Able Danger Source Steps Forward

The NY Times interviews Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who has been a key source on the Able Danger disclosures:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.'s Washington field office to share the information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.

...

The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the so-called data-mining program to come forward and acknowledge his role.

At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.

John Podhoretz has a two posts at the Corner, which summarize the alternative "who's lying or confused?" scenarios, from which we extract this:

The Able Danger papers shown to the 9/11 Commission at the Pentagon after the Afghanistan meeting did not feature anything mentioning Atta. So the 9/11 Commission says. So either the Commission staff is lying. Or no paper mentioned Atta and Shaffer is just wrong. Or the Defense Department misplaced the paperwork mentioning Atta. Or somebody at the Defense Department deliberately didn't give the Commission the material.

In the first case, if the 9/11 commission staff is lying, the hell to be paid is going to be colossal. Among other things, it could shake the current State Department to its foundations, since the 9/11 commission staff director, Philip Zelicow, is one of Condi Rice's most trusted aides.

In the second case, if the Defense Department withheld critical information on this matter, it's almost impossible to imagine the intensity of the bloodletting that will follow.

He also notes an AP story with this charge from Lt. Col. Shaffer:

In an interview with Fox News Channel and The New York Times, Shaffer said the panel was not given all the information his team had gathered.

"I'm told confidently by the person who did move the material over that the 9/11 commission received two briefcase-size containers of documents," Shaffer said in the interview, part of which was aired by Fox News Tuesday night. "I can tell you for a fact that would not be ... one-20th of the information that Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent."

The information request from the 9/11 Commission to the Pentagon was described in the Commission's Aug 12 press release:

In November 2003, shortly after the staff delegation had returned to the United States, two document requests related to ABLE DANGER were finalized and sent to DOD. One, sent on November 6, asked, among other things, for any planning order or analogous documents about military operations related to al Qaeda and Afghanistan issued from the beginning of 1998 to September 20, 2001, and any reports, memoranda, or briefings by or for either the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Commanding General of the U.S. Special Operations Command in connection with such planning, specifically including material related to ABLE DANGER. The other, sent on November 25, treated ABLE DANGER as a possible intelligence program and asked for all documents and files associated with “DIA’s program ‘ABLE DANGER’” from the beginning of 1998 through September 20, 2001. In February 2004, DOD provided documents responding to these requests. Some were turned over to the Commission and remain in Commission files. Others were available for staff review in a DOD reading room. Commission staff reviewed the documents.

A possible resolution - the Pentagon sent over two briefcases of obviously relevant material, and made the rest avaliable in the reading room.  (Yes, it was Philip Zelikow in the reading room with a briefcase.  Leave Col. Mustard out of it.)

Mickey has his own round-up of possible motivations for a cover-up:

Still, it seems deceptive [of J Podhoretz] to target only Gorelick, and extremely foolish to assume that all the screw-ups the 9/11 Commission may have made are attributable to some insidious desire to protect her (as opposed to, say, protecting John Kerry, or Bill Clinton, or the Pentagon, or George H.W. Bush, or the Commission's already-written story line--or to sheer negligence, lack of manpower, or excusable bad luck).

Fair enough, although the rationale for a George "41" Bush cover-up does not leap off the page at me, and "43" is missing from Mickey's list, although Mickey's notes him elsewhere (I believe - sites are crashing at my insecure remote location, and Slate is now gone.)

I nominated some folks that might prefer to bury this a few days back:  "The obvious whipping boys of summer would be Clinton/Berger/Gorelick, for fostering an overly legalistic approach to the War on Terror; Bush/Tenet/Rice for failing to draw this information from the system in the summer of 2001, when we were at a high terrorist threat level and Tenet's hair was on fire; and Gen. Hugh Shelton and the Pentagon."   

Let's end with an easy question - do people think they have seen enough to merit a Congressional investigation?  And do people want the investigation to be in Curt Weldon's House, or over in the Senate?

My answer - if the Defense Dept. now denies everything, I may not believe them, and if they admit that they sat on Atta's name, I really won't believe it - send it to the Senate, start putting people under oath, and sort this out.

MORE:  Great moments in "Get the quote right", with emphasis added.  From the Times:

Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases. Nor was he aware, he said, which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.

But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from internet sites and from paid search engines such as Lexis Nexis.

"We didn't that Atta's name was significant" at the time, he said, adding that "we just knew there were these linkages between him and these other individuals who were in this loose configuration" of people who appeared to be tied to an American-based cell of Al Qaeda.

"We didn't that Atta's name was significant" - didn't what?  "Know", "reveal", "grok", "comprehend"?  Yes, from the context the missing word is almost surely "know", but why am I suddenly playing "Wheel of Fortune"?

MORE:  Weldon tells us that he first learned of the Atta link a few months ago, and he is hazy about his famous chart.

Comments

[Thomas]

This story would be helped if someone who actually worked on Able Danger came forward. Not disparaging Shaffer here, but he didn't seem to be involved in the process. He says the info gathered was twenty times what the Pentagon handed over. Well, what was in this information? Did it provide focus on the 60 member 'cell'? If it did, then there is definitely something fishy here. If it was all over the place, and the 'cell' came up out of nowhere, and had a muddled context, then there probably isn't.

[AJStrata]

Add me to the list who want a full and complete congressional investigation.

[aaron]

Bonus points for admitting what he did not know and what his real job function was instead of inflating it.

[Cecil Turner]

As a bat for Clinton/Berger/Gorelick (or Bush/Tenet . . .) bashers, this seems like pretty thin gruel. Even if the intelligence had been solid, a report of mid-level Al Qaeda operatives in the US might well have been lost in the noise. Compare that to some of the far more obvious indicators ignored in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor--and the subsequent egregious communications failures--and by historical standards this stuff just doesn't rate.

The failure of the 9/11 Commission to address it after the fact is an entirely different matter. Of course if they never got Atta's name, then it makes perfect sense. And if DOD decided not to compromise an ongoing intercept operation so that a fact-finding commission could learn that a set of data that was likely to've been ignored anyway was never passed on . . . well, that's hardly inconceivable. Color me skeptical.

[Marcel]

Now that Defense and the FBI have more freedom to share intelligence, have they actually been sharing? Or have the legal walls come down while bureaucratic walls still exist?

[Geek, Esq.]

I'd suggest the Senate instead of the House, because there are a few folks there that can put partisanship aside. I don't think such folks exist in the House.

[kr]

Patience.

[Wolfman]

There are growing indications that the Clinton administration ignored or underreacted to intelligence reporting that preceded 911. In contrast, the Bush administration overread intelligence. In a post-911 world, it saw the tip of an iceburg and then incorrectly estimated what lay beneath the surface.

The 911 Commission is looking increasingly suspect. Its Able Danger comments are unsatisfying; and now it appears that the State Department gave stern warnings - either not discovered or reported by the Commission - to the Clinton Administration about OBL relocating to Afghanistan in 1996.

It's time for Congressional hearings.

[Etienne]

Honest question: Can someone explain the significance of this, such that a Congressional inquiry might be required, beyond reiterating the disastrous consequences of "the wall" policy pre-9/11?

I can see there may be some partisan political fruit to be picked, but how does this go over any new ground? We already know that the FBI was informed of the inordinate number of Arab flight students and their disinterest in learning to take off and land. We know that information never got passed on during the spring and summer of 2001. How is this materially different? Is there really anything OF USE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC beyond more fodder for some always delicious Clinton bashing. I mean, our freaking government is hardly operation these days as it is. Do we really need to start empowering commissions to investigate commissions?

[Appalled Moderate]

Etienne:

The problem is not only Able Danger, but that the commission report also did not mention the State Department warnings on allowing Bin Laden to move to Afghanistan or the memo on the Wall that is fueling an article in the New York Post.

Congress passed legislation on the basis of findings of the Commission. To the extent the fact finding process of the 9-11 commission was influenced by a desire to minimize Clinton-era errors, that legislation may have been flawed. As a for instance, Congress has been reluctant to fund data mining projects like Able Danger. Think there would be that same reluctance if the 9-11 commission highlighted the stuff that's been in the New York Times over the last few weeks?

Now, whether Congressional hearings would just be an oportunity for endless blovations or contain a few moments of thoughtfulness is a close question. But, I think we do have to wonder what the 9-11 commission thought it was doing by raking Condi and company over the coals, and ignoring other things.

[Wolfman]

Etienne,

There is - and will continue to be - a debate about how to balance our civil liberties and national security.

The more we understand about the consequences of shifting that balance in one direction or the other, the better.

For reasons I can only speculate about, the 911 Commission appears to have missed or concealed important facts that bear that important debate (Able Danger, the 1996 State Department warning, and the White memo).

[Lurking Observer]

Whether or not there is a need for a Congressional investigation, I think it is useful to unpack the Able Danger problem (or, more accurately, the 9-11 Commission problem) into its constituent components.

The biggest issue, apart from Able Danger, State Department, etc., was whether or not there were problems within the intelligence community that hindered provision of early warning.

Data mining, sharing of intel between agencies, the line between domestic and foreign spying, all of these are issues of concern. If, for example, it turns out that the "wall" was a huge hindrance, does that recast the utility of the PATRIOT Act, at least some of which was aimed at tearing down the "wall"? What about "Total Information Awareness"?

Ironically, this is what the 9-11 Commission was intended to resolve, but recent evidence suggests that they may not have done as thorough a job as possible.

Which is a separate issue.

The question that recent revelations arouses, while partly linked to what we knew prior to 9-11, raises discomfiting questions about the 9-11 Commission itself.

-Were they informed of the Able Danger program? What about the State Department warning? What about Mary Jo White's warning?

-If not, why not?

-If so, why did they not follow up?

It is eminently possible that there are reasonable answers to all of these questions, including that they simply made a mistake, falling prey to preconceived notions, and picking and choosing which data to believe or to emphasize.

[Note: Choosing to believe information that supports your preconceived notion is the same "lie" of which the Bush Administration is often accused. In this regard, if this is what happened, then the 9-11 Commission "fixed" its conclusions in about the same manner as the Bush Administration is said to have "fixed" its conclusions. Goose, gander.]

Or it is possible that they do not have reasonable answers.

Unfortunately, the constitution of said panel, including the inclusion of one of the architects of "the wall," not to mention the flip-flop over whether they'd been informed of Able Danger at all has hurt their credibility.

None of which necessarily suggests a Congressional investigation would necessarily be an improvement---but if there continues a steady series of disclosures along these lines, it may be the only way to determine whether the Commission itself undertook a full, thorough investigation or not.

[vadkins]

I posted a transcript of the 1 hour interview of Lt. Col. Shaffer on The Savage Nation last night at:
http://qtmonster.typepad.com/qt_monsters_place/2005/08/able_dangers_of.html

[Etienne]

Congress passed legislation on the basis of findings of the Commission. To the extent the fact finding process of the 9-11 commission was influenced by a desire to minimize Clinton-era errors, that legislation may have been flawed. As a for instance, Congress has been reluctant to fund data mining projects like Able Danger.

The only thing that makes sense here is to try and understand the efficacy of data mining projects. The whole "desire to minimize Clinton era errors" is silly, given the bipartisan makeup of the commission and the fact that the commission DID identify the pertinent problem,i.e. "the wall". We definitely don't need a commission just to investigate whether data mining projects are a good idea. Couldn't good old fashioned research do that job a lot quicker?

I have another question, another honest one. Do those who advocate investigating things like this also think we should be investigating the politicization of intelligence prior to the Iraq invasion? Does that seem at all consequential to any here, considering it deals with an actual ongoing matter where Americans are dying every day? Not to mention the fact that similar manipulations of intelligence, if not addressed, could lead us into another disastrous situation that the country would not be honestly informed about?

I'm all for Congressional investigations, and as a New Yorker, I'm definitely all for investigating ways to intercept terrorist operations...but I'm sick unto the death of my Congress being used as a partisan witch hunting tool. The Congress is already disgustingly bloated and seems to do nothing but pass porky bills designed to get politicians re-elected. I'd much prefer an investigation into how they're keeping us safe NOW, rather than finding new ways to blame Clinton for things that are over and done.

[boris]

Is there really anything OF USE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC beyond more fodder for some always delicious Clinton bashing.

Busting the omission commission lock on the Atta timeline is more important than who's to blame for shortcomings in the commission report.

''There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.''

This isn't just 20/20 Blindsight ... the defenders want to maintain complete control of that timeline to retroactively prevent any connections between Iraq and 911. The dataminer info would bust that retro control wide open.

[Seven Machos]

I can't believe Bush-Rove-PNAC-evil placed such severe restrictions on meetings between the FBI and military intelligence in mid-2000. This is a disgrace.

That was an election year if I recall correctly. Certainly, had the public known that military intelligence had busted a ring of terrorists, it would have been more likely to elect the sitting vice president. Everybody KNOWS the Bushies purposefully made inter-agency cooperation more difficult in order to hurt the Democrats. Bush OBSTRUCTED the government in mid-2000, then had the gall to steal the election through the mechanizations of the Supreme Court and its so-called "authority" to interpret the Constitution.

This may have cost Al Gore the electoral college. But for this TRAVESTY of justice, Al Gore may well be president today, and we'd all be a lot safer, and September 11 would never have happened.

BUSH LIED!!!!!!! PEOPLE DIED!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Seven Machos]

So, basically, Etienne, you'd like an investigation into how the Bush administration is combatting terror now, because you don't like Bush.

You don't want an investigation into how the Clinton administration combatted terror, because you like Clinton.

Also, even though (thank God!) we have been mostly spared from terror since nine months into Bush's two-term presidency, you'd like "an investigation into how they're keeping us safe NOW."

You are ridiculously, shortsightedly, and ignorantly partisan. At least you are honest about it.

[Etienne]

This isn't just 20/20 Blindsight ... the defenders want to maintain complete control of that timeline to retroactively prevent any connections between Iraq and 911. The dataminer info would bust that retro control wide open.

Help me out here, boris. How does losing control of the timeline CREATE any Iraq/911 connections? Are you saying that this is the missing link that justifies the entire debacle? Please explain, because that sounds like a hell of a leap.

I'm here to try and understand this. It's a rare rightwing site that discusses this kind of a thing in a rational manner (sevenmachos excepted, of course).

[Etienne]

Um, actually, Mr. Macho, I don't give a pig's fart about Clinton. What I'd like to do is live in the present because unlike you (I'm guessing) I actually live in a place that has been victimized by terror and is vulnerable to it in the future.

The Clinton bashing, especially on the part of Republicans who refuse to accept ANY responsibility for the war,energy prices, deficit or anything else that has happened under their monopolistic control of our government, has gone from tiresome to pathological. As for calling me partisan, well, what do you call yourself?

[Cecil Turner]

"How does losing control of the timeline CREATE any Iraq/911 connections?"

The most significant one was the purported Atta/IIS meeting in Prague ("debunked" by the contention Atta was in the US at the time). As are the other (weak) indications the post-9/11 anthrax attack was foreign-sourced (which, if true, would tend to implicate Iraq).

[boris]

How does losing control of the timeline CREATE any Iraq/911 connections?

The omission commission Atta timeline HAS BEEN USED to dispute Iraq/911 connections as YOU WELL KNOW.

If the commission report authority supporting the timeline is discredited, then existing evidence which was formerly inadequate to budge that timeline becomes more credible.

[Seven Machos]

1. For the 57th time, Etienne uses the word "monopolistic" incorrectly.

2. I live smack-dab in the middle of the terror threat, Edy.

3. How are energy prices Bush's fault? Energy prices are China's and India's fault. There is no sinister explanation. Supply and demand, pal. Look into it.

4. I accept full responsibility for the war. I'm an advocate of the war. What advocates of the war DON'T accept responsibility for the war? This is silly.

5. I am a partisan. The difference is, I don't immediately go on the defensive when an administration I generally support is implicated in doing something wrong. (As I have said repeatedly, we didn't destroy enough and post-war planning was negligently awful.) You are on this board pretending to "try to understand" stuff, which suggests that you are in some way neutral, when the fact is you can't stand the president. What's to understand? I mean, besides words like "monopoly" and "pathology," which you throw around but clearly have no grasp of.

[Lurking Observer]

Etienne:

You are presuming that intelligence was politicized. As I noted above, it is far more likely to have been subject to the very human, very normal (and unfortunate) susceptibility to weighting evidence that supports preconceived notions over that which doesn't.

As to the 9-11/Saddam connection, there would be no "creation" of such a link; the 9-11 Commission, even if it was utterly used as a whitewash, cannot create a link if there wasn't one.

However.

Part of the argument that has been laid out against the Iraq War is the idea that there was no connection between Saddam and the 9-11 hijackers. (We'll leave aside the broader issue of Saddam and al-Qaeda for the moment.)

But what of Mohammed Atta? The claim has been made that Atta was in Prague and met with Iraqi intelligence.

Personally, I don't know if Atta can be linkned to the Iraqis; but the point here is that the Commission, which was responsible for investigating intelligence failures preceding 9-11, was apparently shown a glaring one (ignoring Able Danger-data) and did not undertake due diligence to investigate further.

Instead, Atta's possible meeting with the Iraqis was dismissed, in one defense by the Commission staff, because it didn't fit the preconceived timeline. What was the basis for said timeline? Cell-phone usage and INS visa records?

It is possible, however, (and this is not yet clear from the drip-drip-drip of revelations), that the Able Danger people had, in fact, other evidence regarding Atta.

IF such data exists in the Able Danger files, and IF it links Atta to the Iraqis, this raises several questions:

How does this recast the war with Iraq?

Why did the 9-11 Commission refuse to pay more att'n to the Able Danger element?

But the real issue isn't Atta and 9-11; the issue is the Commission's responsibility for determining what intel failures occurred prior to 9-11. If they refused to investigate leads (e.g., Able Danger), then they failed in their responsibility.

Note, btw, that the Commission is not charged with investigating the Iraq War. They were given a specific charter, and stuck to that charter (insofar as they did discharge their responsibilities).

[boris]

But the real issue isn't Atta and 9-11; the issue is the Commission's responsibility for determining what intel failures occurred prior to 9-11.

Wrong. If there is a real issue, it is the intel failures that occurred prior to 9-11. The commission is, was and always will be an effing joke.

Aside from that, the net-combat issue is the Iraq war, and for that ... Atta and 9-11 is where it's at.

[Etienne]

Believe me, Macho Man, when I come here to understand, it isn't you I'm asking questions of. Smack dab in the middle of a terror target? Where would that be, generally speaking? ... And of course I understand gas prices aren't the administration's fault. Nothing ever is. But you might want to tell that to the American people, who seem to be coming to a rather different judgment.

The fact that I don't like Bush - and indeed I'm honest about that, I thoroughly despise him and what he and his gang have done to my country - in no way exempts me from trying to understand how my government failed my fellow citizens that day, and what has been done to prevent a future attack. One day soon this creep will be gone, but this country and all its citizens will still be here.

Thanks for the responses, boris & Cecil, but that does sound like the same old same old. OK, the timeline justified the idea that Atta couldn't have been in Prague, but it didn't preclude anyone from presenting evidence that he WAS there either. And even if that was a proven fact, which it likely never will (or can) be, then that is some flimsy hooks to be hanging a war on.

I'm really not looking to stir up shit. I want to understand whether or not this is a matter of consequence, or just another partisan tempest in a teapot. The only sites discussing it are the righty ones, and most of the posters are frothing at the mouth so insanely they make even seventesticles sound statesmanlike.

[Lurking Observer]

boris:

Yes, that is a better formulation. The issue is what intelligence failures occurred, how can they be prevented or at least mitigated in the future.

The 9-11 Commission was responsible for trying to determine said failures and proposing solutions. Insofar as they did not undertake due diligence in investigating all of the failures/solutions, they are remiss.

Where the issue becomes explosive is why they did not do so (presuming that they did not do so, which sadly becomes more and more likely w/ each new revelation, be it of ignored State Department memos or Mary Jo White's warnings). If it turned out, for example, that the Commission ignored evidence that Atta met w/ Iraqi agents, or that the "wall" had proven to be a fatal flaw, then its recommendations are at best suspect, and at worst worthless.

But I don't think we have quite enough evidence just yet to know what the Commission did or did not do (although, as I wrote, it's not looking good for it).

[Appalled Moderate]

Etienne:

Part of the mandate of these type of commissions is to report, accurately, the full story of what happened -- what went wrong. They are supposed to be deadening in their detail and convince the Ameican people that what went wrong has been investigated thoroughly. Then everyone can have closure, and move on to the next problem.

When Commissions like this fairly clearly have members with conflict of interest problems, and then ignore or downplay data, they hurt their own credibility. Folks keep scratching the itch. Conspiracy theorists keep theorizing.

Based on the current play of the news, there appear to have been three relevent pieces of info left out of the report -- Able Danger, Mary Joe White's objections to the wall, and warnings to the Clinton Admistration about letting Bin Laden go to Afghanistan. There were no dramatic questions on these matters in televised hearings -- no finger pointing and demands to witnesses for the full details. With respect to Bush, however, we were treated to Richard Clarke and fairly probing questioning of Condi Rice regarding the famous August briefing.

Now, maybe there are similar omissions and errors regarding the Commission's evaluation of Bush's report. But they don't seem to have been reported and, in the rather partisan atmosphere of the Presidential campaign, I would have thought they would have been.

[Lurking Observer]

Etienne:

It is an important issue, b/c a failure to conduct due diligence means that the report is half-a**ed at best.

As for the Atta aspect, it would indicate that there might well have been a direct link between Saddam and al-Qaeda---no small issue. Intelligence agents don't just meet on a whim, especially with people about to conduct a rather major attack.

As for who is examining the issue, it has been my distinct impression that the Left-side of the blogosphere focuses on issues that cast Bush in a bad light. Able Danger does not do so, any more than the Air America scandal does so; ergo, little coverage by the Left of either. Conversely, both sides are discussing Cindy Sheehan, and that hardly makes that topic a more important one.

But the 9-11 Commission is not a matter of partisanship, any more than the Warren Commission or the Committees to examine Pearl Harbor. IF the 9-11 Commission did not fulfill its responsibilities, then there is an enormous problem, and it is important to determine why it shirked its duties (if it really did so).

[Etienne]

Thanks for the response, LO. I know the commission wasn't charged with investigating prewar intelligence manipulation. That investigation was postponed until after the elections - apparently the ones scheduled to take place after all the participants are dead.

I don't see how it is "far more likely" that all the wrong conclusions were a perfect storm of human error though. It was clear, from multiple sources (not the least of which is the Downing Street Minutes) that the administration wanted certain conclusions and then - lo and behold! - it got them. We'll never know because the admin is not going to ever allow us to understand how they did this to our supposedly free democratic society.

In any case, that's not the issue at hand. I realize the Atta-in-Prague scenario is important to war supporters. If they can use this information to make that case, I will surely listen to it.

Can anyone explain WHY both Repubs and Dems on the commission collaborated to conceal this evidence if that is the case? Just to keep things neat? Why?

[Lurking Observer]

Etienne:

If you keep the sarcasm level down, you're far more likely to get a reasoned response.

Your first two paras put you down, in my book, as someone who already knows all the answers, making any response more likely to be simply a waste of time.

As for the DSM, they've been debated and discussed enough that I doubt any response on that front will make much dent. Ditto your blithe dismissal of Atta-in-Prague (IF it happened).

The reality is that intelligence is often a matter of picking and choosing, since the other side is busily obfuscating and confusing the issue. For that matter, your own side might be doing the same (e.g., by collecting so much data that picking out the best nuggets is hard).

Groupthink is common---no one need lie to create it (although your comments would suggest that you don't really believe that). That might well explain both Bush and the 9-11 Commission---a preconceived notion dominating the discussion.

That doesn't address certain issues that should have proven disturbing from the get-go. Beginning w/ why Jamie Gorelick was on the Commission itself, rather than being a witness.

Oh, and bipartisan is not a synonym for non-partisan. Putting James Jeffords and Teddy Kennedy on the same commission would make it bipartisan, but no more non-partisan than putting Zell Miller, Ed Koch, and Dick Cheney on the same commission. The fact that the Commission ignored several items is unfortunately becoming ever clearer, and makes the whole "why would GOPers ignore it" moot, since it happened.

[Toby Petzold]

Why isn't Sandy Berger in jail?

[Etienne]

I'm sorry about the sarcasm, LO. I tend to gird for battle when I come to righty sites.

I still am not seeing anything exciting here, except one more incidence of important intelligence being channelled into bureaucratic dead ends. It really doesn't do a thing to lend credence to any Iraq/9-11 connections. Possibly it refutes the timeline that prevented placing Atta in Prague, but neither does it place him there. If you can't prove I was home last night, does that prove I was out robbing the gas station?

I missed the DSM conversations here, unfortunately. I'm sure they were lively. I do like to get the conservative viewpoints on such things. As you see, you found the most forgiving interpretation for them, but I certainly can not. In any case, we will have to wait for the history books to explain it to us, because our government certainly will not. Of that we can be sure.

I do understand it is important for commissions to be honest and thorough. I do NOT understand what would motivate any of the members besides Gorelick to suppress this information. And of course, it isn't really clear what info the commission received, so it is another presumption to suppose they suppressed anything at all.

[Mackenzie]

The 9/11 Commission was a typical Washington bi-partisan commission consisting of 50% Republicans and 50% Democrats not currently holding a political office or party position. The same with the senior staff. Any commission populated by politicians is overly conscious of partisan sensibilities. Whether knowingly or not there are political trade-offs - one side doesn't dwell on the other side's shortcomings in return for the same soft treatment. Maybe there is no such thing as non-partisanship, but bipartisan efforts are never going to dig deeply enough.

[Etienne]

What's the alternative, Mackenzie?

I think the American people have despaired of ever having their government give a true accounting of any of its actions. It is one of the ways we have lost the integrity of our democracy. The spirit of partisan warfare that people are engaging in now is kind of a vicarious substitute for democracy, because anyone who has spent any time on any political blog knows that truth seeking is the lowest of the motivations. It's usually all about pinning the blame on anyone who isn't "us".

If there was ever a time for a political maverick in America, it is now.

[Seven Machos]

I can see the White House from here.

[Dwilkers]

"Maybe there is no such thing as non-partisanship, but bipartisan efforts are never going to dig deeply enough."

Just so. And that is why a congressional 'investigation' (rolleyes) of any sort is pointless.

And guys, the Able Danger story, if true, undermines the idea that 9/11 was a 'failure of intelligence', no? One obvious point of the story is the intelligence was ignored because of policy considerations.

[Seven Machos]

Dwilkers is exactly correct. Clinton and Bush and Bush and Reagan and Carter can be blamed for this.

[gs]

Etienne, I commented regarding this post that Rumsfeld's hand-picked Army Chief of Staff might have been involved in the decision not to meet with the FBI. If the Clinton administration and Rumsfeld each could show to disadvantage here, it's understandable that partisans on both sides might let unsplashed mud lay. Bad for the country, but understandable.

[Lurking Observer]

Dwilkers:

Yes and no. Pearl Harbor was not a failure of intelligence, in the sense that people were aware an attack of some sort by the Japanese was going to occur somewhere in the Pacific. Some even thought it would be at Pearl Harbor.

But the fact of the matter is that they did not know when, they did not know what kind of attack (sabotage vs air attack), they did not know how.

Thus, it was an intelligence failure (although intelligence failures can be due to a variety of factors, including a bad policy, e.g., "the wall," or bad decisions, e.g., lining up the aircraft b/c you think sabotage is more likely than an air attack).

Etienne:

In the first place, this was not the sole issue. The Czechs have long said that they placed Atta in Prague with the Iraqis. In your analogy, your defense that you weren't robbing the gas station was that you couldn't be there, b/c you were someplace else (say, in bed). If I can show that you were definitely not in bed, and someone else can show that they saw you at the gas station at the time of the robbery, it doesn't PROVE you robbed the station, but it certainly goes a long way towards it.

This begs the question of whether a law enforcement model, and especially a criminal model, is the right one for dealing w/ such issues in the first place.

If we consider the possibility that the proper analogy is a civil suit, i.e., preponderance of evidence, rather than criminal, beyond a reasonable doubt, then you are in even deeper trouble.

[Seven Machos]

Lurking Observer: Ultimately, you can't fit war into law -- despite thousands of years of trying -- because war, once embarked upon, is extra-judicial by its nature. It is a situation in which two groups claiming a monopoly on force fight until one group claims a monopoly on force.

In criminal law, it is understood, even for the most part by the criminals themselves, that the State has a monopoly on force. In civil law, since both sides submit to a court's jurisdiction, there is complete understanding.

Etienne: note my correct use of the concept of "monopoly."

[Cecil Turner]

"OK, the timeline justified the idea that Atta couldn't have been in Prague, but it didn't preclude anyone from presenting evidence that he WAS there either."

There was one [disputed] sighting. But since nobody was following Atta at the time, he'd only be noticed when he contacted someone who was being followed. That sort of information is going to be thin.

"And even if that was a proven fact, which it likely never will (or can) be, then that is some flimsy hooks to be hanging a war on."

Not sure what the draw is in looking for ex-post-facto casus belli. Saddam was in violation of the Gulf War cease-fire, which is as good a "hook" as any. We thought he was a gathering danger of providing chem/bio assistance to terrorists (and he may have actually provided that assistance through Atta . . . and we may never know).

[Lurking Observer]

7:

I agree that war is not compatible with law. I recently re-watched "Breaker Morant," and am reminded of their key conclusion: War is not subject to peacetime morality, and by extension, legal reasoning.

I utilized the legal analogy primarily b/c Etienne insists that the absence of evidence is the same as evidence of absence, when that is in fact illogical and deeply flawed reasoning.

More to the point, given the widespread American belief that the legal approach is the preferred one, even in matters of war, I thought it useful to suggest that rather than a criminal court analogy, a civil court one is better in the context of the anarchical international system. (Of course, juxtaposing law and anarchy together begs quite a few questions as well, but we all work w/ what we have.)

[Etienne]

"The Czechs have long said"?...See, that sounds like Fox News copyrighted phrase "some people say". That doesn't constitute proof or evidence or any damn thing at all. That's hearsay, or even less.

The question of law enforcement vs. war waging is another sticky wicket. Again, not least because of the partisan clubbing its used for, by the likes of the despicable Rove. War can only be fought between states. You can't have a war where a state wages war against an ideology. That doesn't mean the ideology isn't a deadly threat. It's just that the old categories are useless. What makes me uncomfortable about the right wing is the apparent delight so many take in the concept of war, and their blind faith in its efficacy.

It would seem that a logical course is the one that will likely be the one taken - some combination of law enforcement work as deployed against drug cartels and surgical military strikes executed with (one would hope) precision and planning. Of course the crucial element is clean, non political intelligence. Which is why I wonder at the apathy for this concept from the right and why there are calls to investigate everything from steroids to oral sex, but not this.

Thank you for the vocab lesson, Seven, but I've been reading about the nuts and bolts of our Congressional processes and the word "monopoly", while not precise, is certainly applicable.

You can see the White House? That sounds a little scary, for some reason.

[Wolfman]

Schaffer has said that he told 911 Commission staff, before the 911 report, that Atta had been identified and shown in some sort of chart. Apparently, this story is also told by a Navy captain associated with Able Danger.

911 Commission leaders deny the foregoing, and report they never received any "chart" identifying Atta.

Is someone lying? Did the chart in fact exist? If yes, what happened to it? Did the prior DOD destroy it? Is the current DOD withholding it?

And there are reports that DOD attorneys stopped the Able Danger group from reporting their findings to the FBI. Has anyone identified these lawyers and asked them about it?

And why is it that the 911 Commission would not report something just because their only evidence is the testimony of American soldiers entrusted with our most sensitive intelligence? If we don't trust them (Schaffer and the Navy captain), why were they involved with Able Danger in the first place?

[Lurking Observer]

Etienne:

Just what in the world do you think intelligence is? What makes you think it's any different for police intelligence, including the drug enforcement model you think will eventually take over?

It would be nice, of course, if the bad guys could be duped into signing a confession, in the guise of signing for their laundry or somesuch. Just in time for Tom Cruise or Roger Moore to win the girl by the end.

But, as we see w/ the Milosevic trial, folks have gotten a lot smarter at avoiding self-incrimination.

Yes, someone (in this case, Czech intelligence) says they overheard something. Or saw something. That's how intelligence works. Intelligence is not an international version of "Law & Order." To expect that is to divorce yourself from the (ugly) reality of intelligence, itself the dirtiest, lowest-down, most uncertain part of the ugly reality of international relations. There's a reason it's referred to as a "wilderness of mirrors."

[Lance]

Etienne,

I don't know whether Atta was in Prague, but the Czechs stand by their claim he was, and there is other evidence as well. Does that prove it? No. However, if another intelligence agency says they saw a specific person it is pretty strong evidence, from what you are saying it seems you did not follow the detailed discussion of that evidence which was substantial as intelligence goes. The key element against it was that at one point when they are suspected of having met, we believed they must have seen the wrong person, because we "knew he wasn't there!" I always found that evidence weak, especially the cell phone evidence, but we just don't know.

Proof like you demand is a pretty high standard to meet, but we would be a lot closer if we found the timeline used was wrong. If they did meet was it because of 9/11? Does it matter? Difficult questions, but saying that something short of a voluntarily presented sample of DNA being donated on film with mutinational witnesses to insure uncompromised provenace isn't going to get us far. Proof isn't the issue, evidence is and we had good evidence that was dismissed because "it just couldn't be true."

In addition, your constant harping about when we are going to begin investigating intelligence before the Iraq war is a bit annoying. WE DID THAT! The Senate Intelligence report which is so wrapped up with Joe Wilson did happen. I know, I remember it. If your complaint is that it was inadequate and run by blowhards go ahead and join the choir. It did happen however. Check Tom's archives.

[boris]

Iraq involvement in 911 is a fairly big deal. A lot of people could overlook lack of WMDs if Saddam was involved.

That's what's really at stake here. The whole Bush lied mantra depends on the Iraq war being ignoble. It may not matter to those of us who support the war on strategic and humanitarian grounds, but the technicality arguments using no fly and cease fire violations are unpersuasive to the touchy feely group thinkers.

A majority believed Saddam was involved in 911 after it happened despite official statements that there was no direct evidence. There has been a campaign to blame that belief on the administration, another lie in effect. Throwing the omission commission Atta timeline into question undermines that campaign and allows what evidence there is to speak for itself.

There's more than Prague.

[Geoffrey Barto]

Bill Buckley once spoke of the classic CIA assassination operation: everyone involved except the target was killed. Can we really believe that the governments of four or five countries were tracking Mohammed Atta as a suspected terrorist and everyone of them lost track of him? I can. All it takes is a law enforcement bureaucracy where you have to fill out more paperwork to take action than to put something on the back burner. And societies that don't take locking people up lightly.

Reading the comments, I wince, because there's too much Clinton, too much Bush, too much 9/11 Commission. What we need is to accept that security can't be perfect, to see where it could have been better and to think through how much power we're willing to give governments run by imperfect people in the hope of better security next time.

We don't need a bad guy here. We need a thoughtful debate over whether, in the long run, the wall is a bad thing because it constrains those charged with our security or a good thing because it limits the ability of the government to direct (perhaps improperly or even maliciously) its power against individual people.

That is not a scientific question for experts. It's a political question for the voters to decide based on who they elect.

That we knew Atta's name, pre-9/11 is surprising. That we didn't do anything about it is typical. That a government might come about that acts every time a possible Atta shows up, however, is terrifying.

[owl]

I think both sides decided to go soft on each other since the beating up of Administration officials satisfied the blood lust. I don't know how they excuse not putting Gorelick under oath since the "wall" seems to be story of 9/11.

I know I blamed Clinton because I was sitting out here, Joe B Citizen, and watching ....something.....attack us over and over for almost 10 years. Small but constant attacks and the feeling that ....something....was building. Felt this strongly before Bush was elected.

So Bush is blamed because he decided to go after a known longtime threat. When N Korea or Iran drops a biggie somewhere in the world, he will be blamed for "ignoring" the problem. Can't you just hear the anti-war, Mother Sheehan supporters when that happens? Can you imagine them if he should decide to do something BEFORE they drop one? If Iran sends a suitcase into NY, someone is going to wonder why Bush did not attack Iran, since he knew they were building. The war protesters will be screaming the loudest and marching with their media sticks. Think I will lighten up on Clinton.

I do wish everyone could stop the blame long enough to study this data mining. We have PCed everything to such an extent, they would be afraid to say that the big, bad military was invading someone's privacy. If they actually came up with Atta, pardon one and all and let the data mining begin.

[kim]

OK, Etienne, I got your number. You note that since the Czechs' 'said' something, that therefore it is 'hearsay or worse'.

Right.

Your world and welcome to it.
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