August 9, 2005
Today's New York Times reveals that military intelligence had identified the core of the 9/11 cell more than a year before the attacks that killed 3,000 people. Mohammed Atta and three of the other hijackers remained unknown to the FBI,...
NOTE: Text in [square brackets] constitute a correction from earlier, erroneous data. Below, Captain Ed discusses [the manifest failures of the intelligence and police communities pre-9/11, including the possibility that, due to the "wall of separation" between intel and law...
August 10, 2005
The AP reported yesterday that they independently verified the claims published in the New York Times that a secret Army data-mining operation identified a handful of Brooklyn residents as members of al-Qaeda in 2000, but did nothing to notify the...
Tomorrow's New York Times reports that members of the 9/11 Commission reversed themselves and now acknowledge being briefed on the Army's data mining project, Able Danger, prior to the publication of their report to the American people. After over 24...
August 11, 2005
Now that the New York Times has printed its confirmation of the Able Danger story and shown that the 9/11 Commission ignored its existence and later lied about being briefed about it, we can turn our attention to another piece...
Another day, another story seems to be the containment strategy for the defunct and now discredited 9/11 Commission. The AP reports that the Commission's spokesperson, Al Felzenberg, now admits that the Commission knew full well that the secret Army program...
The official line espoused (at least for the moment) by the 9/11 Commission for their omission of the Able Danger data-mining project that correctly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers more than a year prior to 9/11 is...
August 12, 2005
With the 9/11 Commission reeling from the revelation that it deliberately ignored the information regarding the Army's secret Able Danger program and its identification of Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as an al-Qaeda cell, the speculation on their...
In order for CQ readers to access the new posts covering the emerging scandal surrounding the revelations about the Able Danger data-mining project that accurately identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers, I have created a new category for...
Arrests corroborated by BBC and Reuters. See Update V. Germany has long been known as one of the primary logistical areas for the 9/11 attacks. Mohammed Atta and several of the 9/11 hijackers spent considerable time in Hamburg especially during...
Read the updates for corroborating links. My last post reviews a rather obscure report on the discovery of an Iraqi spy ring in Germany in February or March of 2001, resulting in the capture of two Iraqi Intelligence Services agents....
The AP reports tonight that 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton have changed their story yet again. Now the two say in a joint statement to the press that they do recall hearing that Able Danger had identified...
August 13, 2005
The Washington Post and the New York Times report extensively on the pushback from the 9/11 Commission's two co-chairs after a week of denials, evasions, and the resulting devaluation of their project. The joint statement from Lee Hamilton and Thomas...
August 14, 2005
Tom Maguire and Jim Geraghty have done a fine job this morning dissecting the latest official, four-page response from the 9/11 Commission about the Able Danger program and its supposed identification of Mohammed Atta as an al-Qaeda operative a year...
Jim Geraghty has more information on Able Danger, apart from Curt Weldon, whose own credibility appears to have suddenly started listing to starboard. Mike Kelly from the Bergen Record got to Weldon's source and started asking questions directly to one...
August 16, 2005
A lot of fancy stepping has occurred in the week since the first revelations of the Able Danger data-mining program at the Pentagon. After Douglas Jehl first broke the story in the mainstream media, the Commission first denied ever hearing...
The New York Times has a late report tonight on the Able Danger story, as one of Rep. Curt Weldon's sources went public in order to testify to the public about the program. Colonel Tony Shaffer tells Philip Shenon that...
The New York Times leads again with another revelation from secret government files about al-Qaeda and the American response to its development into a worldwide organization of terror. In response to a FOIA request, the State Department has declassified internal...
August 17, 2005
Deborah Orin and the New York Post have the second memo from Mary Jo White to the Department of Justice, urging them to reconsider the policies put in place by Janet Reno and her deputy Jamie S. Gorelick that effectively...
CNN conducted an interview with Col. Tony Shaffer, the DIA liaison officer to the Able Danger operation who has gone public to tell what he knows about the identification of Mohammed Atta as an al-Qaeda terrorist more than a year...
The Daily Standard has just published my latest column, which reveals to those who missed my earlier post on the arrests of two Iraqi spies in Heidelberg during February 2001. The discovery of these agents, especially given the time frame,...
August 18, 2005
Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, has once again changed directions on the Able Danger program. As the New York Times reports this morning, the effect of Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer going public with his Able Danger information...
Deborah Orin continues her coverage of Able Danger, rivalling that of the cross-town Times which initially broke the story, with an interesting and somewhat contradictory follow-up with the first public source, Col. Tony Shaffer. Shaffer points out that he initially...
Thanks to CQ reader Elly in Australia, we have a couple of more threads from which to work on the arrests of Iraq spies in Germany during the same period that the 9/11 team leaders traveled through that country. She...
August 19, 2005
The full-court press continued on discovering why the Able Danger project did not get any attention or mention from the 9/11 Commission, and the State Department has discovered another memo that the Commission overlooked. Fox News reports that the Senate...
August 20, 2005
After getting the silly e-mail responses from Think Progress' readers, most of whom had failed to even read any CQ posts on the subject of Jamie Gorelick or the wall that discouraged any coordination between law enforcement and intelligence operations...
Col. Tony Shaffer's appearance on Hannity and Colmes last night on Fox has people on all sides of the Able Danger thread scratching their heads. Initial news reports about this interview claim that Shaffer denied naming Atta to the Commission...
August 22, 2005
The Washington Times reports that although Col. Tony Shaffer remains the only person connected to Able Danger to willingly part with anonymity, several other sources met with the press on August 8 when the story went public, including members of...
One of the arguments at places like Think Progress and other sites which have made themselves the defenders of former Deputy AG Jamie Gorelick consists of pointing out that Gorelick didn't work at the DoD when she erected the "wall"...
The Pentagon has provided its official response to the revelations made almost two weeks ago by Curt Weldon, Col. Tony Shaffer, and Able Danger staff that alleges that the US Army team had identified four of the 9/11 hijackers as...
The second source for the Able Danger story, the somewhat mysterious Navy captain that tried to get the 9/11 Commission to look into the data-mining project at the last minute, has shed his anonymity and pushed the ID of Mohammed...
One of the reasons why the 9/11 Commission claim they dismissed the information regarding Able Danger is because the claims made by Col. Tony Shaffer and Captain Scott Phillpott did not match the known travel timeline for Mohammed Atta. That...
August 23, 2005
The Pentagon continued its attempted public-relations recovery after almost two weeks of remaining silent on the Able Danger revelations. After issuing its official statement, spokesman Larry Di Rita spoke out on Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer and their inability to find...
Andy McCarthy makes a good point on today's Corner at National Review Online regarding Able Danger and its impact on the timeline given for Mohammed Atta by the 9/11 Commission. He writes: The commission could, of course, be right. It’s...
August 24, 2005
My new column at the Daily Standard, "Rethinking Prague", explores the issue of the timeline assigned to Mohammed Atta by the 9/11 Commission, especially in light of the multiple-sourced Able Danger revelations over the past two weeks. Now that three...
The German news magazine Der Spiegel profiles yet another terrorist linked to the 9/11 attack plot and the Hamburg cell whence it sprang. Luai Sakra surfaced in Turkey, and although he has some apparent stability issues, DS reports that the...
August 25, 2005
The 9/11 Commission claimed to have discounted the testimony of Captain Scott Phillpott in July 2004 on Able Danger specifically because of his assertion about when his team identified Mohammed Atta as a potential al-Qaeda terrorist in the United States....
Senator Arlen Specter has announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the revelations surrounding Able Danger and plans to cover wider-ranging issues on intelligence and information sharing: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., plans to hold...
August 26, 2005
The third source to go public from the Able Danger team confirms that the secret Army datamining project identified Mohammed Atta as a potential al-Qaeda terrorist in early 2000. J.D. Smith also corroborates Col. Tony Shaffer's account that they told...
August 27, 2005
As people often say, you just can't make this stuff up. A couple of revelations today on Able Danger not only give more background on the secret data-mining project and the failure to use its information to stop Mohammed Atta...
CQ reader Ginetta sent me a message earlier today regarding some further Able Danger dots that she had connected. She read Countdown to Crisis by Kenneth Timmerman (a book which I have but have not yet read), a book which...
Earlier this evening, I did a quick post on a passage in Kenneth Timmerman's new book Countdown to Crisis that matches up to the timeframe when Captain Scott Phillpott went to the 9/11 Commission to insist that his secret datamining...
August 28, 2005
Perhaps Senator Fritz Hollings cannot claim to have first connected Iraq to 9/11, but he did point out for the record an odd literary coincidence in a speech on the Senate floor on September 12, 2002, the day after the...
August 29, 2005
Newsmax reports that a chart shown at a Heritage Foundation event in May 2002 by Curt Weldon came from the Able Danger program, and that the classified version of it would have shown Atta in the picture (h/t: CQ reader...
Several previous posts here have discussed Jamie Gorelick's wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement, enunciated by her now-infamous 1995 memo to U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, FBI Director Louis Freeh, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Jo...
August 30, 2005
The invaluable Steven Hayes presents yet even more information that never made it into the supposedly comprehensive 9/11 Commission report in this week's edition of the Weekly Standard. Hayes reports that two figures tied to both the first World Trade...
AJ Strata and Tom Maguire both link to a WTOP report on an apparent shift at the Pentagon on the question of Able Danger's ID of Mohammed Atta. Last week, Larry di Rita could barely contain his cynicism at the...
August 31, 2005
My column today at the Daily Standard, "Accounting for the Final Report", reviews the standing of the 9/11 Commission report, the supposedly definitive and final word on the worst foreign attack on American soil. Able Danger started a steady stream...
September 1, 2005
Arlen Specter raised the ante yesterday when announcing the scheduling of the hearing he will conduct with the Judiciary Commitee on the Able Danger project. The September 14th hearing into the datamining effort and its identification of Mohammed Atta and...
The naysayers of the 9/11 Commission took another blow to their credibility today when the Pentagon announced that three more Able Danger team members remember the identification of Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before their terrorist...
September 2, 2005
Several CQ readers sent me a link to a lengthy interview with LTC Tony Shaffer in the upcoming issue of Government Security News. Although hardly exclusive, the Pentagon's latest revelation of three more corroborating witnesses lends a lot more credence...
September 9, 2005
UPI continued its reporting on Able Danger and the response to it by the Pentagon in a wire report that saw little media replay. Stratasphere and Just One Minute must have their antennae finely tuned to have discovered this at...
September 13, 2005
Reason's Paul Sperry tries to do his best to rebut the Able Danger story about two weeks after the Pentagon not only stopped debunking it but also admitted finding three additional witnesses that corroborate Col. Tony Shaffer, Captain Scott Phillpott,...
September 15, 2005
Despite the discovery of five eyewitnesses to the Able Danger project who now insist that Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers got identified as potential al-Qaeda terrorists over a year before the deadly terrorist attacks, the 9/11 Commission has publicly...
September 17, 2005
AJ Strata notes that the Senate Judiciary Committee has come under pressure from the Pentagon to close its Able Danger hearings to the public, just when it has finally acknowledged finding three additional witnesses that corroborate the identification of Mohammed...
September 20, 2005
The New York Times reports this evening that the Pentagon has blocked its military witnesses from testifying on Able Danger at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings tomorrow. Senator Arlen Specter registered his surprise but plans on holding the hearings anyway...
September 22, 2005
The Pentagon has decided to play games with the Able Danger story, virtually confirming the worst suspicions of just about everybody by first acknowledging that five of its team members recall identifying Mohammed Atta as a potential AQ terrorist a...
September 23, 2005
The Pentagon has reversed itself -- again -- in the Able Danger soap opera playing out in Washington DC. After agreeing to provide witnesses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, then forbidding them to testify on the eve of the hearings,...
Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it had an agreement with the Pentagon to allow the five witnesses to testify in open hearings on the Able Danger project and its identification of the four lead hijackers of the...
September 24, 2005
Dr. Eileen Preisser has come up several times in the past few days as a key analyst in the Able Danger project. Originally unnamed in Col. Tony Shaffer's assertions of the determinations of the project, he said that a female...
September 25, 2005
Rep. Curt Weldon's credibility may have taken a minor hit in yesterday's Washington Post with a rather passive denial from National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that Weldon gave Hadley a chart showing Mohammed Atta as a member of al-Qaeda either...
September 26, 2005
Spanish authorities expect a verdict soon in their prosecution of three alleged 9/11 conspirators, in a case that has received scant attention in the American media -- and even less from the 9/11 Commission report. Twenty-four defendants will find out...
September 27, 2005
I wrote yesterday before the Spanish trial judges announced their decision on their only 9/11 trial that the verdict had the possibility of demonstrating the invalidity of the conclusions reached by the 9/11 Commission. The Spanish court did just that,...
A number of people e-mailed me today about the blog entry at the Washington Post by William Arkin regarding Able Danger and the nature of the material it developed. Arkin claims that Able Danger never found any connection to Mohammed...
September 30, 2005
Col. Tony Shaffer has had his security clearances revoked by the DoD and have officially notified his attorney of the circumstances surrounding the revocation. Although it does not technically affect his membership in the Army reserve, the action effectively ends...