Able-Danger; Information never reached National Security counsel.

That's assuming that there was any real information to pass upwards. Sherlock Google does a good job of reporting what Roger Cressey, Clarke's Deputy at Counter-Terrorism, recently said in an interview on Hardball. If there was any real information, the Department of Defense was responsible for determining that it was important at the policy level and passing it up. For whatever reason, that did not occur.

[Sherlock presents an interesting point - Mohammed Atta would have been arrested, and that would have been to the benefit of Al Gore as he ran for President. The NeoCons at DoD therefore had a strong reason NOT to pass that information up to Clarke.]

This is from Breitweiser through Hardball:

BREITWEISER: You know, David, I think this takes the threshold beyond another mishap.

You`ve got situations with the CIA failing to give information to the FBI. You have testimony from FBI agents saying that everything that possibly could have gone wrong went wrong. I think we`ve passed the point of this being an institutional failure. These were failures on behalf of certain individuals.

It is startling to me to think that, if this operation did in fact occur, that someone with Roger Cressey`s credentials in his position didn`t know about it. I would like to know what level of secrecy this operation was carried out under.

Sherlock Google points out:

The only possible culprit in letting Atta go free was Gen. Pete Schoomaker, in charge of Special Ops and the DIA, who we now know was a secret neo-con because he was promoted by Rumsfeld to Army Chief of Staff in 2003, and Rummy even took him OUT OF RETIREMENT (never been done before).

Please do not clutter up this diary with troll remarks that Shaffer is a liar or that the Gorelick Wall legally prevented the DIA from talking to the FBI. All that has been debunked in the previous diaries by Booman23, TopDog and me (in order of their appearance):

• The Failings of the 9/11 Commission
• Confirmed: Able Danger ID of Atta before Bushco Shut it Down
• Rice aide hid disbandment of Atta's trackers from 9/11 report
• Must Read! The Neo-Con Able Danger Scandal -- Atta Coverup! UPDATE 5
• Shaffer lawyer: Army ordered documents destroyed in '03

For the Truly Lazy, here is a quick summary:

1. DIA team Able Danger Id'd Atta and 3 other 9-11 terrorists by early 2000. Confirmed by AD team members Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer and Captain Scott Philpott.
2. SOCOM (Schoomaker or another 2 or 3-star general) did not allow AD team to tell FBI their recommendation to arrest Atta and used phony excuse of the Gorelick Wall to stop them. This prevented FBI, Clarke and Clinton from finding out that al-Queda had sent 4 terrorists into the US--even after the Millennium Bomber caught in '99!
3. Able Danger was disbanded in Feb. 2001 when the Neo-Cons took power. Don't know who gave order but it must have been Rice or Cheney. We know Clarke demoted by Zelikow on Rice's order at that same time, along with most if not all counter-terror programs and recommendations started by Clinton and Gore.
4. Philip Zelikow appointed by Bush to head 9-11 Commission. After meeting with Shaffer and AD team, Zelikow and his top staff DELIBERATELY covers up early Atta ID and never tells other Commissioners about it.
5. Army destroyed all AD documents and charts proving early ID of Atta.
6. Zelikow, promoted for his coverup work to Senior Counsel to Rice at State, continues coverup today, as do the rest of the Neo-Cons and the Republicans on the 9-11 Commission.
7. RW hate radio hosts and bloggers suddenly back off Able Danger story when they sense it could have incredible blowback on them. They begin to intimate Shaffer is a liar when the day before he was their way to blame 9-11 on the Clenis.

This information and analysis does not square with what Kevin Drum is reporting. Kevin is a lot more suspicious that there was any real data from Able-Danger in the first place. I am less suspicious, however. I suspect there was something, and it was significant. It became more significant after 9/11 which is why I suspect it was treated rather cavalierly at the time.

My take right now it that we don't know key items for certain. (Well - Duh!) But what are they?

• Did Able-Danger exist and did it identify Mohammed Atta before 9/11? For this we have testimony from LTC Shaffer. His testimony is not supported by documentation, but apparently some others who were on the project have confirmed it. If that is true, then the next question is

1. Why was the information not passed up to the NSC level by DoD? Who stopped it. Then
2. Who shut Able-Danger down in Spring of 2001 and why? (Probably Cheney or Rice.) More significant, why was all the documentation from the project eliminated?
3. Why did the 9/11 Commission ignore reports of the Able-Danger findings?
4. Why is it coming out into the media now? Who benefits and who loses?

• If Able-Danger did not identify Mohammed Atta prior to 9/11

1. Who is pushing the story that they did and why? Especially, why is LTC Shaffer performing the career-ending stunt of bringing it to the media? What is his connection (if any) to Congressman Curt Weldon who is pushing the story for all he is worth?
2. Does (did?) the right-wing really think they could blame 9/11 on Clinton?

As a tentative position, I think there was a program that turned something up. The program was low-level and experimental, so when they did get some significant results they were not taken too seriously. LTC Shaffer is, after all, a reserve officer. The active military does not give high priority current programs to reserve officers, but they use them when they can provide skills and expertise to programs that are not likely to forward the career of a regular officer. [As a retired career Reserve Officer I can vouch for that.] But this was (I am assuming) such a program that turned up information that might have been very useful at the policy level.

The identification of a high-level member of al Qaeda could lead to his arrest. But his identification by a low-level experimental program run by a mere reserve officer does not, itself, suggest that it is significant data. Killing it would be easy, and not in any way a danger to a career in the military. But successful arrest of Atta could help elect Al Gore President. The early snubs of military personnel by Clinton staffers has never been forgotten by members of the military.

One of the real problems of a bureaucracy is that new ideas and initiatives have to be accepted by each level of the hierarchy as they go up the chain of command, and they can be permanently killed at any single level on the way up for almost any reason. It is also much easier to kill an idea or initiative or program than it is to decide in its favor.

So I think that although something was turned up, it was easy to kill. It was only possibly significant data, it could result in an outcome that some members of higher hierarchical levels didn't like, those same members didn't take it seriously, and killing it was low-risk. The result was that the identification of Mohammed Atta got killed before being passed to the NSC of Bill Clinton.

I'll agree with Briethieser. I think these were failures on behalf of certain individuals. But this is a working hypothesis. New information could change it. Still, I'd give it about an 80% chance of being correct.