JustOneMinute

Now I'm Confused

Mickey sends us to a new post by Edward Jay Epstein describing how a data mining operation might have picked up Mohamed Atta rather easily.  However, this bit leaves me at sea:

First, if Able Danger cross-referenced Arab males who flew to Pakistan in 1999 and Arab males who subsequently requested a replacement passport and then applied for a US visa, it would have come up with a list of Arabs possibly seeking to hide trips to al-Qaeda facilities in Pakistan and Afghanistan from US authorities. Such a list would include both the names of Atta and al-Shehhi.

OK, but... wouldn't Atta have been using a German passport, or at least, a non-US passport?  We have been told a million times in the last week that he was a non-US citizen, so that "The Wall" did not apply to him.

Is the redoubtable Dr. Epstein (who is very well-versed in this) assuming that the Able Danger team would have access to passport replacement requests made to other governments?  Or does he have something else in mind?  Here is an obvious alternative - note the issuance date on the passports of visa applicants, and cross-reference that.  Presumably this will capture new passports, although it won't separate replacement passports.  Or might there be an international registry for lost/stolen/cancelled passports that have been replaced?  There ought to be.

Per this CNN story, Atta *did* get a new passport, perhaps to conceal a trip to Afghanistan, but was it a US passport?  If it was, the German Interior Ministry seems to know a lot about the US passport process.

Puzzling.  But I have no plans to get rich betting against Dr. E.

Shaffer Named Terrorists On A No-Name Basis

[See UPDATE 2 - the transcript *may* tell a different story]

Lt. Col. Shaffer, a key source for Able Danger info, has changed his story:

Shaffer said in an interview on FOX News' "Hannity and Colmes" Thursday night that he and a fellow officer — a Navy captain — briefed the commission on Able Danger's findings.

"The fact is this — they were told not once but twice," he said.

Although Shaffer conceded that during his own personal briefing of Sept. 11 commission staffers in Afghanistan in Oct. 2003, he didn't specifically name the terrorists.

Emphasis added.

A week earlier, when the Commission was revising their story about what they knew and when they knew it, we got this blast from Congressman Weldon:

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.

Oh, boy.  Well, I bet folks have a few oaths for Weldon and Shaffer just now.

Hat Tip to Laura Rozen.

UPDATES:  Steady as she goes (down), from Mark Coffey at Decision '08:

Is that the end of Able Danger, then?

No, it is not. There are two things at play here: one, did ‘the wall’ between the military and law enforcement prevent the apprehension of the 9/11 conspirators, and two, was the 9/11 Commission negligent in not pursuing an Atta-related lead? Question two is increasingly leaning towards a favorable outcome for the Commission, but question one, I believe, remains an open book.

"She" is a nautical metaphor, BTW - this is still a family-friendly blog.

And for that "mushy" feeling, let's flip to John Hinderaker, who had doubts about Shaffer a few days ago.

UPDATE 2:  Don't give up the ship, cries the Captain!  Since Hannity and Colmes were especially interested in the notion that Shaffer named names, either they weren't listening when he broke news with this answer, or they took his response to mean "I named Atta, but not the other terrorists".

You read, I deride.

MORE:  If I were a table-pounding Attack Dem, I would target Stephen Hadley, purported recipient of Weldon's mysterious chart.  Either Hadley embarrasses Weldon (if that is possible) by debunking the chart, or he admits that he sat on a breakthrough chart during the 9/11 Commission process, and, BTW, is not pushing for funding of this successful intel project (or has pushed, but forgot to mention it to Weldon).

All roads lead to despair.  Well, an Attack Dem would think so, at least.  I'm going to thank Weldon and look for a new road.

An Able Danger Question That Can Be Answered!

9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer asks a question about Able Danger that can actually be answered:

While making no judgment on the veracity of the claims, former commissioner Tim Roemer said inconsistencies are appearing between the story and the facts that the commission knows.

For one, Roemer asked how Able Danger got a photo of Atta in 2000 for its alleged chart of terrorists when he had not yet applied for a U.S. visa.     

Here is how the Times presented that in their opening story:

In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men...

...He said that he delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

...Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year [2000].

OK.  Since "summer" starts on June 21, a chart prepared over the summer could have included a visa photograph.

Now to flag Andrew McCarthy.  [Kevin Drum does a first-rate job on this question.]

MORE:  Not so fast!  Per the 9/11 Commission statement of Aug 12, it *appears* that the photo may have been from the spring of 2000, but we can spin that.  Here we go:

On July 12, 2004, as the drafting and editing process for the Report was coming to an end (the Report was released on July 22, and editing continued to occur through July 17), a senior staff member, Dieter Snell, accompanied by another staff member, met with the officer at one of the Commission’s Washington, D.C. offices. A representative of the DOD also attended the interview.

According to the memorandum for the record on this meeting, prepared the next day by Mr. Snell, the officer said that ABLE DANGER included work on “link analysis,” mapping links among various people involved in terrorist networks.

According to this record, the officer recalled seeing the name and photo of Mohamed Atta on an “analyst notebook chart” assembled by another officer (who he said had retired and was now working as a DOD contractor).  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 officer complained that this information and information about other alleged members of a Brooklyn cell had been soon afterward deleted from the document (“redacted”) because DOD lawyers were concerned about the propriety of DOD intelligence efforts that might be focused inside the United States. The officer referred to these as “posse comitatus” restrictions. Believing the law was being wrongly interpreted, he said he had complained about these restrictions up his chain of command in the U.S. Special Operations Command, to no avail.

Ahh!.  Just because the original chart was dated April 2000, it does not follow that this Naval officer (now known to be Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott) *saw* it in April; nor does it mean that the chart was never updated.)

In other stories, the WaPo tells us more emphatically today what the NY Post told us yesterday - Lt. Col. Shaffer is getting his information second-hand. 

The Wapo also tries to probe Rep. Weldon's memory:

Time magazine reported last week that Weldon said he is no longer sure that Atta was included on the chart he gave Hadley. But Weldon's chief of staff said yesterday that Atta was on the chart and that it was produced in 1999. Representatives for Hadley, who is now President Bush's national security adviser, have declined to comment on Weldon's claims.

Weldon did not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.

Weldon may not have responded yesterday, but he responded to Eric Umansky of Slate, and told the world that he only learned that Able Danger ID'ed Atta in June 2005.  My gloomy thoughts here.

BONUS PUZZLE:  Per the Commission statement about Phillpott's briefing, the names were redacted shortly thereafter.  Well, as we wondered when the Commission's statement was first reported - when Gen. Shelton was briefed in Jan 2001, were the names still redacted?

We ask because we are still grappling with this from the Aug 12 Times:

In an interview this week, a former senior military officer disputed that the unit members had ever presented to their superiors information that identified Mr. Atta or other suspected members of Al Qaeda.

Weldon didn't know about the Atta ID until 2005, Shaffer didn't know until after 9/11, Gen. Shelton may not have been told at all - I can see why the Pentagon is taking so long to respond to this.  So far, the WaPo has this:

A Pentagon official said yesterday that although the investigation into the allegations is still ongoing, "we're not finding information that substantiates these claims."

The Pentagon presumably has folks engaged in a heroic attempt to prove a negative.  We are stalled because no one wants to be the poor fool to say "There are no relevant Able Danger documents", because they know what will be found five minutes after those words leave their mouth.

However, they can't find anything.  Or, they have found the smoking chart, and are now scrambling to marshall a cover-up an explanation.

Able Danger - Muddying The Waters

In an earlier post I wondered if Mohamed Atta was showing up in public databases or in news reports prior to 9/11.  It turns out he was - sort of.  There was a Mahmoud Atta who attacked a bus in the West Bank in 1986, was arrested in Venezuela, and was eventually deported from the US to Israel in 1990.

So what?  Well, per Snopes, in the aftermath of 9/11 news services confused the two and wondered which bright lights in the INS allowed a known terrorist into the country.  (Jeralynn Merritt debunked this back in the day).

So, as part of our ongoing attempt to square the circle and resolve the conflicting stories about Able Danger, we are tossing out this notion - might Lt. Col. Shaffer or someone else have confused the two Attas in their analysis?

OK, that seems like an incredibly dumb idea, until you think about it (it then rises to "Not hopelessly farfetched") - the first Atta (Mahmoud) was a naturalized US citizen and a known terrorist.  If you were data mining for new terrorists, mightn't you start with him and see who his friends and connections were?  As Shaffer explained in an interview with Michael Savage, its all about linkages.

And having captured the linkages, mightn't Atta's name appear on some chart or file as a focal point for "Persons of Interest with Links to Atta"?

Finally, post 9/11, confusion sets in.  In his latest interview in the NY Post, Lt. Col. Shaffer tells us that, like Rep. Curt Weldon, he didn't know that Able Danger had identified Atta until after 9/11:

Shaffer said Atta's name didn't ring a bell when he learned the hijackers' names after 9/11. But he got "a sinking feeling in my stomach" when the woman Ph.D. in charge of Able Danger's data analysis told him Atta was one of those who had been identified as a likely al Qaeda terrorist by Able Danger.

"My friend the doctor [Ph.D.] who did all the charts and ran the technology showed me the chart and said, 'Look, we had this, we knew them, we knew this.' And it was a sinking feeling, it was like, 'Oh my God, you know. We could have done something.' "

OK, the idea that we have two Attas is a longshot, and a lot of the story we are getting does not support it.  On the other hand, a lot of the story we are getting is second hand - we have *still* not heard directly from someone who can say that they had identified Atta as a terrorist before 9/11.  Both Weldon and Shaffer only learned about the Atta ID afterwards (in Weldon's case, roughly June of 2005).

I toss the idea out there.

Oh, and if the Pentagon has suspended Shaffer's security clearance and lost his files, after failing to respond meaningfully to the 9/11 Commission's request for info - shouldn't we be calling this a Pentagon cover-up, rather than a Commission cover-up?  Just wondering.

MORE:  A Tale of Two Attas - the confounding of Czech and German investigators:

Consider the odds: two men named Mohamed Atta, total strangers with nothing to connect them, both arriving in Prague just as one, the Sept. 11 hijacker, was beginning his fateful journey to the United States.

According to documents in the files of the German federal police, the improbable scenario of "The Two Attas" is precisely what transpired in the spring of 2000, confusing investigators for months and laying the groundwork for a spurious claim that Atta later met with an Iraqi intelligence agent.

Thanks to Lucy in the comments.

And speaking of Lucy, let's note that Lt. Col. Shaffer would not be having a problem producing the famous Al Qaeda organization chart if Dan Rather were covering this story.

9/11 Commission To Pentagon - Over To You!

Thomas Kean of the 9/11 Commission bounces the Able Danger ball into the Pentagon's court:

The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission called on the Pentagon on Wednesday to move quickly to evaluate the credibility of military officers who have said that a highly classified intelligence program managed to identify the Sept. 11 ringleader more than a year before the 2001 attacks. He said the information was not shared in a reliable form with the panel.

The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, offered no judgment about the accuracy of the officers' accounts. But he said in an interview that if the accounts were true, it suggested that detailed information about the intelligence program, known as Able Danger, was withheld from the commission and that the program and its findings should have been mentioned prominently in the panel's final report last year.

"If they identified Atta and any of the other terrorists, of course it was an important program," Mr. Kean said, referring to Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the attacks. "Obviously, if there were materials that weren't given to us, information that wasn't given to us, we're disappointed. It's up to the Pentagon to clear up any misunderstanding."

On this question of what did the Pentagon know and when did they know it, I am not sure enough attention has been paid to the clarified Curt Weldon story, as developed by Eric Umansky. 

According to Weldon, it was only in June 2005 that his Able Danger connections told him that they had ID'ed Mohammed Atta back in 2000.  This, despite the fact that in May 2002 Curt Weldon was extolling the Able Danger program, lauding its output, and describing its briefing (part of which he had seen).  There is an extended excerpt after the break, but nowhere in his speech does he mention Mohammed Atta, and apparently, that name was not mentioned to him.

Why so coy, we wonder - if the Able Danger people wanted to promote their effort by enlisting a Congressman, why not give him the headline grabbing story about Atta right away?  Why wait three years before delivering the clincher?  Even if the identification of Atta was classified in 2002 (and the other parts Weldon revealed were not?), couldn't they have whispered it to him?

Well.  The Pentagon is continuing to tread water:

The Pentagon has not disputed the accounts from Colonel Shaffer or the Navy captain. But it has withheld comment on Able Danger, saying it is gathering information about it.

My Things To Do list:

(a)  Per Lt. Col. Shaffer, "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".  Right, then, has anyone checked Lexis-Nexis to see if Mohammed Atta generates any hits in 1999 or 2000?  It proves nothing if the answer is no, but "yes" might be very interesting - why would Atta have been in the news?

(b)  Helpen ze Captain, und mach snell!  Captain Ed notes an obscure arrest in Germany, in Feb 2001, of two Iraqi intelligence agents.  However, finding follow-up has been difficult.  Needed - eager German-speaking Googlers!  The hope is that the German press may have more on this.  The prosecutor's name, Kay Nehm, may be a starting point.

As a sidebar to the Captain's "UPDATE II" - here is some AP coverage of the situation - apparently, the report from the Carribbean about an Islamic terrorist plot to fly a plane into the WTC was presented at a Congressional hearing, but dropped from the 9/11 report:

At congressional hearings last week that reviewed the pre-Sept. 11 performance of the CIA, FBI and other agencies in sorting through such possible clues, 10 intelligence reports made public described threats the government received suggesting terrorists might use planes as weapons.

Those, plus two publicly known plots, in 1994 and 1995, that would have crashed planes into targets, suggest the government should have taken a closer look at terrorists' potential use of planes, investigators said.

The threats detailed in the congressional report do not tell the whole story, said Cannistraro. ''That's taking one snapshot in a movie that's five hours long,'' he said.

...For example, U.S. intelligence got information in August 1998 that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center, says the report by Eleanor Hill, staff director of the congressional investigation.

The report does not offer a source for the information. A U.S. intelligence official, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity, said it was from a dubious source: a Caribbean police officer.

''It was viewed as wildly speculative,'' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''There was no information to corroborate this report.''

The report was passed on to the FBI, Federal Aviation Administration and other groups, which did little with it.

Officials do not believe the police officer's report is linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Weldon excerpt below.

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.

Able Was I - Weldon Remembers!

Eric Umansky, who has been a skeptic at Slate on the Able Danger story, interviews Rep. Curt Weldon and pins down the time when Weldon first became aware that the Able Danger team had identified 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta:

Three months ago I was doing my book and went back to [the former Able Danger officers].  I wanted a copy of the chart, because much of my book was dealing with the importance of finding patterns in intelligence. So I asked them if they had another copy of the chart. They said no. So I asked them to recreate one—it was only then that they told me they had actually ID’d Atta and had recommended sharing it. What they told me and what I believe is the case that [the original chart] had a photo and name of Atta.

That ties in with this TIME magazine story, excerpted by Decision '08, Michelle Malkin, and Kevin Drum:

In a particularly dramatic scene in Weldon’s book, Countdown to Terror, the Pennsylvania Republican described personally handing to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, just after Sept. 11, an Able Danger chart produced in 1999 identifying Atta. But Weldon told TIME he’s no longer certain Atta’s name was on that original document. The congressman says he handed Hadley his only copy. Still, last week he referred reporters to a recently reconstructed version of the chart in his office where, among dozens of names and photos of terrorists from around the world, there was a color mug shot of Mohammad Atta, circled in black marker.

That answers one of my questions from Aug 13 - "When did Weldon learn that Able Danger had identified Atta - is that a fair question to put to him?"

On the other hand - we will soon have a new post on the latest NY Times story in which Weldon's key source identifies himself and claims that Pentagon lawyers blocked him from meeting with the FBI - a point which the Defense Dept. is not yet denying.

Waas On Rove And Plame

Murray Waas has extensive background on the Plame investigation, the Rove connection, and Ashcroft's recusal, all in the Village Voice, with more at his blog.  Comic highlight:

What has not been previously reported until now (a blog breaks news!?), is that not only could Rove not remember the name of the journalist who purportedly might have told him of Plame's CIA employment, but he also claimed to remember virtually nothing about the circumstances of the purported conversation. He could not even recall whether the conversation took place on the phone or in person.

If only it were September, we could add a soundtrack - "Try To Remember", or perhaps "Memories".  NO, "You Don't Send Me Flowers" can't be right!

I am currently blogging from an insecure remote location with a glitchy connection, but I expect to have some independent thoughts on this eventually.

UPDATE:  If I had a red pen, I would suggest some changes to this article:

Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations were most likely the result of a hoax.

What Wilson or anyone else knew about the Niger forgeries in March 2002 is a fascinating question.  Let's agree that Wilson said an actual sale was out of the question.

When Wilson sought out White House officials, believing they did not know all the facts, he was rebuffed. He then went public with his criticism of the Bush administration. It was then that senior administration officials began their campaign to discredit Wilson as a means of countering his criticisms of them.

Rove and Libby, and to a lesser extent then deputy National Security Council (NSC) adviser Stephen J. Hadley (who is currently Bush's NSC adviser), directed these efforts. Both Rove and Libby discussed with Novak, Cooper, and other journalists the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and that she was responsible for sending him to Niger, in an effort to discredit him.

How do we know that Rove and Libby "directed" these efforts?  Why not Condi Rice, or Ari Fleischer, or Dick Cheney, Libby's boss?

Plame's employment with the CIA had been detailed in a highly classified State Department memorandum—circulated to senior Bush administration officials—in the days jut prior to conversations between Rove and Libby and journalists regarding Plame.

Dated June 10, 2003, the memo was written for Marc Grossman, then the undersecretary of state for political affairs. It mentioned Plame, her employment with the CIA, and her possible role in recommending her husband for the Niger mission because he had previously served in the region. The mention of Plame's CIA employment was classified "Secret" and was contained in the second paragraph of the three-page classified paper.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson published his now famous New York Times op-ed and appeared on "Meet the Press." The following day, on July 7, the memo was sent to then secretary of state Colin L. Powell and other senior Bush administration officials, who were scrambling to respond to the public criticism. At the time, Powell and other senior administration officials were on their way to Africa aboard Air Force One as members of the presidential entourage for a state visit to Africa.

TIME magazine was very tough on that timeline, noting that after a Walter Pincus article on June 13, the memo was much discussed in Admin circles.

As to "The mention of Plame's CIA employment was classified "Secret" ', well, not exactly.  Per the WSJ, her name was mentioned in a paragraph that was labeled secret.  However, folks who work with classified documents have explained that it may well have been some other element of the paragraph that attracted the classification.  For example, the paragraph may have mentioned the (once classified) information that the CIA sponsored a fact-finding trip to Niger.  It may be that Ms. Plame's name was what made that paragraph classified, but again, folks who do this for a living have found the idea that a NOC would be casually mentioned in an inter-agency memo to be absurd.

Finally, as to Rove's omission of his mention of his conversation with Matt Cooper about Ms. Plame - it is probably worth noting that an e-mail between Rove and Hadley noted their talk (but not the details), so it is quite possible that Rove's memory was jogged by a review of his own e-mails (by his lawyers, presumably), rather than by Fitzgerald's investigators.

Secondly, the first round of subpoenas in October 2003 did not mention Cooper or TIME (No, I can't explain why that was).  TIME was picked up (along with the White House Iraq Group e-mails, such as Rove-Hadley) in January 2004, after Fitzgerald took over.

Richardson '08

The LA Times profiles New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, and notes his Presidential ambition.  Our two cents - at a dinner party last Christmas, a Dem fundraiser assured me that Richardson had no hope as a Presidential candidate, because his personal life made Bernie Kerik look like a choir boy.

But what do I know?

MORE:  In anticipation of a failed link, we have some Bernie-bashing below the break.

Good Time Management Tip

Decision '08 has a new address.  If you think you don't have time to update your links (or add him now!), he has a GREAT time-management tip for bloggers everywhere.

Able Danger - The 9/11 Statement

The 9/11 Commission's statement on Able Danger is now available on their website.  The statement is a four page .pdf file which makes an even stronger case for the Commission than was suggested by the WaPo or NY Times stories - there is a lot more info about how the Commission followed up on the initial Able Danger briefing, and they do not seem to have been derelict, non-responsive, or uninterested.  [However, folks worried about the possible motives for a Commission cover-up will find the UPDATE to be *very* interesting!]

From the 9/11 statement, here is a headscratcher:

In 2004, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) and his staff contacted the
Commission to call the Commission’s attention to the Congressman’s critique of the U.S. intelligence community. No mention was made in these conversations of a claim that Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers had been identified by DOD employees before 9/11.

Well, we have noted that the Congressman did not mention Atta in his 2002 House floor speech either.  The Times did tell us this:

In the interview on Monday, Mr. Weldon said he had been aware of the episode since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, when members of the team first brought it to his attention. He said he had told Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, about it in a conversation in September or October 2001, and had been surprised when the Sept. 11 commission report made no mention of the operation.

Well, did "the episode" include Atta's name?  Maybe not - the same Times article told us that Mr. Weldon "said he had recognized the significance of the episode only recently..."

Baffling.  When did Weldon learn that Able Danger had identified Atta - is that a fair question to put to him?

The must-read Norristown Times-Herald, which interviewed Weldon back in June, carries a follow-up in response to the 9/11 Commission statement.  It's mostly background, but interesting.  And it is made more interesting by the *possibility* [confirmed!] that a key source for the Times Herald is also commenting as "Anon" at The Intel Dump.  I have more confidence in Phil Carter's crew anyway...

UPDATE:  [Reaction to the 9/11 memo from Jim Geraghty and John Podhoretz.  The Skeptic's Corner is never too crowded].  After the break, we have a longish excerpt describing the Commission response to the their first briefing on Able Danger in Oct. 2003.  But here is their opening sentence:

On October 21, 2003, Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, two senior Commission staff members, and a representative of the executive branch, met at Bagram Base, Afghanistan, with three individuals doing intelligence work for the Department of Defense.

And who is Philip Zelikow?  Currently he is with the State Dept., but at the time of the Commission, he was criticized for being too close to the Bush team, and especially Condi Rice - he coauthored a book with her, led the transition briefings on terror, and was allegedly instrumental in demoting Richard Clarke.  But that is not the interesting bit!

Before joining the 9/11 Commission Mr. Zelikow was "the Executive Director of   the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age   (2002-2003). This task force investigated ways of developing an information   network to prevent terrorism while protecting citizens' civil liberties."

How about that?  The fellow who led the first Able Danger de-briefing was also an expert in terrorism and information management.  Did he, or the Markle Foundation, have thoughts about data-mining?  Indeed they did - we take this from their press release:

As the recent controversies surrounding DARPA's Terrorist Information Awareness program and an Army contractor's use of Jet Blue passenger data demonstrate, government access to, and use of, privately held data remains a vexing problem. In its report, the Task Force notes that the government should effectively utilize the valuable information that is held in private hands, but only within a system of rules and guidelines designed to protect civil liberties. Since it is not possible for the nation to harden all potential targets against terrorist attack, the Task Force concludes that the government must rely on information to detect, prevent, and effectively respond to attacks. The travel, hotel, financial, immigration, health, or educational records of a person suspected by the government to be a terrorist may hold information that is vital to unveiling both his intentions and those of other terrorists.

However, the Task Force also concludes that the government should not have routine access to personally identifying information even if it is widely available to the public. If government is to sustain public support for its efforts, it must demonstrate that the information it seeks to acquire is genuinely important to the security mission and is obtained and used in a way that minimizes its impact on privacy and civil liberties.

Does this mean that Mr. Zelikow would prefer to quash news of "Able Danger", if it really had been a successful data-mining program?  Who knows?

The full report is at the Markle Foundation website.  And the Washington Post, in their coverage of the Foundation press release, teases us with this:

The report also said the administration mishandled several promising programs to mine private sector databases for signs of terrorist activity by failing to set clear policy guidelines for the government's collection and use of data on Americans' everyday activities.

As time permits, I hope to read through the full effort.  However, this is what we have a blogosphere for...

Mark Steyn notes that the US border is semi-permeable, and that Atta may have been in the US even if INS records don't say so.  Eleven million undocumented aliens can't be wrong.

Excerpt from Commission statement below.