Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists

By PHILIP SHENON

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 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.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.

"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.

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 program to acknowledge his role publicly.

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.

The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."

The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.

Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.

Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.

Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.

Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.

The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.

A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."

"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."

Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.

"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."

"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."

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 of 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 like LexisNexis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/polit ... nted=print
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One more to add to the long list of Americans who were trying to warn every intelligence agency of a terrorist cell operating in the U.S. But no one cared. Everyone ignored all these warnings. Another addition to Crossing the Rubicon for Mr. Ruppert.

And? The U.S. warned British intelligence two weeks before the London subway bombings and tried to apprehend the ringleader, but were rebuffed. What does that suggest? The British were complicit? Too trusting? Stupid? Part of the problem?

Thank you IEB. This is so refreshing. I thought I was going to have to post this.

I hate to say this, but you know where the finger is going to end up pointing right?

I think it's kind of funny that you're blaming the military. It's Gorelick and the Clinton Administration. This whole 9-11 commission makes me sick. The events that led to 9-11, they make me sick.

All of the above.

I'm not gonna waste my time with you LW your posts are always so partisan it makes me sick. Your a Republican shill if I ever saw one. I could give you a list of warnings ignored and a list of people who had advance knowledge of the attacks and you'd still think Clinton did it.

IEB!

Why does it matter if there was an "Arab terrorist cell" in America if the government was the ones that orchestrated 9/11 anyway?

Because they needed someone to take the fall. Arab operatives were just that. See, when you have a number of them being identified by FBI field agents and sending multiple warnings (Phenoix memo specifically) and you have a collective contagious stupidity that doesn't persue these warnings it's a sign of complcity in the attacks by some members of our Government.

When your told to back off of investigations that would have prevented these men from boarding those planes on multiple occasions that is highly suspicious. There were many people who tried to warn of these attacks and were ignored repeatedly. We have war games being run that simulate crashing commercial airliners into buildings in D.C. and N.Y. just coincidently on the day that it actually happens for real. Just like the London bombings. We have jets that would have been scrambled moved across the country to the North West. I could keep going on and on, but I imagine you'll write it all off as "That many people couldn't keep a secret that big."

How did they have pictures for all these "hijackers" the same day. All the while at least 5-7 of them are still alive and well. Yet, I still see those 19 pictures go up of the terrorist hijackers. The official story is a complete farce.

Please read the book Crossing the Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert. I don't do this investigation justice on this forum as this man has in his 600+ page fully sourced book. I implore you to take the time and read it or give me your address and I'll send you a copy.

fuck you PD, you beat me to it


but of course he has a reply and a clearly "logical" answer to it hehehehehe

IEB!

While I respect your point of view.....please give me advance notice if you plan to travel anywhere in NoCar, so I can stay off the roads just in case you think traffic rules are conspiracies as well.

I watched this conspiracy theory about 9/11. Most of it sounded far fetched but a couple of things resonated.

Why did the towers fall at an equal speed? Surely the floors nearer the bottom were less damaged, and would have slowed down, or at least started falling to one side.

Also why did they fall straight down? I would have though that the impact from one side and the height of the impact would have made them fall differently.

Also I saw some stuff about the Pentagon attack - the size of the aircraft and angle of impact some say would have caused major disruption on that busy freeway. Possibly blowing cars over etc.


I am by no means buying into these theories just don't have enough knowledge to contest them.

Mythbusters busted that idea.

I saw the building not long after it was hit (on 9/11) and I can tell you that no such disruption hit the traffic on the GW Parkway or any of the other roads around there. I can also tell you I have aquitances who claim they saw the plane from heading down from an office in Crystal City (they said they did not see the impact). I have zero doubts a plane hit the building.

Interesting quote from Mr. Shaffer

"The lawyers' view was to leave them alone, they had the same basic rights as a U.S. citizen, a U.S. person and therefore the data was kind of left alone."

So.... because it was politically correct not to bother someone suspected of terrorism, they let him go. Now I wonder who's administration out these rules into place....

there is also the distinct possibilty that the reason that the our government didn't go after Atta and the British didn't go after the london suspects because they actually wanted it to happen.

Who is the only group that has benefited from 9/11? the 2%.

9/11 helped shift the public to a state of mind that overwhelmingly supported not only Afghanistan, but iraq.

our government isn't the only gvt that knew about the terrorists being here before 9/11. Mossad was actually tracking them as well.

That's funny, I always thought the Constitution is what gave people rights. Learn something new everyday.

Where did I ever say that Clinton did it? There's no way that I would ever, ever, ever even think such a thing. Clinton didn't do this. Clinton sure as hell didn't mean for any of this to happen.

I find it amusing that you come on here call me a Republican shill, yet, you can't even come out and say it like it is. CLINTON FUCKED UP TOO! See, I point the finger just as much at Bush. In my opinion, what Clinton, Ms. Gorelick (who sat on the 9-11 commission), and Sandy Berger did set the stage for such a disaster to happen. Clinton gave up Bin Laden on three occassions. He had the wall between agencies erected to protect his personal life with Lewinsky. Now, in light of Able Danger, it would seem that 9-11 could have been at least stalled during the Clinton administration. Bin Laden and a number of the hijackers could have been sitting in a jail cell before Clinton even left office. But he had to put his legacy first.

But I'm not as naive as you think. See, the reason I mentioned Clinton, is because this Able Danger thing is ABOUT CLINTON! Particularly about the three individuals mentioned above. Bush was handed a deck of shitty cards. But you know what, that is no fucking excuse for Bush not doing anything to fix the system that Clinton gave him. Same thing for other issues with Bush. I don't care what anybody says. Bush was complacent in regards to a known threat. He could have been more pro-active, he wasn't, there were obvious signs (like you said) and they were ignored, never followed up on, and the dots were never connected. Still, those dots that you'd mention largely had nothing to do with the 9-11 hijackers. The information given in that memo in August, was at best vague. And enlight of Able Danger, I don't see how you can skirt Clinton, but still insist that this is a gigantic Bush conspiracy.

No offense IEB. But if you are going to play a conspiracy card, I would say that it becomes much more interesting if you extend your conspiracy theory beyond the Bush administration. Think about how juicy your conspiracy theory could be. the Clintons, Bush, and Cheney, in it to rule the world. Muahahahahahaha. After GWI, Bush Sr, pissed about almost being assassinated, gets the Clinton's together. They first try to bring down the towers in 1993, but after a failed attempt, install a sleeper cell in NY. The plan being to use an attack as a reason to go back into Iraq. See, Clinton lays the framework, then Bush takes office. BAM! 9-11. Next thing you know, Bush goes into Iraq and get's his oil. Cheney's pockets are lined because of Halliburton, and the next thing you know Bill is the president of the UN, and Hillary is the president! Come on IEB. A gigantic, two party conspiracy encompassing the most powerful people to be on earth.

Don't ever think I give Bush a free pass on 9-11. It should have been prevented.

That sounds fucking fantastic.