Disabled Intelligence
"Able Danger."
Remember those words. It could very well be that they are the two words the Clinton Administration never wanted the American public to hear. They were heard by the highly political 9/11 commission and dismissed as not "historically significant" and therefore never mentioned in their final report. But their historical significance is yet to be decided and by the looks of things, their significance is gaining momentum every day.
A few questions that need to be asked for starters:
1) Who were these Defense Department lawyers who canceled these meetings with the FBI?
2) Did these lawyers make this decision on their own or did they have to report to Defense Secretary William Cohen? ( I would be shocked if Cohen was unaware of this)
3) If Cohen was aware of it, who else in the Clinton Administration was aware of it? (wouldn't this be something the Defense Secretary would report to the president?)
4) Was the upcoming 2000 election a factor in keeping this information under wraps for fear the American electorate would react negatively to a breach of national security?
5) When Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, raided the National Archives and walked off with classified terrorism reports in his socks (a crime for which he has pled guilty), could it potentially have had something to do with this?
Remember those words. It could very well be that they are the two words the Clinton Administration never wanted the American public to hear. They were heard by the highly political 9/11 commission and dismissed as not "historically significant" and therefore never mentioned in their final report. But their historical significance is yet to be decided and by the looks of things, their significance is gaining momentum every day.
A few questions that need to be asked for starters:
1) Who were these Defense Department lawyers who canceled these meetings with the FBI?
2) Did these lawyers make this decision on their own or did they have to report to Defense Secretary William Cohen? ( I would be shocked if Cohen was unaware of this)
3) If Cohen was aware of it, who else in the Clinton Administration was aware of it? (wouldn't this be something the Defense Secretary would report to the president?)
4) Was the upcoming 2000 election a factor in keeping this information under wraps for fear the American electorate would react negatively to a breach of national security?
5) When Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, raided the National Archives and walked off with classified terrorism reports in his socks (a crime for which he has pled guilty), could it potentially have had something to do with this?
posted by Wonderdog | 8:56 AM | Permalink
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9 comments
9 Comments:
Wonderdog,
Your conspiracy theories are creative, but way off the mark, as the article you linked to makes clear:
"[L]awyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States."
The Special Operations Command is not a policy wing of the Pentagon, it is an operational unit of the military that plans and conducts operations against terrorists. It reports to the Joint Chiefs, not directly to the Secretary of Defense. The SOC lawyers were clearly worried about violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which forbids military personal from participating in domestic civilian law enforcement. This kind of bureaucratic barrier to intelligence-sharing could and did happen under all administrations, regardless of partisan affiliation, it had nothing to do with electoral politics.
Madman,
I'm glad you've cleared all of this up for us. I guess there's nothing to it then.
But, just to be safe, I think we need to ask Colonel Shaffer a few questions.
Did Clinton lie and did 3,000 people die?
Wonderdog,
Go ahead and ask. I'm willing to bet a lot of money that this information got nowhere near President Clinton. Unlike that August 6, 2001 briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In U.S"- Dubya slept and thousands wept.
Oh, God, by all means let's get into the "who ignored the threat of terrorism more" game of gotcha. "Dubya" slept through the report on bin Laden; "Bubba" slept through the first WTC attack, the U.S.S. Cole, the Khobar Towers, etc. The scary thing is that there are some people who want to keep sleeping (Dennis Kucinich springs to mind).
I'd be more interested in this question: who is lying -- Colonel Shaffer or the vaunted 9/11 Commission?
Wonderdog started it.
Your question is interesting in only the academic sense, Kate Marie. The 9/11 report may not have mentioned Shaffer's testimony, but by the time the report was published it had already effectively been acted upon. Parts of the Patriot Act removed the legal firewalls that caused the SOC lawyers to balk at sharing intelligence with the FBI. In the end perhaps Shaffer's testimony was overlooked because new policies had made it moot.
Madman,
I have to admit to playing Oliver Stone a bit in my post and its motivation was to give the other side a little of their own "Bush Lied" drivel back at them.
That said, it's absurd that the 9/11 Commission dismissed "Able Danger" out of hand and never even questioned Shaffer. If they dismissed him as a "moot" point, as you've suggested, their incompetence would be more frightening than any bias I could ascribe to them.
The same incompetence and perhaps negligence can be said for Clinton's Defense Dept. for withholding this evidence for fear of litigation from the ACLU.
As for the Posse Comitatus Act, let's look at the language:
"From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment."
Is giving information to the FBI on potential criminal activity which threatens the safety of American citizens an act of "executing" the law? How is it any different than a citizen calling the police when he observes criminal activity?
Even if you could somehow argue that such an information exchange was an "execution" of the laws, it would still fall within the exception that it is permitted when expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress. The Supreme Court has held time and time again that any activity which would otherwise be in violation of the Constitution is permissible if it is "necessary to achieve a compelling state interest". If preventing a terrorist attack against our citizens isn't a "compelling state interest" and if informing the FBI of that threat isn't "necessary" to protecting that interest than I don't know what is.
Also, as to your confident assertion that Defense Secretary William Cohen would not be consulted on this matter, this language from the Act is in direct contradiction of that notion:
"Sec. 375. Restriction on direct participation by military personnel:
The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law."
Are you telling me that the lawyers in this case, who were so concerned about violation of this Act, were unaware that the Secretary of Defense had supervisory oversight as to the adherence to this Act and failed to bing it to his attention? Wow.
I think we need to ask Shaffer some questions.
Wonderdog,
All of your parsing of Posse Comitatus is well and good, but any case against the Clinton administration still depends upon 20/20 hindsight and an unrealistic expectation of how the legal system and bureaucracy work. PC1878 may allow for domestic military law-enforcement in the case of a "compelling state interest," but it is only in the wake of 9/11 that we know just how compelling a state interest resided in the identity of Mohamed Atta. Without that foreknowledge it is difficult to expect that the legal and bureaucratic machinery of the Federal Government would behave any more quickly or differently than it did *given the then current state of the law*.
Sure, the Sec. of Def. has de jure oversight over all divisions and units of the military, but de facto s/he cannot possibly micromanage the legal issues that constantly arise during day to day military operations.
Special Operations Command is a tactical unit (45,000 soldiers) involved in constant field operations. They have their own legal team precisely in order to keep the numerous legal issues that arise in the natural course of their peculiar type of operations from having to always clear the Secretary of Defense's desk. The S.O.C. lawyers were doing what they had been ordered to do- engaging in legal triage so that the operational efficiency of the unit would not be hobbled by constant delays as questions passed up and down the chain of command. In hindsight their decision seems to have had grave consequences, and steps have been taken to preclude such an oversight happening again, but to blame what happened on the particular inefficiency of the Clinton White House is just not fair or accurate.
The best index of how little any particular partisan regime is to blame is the current stonewalling on the part of the DoD. If blame could be passed onto the Clinton White House why would DoD be reticent to release records surrounding this issue? The answer is obvious- the people involved are not political appointees that change from one regime to the next, they are career officers and bureaucrats who have been in place since 2000.
Madman,
If the first WTC bombing and the U.S.S. Cole were insufficient "foreknowledge" to alert the administration of the "compelling state interest" with regard to Mr. Atta then I don't know what is. The negligenct decision-making in the "Able Danger" operation is not one that may only be seen in "hindsight." If the SOC is as deeply engaged in terrorist activities as you suggest, how could they not have known the threat? That doesn't make sense.
As for blaming the Clinton Administration or Clinton himself, I agree that I don't know enough to assign such blame. But I cetainly think we need to ask questions and find out. You seem to be opposed to questions at all.
You seem to have all the answers already. Why don't we ask quesions first and see if you're right.
Wonderdog,
I have no problem with asking questions, I just don't see the smoking gun that you do. Let whoever wants to ask whatever questions they feel are warranted, in the end I feel that Kate Marie will be proven right, the "blame game" over 9/11 is a profitless sinkhole.
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