Able Danger, Part 3

Shaffer was deployed to Afghanistan in October, 2003 , where he had an opportunity to brief Dr. Philip Zelikow and his staffers on Able Danger. Zelikow had worked for Condoleezza Rice in the NSC. He told the Rice deputy that AWe found two or three cells which conducted 9/11, to include Atta.@ After Zelikow told Shaffer to contact him when he returned to Washington. The 9/11 commission materials show that Zelikow called the US almost immediately, at 4AM eastern time. When Shaffer tried to contact Zelikow at the Kean ( 9/11) commission, staffers told him there was no need for a meeting as they had all the necessary information on Able Danger. Zelikow did not give this information to the commission and did not include it in the document. . Zelikow denies the meeting with Shaffer in Afghanistan, but Shaffer has Zelikow=s business card as evidence. Zelikow later said said it was "not historically relevant." Zeliknow had been on loan from the White House National Security Office and is now special counselor to his friend, Secretary of State Rice. The Able Danger project also turned up business dealings between Stanford University Provost and the People’s Republic of China.

The Pentagon initially said that Able Danger never existed, and later said the files on the project had disappeared. . Shaffer, a Bronze medal winner, could not leave well enough alone. He sought to make certain that people in power, including Congressmen, realized what could be accomplished by using the Able Danger approach. He also revealed that the team had been aware of Mohammed Atta and the five Al Qaeda cells in the US and abroad. Shaffer lost his security clearance as well as his DIA job. He was also charged with stealing government pens from an embassy where his father worked when he was thirteen years old. In an effort to frame him, someone sent Shaffer a package with five secret documents and a bag of 20 government pens. A inquiry costing about $400,000 was launched to determine whether Shaffer had fraudulently charged to the government $67 worth of telephone calls over eighteen months.

When he appeared on Wolf Blitzer=s program, the broadcaster blind-sided him with the charge he was sleeping with a woman in the office of Congressman Curt Weldon. Shaffer claimed that when the Bush administration replaced his top superior General Peter Schoomaker, that all hope of using the knowledge gained was gone. Navy Captain Scott Philpott, hade of the team, said they identified Atta as a member of the Brooklyn cell, but the US had certain knowledge Atta was in Hamburg at the time . However, J.D. Smith, a civilian contractor, has said he was "absolutely positive" Atta was in Brooklyn at that time. Smith was to withdraw his firm from the project. . Shaffer was forbidden to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, this decision was later reversed..

The DIA moved to take Shaffer off its payroll, and an unidentified DIA representative told CNN=s Wolf Blitzer that Shaffer was having an affair with one of Congressman Curt Weldon=s staffers. The Congressman answered that the colonel did not know anyone on his staff. Some other members of the Able Danger team are represented by Shaffer=s lawyer and are now saying other members of the data-mining task force do not support his claim that they knew Atta was physically in the United States. The colonel must be under enormous pressure to modify his story. . Two conclusions are inescapable. (1) There was great reluctance on the part of the Pentagon, under both Clinton and Bush, to act on the knowledge it had about Atta and his three friends.( 2) Now it is clear to all, that the Pentagon was and is busy denying it had this knowledge, and it was mightily assisted in this cover-up by the executive director of the 9-11 commission. A third conclusion is likely and may explain much of the lying about Able Danger. Kean Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste openly denied that the United States had any of the data mining capacities described by Colonel Shaffer. It could all be about denying these capabilities and what possession of such capabilities mean to US citizens.



The reason why the Bush Administration worked so bury information about Able Danger are not clear. It was a sophisticated data-mining project designed to gather information about Al Qaeda. Discussion of the findings of the Able Danger project lead to consideration of how much the US knew about Atta and other terrorists before 911. At the very least, it is a picture of incredible incompetence. But some of the evidence could be used to raise questions about what else was being hid. This piece will focus on what was known about Ali Mohamed, who was convicted for involvement with the 1998 embassy bombings and Mohamed Atta. Ali Mohammed is relevant because he was connected to the 1993 bombing and the embassy bombings of 1998. There is clear evidence that he was connected to the FBI, and at least briefly to the CIA. The next post will deal with him.