Of Shibboleth and Power
Of Shibboleth and Power
by Stan Goff
Sometimes, when a comrade intentionally ignores relevant facts in the discussion of an issue, it may indicate that the comrade is enthralled by an unexamined shibboleth. If I remember my Bible, the word shibboleth was used as a kind of military password, because enemy intruders couldn’t pronounce it. Those who approached Hebrew positions at night and couldn’t say it were likely to be slain. Wikipedia defines today’s use of shibboleth as “words and phrases that can be used in a similar way — to distinguish members of a group from outsiders.”
During the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United Nations became a central battlefield between pro-war and anti-war forces. People’s oppositions to the war at home and abroad, as well as inter-imperial rivalry, obliged the George W. Bush administration to have Colin Powell perform his perfidious sideshow before the General Assembly in attempts to create a veneer of legitimacy and buy domestic acquiescence, creating the conditions for the subsequent showdown in the Security Council.
The whole process of diplomatic struggle inside and outside the Security Council delayed the ground offensive for weeks. It also influenced the narrow decision taken by the Turkish parliament to deny the United States Army’s 4th infantry Division its northern “anvil.” These developments weakened the Americans’ tactical disposition in Iraq after the invasion, protected and strengthened significant sections of both the political and armed resistance, and advanced the degradation of U.S. forces by years.
Yet many on the left were altogether dismissive of the drama of resistance in the Security Council — which actually diminished Washington’s ability to wage war when, where, and how it pleased — just because the U.N. is at bottom an “agency of imperialism.” Such categorical dismissals are symptomatic of a kind of leftist idealism. Another face of the same idealism is the tendency to promote maximalist programs that are currently endorsed by only a tiny handful of socialists at every mass manifestation of resistance to any aspect of the ruling-class agenda.
Underlying both unfailingly categorical dismissals and untimely maximalist programs is a notion that…
Read the full commentary.
chad:
Excellent commentary, Stan. I’ve forwarded it on to Left Hook where there is considerable discussion/debate over Sept 24 unity. I think you nailed it.
2 August 2005, 4:25 pmles:
Brilliant.
I can remember arguing years ago - not with such clarity - that even the smallest reform can have revolutionary potential for the ideology of those involved in winning that reform. An example I’ve always used is a local population struggling to get a road crossing put in place by a school (we call them ‘zebra-crossings’). It might not seem very romantic in the overall scheme of things, but for those involved it can be the first time that they have ever realised the power of their own agency. It might not bring them to read Grundrisse but it can change the way power is related to. In other words people’s perceptions can be changed once they are involved in action, no matter how mundane that action may seem.
I have also found that the small leftist grouplets you allude to and who turn up at mass events demanding ‘maximalist programs’, don’t get involved in these small struggles in case they compromise their political ‘purity’. They do not like getting their hands dirty.
3 August 2005, 3:07 amYoshie:
Stan, I love the photo that you put into this entry! A perfect accompaniment for the article. Maybe, I’ll steal it for the zine!
Now, to the legion of Stan Goff fans, here’s good news: a new powerful article by Stan will be published soon by mrzine.org. Stay tuned!
3 August 2005, 1:52 pmm.c.:
Empirical Political Philosophy (or a little theory goes a long way)
aka my two cents:
Not counting most of the Main Stream Media, the Bush/Saudi/Carlyle crowd had/have two major allies in the rush to war in Iraq.
1) Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party and its surrogates. A Labor PM might have been less willing to actively promote unrest in the region. Also, Sharon is not hugely popular in Israel. The govt.& military elite keep 50.1% of the voting public in perpetual fear and scrape out election victories. The irony is that the two Arab countries with treaties with Israel, Abdullah II’s Jordan & Mubarak’s Egypt face more internal unrest with puritan/fundamentalist/reactionary/non-modernist types like the muslim brotherhood because of the war, not less.
2) Tony Blair dragged the British govt.& Labour Party into supporting Bushtail. A more independent PM would/should said no.
Working Hypothesis: The U.S. administration might have still gone forward had one of the two balked, but IMO not both.
Wildcards: I’m not a member of the Rupert Murdoch fan club but he’s got enough pull in the world to make a difference if he wanted to. Others I might put in this category might be Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. of the NYT & Mort Zuckerman, owner of the U.S. News&World Report & the Daily News.
5 August 2005, 6:23 pmDave Riley:
Don’t you love the term “shibboleth”? And don’t you think that such a important doco like the Communist Manifesto is enriched by its use in its text?
6 August 2005, 7:35 pmEven the sound of it — shibboleth — is appealing. No wonder so many groupuscules (another great word) get stuck on it.
I think I’ll write an eulogy to it. : Shibboleths I have known…Once a great shibboleth…
Maybe even sponosra verb into being…?
dave riley
m.c.:
“There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in. It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which Al Qaeda could thrive.”
Robin Cook
{If I’m in error or if anyone knows where this was first reported, please correct me}
7 August 2005, 8:26 pmBefore Robin Cook resigned as Foreign Secretary, he and Colin Powell were shuttling between Washington, the UN, and London. Supposedly, they met in the rush to war and Cook asked Powell what the latest news from the white house & pentagon was. Powell is quoted by someone as responding to Cook: “They are f–king crazies.”
m.c.:
{One faux pas I found myself. Cook resigned as FM in 2001. So Jack Straw was the person Colin Powell spoke to. This quote may be from the Bob Woodward book, ‘Plan of Attack’; he spent a lot of time with Powell & Armitage}
8 August 2005, 8:31 pmm.c.:
Congressman: Defense Knew 9/11 Hijackers By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer
44 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The Sept. 11 commission will investigate a claim that U.S. defense intelligence officials identified ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as a likely part of an al-Qaida cell more than a year before the hijackings but didn’t forward the information to law enforcement.
Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa. and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said Tuesday the men were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as “Able Danger.” If true, that’s an earlier link to al-Qaida than any previously disclosed intelligence about Atta.
Sept. 11 commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton said Tuesday that Weldon’s information, which the congressman said came from multiple intelligence sources, warrants a review. He said he hoped the panel could issue a statement on its findings by the end of the week.
“The 9/11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell,” said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. “Had we learned of it obviously it would’ve been a major focus of our investigation.”
The Sept. 11 commission’s final report, issued last year, recounted numerous government mistakes that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Among them was a failure to share intelligence within and among agencies.
According to Weldon, Able Danger identified Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of a cell the unit code-named “Brooklyn” because of some loose connections to New York City.
Weldon said that in September 2000 Able Danger recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI “so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists.” However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.
Weldon did not provide details on how the intelligence officials identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell.
Defense Department documents shown to an Associated Press reporter Tuesday said the Able Danger team was set up in 1999 to identify potential al-Qaida operatives for U.S. Special Operations Command. At some point, information provided to the team by the Army’s Information Dominance Center pointed to a possible al-Qaida cell in Brooklyn, the documents said.
However, because of concerns about pursuing information on “U.S. persons” — a legal term that includes U.S. citizens as well as foreigners admitted to the country for permanent residence — Special Operations Command did not provide the Army information to the FBI. It is unclear whether the Army provided the information to anyone else.
The command instead turned its focus to overseas threats.
The documents provided no information on whether the team identified anyone connected to the Sept. 11 attack.
If the team did identify Atta and the others, it’s unclear why the information wasn’t forwarded. The prohibition against sharing intelligence on “U.S. persons” should not have applied since they were in the country on visas — they did not have permanent resident status.
Weldon, considered something of a maverick on Capitol Hill, initially made his allegations about Atta and the others in a floor speech in June that garnered little attention. His talk came at the end of a legislative day during a period described under House rules as “special orders” — a time slot for lawmakers to get up and speak on issues of their choosing.
The issue resurfaced Monday in a story by the bimonthly Government Security News, which covers national security matters.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he was unaware of the intelligence until the latest reports surfaced.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the 9/11 Commission looked into the matter during its investigation into government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report.
Hamilton said 9/11 Commission staff members learned of Able Danger during a meeting with military personnel in October 2003 in Afghanistan, but the staff members do not recall learning of a connection between Able Danger and any of the four terrorists Weldon mentioned.
___
Associated Press reporter John J. Lumpkin contributed to this report.
9 August 2005, 7:16 pmm.c.:
Four 9/11 bombers tied to Al-Qaeda before attack: report Tue Aug 9, 4:43 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A year before the September 11 attacks, Mohammed Atta and three other bombers had reportedly been identified as likely members of a cell of the Al-Qaeda operating in the US by a military intelligence team that recommended sharing the information with the FBI.
The recommendation from the intelligence unit, known as Able Danger, was rejected in part because the four suspects had valid entry visas, a former defense intelligence official and a Republican lawmaker Curt Weldon told The New York Times.
Under US law, US citizens and residents may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations, Weldon and the intelligence official said, but while the measure does not include visa holders, Atta and his three colleagues were extended that protection because of pre 9/11 discomfort at sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.
The account, which Weldon said he based on assertions by three former intelligence officers with knowledge of Able Danger, is the first time Atta was identified by any US agency as a potential threat before the September 11 attacks, the daily said.
The former intelligence defense officer, who asked not to be identified, told the daily that Able Danger was formed in 1999 to assemble information about Al-Qaeda networks around the world.
“Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision makers options for taking out Al-Qaeda targets,” the former official said.
9 August 2005, 7:20 pmm.c.:
The Sunday Times - Britain
July 31, 2005
Key No 10 aides were split over war
Robert Winnett, Whitehall Correspondent
THE SPLIT over the Iraq war, which ran through the Labour party, reached into Tony Blair’s innermost circle, according to an updated biography of the prime minister.
Key Downing Street advisers including Alastair Campbell, former director of communications, and Baroness Morgan, former director of political and government relations, are revealed to have had “private reservations†about the prime minister’s strategy.
The disclosures have been made by Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon, who has benefited from insider accounts that the government is now seeking to suppress.
At the outbreak of war, a gung-ho attitude seemed to pervade Downing Street. According to an interview with Morgan: “. . . he (Blair) wanted big maps on the wall of the den (Blair’s office) so he could follow the progress of the troops. We wouldn’t let him. He really would have liked a sandpit with tanks.â€
Seldon is understood to have had access to the private unpublished papers of key officials. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador in Washington; Lance Price, former deputy to Campbell at Downing Street; and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations and then special envoy to Iraq, are all understood to have kept detailed records and were all interviewed by Seldon.
The updated version of Seldon’s biography of Blair draws heavily on their revelatory material — the publication of which Whitehall officials are now attempting to block.
The Cabinet Office has halted Price’s plans to publish his memoirs while Greenstock’s forthcoming book is to be edited before publication. Meyer intends to publish his memoirs in the autumn, after official clearance.
The most sensitive sections of Seldon’s biography detail the run-up to the war in Iraq during 2002 and 2003, Blair’s relationship with the White House, and attempts to persuade the United Nations to back action.
Decisions were made largely by a tight group of Downing Street advisers, diplomats and intelligence chiefs working with the prime minister. However, Seldon discovered that even within this group there was unease about Blair’s actions. “Even No 10 was divided, with Jonathan Powell (Blair’s chief of staff) strongly advocating closeness to the (American) administration, and Sally (Baroness) Morgan in particular pressing for the need to go down the UN route, †writes Seldon.
“Many senior diplomats in the Foreign Office were deeply concerned but failed to speak out . . . Within his closest team in No 10, Campbell and Morgan had private reservations while (David) Manning (Blair’s foreign policy adviser) was often uneasy . . . The intelligence chiefs (Sir John Scarlett, Sir Stephen Lander and Sir Richard Dearlove) were not counselling caution.â€
Seldon reveals the alarm of Blair’s inner circle when told that the invasion would not receive the backing of the UN, after diplomatic efforts had failed.
“On 11 March, Greenstock reported to Downing Street that the second resolution attempt was losing ground,†he writes.
“‘I’m not sure we are going to get it through,’ Blair told his aides in No 10, Manning, Powell, Campbell and Morgan. ‘Hell, we are stuck then!’ one of them said as they began to ask themselves quite how they ended up in this position. Some in No 10 were clearly shocked to find themselves in a box with no escape plan.â€
The build-up to the invasion began in April 2002 when Blair travelled to George W Bush’s ranch in Texas. It was at this meeting that the possibility of invading Iraq in 2003 was first raised with Blair.
Over the next few months, Blair is understood to have backed the American plan but insisted on several conditions, including UN involvement and a push on the Middle East peace process. However, Seldon details how Blair’s negotiating position was quickly eroded.
Meyer told Seldon he had warned Downing Street officials that Britain was being “taken for granted†by the Americans.
The book notes: “Prior to the most important of his (Blair’s) frequent phone calls to Bush, in the run-up to the Iraq war and on other issues, pointed briefing notes would be prepared for Blair, urging him to tackle the president directly. ‘We’d then read the record of the conversation and see that Blair had gone off at a tangent,’ said one insider. ‘He just seemed oddly reluctant to confront Bush head-on.’â€
Reports began to circulate round Whitehall that Blair did not read his briefs, and that he shied away from tough one-on-one encounters.
Seldon writes that during the autumn of 2002 British diplomats and politicians were involved in tense negotiations at the UN, but it seemed that Blair was being bounced into war. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, was hostile to Blair and the British and sat in meetings “like a lumpâ€, according to one official present.
However, Blair was told by diplomats, thought to be Meyer and Greenstock, that he could have stopped America invading Iraq had he been prepared to use his influence.
“Advice Blair received from diplomats that autumn (in 2002) was that Britain could be the swing vote on whether or not the US would go to war.â€
One crude remark assesses the scale of the political risk the prime minister took in backing the American invasion. Seldon quotes one close adviser telling Blair at the time: “Forget your contribution to public services. What you’ll be remembered for is winning two f****** great election victories and four wars.â€
LEAKED DATA REVEAL REASONS FOR INCREASED BOMBING RAIDS WERE A SHAM
Figures released by the Ministry of Defence have shown the reasons given by Britain and America for stepping up bombing raids in Iraq in the run-up to war were a sham, writes Michael Smith.
Geoff Hoon, who was then defence secretary, and Donald Rumsfeld, his American counterpart, both claimed that the rise in air attacks was in response to Iraqi attempts to shoot down allied aircraft
However, the minutes of a meeting of Tony Blair’s war cabinet on July 23, 2003, leaked to The Sunday Times, record Hoon saying “the US had begun spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime”.
Ministers have since insisted that the stepped-up attacks, which began in May 2002, were as a result of increased Iraqi activity and were not an attempt to provoke a response that would give the allies an excuse for war.
The figures do not support those claims. In the first seven months of 2001 the allies recorded a total of 370 “provocations” by the Iraqis against allied aircraft. But in the seven months between October 2001 and May 2002 there were just 32.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, who obtained the MoD data in a Commons written answer, said it reinforced the need for an inquiry into ministers’ conduct in the run-up to war.
9 August 2005, 8:13 pmPage 1 || Page 2 ||
m.c.:
‘Able Danger’ Stopped From Informing FBI By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 11 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - An Army intelligence officer said Wednesday he told staff members from the Sept. 11 commission that a secret military unit had identified two of the three cells involved in the 2001 terrorist strikes more than a year before the attacks.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who said he was associated with the “Able Danger” unit, said that during a 2003 meeting in Afghanistan, he mentioned that the unit had identified Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta along with three other hijackers as terrorist suspects.
Three months later, in January 2004, Shaffer said he was back in the United States and offered to follow up with the commission, but his offer was declined.
“I just walked away shocked that they would kind of change their mind, but I figured someone with equal or better knowledge … probably came and talked to them, so they must’ve taken care of it,” Shaffer said.
Shaffer said he was told the commission obtained only two briefcase-size loads of documents from at least 15-plus boxes of information on Able Danger.
Lt. Col. Chris Conway, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday an investigation into Able Danger was under way.
The department “has been working to gain more clarity on this issue. Accordingly, we continue to interview a number of individuals associated with Able Danger,” Conway said.
Conway said it was too soon to comment on findings related to the program.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission’s follow-up project, said the commission is awaiting the results of the Pentagon’s investigation.
A statement last Friday by former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said the commission did not obtain enough information on the operation to consider it historically significant.
Shaffer said Able Danger identified Atta and three other Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000, but that military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI out of concerns about the legality of gathering and sharing information on people in the U.S.
“The lawyers’ view was to leave them alone, they had the same basic rights as a U.S. citizen, a U.S. person and therefore the data was kind of left alone,” Shaffer said.
Shaffer said he and a Navy officer disagreed with that and tried to set up meetings with the FBI, but each time the idea was rejected by lawyers from the Special Operations command.
“There was a feeling … if we give this information to the FBI and something goes wrong, we’re going to get blamed for whatever goes wrong,” Shaffer said.
The statement by Kean and Hamilton said only Atta was mentioned to them as being identified by Able Danger. They were told by a Navy officer about Atta 10 days before the commission released its report in July 2004, but the officer did not have documentation to back it up, the statement said.
The statement also said the Navy officer’s dates related to the pre-Sept. 11 whereabouts of Atta did not fit with what they knew.
Shaffer said it did not surprise him the dates would be different.
Able Danger “wasn’t about dates and locations. It was about associations and linkages. That’s what the focus was,” Shaffer said.
Shaffer said Able Danger identified the terrorists using data mining techniques. His relationship to Able Danger was first reported Tuesday night by The New York Times and Fox News Channel.
Shaffer’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, said Wednesday that Shaffer does not have documentation related to Able Danger because his security clearance was suspended in March 2004 because of “petty and frivolous” reasons. They include a dispute over mileage reimbursement and a charges for personal calls on a work cell phone, Zaid said.
Shaffer, an Army reservist, has been on paid administrative leave for the past 16 months, Zaid said. He was an active Army major during his involvement with Able Danger, Zaid said.
Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, has said the Sept. 11 commission did not adequately investigate the claim that four of the hijackers had been identified more than a year before the attacks.
17 August 2005, 4:29 pmm.c.:
{Partial transcript of Countdown with Keith Olbermann; Aug. 17}
Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, why shouldn‘t all that be also true about 9/11? About a secret U.S. military operation called Able Danger that supposedly ID‘d Mohammed Atta in 2000, that has only been ID‘d by the man who was its liaison to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer? He joins us in a moment.
First, his story, parts which of you have heard previously from Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon, and while in 2000 and 2001, he tried three times to get information about al Qaeda suspects in America into the hands of the FBI, that the meetings kept getting canceled by military lawyers, fearful the Army would be seen as using its resources against civilians who were in this country legally, and that those suspects eventually ended up hijacking planes on 9/11.
According to the commission set up specifically to investigate the attacks, only two of the 19 hijackers, Khalid al-Midar and Nowath al-Hasmi (ph), were on the intelligence radar. But according to Colonel Shaffer, Able Danger had identified four of them, even had pictures of them, including the ringleader, Mohammed Atta.
Colonel Shaffer said he shared information about this missed opportunity with members of the 9/11 commission when they traveled to Afghanistan in October 2003. He was there. But commissioners say they do not recall any mention of Atta in that meeting, and say there was no reference to him in the Able Danger documents handed over to the commission by the Department of Defense.
The Pentagon says its inquiry is ongoing, but, quote, “It‘s too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger.â€
I‘m joined now by Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer. Colonel Shaffer, good evening. Thanks for your time.
LT. COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER, U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Good evening. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
OLBERMANN: The remnants of the 9/11 commission pretty much dismissed this information as irrelevant historically. Congressman Weldon has been, in some quarters, dismissed as a loose cannon, even by a lot of conspiracy theorists and cynics about 9/11. What corroboration or documentation exists? What do you have? What do you know exists, that all this information about Atta and the others really was available as far back as 2000?
SHAFFER: Well, the data itself we‘re looking for, that‘s one of the issues that clearly the Department of Defense is working to resolve. I met with Dr. Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and Colonel Schwartz, the director of the Joint Staff, where they assured me, and I‘m working with them to try to find where some of these documents ended up.
The issue of where they might else—where these documents may be, also, we‘re still also trying to figure out where they might have ended up. We don‘t know at this point in time.
What we do know is, there‘s other folks who have already talked to Congressman Weldon and myself, and those folks were my colleagues, who also worked in Able Danger, who actually handled the documents. In one case, one of the doctors, one of the scientists who put the technology together which actually resulted in this identification, is also willing at some point to come forward here.
And we‘re working right now to make sure that these people can come out without jeopardizing their careers.
OLBERMANN: So you are hoping for or expecting additional verification from people who will come forward, who were connected to Operation Able Danger?
SHAFFER: I am certain that this will be verified. There‘s just too many people who do know about this, although it was a very tightly held operation. It was very tightly focused, lot of them—not a lot of people knew about it, but there‘s enough who did know about it and were aware of what the findings were, the critical findings regarding the Atta and the other terrorists, which were what we identified to be as part of the Brooklyn cell.
OLBERMANN: Without the hindsight of what we knew about Atta and the others and what they did, how important did you and that team think in 2000 that that information was? How emphatic were you about trying to get to the FBI?
SHAFFER: I‘m not going to say that we knew by some divine measure that something was about to happen. The entire government at that point in time really wasn‘t equipped, or in any sort of (INAUDIBLE) to think that something was about to happen.
So the way it was approached was, this is a planning exercise, which we need to look at this as a group that has hit the United States, they have bombed embassies, and we need to look at them as a target which maybe will be planning things against us.
But honestly, most people thought it would be overseas, not in the United States.
OLBERMANN: I don‘t mean to merge entirely your account with this with the one that Congressman Weldon has been very public about this summer, but perhaps you can clear up two details that are floating around about the supposed 2000 identification that had befuddled and made some of the experts in this field doubtful or dubious.
SHAFFER: Right.
OLBERMANN: The connection between Atta and this Brooklyn reference, when the only terror cell known to have been connected to Brooklyn, New York, was connected to the millennium bombing plot…
SHAFFER: Right.
OLBERMANN: … and then the idea that the Able Danger documents may have contained a photo of Atta, long before there was one of him in the files of the Florida Department of Transportation, which would have been the summer of 2000. Do you know anything about those two specific points?
SHAFFER: The points of data that were assembled as part of the research was done by the Land Information Warfare Activity Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. It was their databases which was the central starting point for this whole exercise, 2.5 terabytes of information. That came from every single available open source that is out there. That‘s commercial, that‘s private, that you can buy into. That‘s everything you can put together, and then—and merged together, and then using the software to pick up data points.
Any terrorist who exists has a profile, essentially. The original bombers of the World Trade Center had a profile. If you take those data points and say, These guys are terrorists, this is what they look like, and you compare that to the existing databases, and use smart-search tools, this is what you can do. You can find a pattern which emerges and say, These guys fit this pattern. This is similar.
And that‘s when you have to take that information and give to it an analyst for verification and vetting.
That‘s what happened in the case of this information. It wasn‘t a single one-time event. It was a series of processing of these databases, which then emerged this data out for to us analyze. That‘s where the information actually came from.
OLBERMANN: In the story today in “The New York Times,†that newspaper quoted you as saying that when the meetings between military intelligence and the FBI kept getting canceled four and five years ago—let me read the quote exactly, “I was at the point of near-insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued.â€
Apparently you are risking at least some damage to your active career now to pursue this now. When none of this was included in any of the various reports of the 9/11 commission, why didn‘t you go public then? And ultimately, if it was critical enough for you to be on the verge of insubordination, why didn‘t you say something about it? I‘m not trying to blame you for the way things turned out, but why did you not go public with this, say, in the summer of 2000, saying, We have these guys that we‘ve fingered here, and they‘re part of a group you probably never heard of called al Qaeda, but they‘re a danger to us right here, right now?
SHAFFER: Well, two—first off, I think you believe—I believe you‘re mixing apples and oranges. The insubordination comment came when we were directed to pull out of Able Danger. What we were trying to do at the time was use the information in 2000 for some useful purpose. If we couldn‘t use it, we wanted to pass to the FBI. So that‘s one critical point.
Second critical point is that next year, when we were—there was an effort to shut it down, we said, We need to maintain this because there‘s useful information, there‘s useful processes here that we need to look at. That‘s part two.
Now, after 9/11, my colleague, who created the technology, gave Congressman Weldon a copy of that chart that had the al Qaeda information on it. Congressman Weldon took that and gave it to Stephen Hadley. My colleague was with the congressman when it happened. That‘s the other point.
So I believed at that point in time, things were going to start getting fixed.
The next time I had an opportunity to speak about this was when the 9/11 commission actually visited Bagram, Afghanistan, where I volunteered, through my chain of command, with their approval. And that‘s when I tried once more to tell them about the information.
OLBERMANN: Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, formerly the liaison between Able Danger and the Defense Intelligence Agency, great thanks for the detail and time—and your time tonight, sir.
SHAFFER: Thank you.
OLBERMANN: Word of another case of what is either a pre-9/11 missed warning or a post-9/11 case of retroactive prescience, this one coming from the State Department. When Osama bin Laden was expelled from Sudan and relocated to Afghanistan in 1996, analysts warned the Clinton administration that his new base would make him even more dangerous.
But that administration decided not to interfere with the move, even though, according to newly declassified documents obtained by “The New York Times,†the State Department believed his that, quote, “His prolonged stay in Afghanistan, where hundreds of Arab mujahadeen receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate, could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum,†Khartoum being the Sudanese capital.
The Bush administration cautioning tonight that its predecessor‘s decision should be viewed in the context of 1996, not with the hindsight provided by 9/11. Also, when Clinton authorized attacks on bin Laden‘s terror camps in the summer of 1998, many dismissed those attacks as diversions from the domestic politics of the time.
And new evidence that bin Laden‘s protege, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, might now be operationally where bin Laden may have been in 1996, on the verge of expansion. After having thwarted an al Qaeda plan to attack cruise ships in Turkey, intelligence officials there arrested Lowi Sakra (ph), who‘s been described by U.S. intelligence officials as an external operations chief for Zarqawi.
Apparently the pair have a personal relationship, so Sakra‘s involvement in the planned Attacks in Turkey is now being seen by some analysts as further evidence that Zarqawi is exporting his operations out of Iraq into the greater Middle East and even into Europe.
18 August 2005, 6:49 pmm.c.:
Lt. Col. Shaffer’s ‘Able Danger’ colleague has been identified as Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott.
Also: the current Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, brought out of 3 year retirement by the SecDef was for three years CO of the Army’s Combat Applications Group. Did I get this right? Here is a little more of his official bio: General Schoomaker served as the Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command from July 1994 to August 1996, followed by command of the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina through October 1997. His most recent assignment prior to assuming duties as the Army Chief of Staff was as Commander in Chief, United States Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, from November 1997 to November 2000.
18 August 2005, 7:23 pmm.c.:
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s ‘Able Danger’ colleague has been identified as Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott.
Also: The current Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who was brought out of 3 year retirement by the SecDef was once CO of the Army’s Combat Applications Group. Here’s a bit of his official bio: General Schoomaker served as the Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command from July 1994 to August 1996, followed by command of the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina through October 1997. His most recent assignment prior to assuming duties as the Army Chief of Staff was as Commander in Chief, United States Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, from November 1997 to November 2000.
Retired Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was Commander in Chief of SOC at MacDill from February 1996 to September 1997.
My take on this is that intel & special ops work hand-in-hand. These above mentioned 4 stars didn’t make it by being dummies. When two officers O-4/5/6 range collect bankers boxes full of data, it boggles my mind that somebody didn’t listen to them. Starting with the original truck bombing of the WTC, AQ was not completely out of the blue. If this happened in Mayberry, Andy would have been fired a long time ago.
18 August 2005, 8:11 pmStan:
It ain’t Andy. It’s Barney, and he’s losing it.
18 August 2005, 8:49 pmhttp://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_7218.shtml
m.c.:
Former aide: Powell WMD speech ‘lowest point in my life’
Friday, August 19, 2005; Posted: 5:44 p.m. EDT (21:44 GMT)
Programming Note: ” ‘Dead Wrong’ — Inside an Intelligence Meltdown” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET on CNN.
(CNN) — A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “the lowest point” in his life.
“I wish I had not been involved in it,” says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. “I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.”
Wilkerson is one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary “Dead Wrong — Inside an Intelligence Meltdown.” The program, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET, pieces together the events leading up to the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public. A presidential commission that investigated the pre-war WMD intelligence found much of it to be “dead wrong.”
Powell’s speech, delivered on February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell’s presentation initially came from a document he described as “sort of a Chinese menu” that was provided by the White House.
“(Powell) came through the door … and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, ‘This is what I’ve got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,’” Wilkerson says in the program. “It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose.”
Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says.
“There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced,” Wilkerson says.
In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.
“In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator,” says David Kay, who served as the CIA’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as “Curveball.”
After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.
“George actually did call the Secretary, and said, ‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you. We don’t believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,’” Wilkerson says in the documentary. “This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it’s fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you’re telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It’s difficult to maintain any warm feelings.”
19 August 2005, 5:51 pmm.c.:
Israeli Spy Affair
U.S. Diplomat Is Named in Secrets Case
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
08/18/05 “New York Times” — – WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - The second-highest diplomat at the United States Embassy in Baghdad is one of the anonymous government officials cited in an Aug. 4 indictment as having provided classified information to an employee of a pro-Israel lobbying group, people who have been officially briefed on the case said Wednesday.
The diplomat, David M. Satterfield, was identified in the indictment as a United States government official, “USGO-2,” the people briefed on the matter said. In early 2002, USGO-2 discussed secret national security matters in two meetings with Steven J. Rosen, who has since been dismissed as a top lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac, who has been charged in the case.
The indictment said that Mr. Rosen met USGO-2 on Jan. 18, 2002, and March 12, 2002, but provides few details about the encounters. The indictment does not describe Mr. Satterfield’s activities in detail nor does it specify what classified information the diplomat discussed with the lobbyist. The meetings were also confirmed by documents, people who have been briefed said. These people asked not to be identified because many of the matters related to the case are classified.
The indictment does not accuse USGO-2 of any wrongdoing, nor does it indicate whether he might have been authorized to talk with the lobbyist. Mr. Satterfield is not believed to be the subject of a continuing investigation. He is the first higher-ranking government official to be caught up in the criminal inquiry.
Mr. Satterfield’s role in the inquiry has been known within a small circle at the State Department. Before he was sent to Baghdad, officials at the State Department asked the Justice Department whether the investigation posed any impediment to his assignment in Iraq, someone who has been officially briefed said. Officials at the State Department were advised that he could take the job.
Mr. Satterfield is one of the department’s rising stars. Before his assignment as deputy chief of mission in Baghdad, Mr. Satterfield, 50, held several jobs in the Clinton and Bush administrations as a Middle East expert. He was ambassador to Lebanon from 1998 to 2001, and was confirmed by the Senate as ambassador to Jordan in 2004, although he never served in that position.
Current and former colleagues say that Mr. Satterfield, who went to Iraq earlier this year, chose the Baghdad post because it posed a bigger professional challenge than Jordan. The United States ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has strong political credentials but, colleagues said, Mr. Satterfield was brought in to provide managerial strength.
Mr. Satterfield did not respond to an e-mail message asking about his role in the case, and one State Department spokesman said that Mr. Satterfield would not discuss the matter. Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the department, referred legal questions about Mr. Satterfield to the Justice Department.
He added, “David is a fine public servant who has served the American people for many years and is continuing to do so under difficult working conditions.”
The investigation is one of the more puzzling national security cases in recent years, focusing on the interactions between foreign affairs lobbyists and officials of the United States and other governments, who over the years, have routinely traded gossip and sometimes classified information. Under the Justice Department’s theories of the case, it is no longer clear whether such conversations are legally permissible.
Current and former colleagues praised Mr. Satterfield as a seasoned and careful diplomat. “I’ve known David Satterfield for 20 years, and he is thoroughly professional, and takes his responsibilities very seriously,” said Dennis Ross, the former chief Middle East negotiator for the United States and a longtime State Department official. “He has always acted solely in American interests.” Martin Indyk, Mr. Satterfield’s former boss in the Clinton administration, both at the National Security Council at the White House and at the State Department, said the idea that Mr. Satterfield leaked classified information is “absurd.”
“The way he speaks is crafted for a public audience,” Mr. Indyk said. “He has this facility for talking publicly without saying anything sensitive. So the idea that he would be leaking classified information is preposterous.
“He has an unblemished record as the consummate diplomat and as a highly effective policy maker as well. He is among the cadre of the best and the brightest in the Near East Bureau. He dealt with Aipac, because it was part of his job to deal with Aipac.”
Mr. Rosen and another former lobbyist, Keith Weissman, have been charged with conspiring to communicate national defense secrets to journalists and a foreign government, which officials have identified as Israel. A third person, Lawrence A. Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst and Iran expert, has also been charged, accused of turning over information to the two lobbyists.
At an arraignment on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., all three pleaded not guilty and were released on their own recognizance. Judge T. S. Ellis III set a trial date for Jan. 3.
Only Mr. Rosen met with USGO-2, according to the indictment. At the time of the meetings, Mr. Satterfield was the deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, which made him the State Department’s second-ranking official for the Middle East.
Their meetings are listed as overt acts in a conspiracy to illegally communicate national defense secrets to a foreign government. After Mr. Rosen’s first meeting with USGO-2 on Jan. 18, 2002, the indictment said, a memorandum containing the information that Mr. Rosen had obtained was sent to other Aipac employees. The indictment did not indicate who wrote the memorandum, but said that it “contained classified information provided by USGO-2.”
The two men met again on March 12, the indictment said. At their second meeting, they talked about Al Qaeda, the indictment said, without saying what aspect of the terror network was discussed. On March 14, Mr. Rosen disclosed to an unidentified foreign official, “FO-2,” the information that he had heard from USGO-2, the indictment said.
Prosecutors have charged that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman improperly obtained classified information from Mr. Franklin, Mr. Satterfield and two other American officials. The two officials whose identities remain unclear are referred to in the indictment as “USGO-1,” and a Defense Department employee identified as “DOD-B.” Although USGO-1 has not been publicly identified, the people who have been officially briefed said that person was no longer in the government.
As the Aipac’s director of foreign policy issues, Mr. Rosen was a well-known figure in foreign policy circles related to the Middle East, inside and outside the government. He helped Aipac set its lobbying goals and maintained relationships with powerful conservatives in the Bush administration. Mr. Weissman was a senior Middle East analyst.
Several Middle East experts noted that Mr. Satterfield was never regarded as particularly supportive of Aipac’s views on Israel. One analyst at an independent consulting firm recalled attending a conference Aipac held for Congressional staff members, during which Mr. Satterfield talked about United States policy toward Israel. She recalled that Mr. Satterfield was met with a mixed reception because his comments were not in line with Aipac’s views.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
20 August 2005, 5:31 pmm.c.:
Officer Says 2 Others Are Source of His Atta Claims
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page A11
The former intelligence officer who says that a Defense Department program identified Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said yesterday that many of his allegations are not based on his memory but on the recollections of others.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who has been on paid administrative leave from the Defense Intelligence Agency since his security clearance was suspended in March 2004, said in a telephone interview that a Navy officer and a civilian official affiliated with the Able Danger program told him after the attacks that Atta and other hijackers had been included on a chart more than a year earlier.
But because he was not intimately familiar with the names and photographs of suspected terrorists, he did not realize that hijackers were listed until it was alleged to him after the attacks, Shaffer said. All of the charts that could support his claims have disappeared, he said.
“I did see the charts and I did handle the charts, but my understanding of them was like a layman,” Shaffer said. “We had identified them as terrorists. . . . But even now I do not remember all the names.”
The comments add to the uncertainty surrounding assertions by Shaffer and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who have said the Able Danger group identified Atta and other hijackers as early as 1999 but was stymied by Defense Department lawyers from sharing information with the FBI. The allegations set off a wave of media reports and have prompted investigations by the former Sept. 11 commission and the Defense Department.
The Sept. 11 panel said last week that it did not find evidence to support the allegations in its files and that the Able Danger program was not “historically significant.” A Pentagon official said yesterday that although the investigation into the allegations is still ongoing, “we’re not finding information that substantiates these claims.”
Shaffer said yesterday that his overall allegations were based on his recollections and those of two others — Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and a civilian employee of the former Land Information Warfare Activity at Fort Belvoir, whom he declined to identify. Phillpott did not respond to telephone messages left yesterday with the Navy and at his home.
Shaffer said that Able Danger, by analyzing publicly available databases, produced charts in “the late spring or summer of 2000″ showing ties between suspected terrorists. Shaffer said that after the Sept. 11 attacks, the civilian employee showed him a chart allegedly from 2000 that purportedly identified Atta and three other hijackers.
Shaffer, who briefed the Senate Judiciary Committee on his allegations yesterday, said he recognized the charts from his work as a liaison between the DIA and Able Danger. But he said he is relying on the word of Phillpott and the civilian employee, who pointed to one of the charts and said, “We had them.”
Phillpott told the Sept. 11 panel in July 2004 that he recalled seeing Atta’s name briefly on an Able Danger chart in spring 2000, which was before Atta obtained a visa and entered the United States. The commission, noting a lack of supporting evidence, said Phillpott’s account “was not sufficiently reliable to warrant revision of the report or further investigation.”
The furor over Atta began earlier this summer with a little-noticed paragraph in Weldon’s book, “Countdown to Terror,” which focuses on the claims of an Iranian informant that the CIA has deemed a fabricator. Weldon writes that during a meeting with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, he presented a chart “developed in 1999″ by the Able Danger program that “diagrammed the affiliations of al Qaeda and showed Mohammed [sic] Atta and the infamous Brooklyn Cell.”
Time magazine reported last week that Weldon said he is no longer sure that Atta was included on the chart he gave Hadley. But Weldon’s chief of staff said yesterday that Atta was on the chart and that it was produced in 1999. Representatives for Hadley, who is now President Bush’s national security adviser, have declined to comment on Weldon’s claims.
Weldondid not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.
20 August 2005, 6:46 pmStan:
MC, Please post a bit of these long ones followed by a link. WAY too much space used this way.
20 August 2005, 8:30 pmComandante Gringo:
I’ve got one thing to say about “Colon” Powell and his U.N.O. performance — and this goes for his “aides” too:
Tough.
[Remember the tearful prime-time performance a year or so later? All part of the attempt to re-spin the personal debacle. Truly pathetic, Beltway brownnosers…]
Fact is, this thing was only the “low point” in your careers because the Boss was forced to tell the biggest lies of his lying, manipulative career in a situation where everyone knew and feared he would be tossed to the wolves by the even more powerful, and exposed — and all those shirt-tail careers would be subsequently damaged. And lo — it came to pass, exactly as feared.
But like I said: tough.
21 August 2005, 11:52 pmCouldn’t have happened to a more deserving crew. Frankly, too bad this wasn’t a capital crime as well, and the lot of youse weren’t marched in front of some firingsquad.
m.c.:
~A Short Philosophical Musing About the Importance of Separation of Church and State~
When Government/State and Religion are united, breaking the law becomes a sin. Questioning or criticizing government edicts border on, or become blasphemous acts; and the various Bureaucracies add extreme self-righteousness to already existing powerful State authority.
The saying: You are either with us or against us; becomes: You are either with us and God or against us and God.
Fascist regimes have all used this page out of the playbook to varying degrees.
26 August 2005, 5:30 pm