So what's the deal with Able Danger?

Supposedly a classified army data mining project identified Mohamed Atta as a member of al Qaeda prior to 9/11, but that information was not passed on the FBI counter terrorist experts. [Failure to act?] Nor was it considered by the 9/11 Commission. [Coverup?]

This is possible, and now a number of individuals who claim to have been involved in Able-Danger have come forward to tell their stories. At Intel Dump Jon Holdaway discusses the story, adding some first person testimony from Ltc. Schafer. Here is Holdaway's summary of the current status of the controversy:

Based on his comments on this blog, and further comments he's made elsewhere, this is where I see the controversy currently sitting:1. Able Danger was a SOCOM operation. When Shaffer says "Pentagon lawyers" tanked FBI cooperation, my understanding is that it was SOCOM lawyers and leaders (including staffers for current Army Chief of Staff and then-SOCOM commander, GEN Pete Schoomaker) who prevented FBI coordination. From Shaffer's statements, it appears that the concern was not necessarily the "wall", but a fear that this support would lead to a "Waco" style controversy. Remember that SOCOM units were involved in giving advice to FBI and BATF during the Waco siege, and that they took a lot of heat for their participation. It is reasonable that SOCOM would fear getting involved in another domestic incident, but Able Danger was not a threat (FBI terrorism cases in Brooklyn are apples compared to BATF in Waco oranges). My hunch is that what Shaffer is talking about is efforts by either he or Able Danger to talk to FBI directly. I also suspect that the Pentagon and DIA were not fully briefed on Able Danger and had no clue about its full mission until about 2 weeks ago. That would explain the current deer-in-the-headlights response we're getting from them.

2. That said, SOCOM is out of its league when dealing with counterterrorism investigations. It may have the mission and assets to hunt down and kill terrorists in the field, but it is not their mission to conduct CT at a strategic level or from a homeland security perspective. SOCOM attorneys may have felt that there were legal problems in coordinating with the FBI (ignorance of what EO 12333 authorizes, misreading of the "wall", misapplication of Posse Comitatus), but that's because they don't normally coordinate with the FBI. However, lawyers at the Army INSCOM, Department of the Army, and DIA levels are very familiar with how to share information with the FBI. Pentagon lawyers familiar with CT and espionage investigations have FBI intelligence officials on their speed-dial. As a former colleague pointed out the other day, Army intel would have gotten material relating to the Atta group in Brooklyn off their desk and into FBI hands immediately.

I still have concerns with the overall story. LTC Shaffer, who by all accounts is an outstanding officer and straight shooter, may only be able to provide a limited, albeit important, side of the story. Further investigation needs to take place, and it sounds like the questions ought to start with whoever stopped coordination. I've previously speculated that it might have been civilian politicos (SECDEF, NSA) who stopped it, but the SOCOM angle makes more sense. Their attorneys would be normal senior judge advocates, and based on what I've seen of training on intelligence oversight and FBI coordination issues in the Army JAG Corps, these guys most likely didn't know what laws and policies out there actually impinged on intelligence sharing operations.

Investigators also need to look at SOCOM leadership, including GEN Schoomaker. If they kept the rest of the Army and DOD in the dark on Able Danger and the results of their investigation, preventing effective FBI coordination, then they ought to be identified and questioned as to their reasoning for that decision. And finally, there needs to be a look into what the Army's Information Dominance Center knew about Atta pre-9/11. I know there was an effort after 9/11 to check all databases to make sure this sort of problem didn't occur, but INSCOM may need to check again to see what they put together in support of Able Danger.

LTC Shaffer has gotten the ball rolling. Unfortunately, he's probably just tanked whatever career he has left. Whistleblower protection only goes so far, and the best he'll probably get is some sort of promise not to prosecute for leaking potentially classified information. DOD would do well not to shoot the messenger this time (a familiar military habit) and start look at whether what he's saying is actually true.

One other issue. Laura Rozen points out that one concern by SOCOM may have been over getting caught spying on a US Person. This is a fallacy, either by the original lawyers/leaders who may have thought it or by the rest of us trying to figure out why SOCOM didn't coordinate with FBI. First, Atta and his group, by any legal reading, was not a US Person. He didn't even warrant "special sensitivity". As far as individuals go, only US citizens and Permanent Resident Aliens get protections from intel collection. Atta was a mere tourist. There are no reasonable legal grounds to give a tourist "US Person" status. Second, even if he had protections, there is a glaring exception for investigations into those reasonably believed to be engaged in international terrorist activities (or affiliated with the same). To be overly cautious two levels of analysis deep is not good application of policy to facts and a bad business practice in the CT line of work.

Frankly there is something very wrong behind this story.

My personal distrust of the Bush administration leads me to suspect that they had the info before 9/11 but let the action go forward to provide a "Pearl Harbor" type response that could be used to justify the already decided on invasion of Iraq. Assuming this was true, G. W. Bush's deer-in-the-headlights reaction as he was reading "My Pet Goat" came, not from surprise at the terrorist attack on 9/11 but his utter surprise at how massive and successful it was. We know that Bush wanted to invade Iraq before he took office as President in 2001. We know that on 9/12 he immediately wanted to use 9/11 as justification for the invasion, and had to be diverted to go into Afghanistan. We know that even at the time of Tora Bora Tommy Franks was diverting planning resources from Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq. We know that the use of Saddam's possession of WMDs and his connections to al Qaeda were a fraud, one which Dick Cheney found very hard to give up even in the face of evidence that they weren't true. We also know that the Republicans on the 9/11 Commission appeared to work very hard to avoid actually performing an effective investigation.

The recent reports on Able Danger suggest that a lot has been covered up. The smell is obvious, only the dead fish is not present.