08-08-2013, 08:26 AM
Albert Rossi
Your linked pdf articles are key to the run-up. Here then is a synopsis:
BEGIN SYNOPSIS
DoD Watchdog Covered Up Intelligence Unit's Work Tracking 9/11 Terrorists
Iron Man would not provide the names of the individuals that the Asymmetrical Threats Division briefed because that information is classified. But the personnel included intelligence officials from CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NCIS, NSA and high-level command officials at JFIC.
The most senior official who was present at the briefing was Vice Adm. Martin J. Meyer, the deputy commander-in-chief of Joint Forces Command. Vice Adm. Meyer is the military official who told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States North American Aerospace Defense Command Region (CONR), and other high-level CONR staffers two weeks
before the 9/11 attacks that "their concern about Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to America was unfounded and that, to repeat, 'If everyone would just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be a threat from Osama bin Laden.'"
Since Meyer was one of the individuals JFIC briefed on al-Qaeda's interest in attacking targets in the United States it is difficult to comprehend why he would dismiss the threats.
Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden
According to the narrative in the IG report, a previous JFIC deputy director of intelligence said that the JFIC commander, identified elsewhere in the report as Capt. Janice Dundas, US Navy, "directed him to stop tracking Usama Bin Ladin. The Commanding Officer stated that the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission."
At the same time, JFIC analysis of purported Afghanistan "terrorist training camps" was also curtailed, with an explanation that such activities were outside the agency's Area of Operations and "that the issues where [sic] not in JFIC's swim lane."
According to the report, the Asymmetric Threats Division was "realigned" in summer 2001 under the "Intelligence Watch Center." The Intelligence Watch Center may be the Combined Intelligence Watch Center associated with NORAD, which is an "indications and warning center for worldwide threats from space, missile and strategic air activity, as well as geopolitical unrest that could affect North America and US forces/interests abroad." This would be consistent with the work DO5 did with the JTF-CS.
The order to stop tracking Bin Laden, therefore, came sometime between the origin of DO5 in 1999 and its realignment just prior to, or right after 9/11. In 2005, the JFIC itself was renamed the Joint Transformation Command-Intelligence, still subordinate to and serving USJFCOM.
In addition, IRON MAN's allegations also included charges that the JFIC and specifically DO5, had developed information that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the most likely domestic targets of an al-Qaeda attack.
Ex-Army Officer Accuses CIA of Obstructing Pre-9/11 Intelligence-Gathering
A decorated ex-clandestine operative for the Pentagon offers new revelations about the role the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played in the shut-down of the military's notorious Able Danger program, alleged to have identified five of the 9/11 hijackers inside America more than a year before the attacks.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal bodies and sharing some degree of blame for the attacks. Shaffer also adds to a picture emerging of the CIA's Bin Laden unit as having actively prevented other areas of intelligence, law enforcement and defense from properly carrying out their counterterrorism functions in the run-up to September 2001.
In the wake of the devastating African embassy bombings of 1998, which left more than 200 dead, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) - responsible for the Pentagon's secret commando units - brought together specialists from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to begin mapping the al-Qaeda network. Based in the Information Dominance Center - also referred to as Land Information Warfare Activity, or LIWA - at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the team's advanced data-mining software found connections between known terrorists and subjects with matching profiles. This highly classified project was code-named Able Danger.
The project first came to public attention in June 2005, nearly one year after the 9/11 Commission released its report, when Congressman Curt Weldon gave a special orders speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Following attacks on Weldon's credibility, five Pentagon whistleblowers came forward to back up his claims, including Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a CIA-trained senior intelligence operations officer, Bronze Star Medal recipient and reserve Army lieutenant colonel with more than 22 years in the intelligence community.
In other words, the collecting of information about al-Qaeda's cell structures was only meant to be a first step in a larger action to be taken using the data. "It wasn't simply an experiment. My actual assignment wasn't Able Danger. I could never testify to the actual operational objectives assigned to me and my unit for the purposes of Able Danger." The Able Danger project, portrayed in most media reports as a mere data-mining exercise, was in fact fully integrated into a larger military effort to target and disrupt al-Qaeda. Its actual capabilities and objectives remain classified.
Shaffer contends that the most damning revelations lie in that still-classified aspect of the project, the operational side. Asked what the next step was to be against the so-called Brooklyn cell identified by Able Danger which he says included five of the 9/11 hijackers, Shaffer responded, "I can't talk about that."
At the center of the military's intended action was a long-term asset recruited by DIA years before Able Danger, a retired Afghan general who had direct access to al-Qaeda activities in Afghanistan. "We had a clear access point to al-Qaeda we were using for our operational purposes," says Shaffer. "The asset was a separate operation we were going to use for access. We were going to use still-classified capabilities." That all changed when CIA got involved.
How the CIA's go-it-alone attitude regarding al-Qaeda helped enable the events of 2001 has only recently gained wider public attention. The story, reduced to an obscure endnote in the 9/11 Commission Report, exploded in 2011 when itemerged that Richard Clarke, counter-terror director for both Presidents Clinton and Bush, had, in a filmed interview, accused the CIA of deliberately withholding information on two of the 9/11 conspirators, the same ones separately
discovered by Able Danger.
According to Clarke, some 50 employees in Black's and Blee's units would likely have known from early 2000 that conspirators Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi - among those who would commandeer American Airlines Flight 77, and reportedly the closest to Bin Laden himself - were working for al-Qaeda and had arrived in the United States.
Incredibly, the agency sat on this information for up to 18 months, ignoring standard protocol requiring them to tell the FBI and Clarke's team on the White House National Security Council.
Only a high-level decision could explain the silence of officers he spoke with regularly, Clarke believes. Pressed by John Duffy, the former head of counter-terrorism sensationally placed the blame on the CIA director. Tenet and others were quick to issue a dismissive press statement. But it can now be revealed the CIA's negligence went far beyond keeping critical intelligence to itself.
Around the same time Alec Station learned of al-Mihdhar's and al-Hazmi's likely arrival in the US, Able Danger's data-mining also unearthed the same individuals' domestic presence. According to several people who directly participated in the project, by mid-2000 their data mine had identified five "hotspots" for al-Qaeda activity including the German- and New York-based cells later implicated in the hijacking plot. Much of the controversy has centered on whether, more than a year before the events of 2001, Able Danger had identified lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. A
Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and Defense Department Inspector General (IG) report have concluded otherwise. Still, Shaffer and colleagues remain adamant that key witnesses were ignored and testimony distorted in theIG's final report. In other words, it was a classic whitewash.
"We found two of the three cells which conducted the [9/11] attacks," says Shaffer. "They were the 'Brooklyn cell' not by geography, but they were the Brooklyn cell because members of the cell formed a similar profile to those who conducted the '93 World Trade Center bombing. We were looking at individuals, groups, and who they talked to, relationships, if they went to a certain mosque during a certain period of time." LIWA analysts created a massive chart with the names and photos of these terrorists. "We discovered these guys here and the CIA apparently knew these guys were here," he insists. "And yeah, nobody really seems to know what was going on."
Shaffer says the significance was understood at the time. "We were scared to death that we had found operational cells ... within the United States. We did not have all the pieces of the puzzle, and we were not able to make sense of everything we had. Military action was going to be the ultimate outcome of the project.'
"It became clear that someone didn't want us looking at the data, and they gave an extraordinary direction." Army staff lawyers directed Capt. Eric Kleinsmith to destroy some 2.5 terabytes of publicly sourced data. In March or April 2000, the offices of Orion Scientific Systems, a private contractor employed by LIWA for the program, were stormed by armed federal agents. Much of the material produced for Able Danger was confiscated - and with it went the US military's best shot at unraveling the hijacking plot.
Soon after the end of the data collection aspect of Able Danger, the CIA pushed for the shut down of the operational side.
"We felt CIA made a huge mistake for political reasons, only to back off ... with regard to the asset in Afghanistan. But in hindsight it is very clear the CIA had its own game, and they were not interested in cooperating to the point where they were interfering with our ability to conduct our own offensive capability against al-Qaeda." Based on Tenet's testimony, Congress ordered DIA's asset - with direct access to al-Qaeda activities in Afghanistan - terminated. Shaffer characterizes Tenet's deception as causing "huge damage" to the overall concept of his part of the program.
In late 2000, the data mining aspect of the military's project was reconstituted as "Able Danger II" and moved to a classified private intelligence research center in Garland, Texas. When command of SOCOM changed hands from the retiring Gen. Schoomaker to Gen. Charles Holland in November, Holland again ordered termination of the efforts in Texas and for the personnel to return to SOCOM headquarters in Florida.
Shaffer claimed there were at least three senior military exchanges over the order that resulted in yelling contests. Most notable was in December when Maj. Gen. Rod Isler, director of operations for DIA, called in their boss Admiral Tom Wilson, the DIA Director, who reported to Tenet. In a shouting match, Wilson directed Isler and Shaffer to stop supporting Able Danger II.
In January 2001, with a new President, George W. Bush, in the White House, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer briefed Gen. Hugh Shelton, the man who had originally supported the formation of Able Danger, on the program results and operational options, including the possibility of reactivating the retired Afghan general asset that George Tenet had caused to be disengaged.
Shaffer said he provided a variation of the same briefing to Tenet himself in February, with DIA Director Adm. Tom Wilson present. The following month, Gen. Ron Isler ordered Shaffer to completely end his work on Able Danger II. Shaffer strongly disagreed, resulting in an argument, before Isler pulled rank on him. From that point on, Able Danger II was essentially done.
END SYNOPSIS
Phil's footnote: This is much of a muchness with the sabotage and sidelining of FBI Counterterrorism Chief John O'Neill
[video]http://video.pbs.org/video/1587879291/[/video]
The current DCI is a Muslim convert who sees jihad as a legitimate religious expression.
Apparently Woody Allen was too busy to accept, wanting to spend more time with his family.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5025[/ATTACH]
Colleen Rowley isn't quite Abraham Bolden but then history doesn't repeat itself, does it.
Your linked pdf articles are key to the run-up. Here then is a synopsis:
BEGIN SYNOPSIS
DoD Watchdog Covered Up Intelligence Unit's Work Tracking 9/11 Terrorists
Iron Man would not provide the names of the individuals that the Asymmetrical Threats Division briefed because that information is classified. But the personnel included intelligence officials from CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NCIS, NSA and high-level command officials at JFIC.
The most senior official who was present at the briefing was Vice Adm. Martin J. Meyer, the deputy commander-in-chief of Joint Forces Command. Vice Adm. Meyer is the military official who told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States North American Aerospace Defense Command Region (CONR), and other high-level CONR staffers two weeks
before the 9/11 attacks that "their concern about Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to America was unfounded and that, to repeat, 'If everyone would just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be a threat from Osama bin Laden.'"
Since Meyer was one of the individuals JFIC briefed on al-Qaeda's interest in attacking targets in the United States it is difficult to comprehend why he would dismiss the threats.
~~~
According to the narrative in the IG report, a previous JFIC deputy director of intelligence said that the JFIC commander, identified elsewhere in the report as Capt. Janice Dundas, US Navy, "directed him to stop tracking Usama Bin Ladin. The Commanding Officer stated that the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC's mission."
At the same time, JFIC analysis of purported Afghanistan "terrorist training camps" was also curtailed, with an explanation that such activities were outside the agency's Area of Operations and "that the issues where [sic] not in JFIC's swim lane."
According to the report, the Asymmetric Threats Division was "realigned" in summer 2001 under the "Intelligence Watch Center." The Intelligence Watch Center may be the Combined Intelligence Watch Center associated with NORAD, which is an "indications and warning center for worldwide threats from space, missile and strategic air activity, as well as geopolitical unrest that could affect North America and US forces/interests abroad." This would be consistent with the work DO5 did with the JTF-CS.
The order to stop tracking Bin Laden, therefore, came sometime between the origin of DO5 in 1999 and its realignment just prior to, or right after 9/11. In 2005, the JFIC itself was renamed the Joint Transformation Command-Intelligence, still subordinate to and serving USJFCOM.
~~~
~~~
A decorated ex-clandestine operative for the Pentagon offers new revelations about the role the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played in the shut-down of the military's notorious Able Danger program, alleged to have identified five of the 9/11 hijackers inside America more than a year before the attacks.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal bodies and sharing some degree of blame for the attacks. Shaffer also adds to a picture emerging of the CIA's Bin Laden unit as having actively prevented other areas of intelligence, law enforcement and defense from properly carrying out their counterterrorism functions in the run-up to September 2001.
~~~
The project first came to public attention in June 2005, nearly one year after the 9/11 Commission released its report, when Congressman Curt Weldon gave a special orders speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Following attacks on Weldon's credibility, five Pentagon whistleblowers came forward to back up his claims, including Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a CIA-trained senior intelligence operations officer, Bronze Star Medal recipient and reserve Army lieutenant colonel with more than 22 years in the intelligence community.
~~~
Shaffer contends that the most damning revelations lie in that still-classified aspect of the project, the operational side. Asked what the next step was to be against the so-called Brooklyn cell identified by Able Danger which he says included five of the 9/11 hijackers, Shaffer responded, "I can't talk about that."
At the center of the military's intended action was a long-term asset recruited by DIA years before Able Danger, a retired Afghan general who had direct access to al-Qaeda activities in Afghanistan. "We had a clear access point to al-Qaeda we were using for our operational purposes," says Shaffer. "The asset was a separate operation we were going to use for access. We were going to use still-classified capabilities." That all changed when CIA got involved.
~~~
discovered by Able Danger.
According to Clarke, some 50 employees in Black's and Blee's units would likely have known from early 2000 that conspirators Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi - among those who would commandeer American Airlines Flight 77, and reportedly the closest to Bin Laden himself - were working for al-Qaeda and had arrived in the United States.
Incredibly, the agency sat on this information for up to 18 months, ignoring standard protocol requiring them to tell the FBI and Clarke's team on the White House National Security Council.
Only a high-level decision could explain the silence of officers he spoke with regularly, Clarke believes. Pressed by John Duffy, the former head of counter-terrorism sensationally placed the blame on the CIA director. Tenet and others were quick to issue a dismissive press statement. But it can now be revealed the CIA's negligence went far beyond keeping critical intelligence to itself.
Around the same time Alec Station learned of al-Mihdhar's and al-Hazmi's likely arrival in the US, Able Danger's data-mining also unearthed the same individuals' domestic presence. According to several people who directly participated in the project, by mid-2000 their data mine had identified five "hotspots" for al-Qaeda activity including the German- and New York-based cells later implicated in the hijacking plot. Much of the controversy has centered on whether, more than a year before the events of 2001, Able Danger had identified lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. A
Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and Defense Department Inspector General (IG) report have concluded otherwise. Still, Shaffer and colleagues remain adamant that key witnesses were ignored and testimony distorted in theIG's final report. In other words, it was a classic whitewash.
"We found two of the three cells which conducted the [9/11] attacks," says Shaffer. "They were the 'Brooklyn cell' not by geography, but they were the Brooklyn cell because members of the cell formed a similar profile to those who conducted the '93 World Trade Center bombing. We were looking at individuals, groups, and who they talked to, relationships, if they went to a certain mosque during a certain period of time." LIWA analysts created a massive chart with the names and photos of these terrorists. "We discovered these guys here and the CIA apparently knew these guys were here," he insists. "And yeah, nobody really seems to know what was going on."
Shaffer says the significance was understood at the time. "We were scared to death that we had found operational cells ... within the United States. We did not have all the pieces of the puzzle, and we were not able to make sense of everything we had. Military action was going to be the ultimate outcome of the project.'
~~~
Soon after the end of the data collection aspect of Able Danger, the CIA pushed for the shut down of the operational side.
~~~
~~~
Shaffer claimed there were at least three senior military exchanges over the order that resulted in yelling contests. Most notable was in December when Maj. Gen. Rod Isler, director of operations for DIA, called in their boss Admiral Tom Wilson, the DIA Director, who reported to Tenet. In a shouting match, Wilson directed Isler and Shaffer to stop supporting Able Danger II.
In January 2001, with a new President, George W. Bush, in the White House, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer briefed Gen. Hugh Shelton, the man who had originally supported the formation of Able Danger, on the program results and operational options, including the possibility of reactivating the retired Afghan general asset that George Tenet had caused to be disengaged.
Shaffer said he provided a variation of the same briefing to Tenet himself in February, with DIA Director Adm. Tom Wilson present. The following month, Gen. Ron Isler ordered Shaffer to completely end his work on Able Danger II. Shaffer strongly disagreed, resulting in an argument, before Isler pulled rank on him. From that point on, Able Danger II was essentially done.
END SYNOPSIS
Phil's footnote: This is much of a muchness with the sabotage and sidelining of FBI Counterterrorism Chief John O'Neill
[video]http://video.pbs.org/video/1587879291/[/video]
The current DCI is a Muslim convert who sees jihad as a legitimate religious expression.
Apparently Woody Allen was too busy to accept, wanting to spend more time with his family.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5025[/ATTACH]
Colleen Rowley isn't quite Abraham Bolden but then history doesn't repeat itself, does it.