Reply #10: The military report on Able Danger admitted it did map out hundreds of AQ

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operatives. The bit about stickies may have been a Weldon imbellishment meant to shore up his attempt to pin 9/11 on the Clinton Administration. However, AD was real, and the US military intelligence was up to its neck in counter-terrorism operations inside the US conducted without proper FISA warrants. The CIA did know what the principal hijackers intentions, having bugged them when they met in Kuala Lumpur during early January 2000 to plan the attacks. The attack cells were all monitored. For some reason we still don't yet know precisely, during the summer of 2001, operational control was lost, and the attack succeeded. That's the truth that this is meant to obscure and whitewash: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/05/pigs_fly_and_em.html

SNIP

So, what was the source of the warnings that set fire to the heads of George Tenet and Richard Clarke in mid-summer, 2001? Again, this has all been on the record for a long time, but Judy would tell the general public more if she had added some background. Same holds true for Rory O'Connor and William Scott Malone's story, "The 9/11 Story That Got Away" (Alternet, May 18, 2006: http://www.alternet.org/story/36388. Put Judy's account together with the Alternet critique, and it still only gets you half-way there, because the following was left out: the UBL cells were only part of a much larger network of that U.S. intelligence had mapped out inside the US and around the world.

Quite simply put, the CIA, NSA and DIA were jointly conducting illegal, warrantless domestic surveillance before 9/11, and their main target were Saudi and Pakistani moneymen and intelligence officers operating inside the U.S. This network was of interest to counter-intelligence, counter-proliferation, and counter-terrorism units, with the latter being decided junior in the community pecking order.

It didn't help anyone that the Bush Administration had essentially a hold on legacy operations, and didn't want to do a thing until the scheduled September 12 Principals meeting, at which Condi's team was supposed to roll-out its own brand spanking new, all Bush-Cheney CT program.

Bear in mind that al-Qaeda made it very easy to track their primary operatives who planned and carried out the 9/11 and Cole attacks. Most of them met together in early January in Kuala Lumpur, and that planning summit was videotaped by the CIA and a half dozen allied intelligence agencies.

Both operations were planned in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur by a group that included the Flt. 77 hijackers and Atta's roommate. Keep in mind two important things about that: The CIA learned about the meeting when the NSA intercepted calls mentioning Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midahar as they travelled to Kuala Lumpur -- that pair would go on to hijack Flt. 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. 2) Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar entered the US at LAX on 1/15/00 - the CIA noted that entry, and the FBI liason at CTC was ordered to withhold a cable to the FBI national security office in NY commanded by John O'Neill.

Despite the fact that CIA knew the pair were in the US, the Agency never requested FISA warrants to intercept their calls. Al-Midhar left that summer and went on to play an active role in the Cole operation,returning to the US in March 2001. His partner, al-Hazmi, remained in the US, and the pair met up with the other main hijackers on several occasions, and received money from sources including the Saudi embassy and a Indonesian businessman who also gave $40,000 to Zakarias Moussaoui.

Zakarias had stayed at the same house in Kuala Lumpur owned by the businessman where the al-Qaeda planning summit had occurred in January 2000, a meeting the CIA had monitored along with "a half dozen allied agencies".

How did U.S. intelligence originally learn about the so-called Brooklyn Cell we have been told was detected by the SOCOM Able Danger program? Since 1995, NSA and British intelligence had been tracking the al-Hazmi family, which operated an al-Qaeda communications center in Yemen.

That brings us to Able Danger. Contrary to public impression, AD was not just a data-mining operation. The project had access to classified DoD files, which would have included the NSA intercepts of al-Hazmi and al-Midhar. It is also erroneously stated that AD was shut down in mid-2001 because of legal concerns about FISA warrant requirements. The strange thing is, the pair were primarily involved in attack operations on U.S. military targets -- the USS Cole, and the Pentagon. Under the so-called force protection exception, NSA and DIA can and do conduct warrantless surveillance, even on US persons inside the United States, suspected of b eing involved in planning attacks on US military facilities and personnel. Therefore, it would have been perfectly legal for Able Danger and other NSA/DIA surveillance to monitor that al-Qaeda cell inside the U.S., and those intercepts should have been in the domestic NSA files available to Able Danger.

Despite the fact that the intended attacks on U.S. military targets would be well-understood, for some reason that still hasn't been explained, President George W. Bush refused to have the pair and their al-Qaeda cellmates inside the US -- known to Able Danger as the "Brooklyn Cell" -- arrested during the summer of 2001. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/28/121022/933

Keep that in mind, as well when you read the following extract from the Alternet Critique of Judy's article about the 9/11 story the NYT missed.

On Oct. 12, 2000, the guided missile destroyer USS Cole pulled into harbor for refueling in Aden, Yemen. Less than two hours later, suicide bombers Ibrahim al-Thawr and Abdullah al-Misawa approached the ship's port side in a small inflatable craft laden with explosives and blew a 40-by-40-foot gash in it, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. The attack on the Cole, organized and carried out by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida terrorist group, was a seminal but still murky and largely misunderstood event in America's ongoing "Long War."

Two weeks prior, military analysts associated with an experimental intelligence program known as ABLE DANGER had warned top officials of the existence of an active Al Qaida cell in Aden, Yemen. And two days before the attack, they had conveyed "actionable intelligence" of possible terrorist activity in and around the port of Aden to Gen. Pete Schoomaker, then commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operation Command (SOCOM).

The same information was also conveyed to a top intelligence officer at the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), headed by the newly appointed Gen. Tommy Franks. As CENTCOM commander, Franks oversaw all U.S. armed forces operations in a 25-country region that included Yemen, as well as the Fifth Fleet, to which the Cole was tasked. It remains unclear what action, if any, top officials at SOCOM and CENTCOM took in response to the ABLE DANGER warnings about planned Al Qaida activities in Aden harbor.

None of the officials involved has ever spoken about the pre-attack warnings, and a post-attack forensic analysis of the episode remains highly classified and off-limits within the bowels of the Pentagon. Subsequent investigations exonerated the Cole's commander, Kirk Lippold, but Lippold's career has been ruined nonetheless. He remains in legal and professional limbo, with a recommended promotion and new command held up for the past four years by political concerns and maneuvering.

Meanwhile, no disciplinary action was ever taken against any SOCOM or CENTCOM officials. Schoomaker was later promoted out of retirement to chief of staff, U.S. Army, and Franks went on to lead the combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

SNIP