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category archive listing Category Archives: Able Danger

The Corner Translates Henry Kissinger and yup he thinks democratization is dumb too.

March 11, 2008 – 5:42 pm

A long time ago in another life when I labored under the illusion that I could make a difference I wrote an over long but fact filled piece that got about 10 hits. Democracy a fools errand or our only way out? Jeane Kirkpatrick responds In this article I set about tearing up the idea that Democracy was some sort of a good idea. The idea for centering the article around Jeanne Kirkpatrick came to me after her passing while I was catching up on her brilliance as our UN Ambassador. Ronald Reagan knew how to pick them. In the particular piece that caught Reagan’s eye was a absolutely damning argument against forcing democracy onto everyone. You can read this wonderful article for yourself here.

Well I am glad to see that Henry Kissinger has confirmed my belief that this Crusade President Bush has launched in the Middle East will not accomplish our main goal, securing our future from terror nations. Here is Henry Kissinger via the Corner:


By Pierre Legrand | Also posted in 9/11, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden Dead, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Saddam Al Qaeda links, Terror war | Comments (0)

Pentagon looking for ass with both hands comes up empty…Saddam’s Connections to Al Qaeda IS a Slam Dunk!

March 11, 2008 – 11:03 am

UPDATED: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air talking about the parts of the Pentagon report that were not covered in the Executive Summary.

Well it is just about time to publish this again seeing how the Pentagon insists on being dumb with reports like this one.  Next thing you know our government will be declaring that Islam is the religion of peace…oops. 

Why did I make this list of Saddam’s Connections and Collaborations with Al Qaeda?
This list started out as just an area to drop links that I found relevant regarding the most obvious reason for taking Saddam out of power, his use of Islamic terrorists to wage war by proxy. To me this aspect of Saddam’s madness has always been the central reason for deposing him. We could not allow any Dictator who believed in using Islamic terrorists as proxies to have any sort of major weapons. The crux was his desire to use Islamic terrorists as proxies in wars against us, which he states as a viable strategy against us in the first example I provide below.


By Pierre Legrand | Also posted in 9/11, Al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Saddam Al Qaeda links, Terror war | Comments (0)

Plame, Wilson, Saddam, Nuclear Weapons, Yellowcake, Corruption, CIA on the Take…oh my.

November 29, 2005 – 10:02 am

UPDATES BELOW!
Just spent a good 2 hours reading a lot of terrific posts on the Plame Affair, to say this stuff is explosive would be like saying a 10 Megaton Nuclear device is sort of loud. These are the people you need to be reading to find out the truth on what is going on. AJ over at Strata-Sphere, MacRanger at Macsmind, Sue in the comments section and a mysterious and brilliant commentator at Free-Republic with the Nom de Guerre of Fedora all of these folks have the ability to sift through mountainous volumes of information and like the Data Miners from ABLE DANGER pull out the information that brings sense out of chaos.

Below is a snippet of information from Fedora who seems to only post at Free Republic.

What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa: Joseph Wilson’s Silent Partners: ” COGEMA, as the managing partner, would have had to know and be complicit.’37 This seems to rule out a priori the very thing Wilson was sent to investigate, and in the process,
to rule out the possibility of French complicity in arming Saddam Hussein’s regime, which seems a hasty exoneration in light of the fact that France had a long history of selling Iraq military equipment and resisting UN sanctions against Iraq.38 It is now known that in fact French companies were helping Iraq skirt UN sanctions.39″

Notice that Joseph Wilson went in believing that it was impossible for a French Company to knowingly sell Yellowcake to Iraq. As if selling Iraq the methods of constructing nuclear weapons was beyond the pale of consideration for the French. Everyone apparently completely ignoring that the Nuclear plant destroyed by Israelis Jets in 81 was sold to it and constructed by the French. Specifically Jacques Chirac was the enabler who insisted that exactly the sort of plant needed for weapons production be sold to the Iraqis.

Fedora hints at the corruption that MacRanger plunges into in this article.

MacRanger: Of course there would be one caveat and this is key and not surprising. The IAEA would have had to have “blinked” once in a while. Scandalous? Yes, but that the IAEA might not have been so suspect if frustrated by the Bush Administration killing the Golden Goose, they showed their hand in October of 2004 by leaking the story of missing munitions at Al-Qaqaa. Make no mistake, the move was to defeat Bush and thus, get the ‘heat off” as a Kerry Administration would have canned any further scrutiny into the Oil for Food Scandal.

MacRanger proceeds to give the best reason I have heard yet for the CIA to have been so at odds with the Bush administration. Sit down before you read this article. The implications are so serious and dire that the warnings of treachery and deceit Laurie Mylroie has been sounding for years, as strident as they were regarding the CIA’s outright war against the President, were not strident enough by half.

Consider this quote that starts off MacRangers other article on the “Plame Game”

“Since it’s creation in 1947, the CIA has been a service dominated by a handful of individuals who carried out their activities as they saw fit, some honestly trying to serve the national interest, others focusing enormous amounts of energy on personal political advantage, even personal profit.” - Prelude to Terror: the Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of American Intelligence - Robert Trento

So there it is, as it always has been, right in front of us. Occam’s razor in all of its glory, instead of conspiracies of competing philosophies we have the most mighty Intelligence Agency in history scrabbling around and lying to make a buck. Perfect. We have Joseph Wilson putting on airs of gentle society while making deals with the most murderous of scum. Marvelous.

MacRanger proceeds to answer the most essential question of the war, why has the CIA been so steadfastly against the war. Some complex theories have been proposed and yet of them all MacRanger seems to have nailed it. I say MacRanger but its clear that AJ over at Strata-Sphere also has the right of it.

Take a look at this post by AJ and weep for our country. We are being protected by evil men who put mere money ahead of this countries continued existence. For those who declare this to be overwrought consider what will happen if those forces that the CIA has aligned itself with, win. Iraq will again descend into the madness that defined Saddam’s reign, Iran will be free to produce whatever it see’s fit. And one day soon one or more of our cities will evaporate into a mushroom cloud followed by a list of demands that will effectively kill this country of ours.

This is one of the reasons that the Blogsphere is so valuable original reporting done by those capable at looking into massive volumes of data and extracting nuggets.

UPDATED: Hat tip Cliff Kincaid over a Media Monitor for this amazing article by Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post. Consider this snippet from the article, Jim Hoagland talking about the CIA:

People in those institutions were out to defy and/or get you. 

But you and yours helped them accomplish the mission. One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.

The hidden management of the criminal justice process and the news media practiced by spooks in Wilson-Rove-Libbygate is nothing short of brilliant. So you were right to fear the agency. Where else do you think the one-page crime report that triggered the investigation and then the pressure-building leaks disclosing its existence came from?

Fear probably caused you to keep the Clinton-appointed leadership in place at the CIA long after some of its top operatives mounted a rebellion against the White House, in part to shift attention from their failures to yours.

Consider for a moment just how outrageous it is that a major reporter, for arguably the most influential newspaper in the United States, after the NYT meltdown,is stating out in the open that the CIA is in open revolt. Color me surprised I thought they worked for us and that President Bush was our representative. If they start having an agenda completely independent of the will of the people then something has gotten way out of whack.

Remind me again why it is we cannot simply put them all out in the streets?


By Pierre Legrand | Also posted in Iraq, Islam, Saddam Al Qaeda links, Terror war | Comments (1)

Why would President Bush’s administration attempt to put the lid on ABLE DANGER.

August 28, 2005 – 10:48 am

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 career”.

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.





By Pierre Legrand | Also posted in Saddam Al Qaeda links | Comments (1)

Problems with the Timeline brings the Crop Duster Anthrax coincidences back into play.

August 27, 2005 – 10:12 pm

One of the people I respect the most as a source is Edward Jay Epstein who has gotten far more right than wrong. But as we can see here if the timeline moves on Atta’s first visit to the United States then Mr. Epstein is going to have a hard time sustaining this position. Indeed its probably just a matter of time before he is forced to admit that our depending on the INS and the testimony of 2 Terrorists for the facts on when Atta first came to the States was unwise. ABLE DANGER is turning over a bunch of things we thought we knew.

  • Fictoid 11 - The Terror Crop Dusters: “Johnell Bryant, a loan manager in the Department of Agriculture’s Florida Farm Service Office, recalled after September 11th that Atta came to her office to get a $650,000 cash loan to finance a twin-engine, six-passenger airplane (not a crop-duster.) She said that the man had told her that he intended to build a tank in the passenger plane so he could also use it for crop-dusting. She said that the meeting had occurred in 2000, between ‘the third week of April to the third week of May of 2000.’ She was able to fix the date because the Far Service subsequently moved their office to Florida City. While no doubt some Arab-looking man made an inquiry about getting a loan during this period, Mohamed Atta was in Germany during that time period, applying for his visa to come to the United States. He did not arrive in the United States until June 3rd 2000. If so, the person who came into Bryant’s office to get a loan to buy a passenger plane in April or May 2000 could not have been Mohamed Atta.”

Notice this other bit of information on Edwards’s site; obviously ABLE DANGER changes a few things. But notice the Crop Dusting mention which dovetails nicely with the up till now discounted report of Johnell Bryant who claimed to have met Atta. Naturally it was discounted because he wasn’t in the United States according to the official timeline. But if the timeline was wrong as it appears increasingly likely that it was then Atta was here and Johnell Bryant’s story likely occurred just as she remembered. Personally I don’t believe anyone could have forgotten or mistaken Atta’s face for anyone else.

  • Next, since it emerged out of the 1998 investigation of al-Qaeda attacks in Africa that Osama Bin Laden planned to train pilots for crop dusting and other agriculture tasks, Able Danger would cross-reference its short list with applicants to US flight schools. Here Atta’s name would come up 31 times, as he applied to 31 flight schools.

Keep in mind that Anthrax can be dispersed if imperfectly by a crop duster, yes I know that’s not the best way but it will work. Furthermore when you combine the Anthrax attacks that did occur, with the reports of members of the hijacking team visiting hospitals with lesions similar if not identical to the sort of injury sustained by exposure to anthrax you get the sort of questions that the 9/11 Commission apparently did not want to face.

Some have tried to state that Atta was interested in renting the small twin engine private airplane with the cover story of using it for a crop duster because that hide his actual desire to fill the crop duster tank with gasoline and use the plane as he used Flt 11. Occam’s Razor comes into play here. Why make up the very implausible story about converting a perfectly good twin engine plane into a Crop Duster? Aside from the ridiculous aspect of using a twin engine plane as a crop duster, if you are not a pilot then it might sound plausible, its not. Twins down low carrying lots of weight aren’t a real blast to fly around, the power to weight ratio is against long term survival of the pilot. Anyways aside from the ridiculous aspects there was absolutely no reason to not use large jets as was done to carry out their attacks. We didn’t have a clue that sort of planning was in the works and so the likelihood of it being successful was higher than trying to rent a twin convert it into a crop duster and simply to fill it with gasoline and run it into something. You can do that with a lot more effect in a Commercial Jet as we all know.

So then if Bin Laden was interested in crop dusters and Atta was interested in crop dusters and one of the hijackers reported to a hospital with Anthrax lesions…where does that lead? Oh and I forgot we were shortly thereafter attacked using Anthrax. Where I am leading with this long article is this question.

Where would the anthrax come from? Where did the anthrax come from that was used to attack and kill US citizens? Why do we keep running into these sorts of coincidences, like the woman who helped Atta and company find rooms in Florida coincidently had a husband who was an executive who coincidently worked at the media company in Florida that was also attacked with Anthrax killing one employee. The Anthrax used was coincidently the same strain used to attack U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle. And coincidently Iraq was said to have offered to train Al Queda in the use and production of Chemical and biological weapons. Consider this bit of evidence provided by Dr. Mylroie “When Dr. Zawahari’s home in Kabul was subsequently examined after the fall of the Taliban, it tested positive for anthrax. So al-Qaeda had the means as well as the intent of using anthrax.” Coincidently…

Course the story that Stephen Hatfill had a grudge that wouldn’t quit seems a whole bunch more plausible now that we review all the “coincidences” doesn’t it? And I love the bit where he mixed up this weapons grade anthrax in the pond next door. Anyone mention just how dysfunctional the FBI has to be to come up with that bit of nonsense?

Was the Commissions timeline used to put paid to entire parts of the narrative that made up the reality of 9/11? Atta’s visit to Prague didn’t happen because the timeline didn’t fit. The story regarding the attempt to rent a twin engine plane for crop dusting was brushed off because of the timeline. Is a timeline the newest way to put off the scent of failure with our government officials?

Tonight the Captain has an explosive story regarding the links between Iran and Al Queda.





By Pierre Legrand | Also posted in Saddam Al Qaeda links | Comments (1)

Why was Atta singled out as significant by ABLE DANGER

August 26, 2005 – 8:40 pm

Its being reported that the information that Able Danger pulled up on Atta came from looking into the Blind Sheik Rahman. Boy if I was asking questions I think it might be pretty interesting to ask the Able Danger folks.

  1. Where was Hani Hanjour back in 1995? Do you have any evidence that he was already researching or even taking flying lessons back then?
  2. Did Atta have any contacts with Hani Hanjour in the States prior to 2000?
  3. What sort of links were found between the hijackers and any State run intelligence agencies such as Iraq or Iran?
  4. Did Atta visit Prague in April of 2001?
  5. How many times do you show Atta visiting Prague?
  6. Did the terrorists use techniques that displayed evidence of Professional Training in evasion from scrutiny?
  7. Was it significant that Atta’s cell phone was used in the United Stated during the time he was reported in Prague or was that typical of the sort of spycraft they were using as evidenced by their extensive efforts to launder their money?
  8. Were you able to glean information from foreign countries? Not likely to be answerer but never hurts to ask.
  9. Were you able to track the money sent to Atta and the rest of the Terrorists even though they went to incredible lengths to hide that fact?

Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani was the Iraqis Consul to Prague and also their top man for carrying out terror operations. He was the replacement for the former Iraqis consul who had defected to England with $150,000.00 that Saddam had given him to arrange the bombing of Radio Free Europe using Islamic Radicals. Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was sent in to replace him and to carry out the attack against what Saddam considered to be a very serious thorn in his side, the American Propaganda Radio Station.

That fact alone gives lie to the meme that the Iraqis were not in the terrorism business. It also nails shut the possibility that they wouldn’t dream of attacking the United States. Of course they would attack the United States but only using proxies. That was the accepted way to attack an enemy you were afraid of engaging directly.

Naturally it behooves us to remember that Iraq attempted to murder a Former US President which as far as I can tell is a first time in our history that a foreign government has attempted to murder a Former or even Current US President.

Did Atta meet with Al Ani? The Iraqis consul Al Ani was the man most likely to have been involved in a plot the size of 9/11.

And lets not forget the Anthrax which unless we want to believe that a disgruntled employee manufactured a form of Anthrax of such quality that only a few nations in the world are capable of then we have to wonder exactly where did it come from. The Iraqis had very advanced capabilities regarding the manufacture of Anthrax.

Strata Sphere is all over this story with some terrific predictions and some great follow up.
Just One Minute is munching on just a tiny bit of humble pie after spending much of last week trying to put the lid on Able Danger.
Jim Geraghty is laying low and hasn’t been seen in a few days after spending much of last week laughing at Rep Curt Weldon…is this a laughs last sort of moment?
Captain’s Quarters





By Pierre Legrand | Also posted in Saddam Al Qaeda links | Comments (0)