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Investigators Searching DIA Clerk's Bank Account For Missing Taxi Fees. Denver police are investigating the embezzlement of $170,000 from Denver International Airport taxi fees. A search warrant obtained by 7NEWS shows the scam went undetected for nearly two years. At least 16 cash collections made by DIA Ground Transportation Department workers between November 2007 and late June 2009 vanished en route from that agency to the airport finance department without making it to the bank. The probe was triggered when a random DIA internal audit found a $10,000 collection missing in June, sources told 7News. Police said they were alerted...

The Federal Aviation Administration has opened its own investigation into the 50-mile flight of the helium balloon that briefly delayed flights at Denver International Airport after a couple reported that their 6-year-old son may have been on board, an official said Tuesday. FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said the agency investigates civil allegations rather than criminal ones. He declined to provide details on the nature of the FAA probe or its possible outcome. Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden has said investigators believe amateur storm chasers Richard and Mayumi Heene called 911 Thursday saying they thought their son, Falcon, was aboard the...

BULLETIN -- NEW YORK POLICE AND FBI RAID HOMES IN QUEENS IN TERRORISM INVESTIGATION.6 minutes ago from BNO Headquarters

SNIPPET: "Theresa L. Penwell is being investigated for a "weapons violation" at Denver International Airport that was reported at about 9:35 a.m. Saturday, according to a Denver police report. Penwell was taken into police custody when two guns were found in her possession at a DIA checkpoint, said Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson. Penwell was interviewed and released pending further investigation."

The number of ex-Guantanamo detainees who have gone back to terrorism is much larger than the government is letting on. A senior intelligence official, who has access to some of the country's top secrets, tells HUMAN EVENTS that some Pentagon analysts actually believe 102 former enemy combatants have returned to terror -- not 61 as publicly reported by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). That would mean that of 520 terrorists released from the Guantanamo Bay prison, nearly 20 percent returned to the practice of killing to achieve their radical view of Islam. The number is gaining importance in light of...

COL| Denver| Aircraft Down| DIA-800| Denver International Airport|737 landed with the wing on fire, initial reports of 15 pts, MCI response enroute. M/A:Arapahoe County M/A:Adams County| COL015| 19:06 Not seeing it anywhere else yet. Hear it live here: Denver PD and Fire

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

DIA -- There are plenty of volunteers offering a helpful hand to delegates and other convention-goers arriving here. Convention volunteers wave Obama 08 signs and airport volunteers stand out in their cowboy hats and suede vests. The hum of noise is occasionally punctuated by the voice of Mayor John Hickenlooper welcoming visitors over the loudspeaker. Even baggage claim is dressed up for the occasion with vases of red, white and blue carnations. Convention-goers are difficult to pick out from the general crowd. A handful are wearing shirts, some have lapel pins or buttons. Not everyone here is happy about the...

New Unit of DIA Will Take the Offensive On Counterintelligence - By Walter Pincus Monday, August 18, 2008; A09 The Defense Intelligence Agency's newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out "strategic offensive counterintelligence operations," according to Mike Pick, who will direct the program. Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities -- but not against U.S. citizens, said Toby Sullivan, director of counterintelligence...

Statement as of 8:00 PM MDT on August 16, 2008 ... Record low maximum temperature set in Denver for August 16th... The high temperature at Denver International Airport today was 58 degrees. This 58 degree reading will replace the previous low maximum temperature record for August 16th which was 63 degrees set 118 years ago in 1890.

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

I remember years ago reading about the strange goings on behind the building and the subsequent images/artwork inside the Denver Airport. I found this on you tube, a very good presentation on the subject. Denver Airport

Feeling guilty about the amount of carbon dioxide your upcoming flight will pump into the atmosphere? Soon you might be able to fork over some extra cash at Denver International Airport to invest in projects intended to help negate your share of the environmental damage caused by air travel. DIA is looking to become one of the first airports in the nation to offer passengers the ability to buy carbon offsets in its concourses. The offsets would pay for renewable energy and power-saving projects that help cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. The airport is soliciting proposals from companies interested...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him—likely by accident—one seriously smoking gun. The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney, John Clarke of Washington DC, details a communication that took place six days after the crash: "On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis...

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Scott W. Carmichael, the senior security and counterintelligence investigator for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He served as the lead case agent for the DIA on the Ana Montes espionage investigation. He has been investigating attempts by foreign intelligence services to penetrate DIA operations worldwide for nearly twenty years. Prior to that he was a Chinese-Mandarin linguist in the U.S. Navy and a special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. His contributions toward the successful resolution of national security matters have earned Carmichael the DIA Civilian Expeditionary Medal and Award for Meritorious Civilian Service,...

~~~snip~~~ The successful investigation and capture of one of U.S. intelligence's prized employees was pushed deep inside the pages of newspapers -- if it appeared at all -- due to 9/11. The lapse in intelligence that led to those attacks overshadowed a rare instance when a mole was successfully outed. ~~~snip~~~ True Believer shows that catching spies within our own intelligence structure is a painstaking process. Carmichael, as much as he is able (given that agencies like DIA just can't let certain information out), walks readers through each step of evidence gathering and case development, while illustrating the challenges in...

Mr. Tenet's account of all this gives the reader no idea of the substance of our critique, which was that the CIA's analysts were suppressing information. They were not showing policy makers reports that justified concern about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Mr. Tenet does tell us that the CIA briefed Mr. Cheney on Iraq and al Qaeda in September 2002 and that the "briefing was a disaster" because "Libby and the vice president arrived with such detailed knowledge on people, sources, and timelines that the senior CIA analytic manager doing the briefing that day simply could not compete."...

The Bush administration: a bigger threat to national security than a foreign spy. That was Tom Brokaw's implicit assumption in his interview with former CIA Director George Tenet on this morning's "Today." Along the way, Brokaw accused former Defense Secretay Donald Rumsfeld of running a "rogue" intelligence operation. BROKAW: In the opening passage you describe conversations in the Clinton administration between the Palestinians and the Israelis attempting to get some sort of a new peace arrangement. But the Israelis were demanding the release of Jonathan Pollard, a United States military intelligence analyst who had been selling them secrets, who's...

(AP) DENVER An empty passenger bridge collapsed over the wing of a United Airlines plane at Denver International Airport on Friday, damaging the aircraft but causing no injuries, the airline said. The cause of the collapse and the extent of the damage were not immediately known. United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said the Boeing 757 had just arrived from Boston and the 184 passengers and crew were still on board. The bridge extends from the concourse to the plane. The one that collapsed is a new type that extends over the wing so passengers can use both the front and rear...

Feb. 18, 2004. 01:00 AM DANNY JOHNSTON/AP U.S. President George W. Bush is applauded by the army and National Guard troops during a speech at Fort Polk, La., yesterday in which he defended the U.S. war in Iraq. Fort Polk is home to more than 6,300 troops who are in Iraq. `Heads should roll' over IraqAdviser wants U.S. intelligence chiefs to quit Cites faulty conclusions on Saddam's weapons ERIC ROSENBERGSPECIAL TO THE STAR WASHINGTON—Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence...

Snow removal a specialty of award-winning airfield. the Little Airport That Could. Centennial is an astonishing seven-time winner (plus one honorable mention) of a national snow-removal award for large general aviation airfields. That achievement gives it high-flying popularity among corporate-jetting executives who want to get where they're going quickly - and safely. "We're clearly the airport of choice... "Our crews know how to remove snow." For the record: Along with most area airports, Centennial was shut down last week for about 27 hours... What's the secret to Centennial's snow-sweeping success? "Long before the snow starts to fly out here, they...

Spokesman doesn't see any reason to alter procedures. Airport officials didn't promise any changes Tuesday despite the avalanche of criticism about the 45- hour closure of Denver International Airport that snarled holiday traffic across the nation. Even a suggestion by their boss, Mayor John Hickenlooper, that some of the equipment that cleared both lanes of Peña Boulevard might be diverted to runways was dismissed. "I don't know why we would do anything differently," DIA spokesman Chuck Cannon said when asked about plans to handle another major storm bearing down on the Front Range that might hit Thursday... Cannon... a debriefing...

Snowstorm dumps 20 inches, snarling roads, closing DIA. A paralyzing blizzard swept across the Front Range on Wednesday, dumping 20 inches of snow, grinding traffic to a near halt, shuttering Denver International Airport and prompting Gov. Bill Owens to declare a state of emergency. With as much as 3 feet of total snow forecast by the time the storm dies down late this morning - a blizzard warning is in effect until noon - travel may not be much better today. • Interstate 70 was closed from Airport Road in Denver all the way east to Kansas. • After numerous...

Three men have been indicted for allegedly trying to obtain defense information and stolen military equipment from an undercover US government agent, federal prosecutors said. Amen Ahmed Ali, 56, received what he believed to be secret defense documents from the agent and sent them to Yemen by fax or courier on several occasions since last year, federal prosecutors said. Ali was arrested at his cigarette shop in Bakersfield about 180 kilometers north of Los Angeles, on Thursday. He was scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in Bakersfield on Friday. The arrest came after a two-year operation and investigation.

A veteran CIA operations official who clashed with former agency Director Porter J. Goss was formally named the deputy CIA director yesterday, raising concerns among critics who say he will hamper reform at the agency. Stephen R. Kappes, who is well-liked among CIA rank and file but who is viewed as someone supporting the status quo at the embattled agency, began work yesterday in his new role, a CIA statement said.

VLADIMIR Putin would like it to be seen as the "energy security" summit, or the "Russia regains its pride" summit, or perhaps even the "Putin leads the world" summit. But this weekend's gathering in StPetersburg of leaders of the Group of Eight nations would more accurately be called "the KGB summit". The streets are crawling with FSB officers, the modern incarnation of the KGB, trying to impose remarkably tight security for the first G8 summit in Russia. The host himself is a former KGB agent. Dozens of his ministers, regional governors and top Kremlin aides are former KGB men, as...

Stephen Kappes: The Wrong Man at CIA by Kenneth R. TimmermanPosted May 31, 2006Before Gen. Michael Hayden settles in as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Congress needs to ask hard questions of the man he has said he wants to appoint as deputy director of the CIA: former operations chief Stephen R. Kappes. Kappes is a former Marine who elicits strong praise from former operations officers such as Gary Berntsen, who worked under him for two years. Hayden also heaped praise on Kappes. "When I did the Rolodex check around the community about Steve … they’re almost universally positive,"...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The general considered the Bush administration's likely choice to become CIA director would be the "wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time," the Republican head of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said on Sunday. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, has been widely cited in the media as the President George W. Bush's expected pick to lead the CIA following the ouster of CIA director Porter Goss. "We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time," Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, told "Fox...

The sordid tale now making the rounds in the "mainstream" press of a rogue Pentagon intelligence operation has all the elements of an urban legend: heavy breathing, a secret basement office "down by the ramp" and government officials who form a hidden alliance based on long-ago ties to an obscure but influential university guru. Only the work of a few good men with the courage to face up to this "cabal" - and a few crusader-journalists to help them - can make the demons scatter and scare the dark ones into the light. Or so the story goes on those...

April 22, 2006 (by Lieven Dewitte) - A passenger who claimed to have a bomb aboard a United Airlines flight was subdued by passengers as the California-bound plane was diverted to Denver International Airport. Two F-16 fighter jets from Buckley Air Force Base scrambled to escort the plane. The A-320 Airbus heading to Sacramento, Calif., from Chicago flew into Denver Friday. The F-16s followed to make sure nothing untoward was going to happen. Jose Manuel Pelayo-Ortega tried to open an door on the Airbus A-320 en route from Chicago to Sacramento, Calif., and then claimed to have a bomb forcing...

United Airlines Flight Diverted to DenverDENVER - A passenger who claimed to have a bomb aboard a United Airlines flight was subdued by passengers as the California-bound plane was diverted to Denver International Airport, airport officials said. Two F-16 fighter jets from Buckley Air Force Base scrambled to escort the plane as it flew into Denver Friday, according to Lt. Commander Sean Kelly, a spokesman for NORAD. "They followed to make sure nothing untoward was going to happen," he said. Jose Manuel Pelayo-Ortega was arrested after the plane landed around 4:30 p.m., FBI spokeswoman Monique Kelso said. Three Secret Service...

... "The lead suggested that what the president was saying was based on something that had been debunked, and that is not true," McClellan said. "In fact, the president was saying something that was based on what the intelligence community - through the CIA and DIA - were saying." ...

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit....

I've created an Able Danger Podcast blog to generate a podcast feed so folks can subscribe to this feed and easily obtain any Able Danger audio (mp3) files. Here is the podcast feed for the Able Danger podcasts. The link to this feed is easy to find at the top left corner of my main blog, QT Monster, just above the Able Danger blog roll. Folks can subscribe to this podcast feed through iTunes. From the iTunes interface pull down the Advanced menu, click on subscribe to podcast, and in the dialogue box paste the URL for this podcast feed:...

Sources close to the ongoing Department of Defense investigation into the controversial Able Danger data mining intelligence program, which purportedly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the worst terror attacks in US history, say the mystery person who actually obtained a much-disputed photograph of Atta for the Able Danger team has now been identified. Ever since the Pentagon-ordered destruction in 2000 of 2.5 terabytes of data unearthed by Able Danger – allegedly including a chart featuring Atta’s photograph that revealed terrorist links and patterns when clicked on – skeptics have long raised doubt about the...

The first 20 minutes or so of the Able Danger conference call was previously posted here. The next three audio clips are here, here and here. Attending this conference call with Congressman Weldon were: AJ Strata from The Strata-Sphere, Dana from Common Sense Political Thought, Curt from Flopping Aces, Mike of Able Danger Blog, QT Monster, Rory O’Connor, Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill, Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Some traditional intelligence officials, however, seemed either skeptical or jealous of LIWA's capability. At one conference, "Able Danger" analysts identified four major al-Qaida hubs - the Middle East, East Africa, Balkans and the Far East - in about 90 minutes."Because we weren't an intelligence organization, we got a lot of bad press," he said. "Folks thought we were running fast and loose with the data."By April, the "Able Danger" team was told to end its support of SOCOM. During the month's long work stoppage, SOCOM's patience ran out, and the military command transferred the work to a Raytheon facility in...

Able Danger identified Mohammad Atta and at least 2 other 9-11 hijackers more than a year before the 9-11 attacks. Why was the data that connected Mohammad Atta as a possible terrorist threat to the United States destroyed, and why wasn't this information shared with the FBI so the 9-11 attacks might have been prevented? 1. Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, explains that there wasn't any prohibition against sharing Able Danger information with the FBI. One of Dr. Cambone's colleagues says, "...we share in Army intelligence and DoD intelligence, we share information with the FBI...

I had the honor of being on an Able Danger bloggers conference call tonight with Representative Curt Weldon. Thanks to Mike at Able Danger Blog for setting this up. The first Able Danger Conference Call was with Attorney Mark Zaid. Bloggers on the line: Dana from Common Sense Political Thought Curt from Flopping Aces Mike of Able Danger Blog QT Monster Rory O’Connor Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto And of course yours truly. This was a really fascinating opportunity to talk directly to the Congressman and finally ask questions...

China Study Rocks The Hill and Unleashes The Purge: While Cambone tried to link the data purge to this 90-day rule, Weldon and the other witnesses (with first hand knowledge) pointed to the LIWA China Study that was being done in parallel to the Able Danger study. I have stated all along this was the lynchpin, the source of all later cover ups and mistakes and lost opportunities. We all know the story so I will not repeat it here, but what we learned from the hearings is how far up this went. Weldon let slip that the initial China...

No you're right Tony, and the significance here is that the FBI Director back then, Louis Freeh said in October of last year on national television, that if he had had the Able Danger information the FBI might well have been able to stop the hijacking. In our hearing past week, and we had both classified and unclassified, we had five people that testified under oath that they believed the same thing. That if the data they collected, that if the analysis they did had been able to be passed to the FBI, they agree with Louis Freeh, that would...

MediaChannel.org used the powerful new MediaVision tool to monitor television news coverage of the Able Danger Congressional hearings. To our astonishment CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" was the only news show to give Able Danger any significant coverage. We were so shocked by the lack of coverage that we created an online campaign to try to pressure TV news networks to cover, as Lou Dobbs put it, "what could be the biggest scandal of our lifetime." Click here to send networks an email demanding coverage! So, sadly, here it is. All the TV coverage we could find thus far:

25th Item: Holy Cow! Weldon has a signed affidavit from a witness that talked to one of Cambone’s staff recently and who said Cambone’s group was going to ‘kill this story’ and Shaffer had no credibility. The name is Butch Willard This is right after Cambone claimed no one was not trying to ‘bring the information forward’. If Weldon is right, Cambone just perjured himself and is in hot water now. The witness is an ex intelligence officer (woman). They moved all this to the closed session!

Audio of the today's entire Able Danger hearing is posted here.

Rep. Curt Weldon: I've learned some additional things that are new. You saw the Arlen Specter hearing in Judiciary that occurred in September. It's very troubling to me that it appears as though the DOD witness did not tell the truth. We had testimony that all of the Able Danger data-mining material was destroyed. I now know that that's not the case. In fact, I now know there's data still available. And I am in contact with people who are still able to data mining runs on pre-9/11 data. In those data runs that are now being done today, in...

The Able Danger portions of the House whistleblower hearings is posted here.

WASHINGTON - Pre-Sept. 11 intelligence conducted by a secret military unit identified terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta 13 different times, a congressman said Tuesday. During a Capitol Hill news conference, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said the unit - code-named "Able Danger" - also identified "a problem" in Yemen two weeks before the attack on the USS Cole. It knew the problem was tied into the port of Aden and involved a U.S. platform, but the ship commander was not made aware of it, Weldon said. The suicide bombing of the Cole killed 17 sailors on Oct. 12, 2000. If anyone had...

I am now liveblogging the US House Subcommittee hearing on national security whistle blowers. Lt. Col. Shaffer just finished his opening statement. He will be questioned during this hearing. You can listen now on C-Span Radio. The permalink to this post is here.

WASHINGTON — An active-duty military intelligence analyst has told congressional investigators that 9/11 pilot Mohamed Atta surfaced 13 times in a controversial Pentagon computer program before he executed the attacks, The Post has learned. Congressional sources said last night that an officer in the Pentagon's secretive Land Information Warfare Center told the staff of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) about the computer hits.