UPDATED AND A BUMP See below!
One of the most frustrating aspects of the ABLE DANGER scandal has been the insidious set of roadblocks that have been set in front of the investigation at nearly every turn. Some roadblocks have been crude and easily surmounted like the initial denial that the 9/11 Commission had even heard of ABLE DANGER . But the most effective roadblocks have consisted of classic attempts at discrediting the sources, vague rumors implying dishonesty as was attempted with LtC Shaffer, confusing questions attempting divert the investigation into dead ends, outright misquoting in attempts to discredit sources and to make them appear to change their stories, basically the entire playbook has been thrown at killing this story. One has to wonder exactly why? Is it simply that no one wants the 9/11 Commission to be absolutely and completely discredited?
Why would the Bush Administration and their allies in the media be so intent on smothering this story? For instance John Podhoretz who happens to be one of the best journalists most of the time is coming up with some of the most implausible reasons that Able Danger is a bunch of hooey. John Podhoretz does not work for the Democrats and while one of my favorite bloggers Ed Morrissey declares that Podhoretz is excellent, on this subject he has been part of the problem in getting the story out. Odd stuff, that is not simply explained by people inside of the Administration not wanting to be distracted from the war on terror, as another prominent blogger proposed to me via email.
Then today’s story, via Podhoretz and the New York Post, that ABLE DANGER was killed when it came out with another one of its now famous charts showing Chinese links to business and technology contacts. On that chart Condi Rice’s name popped up and that was enough to have the entire team fired and ABLE DANGER terminated, with the juicy quote, provided by the New York Post, of some unnamed Colonel who declared to civilian contractor James Smith, “You just ended my careerâ€.
One problem with that story in the New York Post article is it appears that ABLE DANGER was shut down in 2000 during the election by nervous Clinton Administration officials. That does not jive with all previous reports of the programs termination date which by previous accounts was terminated in 2001. But that aside when I heard the story, the chart on Condi made the attempts to stifle the story and the New York Times eagerness to air the story all fall into place.
- As it stands now we have an outfit that successfully discovered the key players in the worst terrorist attack in history as they not only named Atta but also 3 other of the players including Marwan Al Shehhi.
- We have that same outfit putting out a chart that had Condi Rice in connections with Chinese contacts which no one at ABLE DANGER to my knowledge claimed to be anything other than coincidences. They also made no insinuations of any wrongdoing or appearance, simply the fact that she appeared spooked at least a Colonel. Could it be spooking the Bush Administration? Would that explain why the New York Times is so eager for this story?
- We have General Peter Schoomaker who was the Commander-in-Chief, Special Operations Command in 2000. Was he in the loop of ABLE DANGER? Seems hard to believe that he didn’t know about the work they preformed.
- Was General Peter Schoomaker the one who gave the command to disband the team?
- Is disbanding the team that pointed to the Terrorists who perpetuated the worst terrorist attack in history the sort of thing one might brag about?
- Would the Bush administration after naming General Peter Schoomaker to be the Army Chief of Staff think it wise to show that their pick shut down one of the best chances we had to shut down the Terrorists of 9/11?
- Does an Administration that puts such a high premium on the power of the Presidency and who have spent considerable capital enhancing and defending that power want to see it degraded by showing the terrible misdeeds of the Clinton Administration? It is plausible to consider that such admissions might do some damage to the prestige of the Office of President.
There are too many reasons for the Bush administration to want to kill this story and very few reasons to highlight this story. After all what would be the advantage to the Bush administration for this story to be fully aired? They simply are not interested in driving this story to hurt the Democrats which seems to be the reason for some of the coverage it received at first. If they aren’t interested in damaging the Clinton Administration then exactly what is gained by the Bush Administration by giving it credence? Someone want to explain that?
What bothers me are people repeatedly claiming that this or that story has changed but not providing any links to the actual text of what has supposedly changed. Having watched Rep Weldon on CSPAN, one of the few places that are professional enough to give a good interview I am not impressed with claims that Weldon has changed his story. What has been reported has changed but that is more evidence of sloppy reporting and wishful thinking than any changes in the main players.
UPDATE #1 Just occured to me while prepping for the hurricane Katrina that there is another, perhaps even stronger motivation for the Bush administration to be attempting to either downplay or smother this story altogether. We just finished completely reorganizing out intelligence services based on information provided by…wait for it, the 9/11 Commission. And the Bush administration went along with this massive reorganization based on what a Commission that was so rife with politics and corruption declared to be in our self interest.
This same commission who had as one of its members one of the people responsible for building a wall between ABLE DANGER and the rest of our government and later on this same person found herself on the very commission that was investigating the failures of our government to discover the plotters and stop them WOW! Is our government deliberately stupid or do they think we are? And as if to add tremendous insult to injury this very same person was charged with making recommendations to reform our intelligence…am I the only one in the entire Country who finds this absolutely the craziest thing around? And the Bush administration went along meekly with this entire process, knowing as it did that the entire time-line the 9/11 Commission used to in effect hide the most important facts regarding 9/11 were made up out of whole cloth, provided by 2 of the Terrorist leaders themselves and the INS, that pillar of efficiency.
Again the Captain and Strata-Sphere are all over this story…posting may be light while we prepare for extended bouts of snorkling if Katrina heads to Baton Rouge.
Captain’s Quarters as usual is all over this story and when the laurels are handed out for driving this story out into the public he will stand near the front of the line.
Strata Sphere has his usual insightful look into this story. Thanks for the link!
Mac’s Mind is interesting but he is too busy trying to shoot the story down to worry about if its not the sort of laughable joke he tries to make it. He seems to resent the fact that Rep Weldon is on a crusade to reform the Intelligence Agencies.
Just One Minute with more.
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