Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Pundit RhetIraq: About "Able Danger"
Who: William M. Arkin
Source: The Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "The Secret History of Able Danger"
First, to debunk the myths:
# As best as I can determine, having spent tens of hours talking to military sources involved with the issue, intelligence analysts did not identify anyone prior to 9/11, Mohammed Atta included, as a suspect in any upcoming terrorist attack.
# It is not even clear that a "Mohammed Atta" was identified, let alone that it is the same Atta who died on 9/11.
# No military lawyers prevented intelligence sleuths from passing useful information to the FBI.
# Able Danger itself was not an intelligence program.
As a representative of U.S. Special Operations Command said at a special Pentagon briefing arranged on September 1, Able Danger "was merely the name attributed to a 15-month planning effort" to begin building a war on terrorism. This is the real story.
As the 9/11 Commission said in its final report: "Despite the availability of information that al Qaeda was a global network … policymakers knew little about the organization. The reams of new information that the CIA’s Bin Laden unit had been developing since 1996 had not been pulled together and synthesized for the rest of the government."
Able Danger reached out to intelligence organizations that were not only involved in monitoring al Qaeda, but also those that were specialists in synthesizing new information.
Source: The Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "The Secret History of Able Danger"
First, to debunk the myths:
# As best as I can determine, having spent tens of hours talking to military sources involved with the issue, intelligence analysts did not identify anyone prior to 9/11, Mohammed Atta included, as a suspect in any upcoming terrorist attack.
# It is not even clear that a "Mohammed Atta" was identified, let alone that it is the same Atta who died on 9/11.
# No military lawyers prevented intelligence sleuths from passing useful information to the FBI.
# Able Danger itself was not an intelligence program.
As a representative of U.S. Special Operations Command said at a special Pentagon briefing arranged on September 1, Able Danger "was merely the name attributed to a 15-month planning effort" to begin building a war on terrorism. This is the real story.
As the 9/11 Commission said in its final report: "Despite the availability of information that al Qaeda was a global network … policymakers knew little about the organization. The reams of new information that the CIA’s Bin Laden unit had been developing since 1996 had not been pulled together and synthesized for the rest of the government."
Able Danger reached out to intelligence organizations that were not only involved in monitoring al Qaeda, but also those that were specialists in synthesizing new information.
