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| More Able Danger personnel say terrorists known pre-9/11 |
| 2005-09-02 |
| A Defense Department inquiry has found three more people who recall seeing an intelligence briefing slide that identified the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks a year before the hijackings and terrorist strikes, Pentagon and military officials said Thursday. But the officials said investigators who reviewed thousands of documents and electronic files from a secret counterterrorism planning unit had not found the chart itself, or any evidence the chart ever existed. The officials acknowledged that documents and electronic files created by the unit, known as Able Danger, were destroyed under standing orders that limit the military's use of intelligence gathered about people in the United States. At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, four intelligence or military officials said investigators had interviewed 80 people who served directly with Able Danger, a team organized to write a counterterrorism campaign plan, or were closely associated with it. Of those 80, 5 in all now say they saw the chart, including Capt. Scott J. Phillpott of the Navy and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Army, whose recent comments first brought attention to Able Danger. At the briefing, the officials said that four of the five recalled seeing a picture of Mohamed Atta, the member of Al Qaeda who planned and carried out the attacks, while one said the chart contained only Mr. Atta's name. The officials stressed that their inquiry was continuing, and that they still could not definitively prove or disprove whether the unit identified Mr. Atta - and, perhaps, other members of the hijacking team - before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The witnesses "are credible people," said Pat Downs, a senior policy analyst for the under secretary of defense for intelligence. But investigators "can't find the document," Ms. Downs said. Another official who described the inquiry, Cmdr. Christopher Chope of the United States Special Operations Command, said there was no evidence that the destruction of Able Danger documents had been anything other than a routine application of privacy regulations. Commander Chope also said there was no evidence that military lawyers issued orders preventing Able Danger personnel from sharing data they had gathered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as Colonel Shaffer has said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #10 Lol. Another Look at Meeee! post. Lol. Wotta desperately self-indulgent self-pitying self-absorbed self-aggrandizing self-centered self-destructive fool for attention. The pluperfect Redheaded Stepchild. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-09-02 21:42 |
| #9 Mike's offering again - using code. Another "whoops" by the Clinton apologists... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-02 19:45 |
| #8 What was the weakness of the Able Danger unit if it identified Atta as the leader of a terrrorist cell? Why would this unit hide this achievement from the DoD leadership? fellatio? |
| Posted by: Abel Oral Danger 2005-09-02 19:14 |
| #7 mjh, your own reasoning escapes me. Your syllogism: =============== An Able Danger member briefing his own DoD leadership that his own unit had cleverly identified Atta as a terrorist before 9/11 is like A UN official hiding from his own UN leadership that he himself had been involved in massive corruption and misappropriation of funds. =============== If that is not your syllogism, then correct it for me. What was the weakness of the Able Danger unit if it identified Atta as the leader of a terrrorist cell? Why would this unit hide this achievement from the DoD leadership? . |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2005-09-02 16:41 |
| #6 Along Mike S's path of reasoning...I would think more people would have known about the massive corruption and misappropriation of funds in the UN OFF initative than the handful that have come forward... In almost every organization (particularly in the government or NGO community) it is a sin to bring to light past weaknesses...I imagine the bureaucracy (read: lawyers) at the DOD is no different. |
| Posted by: mjh 2005-09-02 09:51 |
| #5 If people in the UN knew about it I'm sure you'd agree with them... |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-09-02 09:04 |
| #4 Well, well, look who's got orality on the mind, even before .com gets here. Didn't Mikey learn anythig aboput credibility from his Kofi/Kojo situation? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-02 09:01 |
| #3 I think that if a DoD unit had identified Atta, the guy who led the attack on the Pentagon, then the discovery of Atta would have been briefed at quite a few meetings, and lots and lots of people would remember the briefing itself (not merely a slide) very well. This fellatio situation now -- where a handful of people remember seeing a briefing slide that now cannot be found -- is very dubious. . |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2005-09-02 08:21 |
| #2 IOW, too much paperwork, NOT enuff office space, NOT enuff bodies to do proper analyses. ATTA has been known for a long time - how can INTEL NOT know??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-09-02 02:23 |
| #1 I was going to comment about how shocked I am about more people then noticed it was a NYT article. |
| Posted by: Charles 2005-09-02 01:50 |