Posted on 08/22/2005 4:13:55 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret defense intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.
The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement today that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by name by early 2000. "My story is consistent," said Captain Phillpott, who managed the program for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command. "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000."
His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta.
Colonel Shaffer went public with his assertions last week, saying that analysts in the intelligence project had been overruled by military lawyers when they tried to share the program's findings with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2000 in hope of tracking down terror suspects tied to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Di Rita said in an interview that while the department continued to investigate the assertions, there was no evidence so far that the intelligence unit had come up with such specific information about Mr. Atta and any of the other hijackers.
He said that while Colonel Shaffer and Captain Phillpott were respected military officers whose accounts were taken seriously, "thus far we've not been able to uncover what these people said they saw - memory is a complicated thing."
The statement from Captain...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Lt. Col is an O-5, isn't a Navy Captain a pretty high rank?
"Yeah? Well Slate Gorton says Shaffer is a liar. So Philpott must be lying to."
And the people who put together "Inside 9/11" for National Geographic, and their sources must be lying, too? They have a segment in their documentary concerning intelligence officers at McDill Air Force Base had a chart with pictures of Mohammad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi on it.
Who is Dr. Cambone?
Thanks for the date of Weldon's speech.
There is one thing that has always bothered me about 9/11, and this Able Danger business only compounds my problem:
German intelligence had both Atta and his roomate Binalshib under surveillance for some time because of their connection to some real bad guys in Europe. Atta visited Spain on January 1, 2001, and tehn July 8, 2001. In the second visit he arrived from Zurich, rented a car and then took off for Taragona, where he met Binalshib. German intelligence warned Spanish intelligence of Binalshib's arrival. Binalshib travelled under a Yemeni passport, Atta under an Egyptian passport in his own name. The Spanish apparently lost Atta from the 9-13 July 2001, they caught up to him on the night of the 13 through the 15th where he stayed and the San Jordi Hotel. On the 16th Benalshib returns to Hamburg. The next day Atta returns the car he rented in Madrid and in which had driven more than 1,000 miles. He takes a Delta flight, arriving in Atlanta and then transferring to a flight to Fort Lauderdale. Now:
My question is this: If German and Spanish intelligence services were following Atta and seemed to know what he and Benalshib were up to in Europe, why didn't the CIA know it? Or if they did, why didn't they pass the info to the FBI? The wall of separation? I wonder if the 9/11 people investigated this?
O-6
It sounds like he put his country before his career.
Even more the Navy Captain. Very very few outright wackos make it to O-6. Even more interesting is this little tidbit, which could give lie to the notion that this was a confusion with another Mohammed Atta (also a terrorist).
Representative Weldon also arranged an interview with a former employee of a defense contractor who said he had helped create a chart in 2000 for the intelligence program that included Mr. Atta's photograph and name.
The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that Mr. Atta's name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart for some time and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs.
A chart that occupies one or more walls is first of all a working document. The chart allows the various teams which are building a system to define where they fit in and to take down information. It's a waste to save the original.
I think they are great to define large computer systems. Only rarely did we make an effort to copy and shrink one to 3 or 4 feet wide and X feet long to save.
Why would Able Danger ever need to do that? They'll never find that original wall chart.
Once the Able Danger folks walked the users (i.e., the intelligence personnel) through the "how and what" why keep the chart? They had the names and other information that they needed. Besides the automated data mining was maybe kind of ad hoc to help Able Danger analysts.
They may (emphasis on may) find source code and files of extracted raw data used to piece together the wall chart. I suppose they should find intelligence documents but they will not likely prove how the information was got.
If someone says they need the original wall chart, they're lying and covering up, IMO.
Good question. The Germans warned the Spanish when he went to Spain. It stands to reason the Spanish warned the CIA when he came to the US.
Sorry to say, but no corroborating documents = no story.
According to Google, his position is Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. According to Shaffer, he briefed Cambone on the Able Danger program before Shaffer went public with his story. I assume he had to give Cambone assurance that he wouldn't disclose anything classified.
One step down from one star Admiral.
Mr. Di Rita said in an interview that while the department continued to investigate the assertions, there was no evidence so far that the intelligence unit had come up with such specific information about Mr. Atta and any of the other hijackers.That is very heavily qualified denial.
The weed out rate from O-6 to O-7 is pretty steep anyway. He's already about one grade higher than most officers can reasonably hope to get in a career.
Weldon delivered a chart to the White House after the Bush Administration took over. No one there seems to have ever seen it. The key to all this is Weldon who seems perfectly assured that he has the goods.
To get to the bottom of this is going to require getting into Sandy Berger's pants. Any volunteers?
I don't doubt that segments were copied either directly or from notes and memory.
When I think of wall charts I mean wall. We used six-foot wide paper obtained from a paper mill that in some cases reached around a large room. Of course I have no idea about the size of the Able Danger chart.
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