before 9/11. 9/11 more
than any other possible event put our defense industry back in
business. And if this is true, and considering that Wolfowitz is now
conveniently connected to big banking it wouldn't be any surprise
that all intelligence agencies would want to destroy or hide all pre
9/11 intel. Think of the money that has changed hands since 9/11, and
then think about the interest on that money and then I think you can
get a picture of why everyone is hush hush.

Comment by Timothy Michel - 12/10/2005 @ 7:09 pm

 


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