Too Late
Able Danger really did have the goods:
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 bureau.
Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its 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 attacks were still being planned.
Read the whole thing.
as stupid as this might sound..
I always wonder what would have happened if the 9/11 attacks had been prevented..
if the plans had been uncovered and the hijackers captured before they could carry it out..
would Osama have continued plotting..
and somehow obtained more dangerous weapons (nukes, chemical, or whatever), so that our first wake up call would have been a fatal blow?
In other words, as terrible as this sounds, should we somehow
be thankful that our wake up call wasn’t a lot worse?
sorry to anyone who lost anyone in those attacks… but I have always thought that maybe we got off lightly – could have been alot worse. if the hijackers had been caught, I doubt that would have served as a wake up call.. probably a news headline for a week and then business as usual.
Osama would have continued plotting and who knows what he would have come up with the next time.
it could have been a crippling blow.
as I said, my apologies to anyone who lost loved ones in that attack for that last statement
As Captain Ed points out, this brings into suspicion all of the commissions conclusions about Atta. They clearly did not do due diligence in the question of whether he went to Prague. Go to captainsquartersblog.com and read all the strings relating to this. Another thing the commission ignored was the arrest of an Iraqi intelligence asset in Iraq that was there to form links to attack the west. Maybe it is a coincidence.
doug
If AG John Ashcroft had declared on Sept. 10, 2001, that he’d uncovered a plot by 20 (19) hijackers to take over not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 (four!) planes, simultaneously, and crash them into the WTC, Pentagon, and Capitol, and that the whole thing had been plotted by a guy living in a cave on the far side of the world, the left would have denounced him. Afterall, the plot was far too complicated and Moslems don’t attack civilians (except in response to the evil Joooos, er, Israelis) or commit suicide (cf. above) — it’s against their religion. Ashcroft & Bush would’ve been labelled paranoid racists who were attempting to scare Americans to further their evil plans.
Well, even after Sept. 11 the left believes that last sentence.
I can’t help but believe such a massive case of dereliction must be credited at least partly to a hidden agenda, one which does not have the best interest of America at heart. Our government is infested with enemy agents and traitors, i.e., Democrats and other liberals, who have shown many times before that they hate our country, everything it stands for, and everyone who loves it.
After all, is passive enabling of enemy activities not the same as active support of them, if the end result is the same? The people who undermine and subvert the ability of our military, police, and intelligence agencies to stop terrorism are as complicit as the very people who plan and carry out the attacks, since both actions were deliberately done with full knowledge of the potential consequences, and especially so in the face of evidence to the fact that many people in government had enough information to act decisively, but instead chose inaction or ineffective half-measures.
There is no evidence that any liberals in government, media, or political organizations have ever done anything but work against America at home and abroad. They are a class of traitors who actively and deliberately seek to overthrow our democratically elected republic, and establish a fascist/socialist, one-party police state, and their own words bear me out as being right.
It is no secret that the ACLU, labor unions, Southern Poverty Law Center, Code Pink, ANSWER, even Martin Luther King Jr., et al, all currently have or have had in the past, especially at the beginning of their work or at their inception, strong connections to international Communism, an ideology that has been committed from its birth to the overthrow of Western Civilization, the success of which America is the most shining example, and thus is the most desirable target. They hate America, they hate white Christians, they hate prosperity, and they hate freedom most, because free people can’t be controlled, and that, above all, is their desire; absolute control.
Um…or maybe they just have a different idea about the role of government?
And just to satisfy my curiosity: did you take your meds twice this morning, or not at all?
It was a different time, we had set a system to preserve peoples rights and a part of that system was that the military could not do what Able Danger did. We now scream how could we be so blind when if they had succeded we would be screaming about the constitution in exile… wait never mind.
Simple bureaucratic incompetence, not evil conspiracy, is always the most likely culprit in situations like this. That doesn’t make it any less infuriating, though.
There’s more, State sent over the goods on OBL in 1996.
Via LGF from the NYT(?!):
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 – State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden
Yes, it is more likely incompetence that conspiracy, but the politicians did nothing to make that conclusion easy what with Gorelik on the commission, etc. I don’t necessarily care to see the commission hung out to dry, but it WOULD be nice to se some puclic recognition of the abundant circumstantial evidence that at the very least leads one to conclude that the belief that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 is premature and highly provisional.
doug
Occam’s Razor applies to this case as well as any other, but is it really coincidence that every person currently serving in government is a product of radical ultra-liberal, leftist, anti-American colleges, and that some are unabashedly leftist in their ideology? It is well known that the govenment employees’ union is 100% leftist, as are most lawyers. The most striking characteristic of leftist indoctrination is that it is so subtle and pervasive, given that it is conducted from cradle to grave through the leftist media, the leftist infested education system, and leftist controlled courts, which have subverted the legislative process, that people rarely even know they have been indoctrinated, or that they are doing the work they have been programmed to do.
I don’t consider the current situation to be the result of incompetence at all, but rather the product of a system designed to incapacitate the government through endless lawyerly quibbling over every detail until the only acceptable action is inaction. What else can you call it when Bill Clinton, and Congress, had been told many times through many sources, including Richard Clark and many other prominent Democrats, that Al Qaeda was known to be planning spectacular attacks and should be preemptively attacked ASAP, yet nothing was done, and evidence in support of action was dismissed or suppressed by lawyers and operatives withing the government. I’m not saying these people were actively trying to ensure the terrorists’ success, but they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt what the results of inaction would be, and they advised inaction anyway. These lawyers and party apparatchiks were, and continue to be, terrorisms’ greatest assets, because they ensure that our best lines of defense against terrorism are totally incapable of doing their job properly.
There will be another attack, and many more Americans will die, and once again, people will ask why, as if they didn’t already know. Well, this time, there will be no excuses, no passing the buck. We know who to blame, and idiots like uncle squid may find themselves on the wrong end of the revolution they’ve worked for so long to bring about, and on the wrong end of a length of hemp.
Doug – Gorelick should be hung out to dry, remember they circled the wagons for her.
Correction: I should have said “useful idiots”, rather than simply “idiots”, in the previous post.
And yes, Goerlick should be hung out, but for the crows, not to dry.
I have to agree with Will and others, who said above that the greatest probable reason behind the events prior to 9/11 was beauracratic incompetance.
But I do not buy that for the 9/11 commission. Gorelick clearly had conflicts and should not have been there.
Given the insight that the Able Danger story provides, the Berger pants stuffing episode now takes on a much more malignant smell. The episode was at the time humiliating for Berger and unexplainable. Why would a man of his position do such an obvious and stupid thing? Now we know.
My take is now that the previous administration, beyond a doubt, f*****d up bad and they were desperately trying to cover their tracks. When they were caught, they tried to use the same kind of cutsie wink and grin bullshit that they used in their many other scandals during the 90′s.
Think back to the Rose Law Firm files or the illegally obtained FBI files and that poor slob they blamed it on. I remeber the MSM frequently referring to him as a ‘gallute’, as if it were a college prank.
When an objective history is written, the Clinton administration will be damned for its incompetance and corruption, as it well should be. After screwing up in a big way, they have lied, stolen and spun in an effort to deflect any blame from themselves. Don’t these people have the slightest shred of decency?
I posted a transcript of the 1 hour interview that Lt. Col. Shaffer granted Michael Savage last night at:
http://qtmonster.typepad.com/qt_monsters_place/2005/08/able_dangers_of.html
Tim P
The answer is no. They have not a single shred of decency.
Clinton White House Ignored Warning to Tear Down Wall Between Intelligence and Law Enforcement
That the Clinton White House was so obsessed with expanding rules restricting the sharing of intelligence with law enforcement can never be forgiven. The ‘wall’ was patently stupid when it was first articulated during the Carter Administration and any …
rbj is right about the likelihood we’d have celebrated Ashcroft rounding up 20 probable hijackers pre-9/11. Likewise, had the Clinton admin rounded up 20 or 30 terrorists, the right and far left would have assumed he was wagging the dog. 9/11 happened because data or no data, the political climate prevented effective action.
But before the “government off our backs” right or “stop the Patriot Act” left starts picking out bad guys, they’d better ask themselves: Just how effective – and powerful – do you want the government to be?
Striking a balance between liberty and security isn’t a job for Washington experts to determine scientifically. It’s a job for voters deciding who should be in the White House and Congress and accepting the consequences of the political climates their choices create. Voters should therefore beware before telling pollsters how much liberty they’ll give up to prevent another 9/11. The pols they elect might believe them.
Geoffrey,
I disagree. Clinton DID ‘wag the dog.’
Let’s recall, the very day Monica L is scheduled to testify before a grand jury, Clinton launches a cruise missle attack on a) an empty camp in Afghanistan and b) an aspirin factory in the Sudan.
Then curiously enough, exactly when the impeachment proceedings are suppossed to begin, guess what? We launch major bombing in Iraq! What a coincidence! twice no less!
Yet the Republicans, after making a fuss, and after major beatings about it from the MSM, fell in and supported the President. Contrast that to the democrats. A few years back, some interns grabbed and published an internal memo among Senate Armed Forces democrats outlining how to frustrate Bush, for political purposes! During wartime no less. And the MSM curiously enough focused on “who leaked this! They must be punished!” Go figure. I won’t recite the other numerous instances we all know where the dems and their handmaidens in the MSM are doing everything to make all the news from Iraq sound bed. Now we also have Able Danger.
Guess what, it’s the democrats who started and do their utmost to perpetuate the poisoned atmosphere you so bemoan. Recall the hate and bilge of last years election? Ever watch a Michael Moore flick? Ever listen to Howard Dean? Ever go over to the DU site or Atrios’s place?
The Republicans are not innocent, by a long shot, but they aren’t even in the same league as the democrats.
I have to say I agree with Improbulus Maximus here. While the political entity known as the Soviet Union may have collapsed, communism is by no means dead. It lives on among the American intelligentsia, college professors, teachers unions, and in the arts.
Make no mistake about it: America is at war, and it is a war for our very survival. To win it, we must not only destroy radical Islam, we must also root out and destroy the vestiges of leftism. They are our mortal enemies.
To put it another way, if there is ever another mass casualty attack on America, it won’t be just Muslims hanging from lampposts.
I’m not advocating it, mind you, merely predicting it.
But I do not buy that for the 9/11 commission. Gorelick clearly had conflicts and should not have been there.
Yup.
Given the insight that the Able Danger story provides, the Berger pants stuffing episode now takes on a much more malignant smell. The episode was at the time humiliating for Berger and unexplainable. Why would a man of his position do such an obvious and stupid thing? Now we know.
If it had just been Gorelick, this thing could be written off as bearucratic incompetence. But I don’t believe for a second that Sandy Berger would risk his reputation and possible prison time to cover for Gorelick.
Who was Berger trying to protect? Himself, or someone else?
The Truth Will Set You Free
I haven’t posted anything yet about the unravelling of the 9/11 Comission Report and the role of Clinton Appointee Jamie Gorelick’s role in establishing the ‘wall’ between law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Thanks to the work of many in the …
(…)”military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.”
I have long suspected that lawyers will eventually destroy the United States.
Not willingly or with malicious intent — more as a side-effect of doing what they do…
To put it another way, if there is ever another mass casualty attack on America, it won’t be just Muslims hanging from lampposts.
Posted by rickl at August 17, 2005 07:43 PM
I’m not advocating it, mind you, merely predicting it.
Posted by rickl at August 17, 2005 08:01 PM
Thank you for the clarification. I was beginning to think you rather unbalanced, but now I see you are an eminently reasonable, thoughtful individual.
You also need to consider the two memos to the Department of Justice from Mary Jo White regarding the Gorelick Wall. She warned years before 9/11 that the wall would have dire consequences, with the possibility of civilian casualties – yet was ignored.
Add the fact that these memos and Able Danger were virtually ignored by the 9/11 Commission and what do you get? Bureaucrats playing CYA instead of doing their job.
Thanks for posting such a relevant and enlightening article. Totally counters this latest effort by the neocons to somehow brand Clinton as the slacker responsible for all of this to pull focus from the current concern about the Iraq conflict. Seems that there was laxity all around.
P.S. you’re kinda cute for a Righty.
Posted by Uncle Squid:
“Um…or maybe they just have a different idea about the role of government?”
And what role might that be?
Is there a rational basis for that role? A historical one? Or did they just pull it out of their asses?
“And just to satisfy my curiosity: did you take your meds twice this morning, or not at all?”
Did you take yours? Or did they leave the door unlocked at the “funny farm” again?
See. it’s easy to play that 6th grade school yard crap, but it’s infinitely harder to come up with RATIONAL explanations.
Have at it!
History will be very unkind to the Klinton Kamp.
But Carter is still the worst president ever.
Did you know that Bill Clinton causes cancer? And that big tsunami last year? Jimmy Carter was to blame.
Gimme a break.
When I read the information emerging out of Able Danger, I can’t help but think about Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson, George Tenet, Sandy Berger and their subsequent actions and reactions taken since the day after 9/11.
All these guys, ironically, worked as security advisors in some capacity under the Clinton administration then, with the exception of Sandy Berger, they worked for a brief time under the Bush Adminstration.
I read a comment at another blog which gave quite a persuasive argument for the idea of there being a Trojan Horse in the Bush Adminstration which was used to divert attention away from the fact that the prior administration really was derelict in duty when it came to Al Qaida. Would help to explain Clarke’s insistance on blaming Bush for 9/11 failures, Joe Wilson yellowcake lies, George Tenent’s silence and Sandy Berger’s classifed document theft from the National Archives.
Hiding Able Danger from the light of day keeps the Bush White House as the primary focus of blame. Able Danger was a prototype operation with relatively little paper trail to begin with so there is not much a trail left to follow. Perhaps the appointment of Porter Gross really has cleaned the CIA’s house.
“Did you know that Bill Clinton causes cancer? And that big tsunami last year? Jimmy Carter was to blame.
Gimme a break.” — Ginpundit
My, my!! That’s really convincing.
Ah, the post-modernist left and their subjective reality.
http://www.junkscience.com/images/nq050606.gif (via “Non-Sequitur”)
Irate Savant:
Thank you for the clarification. I was beginning to think you rather unbalanced, but now I see you are an eminently reasonable, thoughtful individual.
Thanks! I’d like to return the compliment, but having visited your blog, I’m unable to.
Sandy P
syn:
Trojan Horse in the Bush administration. Mm-hmm. George Tenent (sp?), Norman Mineta, 90% of the State Dept., God knows how much of the CIA, the FBI, the ATF, and on and on and on…
In general, most of the people in government agencies have no loyalty to anything other than the perpetuation of their own power.
Hanged, shot, makes no difference to me.
‘most people in the government have no loyalty to anything’
Right now I am concerned specifically with those who worked in the government from the days of Able Danger to the days directly after 9/11.
Now that we’ve invaded Iraq, where the hell is Osama? Wasn’t that the point originally?
Or has the commie/government union/lawyer/gay/aids spreading/pretend grieving mothers/leftist conspiracy conspired to hide him away? Maybe Clintons hiding him in his basement? It’s possible! Maybe he IS Clinton! Hmmmm
Maximus – - You are 100% right.
You know, dereliction of duty seems to be second nature for the leftists in government. More people seem to be realizing this too.
“You know, dereliction of duty seems to be second nature for the leftists in government. More people seem to be realizing this too.”
Ain’t that a (completely unsubstantiated) fact!
Oh look! Here’s a substantiated fact -
“Bush Poll Numbers On Iraq at New Low”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52151-2004May24.html
What were we saying about more people coming to realize about dereliction of duty in office?
Just visiting from the Reality Based Community; bye now:
Pentagon says it has found no evidence Atta identified before 2001 attacks
“A Pentagon review has so far found no evidence that a secret intelligence operation identified Mohammad Atta as a member of a US-based Al-Qaeda cell before the September 11, 2001 attacks, a spokesman said.”
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050822/1/3uexl.html
The Inexcusable Failures
of an Idiot Man-Child
We set out to establish a democracy, but we’re slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic.That’s a quote from a (anonymous) US official in this Washington Post article. Brilliant. Okay, let’s set aside for the moment the