![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
UPDATED BELOW! THANKS CAPTAIN FOR THE LINK! Welcome my site Captain Quarters readers please take a look around.
The Able Danger story was brought to light not by Lt. Col Shaffer but by Congressman Curt Weldon who has served in the House since 1987. In that time he has served on several key Committee’s that have a direct relationship on his involvement in exposing the faults in our intelligence agencies. These committee’s include:
It is obvious from his achievements that he is no crackpot standing on the corner shouting that the end of the world is near. So when he declares that he had to go public with information regarding Able Danger he deserves our respectful attention.
That he has received less than that from the left is not a surprise. That he has been attacked from the right with the sort of sniping that is far more effective than the full frontal assault of the left is probably a shock to many. Rep Curt Weldon is a hawk, he is a patriot, and he is right about our intelligence agencies and fixing them was his main goal for writing his book and exposing Able Danger.
Why would people like John Podhoretz and Jim Geraghty unleash scathing attacks on him based on reports coming out of unreliable sources which they didn’t even have the decency to check for accuracy? Not once was any of their reporting based on first hand questioning of either Rep Weldon or Lt Col Shaffer did anyone at National Review try to interview either of them?
One has to wonder exactly what motivated these baseless attacks on a man who is trying to alert us to the faulty practices of our intelligence agencies. We know that both of these gentleman have uncanny access to the Bush Administration which must not be too terribly anxious to have Able Danger destroy the 9/11 Commission credibility. Did they get the word quietly from their sources inside of the Administration that Rep Curt Weldon was not being a team player? Did they get the subtle hints that insider sources they both depend on for their living might be inclined to dry up if they kept up supporting a man who is bent on bringing the bureaucracy to account? Who knows, explaining their enthusiasm for believing the worst about Rep Curt Weldon and Lt. Col Shaffer is above my pay grade.
Lets look at what Rep Curt Weldon is trying to accomplish with both his book “Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it” and why he brought out the information regarding ABLE DANGER. The book is remarkably disquieting in that the wild accusations of incompetence inside the CIA don’t seem to be getting any better, indeed Rep Curt Weldon declares that Porter Goss a friend of his has merely established a beachhead in an organization that refuses to change. Indeed it is startling that Rep Weldon calls upon us the American people to get interested in the fight to reform our intelligence agencies because the will is almost absent within Washington to get the job done. Washington will need our firm resolve to correct grossly negligent practices inside of those agencies at the tip of the spear. Rep Weldon is engaging in a tactic that President Reagan made so famous, going over the heads of both Washington and the Press to appeal directly to us! Can we pull ourselves away from the latest reality show long enough to help?
His charges mirror those of another iconoclast Laurie Mylroie in her book Bush vs. the Beltway : How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror. In Dr. Mylroie’s book she details a particularly disastrous operation against Saddam Hussein which the CIA was running that explains exactly how incompetent the once fearsome CIA has become. The CIA was trying to support a Coup attempt inside Iraq, which was promptly broken with all the people involved being rounded up by Saddams extremely efficient Secret Services. Not only were all the operatives captured but the Secret Services of Saddam had the audacity to capture the CIA’s top secret radios which they then used to call the CIA to relay the news of the failure.
Able Danger by itself is explosive in that it has the potential to destroy most of the credibility of the 9/11 Commission especially in the crucial areas of the Atta timelines. Remember that those timelines were used to explain that the Czech Foreign Office was mistaken in believing that Atta had met with Iraqi Consul in Prague, Ahmed al-Ani. The 9/11 Commission claimed that their time line had Atta in Florida and not in Prague, its worth noting that the Czech Foreign service not only has stuck to its story but has also produced the Iraqis Consul’s appointment book that shows a meeting with the Hamburg Student during the time the Czech Foreign Service claimed that Atta met Ahmed al-Ani. Atta was known as the Hamburg Student. The main players of the hijackers all came out of the Hamburg cell.
Destroying the 9/11 Commissions timelines and putting Atta in Prague during the time period that the Czech Foreign Service shows he met Ahmed al-Ani won’t do a lot of favors to those who were against the war. Obviously if Saddam was in the loop of 9/11 then any arguments against the war would fall flat. You would think that this might be of some importance to the Bush Administration. But then again there has always been enough information to tie the Iraqis directly to the sort of Terrorism that would force us to act and yet the Bush administration never saw fit to exploit them. For instance it is absolutely proven that Ahmed al-Ani was in the process of an attempt to use Islamic Radicals to blow up Radio Free Europe and yet the Bush administration has never made as big an issue out of this as could have been made.
In addition to the explosive nature of the ABLE DANGER reports, the implications of incompetence inside of our intelligence apparatus and the refusal to correct the biggest problems show that in the face of the most terrible terrorist attack in history our Government Agencies are still unwilling to correct past practices. Given the terrible nature of emerging threats this should terrify you.
For evidence of such massive incompetence one only has to look as close as the last Presidential Election when the CIA found time to permit one of its employee’s to launch a bold attack on a sitting Wartime President by publishing a book, Imperial Hubris that was hyped to the nth degree by the Press. The audacity of that attack is mind-boggling and if I may engage in just a bit of partisan sniping, had that same scenario occurred during a Democratic Presidents term the MSM would have been declaring it for what it was, it was nothing short of an attempt to influence the Presidential Election with the outright approval of the Director of the CIA. Some might dare call it an attempted coup d’etat. Whether it was or not it certainly marked the sort of attack that deserved to be answered by the sorts of wholesale changes recommended by Rep Curt Weldon and others. Consider that in the middle of one of the most desperate wars we have fought the main players in finding the enemy are instead taking a bit of time off to attack the President.
Another terrific example was the fiasco of Joseph Wilson and Mrs. Valerie “Top Secret” Plame where another group inside of the CIA decides to try and embarrass the President by producing false data for a fawning MSM. Impressive that the CIA, who missed hitting those terrorist bastards before Jeremy Glick and Todd Beamer had to fight them in the skies on Flt 93, find enough time to have Joseph Wilson flying around drinking tea in Nigeria. Remind me again why we have given this dysfunctional agency trillions of dollars so far? Was it because of their astute predictions regarding the Soviet Union?
Neither of these events are examples of an agency trying to bring our foes to justice for if that was the case failure while still unacceptable would be understandable. No in those last two examples we have a huge dangerous agency out of control starting to believe that they have the power to run the show. We are treading on some very dangerous ground here and if you believe that after attempting such massively corrupt plays that the CIA will go quietly into the good night then I have a bridge I want to sell you.
This is the thrust of Rep Curt Weldon’s book that while there are undoubtedly many fine CIA Agents the agency itself is too corrupt for reform. This is why we must drive this story until there is an investigation by a commission that is honestly capable of seeing the faults of our agencies and recommending corrective actions that will actually correct the problems.
This is another reason ABLE DANGER was important because the release of that material worked to show how poorly the original Commission did its job. They simply refused to hold anyone’s feet to the fire and like some meek teacher not wanting to offend, chose instead to mildly rebuke the entire class for the serious crimes of one or two bullies. Not only that but the Commission were like children who not wanting to hear bad news simply cover their ears and scream I am not listening. If this is the way we are going to fight this war then we may as well save everyone some time and surrender.
Rep Curt Weldon makes some serious suggestions that instead of deserving derision at the hands of journalists who apparently believe we are playing Cricket instead of at war, deserves serious study by those of us who feel that our nations survival depends on our involvement in our Government. The sorts of word games that some journalists are so fond of have no place in life or death decisions regarding our conduct of this desperate war.
Finally let me close by quoting some of the recommendations made by Rep Curt Weldon and you judge for yourself whether this is the work of a man solely interested in publicity as some on the right have characterized him or of a patriot who deserves the sort’s attention many believe he craves.
Mind that all of this is completely aside from the fact that his source (ALI alias) accurately predicted so many of the events that fill our headlines. For instance Ali predicted that Iran would start supplying the Terrorists in Iraq with shaped charge weapons that they had the capability to build. This has been confirmed by the capture of multiple shipments of said weapons coming across the border. And sadly it has also been confirmed by the murder of 14 Marines using one of those shaped charges against their Armored Carrier. Iran has a long history of murdering US Marines and its about time we stopped them. Having Rep Curt Weldon providing evidence of their complicity is terrific. His suggestions of supplying the underground opposition seem to make a lot more sense than outright invasion.
Captain Ed as usual leads the way
Stratus-Sphere is hitting the story hard as well
Today the Captain unleashes some of his best reporting on the Atta Timeline. The Daily Standard article is a must read for anyone.
able danger
Terrorism
Weldon
9/11 Commission
Atta
Pierre Legrand @ 8/24/2005 01:07:00 AMThe Able Danger story was brought to light not by Lt. Col Shaffer but by Congressman Curt Weldon who has served in the House since 1987. In that time he has served on several key Committee’s that have a direct relationship on his involvement in exposing the faults in our intelligence agencies. These committee’s include:
- House Armed Services Committee As Vice Chairman for the House Armed Services Committee, I oversee the annual defense authorization bill. This legislation covers the breadth of the operations of the Department of Defense as well as a significant portion of the annual operating budget of the Department of Energy. The annual national defense budget of approximately $393 billion involves millions of military and civilian personnel, thousands of facilities, and hundreds of agencies, departments, and commands located throughout the world. The committee performs general oversight of the structure and management of the Department of Defense and related topics.
- Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee I currently serve as Chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. As Chairman, I am responsible for all Army and Air Force acquisition programs (except strategic weapons and lift programs, special operations and information technology accounts). In addition, the subcommittee is responsible for all Navy and Marine Corps aviation programs, National Guard and Army and Air Force reserve modernization, and ammunition programs
- Projection Forces SubcommitteeI am a member of the Projection Forces Subcommittee. The Subcommittee is responsible for Navy and Marine Corps programs (except strategic weapons and space programs, special operations and information technology accounts), deep strike bombers and related systems, strategic lift programs and naval reserve equipment.
- Homeland Security CommitteeAs Vice Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I have primary jurisdiction over the nation’s third largest cabinet agency, the Department of Homeland Security
- Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment SubcommitteeIntelligence and information sharing will assist us in preventing, preparing for, and responding to potential terrorist attacks on the United States; the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security for comprehensive, nationwide, terrorism-related threat, vulnerability, and risk analysis; the integration, analysis, and dissemination of homeland security information, including the Department of Homeland Security’s participation in, and interaction with, other public and private sector entities for any of those purposes;
It is obvious from his achievements that he is no crackpot standing on the corner shouting that the end of the world is near. So when he declares that he had to go public with information regarding Able Danger he deserves our respectful attention.
That he has received less than that from the left is not a surprise. That he has been attacked from the right with the sort of sniping that is far more effective than the full frontal assault of the left is probably a shock to many. Rep Curt Weldon is a hawk, he is a patriot, and he is right about our intelligence agencies and fixing them was his main goal for writing his book and exposing Able Danger.
Why would people like John Podhoretz and Jim Geraghty unleash scathing attacks on him based on reports coming out of unreliable sources which they didn’t even have the decency to check for accuracy? Not once was any of their reporting based on first hand questioning of either Rep Weldon or Lt Col Shaffer did anyone at National Review try to interview either of them?
One has to wonder exactly what motivated these baseless attacks on a man who is trying to alert us to the faulty practices of our intelligence agencies. We know that both of these gentleman have uncanny access to the Bush Administration which must not be too terribly anxious to have Able Danger destroy the 9/11 Commission credibility. Did they get the word quietly from their sources inside of the Administration that Rep Curt Weldon was not being a team player? Did they get the subtle hints that insider sources they both depend on for their living might be inclined to dry up if they kept up supporting a man who is bent on bringing the bureaucracy to account? Who knows, explaining their enthusiasm for believing the worst about Rep Curt Weldon and Lt. Col Shaffer is above my pay grade.
Lets look at what Rep Curt Weldon is trying to accomplish with both his book “Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it” and why he brought out the information regarding ABLE DANGER. The book is remarkably disquieting in that the wild accusations of incompetence inside the CIA don’t seem to be getting any better, indeed Rep Curt Weldon declares that Porter Goss a friend of his has merely established a beachhead in an organization that refuses to change. Indeed it is startling that Rep Weldon calls upon us the American people to get interested in the fight to reform our intelligence agencies because the will is almost absent within Washington to get the job done. Washington will need our firm resolve to correct grossly negligent practices inside of those agencies at the tip of the spear. Rep Weldon is engaging in a tactic that President Reagan made so famous, going over the heads of both Washington and the Press to appeal directly to us! Can we pull ourselves away from the latest reality show long enough to help?
His charges mirror those of another iconoclast Laurie Mylroie in her book Bush vs. the Beltway : How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror. In Dr. Mylroie’s book she details a particularly disastrous operation against Saddam Hussein which the CIA was running that explains exactly how incompetent the once fearsome CIA has become. The CIA was trying to support a Coup attempt inside Iraq, which was promptly broken with all the people involved being rounded up by Saddams extremely efficient Secret Services. Not only were all the operatives captured but the Secret Services of Saddam had the audacity to capture the CIA’s top secret radios which they then used to call the CIA to relay the news of the failure.
Able Danger by itself is explosive in that it has the potential to destroy most of the credibility of the 9/11 Commission especially in the crucial areas of the Atta timelines. Remember that those timelines were used to explain that the Czech Foreign Office was mistaken in believing that Atta had met with Iraqi Consul in Prague, Ahmed al-Ani. The 9/11 Commission claimed that their time line had Atta in Florida and not in Prague, its worth noting that the Czech Foreign service not only has stuck to its story but has also produced the Iraqis Consul’s appointment book that shows a meeting with the Hamburg Student during the time the Czech Foreign Service claimed that Atta met Ahmed al-Ani. Atta was known as the Hamburg Student. The main players of the hijackers all came out of the Hamburg cell.
Destroying the 9/11 Commissions timelines and putting Atta in Prague during the time period that the Czech Foreign Service shows he met Ahmed al-Ani won’t do a lot of favors to those who were against the war. Obviously if Saddam was in the loop of 9/11 then any arguments against the war would fall flat. You would think that this might be of some importance to the Bush Administration. But then again there has always been enough information to tie the Iraqis directly to the sort of Terrorism that would force us to act and yet the Bush administration never saw fit to exploit them. For instance it is absolutely proven that Ahmed al-Ani was in the process of an attempt to use Islamic Radicals to blow up Radio Free Europe and yet the Bush administration has never made as big an issue out of this as could have been made.
In addition to the explosive nature of the ABLE DANGER reports, the implications of incompetence inside of our intelligence apparatus and the refusal to correct the biggest problems show that in the face of the most terrible terrorist attack in history our Government Agencies are still unwilling to correct past practices. Given the terrible nature of emerging threats this should terrify you.
For evidence of such massive incompetence one only has to look as close as the last Presidential Election when the CIA found time to permit one of its employee’s to launch a bold attack on a sitting Wartime President by publishing a book, Imperial Hubris that was hyped to the nth degree by the Press. The audacity of that attack is mind-boggling and if I may engage in just a bit of partisan sniping, had that same scenario occurred during a Democratic Presidents term the MSM would have been declaring it for what it was, it was nothing short of an attempt to influence the Presidential Election with the outright approval of the Director of the CIA. Some might dare call it an attempted coup d’etat. Whether it was or not it certainly marked the sort of attack that deserved to be answered by the sorts of wholesale changes recommended by Rep Curt Weldon and others. Consider that in the middle of one of the most desperate wars we have fought the main players in finding the enemy are instead taking a bit of time off to attack the President.
Another terrific example was the fiasco of Joseph Wilson and Mrs. Valerie “Top Secret” Plame where another group inside of the CIA decides to try and embarrass the President by producing false data for a fawning MSM. Impressive that the CIA, who missed hitting those terrorist bastards before Jeremy Glick and Todd Beamer had to fight them in the skies on Flt 93, find enough time to have Joseph Wilson flying around drinking tea in Nigeria. Remind me again why we have given this dysfunctional agency trillions of dollars so far? Was it because of their astute predictions regarding the Soviet Union?
Neither of these events are examples of an agency trying to bring our foes to justice for if that was the case failure while still unacceptable would be understandable. No in those last two examples we have a huge dangerous agency out of control starting to believe that they have the power to run the show. We are treading on some very dangerous ground here and if you believe that after attempting such massively corrupt plays that the CIA will go quietly into the good night then I have a bridge I want to sell you.
This is the thrust of Rep Curt Weldon’s book that while there are undoubtedly many fine CIA Agents the agency itself is too corrupt for reform. This is why we must drive this story until there is an investigation by a commission that is honestly capable of seeing the faults of our agencies and recommending corrective actions that will actually correct the problems.
This is another reason ABLE DANGER was important because the release of that material worked to show how poorly the original Commission did its job. They simply refused to hold anyone’s feet to the fire and like some meek teacher not wanting to offend, chose instead to mildly rebuke the entire class for the serious crimes of one or two bullies. Not only that but the Commission were like children who not wanting to hear bad news simply cover their ears and scream I am not listening. If this is the way we are going to fight this war then we may as well save everyone some time and surrender.
Rep Curt Weldon makes some serious suggestions that instead of deserving derision at the hands of journalists who apparently believe we are playing Cricket instead of at war, deserves serious study by those of us who feel that our nations survival depends on our involvement in our Government. The sorts of word games that some journalists are so fond of have no place in life or death decisions regarding our conduct of this desperate war.
Finally let me close by quoting some of the recommendations made by Rep Curt Weldon and you judge for yourself whether this is the work of a man solely interested in publicity as some on the right have characterized him or of a patriot who deserves the sort’s attention many believe he craves.
- He recommends a rapprochement with the Russians and offers some very plausible reasons why they might accept and the way to approach them to convince them.
- Establish a Center that would allow Intelligence agencies to share information without the burdensome Intelligence Czar. National Operations Analysis Hub
- Reforming Leadership the gross incompetence in the intelligence community over the last decade combined with the current rebellion of intelligence community leaders especially at the CIA justifies the dismissal of all current leaders in all agencies across the entire intelligence community.
- How to “fix” group think. The destructive effect of “group think” is probably the single greatest weakness of the intelligence community. “Group Think” can be countered by changing the analytical culture to give more emphasis to diverse and alternative views and especially to encourage the replacement of “group think” with intellectual individualism. (Is Weldon a closet Randian?) In short we need more Team B action… Centralizing the Intelligence Agencies has exactly the opposite effect and shows a serious misunderstanding of what we need.
Mind that all of this is completely aside from the fact that his source (ALI alias) accurately predicted so many of the events that fill our headlines. For instance Ali predicted that Iran would start supplying the Terrorists in Iraq with shaped charge weapons that they had the capability to build. This has been confirmed by the capture of multiple shipments of said weapons coming across the border. And sadly it has also been confirmed by the murder of 14 Marines using one of those shaped charges against their Armored Carrier. Iran has a long history of murdering US Marines and its about time we stopped them. Having Rep Curt Weldon providing evidence of their complicity is terrific. His suggestions of supplying the underground opposition seem to make a lot more sense than outright invasion.
Captain Ed as usual leads the way
Stratus-Sphere is hitting the story hard as well
Today the Captain unleashes some of his best reporting on the Atta Timeline. The Daily Standard article is a must read for anyone.
able danger
Terrorism
Weldon
9/11 Commission
Atta
> |