More on Able Danger

More revelations continue to come from from the Able Danger project. (Hat tip to Froggie over at Chronwatch). The New York Post in an article, that Mohammed Atta's name surfaced 13 times in the data gathered by Able Danger. Congressman Curt Weldon(R-PA), held a news conference detailing the latest revelations. A full transcript is available at the Able Danger Blog. Here are some excerpts:

"Thank you for coming out. I'm Curt Weldon and I'm here to announce the hearing that everyone said would never occur, that will begin tomorrow."

It is about time that hearings were held on Able Danger. Rep. Weldon has been tireless in his efforts to see that these hearings occur.

"WELDON: Now, since this whole process began, you saw Louie Freeh, former FBI director, on "Meet the Press" in October respond to Chris Matthews and say publicly, "If I would have had the kind of information Able Danger had, we in the FBI may well have been able to stop 9/11 from ever occurring."

How the 9/11 Commission can call Able Danger historically insignificant is just beyond my imagination.

In addition, several months ago, General Hugh Shelton came out for the first time publicly and has said that he was the one who personally authorized the creation of Able Danger; that it was a top- secret, elite organization of approximately two dozen individuals whose total purpose was to identify Al Qaida operatives around the world and in the U.S.

So we have General Shelton testifying that he created it. You have Louie Freeh saying if he'd have had the information it could have helped stop 9/11, perhaps. And now we have information that will be testified to under oath that there were attempts to transfer information to the FBI on at least three occasions, and on all three of those occasions in September of 2000, lawyers within the administration denied those meetings from taking place.

I've learned some additional things that are new. You saw the Arlen Specter hearing in Judiciary that occurred in September. It's very troubling to me that it appears as though the DOD witness did not tell the truth.

We had testimony that all of the Able Danger data-mining material was destroyed. I now know that that's not the case. In fact, I now know there's data still available. And I am in contact with people who are still able to data mining runs on pre-9/11 data. In those data runs that are now being done today, in spite of what DOD said, I have 13 hits on Mohammed Atta, spelled Mu and Mo. Not Mohammed Attif, not Mohammed Attel; Mohammed Atta. Thirteen times we have hits in the data that's still available, that we were told was destroyed. That was pre-9/11 data, where Mohammed Atta's name was spelled two different ways, but it was Mohammed Atta.

It is outrageous to me that the Defense Department would say, as we will hear from Eric Kleinsmith tomorrow, that, yes, he did destroy the LIWA data, but the LIWA data wasn't all the data. There was other massive data mining that was collected, that we just don't know the whereabouts of."

Some one really needs to find out why the 9/11 Commission refused to even consider the Able Danger data. Having read the Commission's Report, it seems to me that they considered other less verifiable data. Of course, one also has to wonder why Jamie Gorelick was on that Commission, considering her involvement is creating the so called "wall" document. This document effectively kept intelligence organizations from sharing data.

If DOD witnesses were not forthcoming or truthful during the Specter Hearings, then this issue needs to be addressed as well. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this set of hearings. Stay tuned! - Sailor

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