Pentagon Probes Treatment of 'Able Danger' Officer
Reuters, Wednesday 09 November 2005

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Washington - The Pentagon inspector general is investigating the Defense Intelligence Agency's treatment of an Army colonel who was the first to claim publicly that the government knew about four September 11 hijackers long before the 2001 attacks, officials said on Wednesday.

Among the issues under review is whether the DIA revoked the security clearance of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer last September in retaliation for repeated comments he made in the media about a military intelligence team code-named Able Danger, sources familiar with the case said.

Revelations about Able Danger, a small data-mining operation that ended in 2000, have reignited debate about whether the United States could have prevented the attacks on New York and Washington that killed 3,000 people and prompted the US war on terrorism.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the inspector general began reviewing Shaffer's case after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld received a written request on October 20 from Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services.

Shaffer and his attorney met with officials from the inspector general's office on Wednesday.

Shaffer came forward in August with claims that Able Danger had identified September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as al Qaeda members in early 2000. But he said Pentagon lawyers prevented the team from warning the FBI.

Others associated with Able Danger, including the team's former leader, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have since made similar statements. But an exhaustive Pentagon search of tens of thousands of documents and electronic files related to the operation failed to corroborate the claims.

Officials with House and Senate intelligence oversight committees have also said there is little substantiating evidence.

US Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who has championed Able Danger and other data-mining projects, told reporters on Wednesday that Able Danger also uncovered evidence of a threat to US interests in Yemen two days before the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole, which killed 17 sailors.

Weldon, who attributed his information to Phillpott, said the Able Danger team passed along the warning through proper channels but no word of danger ever reached the Cole.

"They sent it up but they don't know what happened," Weldon said. "That's part of what needs to be investigated."

Meanwhile, Shaffer's attorneys say their client is in danger of losing his job because the DIA has accused him of obtaining a medal under false pretenses, improperly showing his military identification while drunk and stealing ink pens.

Shaffer's supporters, including Weldon, say the charges are trumped up.

Weldon and Shaffer attorney Mark Zaid both said the DIA recently returned Shaffer's personal effects from his office but mistakenly included several classified documents and another employee's mail.

"There are several inconsistencies between the DIA and LTC Shaffer concerning the facts," Hunter said in his letter to Rumsfeld. "The committee also has concerns with certain aspects of how the DIA has handled this matter."

Officer: 9/11 panel didn't receive key information

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former member of a classified Pentagon intelligence unit told CNN on Wednesday that information he tried to provide to the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks never made it to the panel's members.

Publicly identifying himself for the first time, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said he worked this year with Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, and they determined "there was a significant amount of information that was totally deleted or not provided to the 9/11 commissioners."

Shaffer was part of the task force that supported Able Danger, an intelligence unit that was looking for al Qaeda terrorists.

The lieutenant colonel said Able Danger uncovered information in 2000 about lead hijacker Mohamed Atta by searching through public databases and looking for patterns.

Shaffer declined to be specific about what kind of documents linked Atta to al Qaeda, saying intelligence units continue to use such processes.

On Tuesday, Weldon told CNN that Shaffer set up meetings with FBI officials in 2000, but they were canceled because lawyers for the Special Forces unit -- of which Able Danger was a member -- allegedly were concerned military authorities could not legally share information with domestic law enforcement about potential terror suspects in the United States.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Shaffer told The New York Times on Wednesday.

In a statement Friday, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, chairman and vice chairman of the now-defunct 9/11 commission, said that Able Danger "did not turn out to be historically significant, set against the larger context of U.S. policy and intelligence efforts that involved [Osama] bin Laden and al Qaeda." (Full story)

Shaffer told CNN he had not come forward earlier because he believed there may have been a classified addendum to the commission's report or there might be some other reason why the information was not disclosed to the public.

The 9/11 panel -- officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- released its final report in a nearly 570-page book in July 2004.

9/11 commission learned about Able Danger
Since the allegations gained renewed media interest last week, military officials have said they were looking into Shaffer's account of the meeting requests and refused to comment further. The Pentagon also is checking into the matter, spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday.

In their news release, Kean and Hamilton said the 9/11 panel became aware of Able Danger on October 21, 2003, when Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission staff, and two staff members met at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with three individuals doing intelligence work for the U.S. Defense Department.

One of the intelligence officers urged the commission to look into Able Danger and complained that Congress had "ended a human intelligence network he considered valuable."

Kean and Hamilton said the official memorandum from that meeting does not mention that Atta's name or any of the other hijackers' names were brought up during the conversation.

"What I know is that their statement on the 12th of August is wrong," said Shafer, who said he was at the Bagram meeting.

He said commission members called back requesting more information, but when he tried to set up a meeting in January 2004, "they changed their mind about talking to me."

Separately, Kean and Hamilton said a senior 9/11 commission staffer met with a "U.S. Navy officer employed at DOD [Department of Defense] who was seeking to be interviewed by commission staff in connection with a data mining project on which he had worked."

But they said the officer's "account was not sufficiently reliable" to include in the final report.

That meeting, they said, took place on July 12, 2004, when the commission's final report already was well into its last stages -- the report was released July 22. The meeting included the senior commission staff member, another staffer, the Navy officer and a Defense Department representative.

According to the official record of the meeting, the officer "recalled seeing the name and photo of Mohamed Atta on an 'analyst notebook chart' assembled by another officer," Kean and Hamilton said in their statement.

"The officer being interviewed said he saw this material only briefly, that the relevant material dated from February through April 2000, and that it showed Mohamed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn," the statement said.

"The officer complained that this information and information about other alleged members of a Brooklyn cell had been soon afterward deleted from the document because DOD lawyers were concerned about the propriety of DOD intelligence efforts that might be focused inside the United States."

But the officer "could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification. Nor could the interviewee recall, when questioned, any details about how he thought a link to Atta could have been made by this DOD program in 2000 or any time before 9/11," the statement said.

CNN's Kevin Bohn contributed to this report.

Officer: 9/11 panel didn't receive key information

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former member of a classified Pentagon intelligence unit told CNN on Wednesday that information he tried to provide to the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks never made it to the panel's members.

Publicly identifying himself for the first time, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said he worked this year with Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, and they determined "there was a significant amount of information that was totally deleted or not provided to the 9/11 commissioners."

Shaffer was part of the task force that supported Able Danger, an intelligence unit that was looking for al Qaeda terrorists.

The lieutenant colonel said Able Danger uncovered information in 2000 about lead hijacker Mohamed Atta by searching through public databases and looking for patterns.

Shaffer declined to be specific about what kind of documents linked Atta to al Qaeda, saying intelligence units continue to use such processes.

On Tuesday, Weldon told CNN that Shaffer set up meetings with FBI officials in 2000, but they were canceled because lawyers for the Special Forces unit -- of which Able Danger was a member -- allegedly were concerned military authorities could not legally share information with domestic law enforcement about potential terror suspects in the United States.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Shaffer told The New York Times on Wednesday.

In a statement Friday, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, chairman and vice chairman of the now-defunct 9/11 commission, said that Able Danger "did not turn out to be historically significant, set against the larger context of U.S. policy and intelligence efforts that involved [Osama] bin Laden and al Qaeda." (Full story)

Shaffer told CNN he had not come forward earlier because he believed there may have been a classified addendum to the commission's report or there might be some other reason why the information was not disclosed to the public.

The 9/11 panel -- officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- released its final report in a nearly 570-page book in July 2004.

9/11 commission learned about Able Danger
Since the allegations gained renewed media interest last week, military officials have said they were looking into Shaffer's account of the meeting requests and refused to comment further. The Pentagon also is checking into the matter, spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday.

In their news release, Kean and Hamilton said the 9/11 panel became aware of Able Danger on October 21, 2003, when Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission staff, and two staff members met at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with three individuals doing intelligence work for the U.S. Defense Department.

One of the intelligence officers urged the commission to look into Able Danger and complained that Congress had "ended a human intelligence network he considered valuable."

Kean and Hamilton said the official memorandum from that meeting does not mention that Atta's name or any of the other hijackers' names were brought up during the conversation.

"What I know is that their statement on the 12th of August is wrong," said Shafer, who said he was at the Bagram meeting.

He said commission members called back requesting more information, but when he tried to set up a meeting in January 2004, "they changed their mind about talking to me."

Separately, Kean and Hamilton said a senior 9/11 commission staffer met with a "U.S. Navy officer employed at DOD [Department of Defense] who was seeking to be interviewed by commission staff in connection with a data mining project on which he had worked."

But they said the officer's "account was not sufficiently reliable" to include in the final report.

That meeting, they said, took place on July 12, 2004, when the commission's final report already was well into its last stages -- the report was released July 22. The meeting included the senior commission staff member, another staffer, the Navy officer and a Defense Department representative.

According to the official record of the meeting, the officer "recalled seeing the name and photo of Mohamed Atta on an 'analyst notebook chart' assembled by another officer," Kean and Hamilton said in their statement.

"The officer being interviewed said he saw this material only briefly, that the relevant material dated from February through April 2000, and that it showed Mohamed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn," the statement said.

"The officer complained that this information and information about other alleged members of a Brooklyn cell had been soon afterward deleted from the document because DOD lawyers were concerned about the propriety of DOD intelligence efforts that might be focused inside the United States."

But the officer "could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification. Nor could the interviewee recall, when questioned, any details about how he thought a link to Atta could have been made by this DOD program in 2000 or any time before 9/11," the statement said.

CNN's Kevin Bohn contributed to this report.

'Able Danger' Could Rewrite History

Friday, August 12, 2005



WASHINGTON  The federal commission that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was told twice about "Able Danger," a military intelligence unit that had identified Mohamed Atta and other hijackers a year before the attacks, a congressman close to the investigation said Wednesday.

Rep. Curt Weldon (search), R-Pa., a champion of integrated intelligence-sharing among U.S. agencies, wrote to the former chairman and vice-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission late Wednesday, telling them that their staff had received two briefings on the military intelligence unit  once in October 2003 and again in July 2004.

Weldon said he was upset by suggestions earlier Wednesday by 9/11 panel members that it had been not been given critical information on Able Danger's capabilities and findings.

"The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9/11 commission staff that the commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger," Weldon wrote to former Chairman Gov. Thomas Kean (search) and Vice-Chairman Rep. Lee Hamilton (search). "The 9/11 commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter.

"The commission's refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose," Weldon added.

On Wednesday, a source familiar with the Sept. 11 commission  formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (search)  told FOX News that aides who still had security clearances had gone back to the National Archives outside Washington, D.C., to review notes on Atta and any information the U.S. government had on him and his terror cell before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The source acknowledged that the aides were looking for a memo about a briefing given to four staff members by defense intelligence officials during an overseas trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the fall of 2003.

Staffers apparently did not recall being told of the Able Danger information at that meeting and wanted to double-check their records.

Former commission spokesman Al Felzenberg told The New York Times in Thursday editions that Atta was mentioned to panel investigators during at least one meeting with a military officer. That briefing came in July 2004, less than two weeks before the commission's final report was issued to the public.

Felzenberg said the information about Atta was considered suspect because it didn't jibe with many other findings. For example, the intelligence officer said Atta was in the United States in late 1999, but travel records confirmed that he did not enter the country until late 2000.

"He wasn't brushed off," Felzenberg told The Times about the military officer's briefing. "I'm not aware of anybody being brushed off. The information that he provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing."

But Weldon said that argument was not good enough.

"The 9/11 commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house," Weldon wrote in his letter Wednesday night.

"Therefore it is no small irony," Weldon pointed out, "that the commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention."

On Thursday, Weldon told FOX News that the military official, who was under cover when he was in Afghanistan for the October 2003 briefing, is certain he told the staffers about Atta at that time.

The military intelligence officer who attended that meeting with staffers "kept notes of that meeting and will testify under oath that he not only told" the staffers about Able Danger's mission, but about Atta.

Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, told FOX News on Wednesday that if Atta's name had been mentioned in the October 2003 briefing, it would have jumped out at staffers.

He said that the commission did not include the claims by Able Danger in the definitive report of the events leading up to Sept. 11 because it had no "information that the United States government had under surveillance or had any knowledge of Mohamed Atta prior to the attacks.

"It could be a very crucial incident in terms of the lead-up to 9/11. It could reveal flaws in the intelligence sharing or the lack of intelligence that we have not yet focused on," Hamilton said of the military's tracking of Atta and its inability to get domestic intelligence agencies to follow up.

Hamilton told FOX News that the commission team would get to the bottom of the confusion over what the United States knew about Atta and whether it played into the commission's investigation.

"I think the 9/11 commission's obligation at this point is to review our records very, very carefully and make very soon  we hope within the next few days  a complete statement about what happened during our investigation," Hamilton said.

Weldon said that he personally knows five members of the commission and is not attacking the integrity of any of them. He said he discussed the matter with two commissioners who told him they were never briefed about Able Danger.

"I have to ask why. I would hope there was not a deliberate attempt by someone on the 9/11 commission staff to keep this information" from the commissioners, Weldon said, adding "I find no fault right now with the commissioners."

A commission spokesman told FOX News that the panel expected to issue a statement before the end of the week.

Among the most critical facts to be determined, if the information about Atta did exist in 2000, would be who then blocked the intelligence from going to the FBI, which could have tracked down the terror cell.

"Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI," Weldon wrote.

"Fear of tarnishing the commission's legacy cannot be allowed to override the truth. The American people are counting on you not to 'go native' by succumbing to the very temptations your commission was assembled to indict," he added.