Posted on 08/30/2005 7:11:21 AM PDT by bw17
Eleanor Hill, the former Pentagon IG who apparently put the stomp on Able Danger was employed at the law firm of King and Spauling both before and after her service on the 9/11 commission. Now who do you suppose is a retired partner at K & S? Why none other than her former boss, that Georgia pussycat, former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga). Was the fix in, or was the fix in?
Ding ding ding...I had forgotten that. This could explain a great many things. We need this guy Clarke in the hearing chair. House Armed Services or Intel committee. The Senate will be useless in this matter.
JEDI.
You betcha! I'd like to hear the whole story. Why did over 3,000 innocent American citizens have to die.
BUMP
Bring it out. All of it. I think the citizens can handle it just fine. We always have.
They caught on to China Gate. They caught Clinton selling our tecgnology to China. A contractor was fooling around and typed in a few names from China, and all kinds of big names and connections popped up. Within hours, Able Danger no longer existed. It's in this thread, but it's thousands of posts long.
Sandy Burger didn't steal from the national archives just because a few known terrorists were in the country. He could have spun that. He was after the real damning stuff.
When Able Danger was wiped out, so was their info on the terrorists plans. That's why no one was prepared. Clinton was more important to Clinton than a few thousand "peasants" in NYC.
Strictly for insurance, ....ie...a cover up.
It would be so cool to find out Able Danger copied everything for their OWN insurance policy before the info was wiped it out! Arkansaside can be a painful way to die. Think of what they could do with that type of information hiding somewhere else in the country.
I can dream, but that's what I would have done! Had I stumbled upon our own government selling us out to a threatening country, I'd cover my butt!!
BTTT
The Best starting point would be Title 50 USC 1801 for the definition of "US Persons".
EO12333 is also of importance.
Then look up the Departmental Regulations on "US Persons".
All of the above is easy to find via google.
IIRC, the FBI was charged with not only domestic investigations, but also in foreign countries if the primary suspect was a US Person (espionage cases, etc....)
I think the key point to remeber is the actual missions of these two departments. The FBI is primarily law inforcement, but is also charged with the protection of the nations secrets / against terrorism etc... The CIA is primarily charged with intelligence collection. While there is some overlap between the two departments, the primary missions are quite different.
Thus, the FBI is active in foreign countries and the CIA is active domestically, but only as far as necessary to perform thier primary missions.
Does this make any sense, or did I just muddy the waters even further??
Your later points are well taken. Indeed, the operation itself (data mining to identify terrorists / spies) was most likely approved by very senior officials at the Pentagon and they most likely received status reports of the progress.
IMHO, two things happened. First, AD was able to identify potential threats. Second, amoung these threats were US Persons.
Now, if AD had stopped at the point of identifing a US Person as a potential threat and *did not go further* (i.e. several links led to that person so now start looking at the data starting at that person) - very likely, the operation would have been handed over to the FBI.
However, it seems that the program was able to (and did) "loop" to a US Person. Any such information collection requires prior specific approval and, if not obtained, the information *can NOT be retained or disseminated*.
IMHO, at least as far as the ATTA connection is concerned, the Petagon lawyers erred in identifying him & hi cohorts as US Persons - however, having done so, AD was doomed. I have seen the info regarding the Chinese Investigation and this probably sealed AD's fate.
No monkey wrench at all! The point of contention is not the SOURCE of the information, it is the SUBJECT of the investigation! The military is quite "free" to question US Persons, both domestically and overseas if they potentially have knowledge that can aid in an investigation - what they can NOT do is actually investigate a US Person unless specific prior approval is obtained.
IMHO, the AD Software probably worked as follows:
Enter name into data base (for example, the mastermind of the 1993 attack)
search internet for name
every name, place, etc... associated with the name entered is added to the database
select first name found at level 1
search internet for name
repeat as necessary.
The problem starts when a US Person is identified and a search conducted based on that person. At that point "he" becomes the SUBJECT. Since it would be "impossible" to get specific prior approval for every US Person that might turn up as a part of such a search, the entire project is "illegal" (at least of conducted by the military - the FBI might be able to do so).
BTW - there were several cases in the 80's (while I worked in CI) that "open source" materials were classified because they contained information that was otherwise classified - the world of intelligence gathering is VERY wierd!
While this could be true, there is another possibility.
If we accept the fact the AD was able to identify US Persons as being involved in espionage / terrorism, and, that these persons were not initially subjects of an investigation (i.e. no approval had been obtained to target that individual), and, that the Pentagon Lawyers determined that such an investigation is illegal ...
It is quite conceivable that the powers that be at the Pentagon determined that the very existance of AD needed to be terminated as the potential risk outweighed any potential benefit.
My gut instinct tells me that the Pentagon overreacted based on the erroneos conclusions of the lawyers and decided to wipe AD in it's entirety!
The question arises: When was Able Danger halted? During the term of Hill, which ended in May 1999, or was it done by Lieberman, who was deputy Inspector General at the Pentagon until a new IG was named in April 2002? It seems that the Pentagon functioned without an IG for nearly three years. Why? If Lieberman made the decision, it seems certain that he, the Assistant Inspector General for Audits, must have received his orders from someone higher up. Who? And who IS Lieberman? Perhaps we could ask Senator Joe, or even better Evelyn S. Lieberman, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Hillary compadre.
Did the Patriot Act retro the use of the information that had been collected?
ping
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