Right Wing Nut House

News on Able Danger this morning centers on an article in the New York Times that seems to indicate that the 9/11 Commission will target the Pentagon for blame if Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer’s story checks out.

Shaffer was a liason officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency and worked with the top secret data mining team in 1999-2000. He has come forward to confirm that Able Danger had 3 of the 4 main 9/11 hijackers pegged as a threat a full year prior to the attacks.

Commission Co-Chair Thomas Kean is asking the Pentagon to quickly assess the credibility of Col. Shaffer and hand over any relevant information:

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.”

Democratic Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste said something similar yesterday:

A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview today 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,” he continued, “the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite request for all information regarding to Able Danger.”

This is the kind of “bloodletting” that John Podheretz speculated would occur:

“…if the Defense Department withheld critical information on this matter, it’s almost impossible to imagine the intensity of the bloodletting that will follow.

The blame game has begun and the Commission would seem to have the Pentagon in its sights. So the focus now shifts to what a possible response by the Pentagon would be?

1. Tell the truth. Admit it made a mistake due to a paperwork snafu. Apologize.

Yeah…right. Next.

2. Smear Colonel Shaffer. Stonewall on the paperwork. Trot out Able Danger team members to refute Shaffner’s assertion.

I’m afraid this would be a more likely scenario. Taking out the whistleblower has a long, dishonorable history in government and the tactics to do so have been honed and refined to perfection. In Col. Shaffner’s case, he has been on “administrative leave” for the last 16 months and has had his security clearances suspended. His lawyer claims it’s Pentagon petifogging over a cell phone bill coupled with his superior’s displeasure over Shaffer’s speaking with the 9/11 Commission staff. It will be interesting to see what the Pentagon says about that.

As far as the Able Danger paper trail, the Pentagon will suddenly discover thousands of more pages of Able Danger documents and curiously, not a one will mention Atta, hijackers, or anything related to a “Brooklyn cell.” And there definitely will be no mention of any attempts to bring anything to the attention of the FBI that was shot down by DoD lawyers.

Or, the Pentagon will say that they gave the Commission everything. Either way, Colonel Shaffer is screwed.

Finally, as I speculated yesterday, the Pentagon may make Able Danger team members available to select national security correspondents. I would further speculate that those team members memories will be suitably vague as in “I don’t recall any mention of Mohammed Atta in any of the reports.”

These tactics will satisfy the 9/11 Commission and perhaps even the Washington Post and the New York Times. They will, of course, have the effect of hanging Colonel Shaffer out to dry. Unless other team members come forward to corraborate his story, Shaffer’s career could become another casualty in the War on Terror.

One thing about Colonel Shaffer’s interviews that have puzzled me has been the reason for the reluctance of DoD attorneys to make Able Danger findings available to the FBI. This interview with Shaffer is from the Delaware County Daily Times (via Laura Rozen):

Yet when he tried to share this information with the FBI, he said he was blocked from doing so by Department of Defense. Part of the reason was recent history and the lack of trust that existed between the federal agencies.

The Branch Davidian debacle in Waco that left 70 people dead was still in the memory banks of all those who had been involved in it, including the U.S. Army Delta Force that advised the siege team.

When it came to al-Qaida, Shaffer believes the mindset of the military was “if we pass the information on to the FBI and they do something with it and if something goes wrong (we’re) going to get the blame for it.”

Ms. Rozen asks “What do we know about the US military’s role at Waco?”

This reference to Waco as it related to the military always confused me. We knew that Special Forces Command had trained Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents in assault techniques leading up to the BATF original raid. We were also aware of military assistance in planning the ultimate attack by the FBI. But that assistance was limited to offering technical advice.

Is it just me or does it seem to you that such minor assistance by the Pentagon was hardly a reason for the skittishness on the part of DoD attorneys. Could there be something else there?

If you allow me to adjust my tin foil hat, we can descend together into the fever swamps of both the right and left to examine the issue of military involvement in the FBI action that ended up tragically killing 70 people.

From Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch:

The two Army officers at the Justice Department that day were Colonel Gerald Boykin, and his superior, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the head of Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Though Clark (who had served with Schoomaker) was not directly involved in the onslaught on the Branch Davidians, the role of the US Army in that affair throws into harsh relief the way prohibitions against the use of the US military for civilian law enforcement can be swiftly by-passed.

After energetic use of Freedom of Information Act enquiries, plus research in three repositories in Texas holding evidence from the Waco inferno, plus other extensive investigations, McNulty and his team have put together an explosive file:

28 video tapes from the repositories show that in the final onslaught on the Waco compound were members of the US military in special assault gear and with name tags obscured. As noted above, Clinton’s revocation of the Posse Comitatus Act made this presence legal. McNulty isolates Vince Foster as the White House point man for the Waco operation.

General Shoomaker is currently the Army Chief of Staff. Things that make you go mmmmmmm…

And this from the Dallas Morning News (1999):

A former CIA officer said Thursday that he learned from Delta Force commandos that members of the secret Army unit were “present, up front and close” in helping the FBI in the final tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound.

The former officer, Gene Cullen, told The Dallas Morning News that he heard the detailed accounts of the military’s active involvement from “three or four” anti-terrorist Delta commandos as he worked with them on an overseas assignment in 1993.

While he was deployed overseas on an assignment, Mr. Cullen said, Delta operators told him that the unit “had 10 operators down there, that they were involved in the advanced forward stages of [the FBI's April 19] operations.”

“When they explained to me the depth to which they were involved down in Waco, I was quite surprised. They said basically they were out there in the vehicles, the Bradley [fighting vehicles], the CEV [tanks],” he said. “They were active.”

The chairman of the Texas Department of Public Safety on Thursday told The News that evidence in the hands of Texas law enforcement personnel may support the account given to Mr. Cullen.

“I’m advised there is some evidence that may corroborate” the allegation that Delta Force participated in the assault, said James B. Francis Jr., the DPS official.

This puts a whole new spin on the reason why DoD lawyers were so reluctant to accede to Col. Shaffer’s request to get the FBI involved. Either the attorney’s were gun shy because of Special Operations Command direct participation the Waco disaster or more restrictions had been placed on military involvement in law enforcement matters. In effect, the “wall” was nothing new but rather a well considered policy of interpreting the Posse Comitatas law more literally.

What ever the reason, I found the participation of Delta Force - even if it was only on the periphery of the FBI operation at Waco - a curious side bar to this story. Anyone who has ever seen the documentary Waco: Rules of Engagement knows that there are many extraordinarily curious aspects to that tragedy that have never been satisfactorily explained. Many of the victims died of gunshots. The tank used by the FBI to punch holes in the walls of the compound for the purpose of initiating tear gas into the structure has disappeared therefore not allowing an examination to determine if it was fired upon as the FBI claims. Also missing is the door to the compound that would have shown who fired first in the initial confrontation between the Christians and BATF.

Just one more curious aspect to a story that may get even more strange over the next few days.

UPDATE

The Captain has a slightly different take on the Kean statement:

The Pentagon, meanwhile, has not yet issued any definitive statement on Able Danger. Media outlets and anonymous sources have expected one since last weekend, always speculating that the statement would come out the next day. It appears that the Pentagon also has been taken by surprise and may need more time to unravel Able Danger, or it may just need more time to establish the authorization and funding for such an extensive data-mining program. My guess is that Congress never authorized such a program, and probably neither did the Clinton White House. That will make Able Danger somewhat embarrassing to top brass and may also explain their reluctance to coordinate information between Able Danger and law-enforcement agencies.

That’s something I hadn’t considered. Will it make it more likely the Pentagon will do their best to get to the bottom of the story? Not likely, I’m afraid.