S. Hrg. 109-311: Abel Danger and Intelligence Information Sharing

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The interviewee had no documentary evidence and said he had only seen the document briefly some years earlier.

Anthony Shaffer and those of four others, Able Danger had identified two of three al-Qaeda cells active in the September 11 attacks; the 'Brooklyn cell' linked to "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, including 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the plot's other 19 hijackers. The Senate panel of investigators said there was no evidence DoD lawyers stopped analysts from sharing findings with the FBI before the attacks. I communicated this information to SOCOM and they reportedly passed it on to CENTCOM, but for unknown reasons the threat assessment was not communicated to Commander Lippold, the skipper of the Cole.There was even a hint of irony in the location of the JTTF’s anniversary party, the same place where Neal Herman’s retirement party had been held on September 11, 1999: the spectacular 50,000 square foot restaurant Windows on the World, located on the top floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Ultimately, after years of unsuccessfully pushing Congress to admit wrongdoing — including testifying at two congressional committee hearings — Shaffer decided in 2006 to go public with the unclassified version of what the 9/11 Commission had excluded regarding Able Danger. In fact, the LIWA/DIA data miners went even further—putting Ali Mohamed and bin Laden’s brother-in-law Mohammed-Jamal-Khalifa in the al Qaeda inner circle. Congressman Weldon reiterated these statements in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 21, 2005.

Far from the “loosely organized group” of Sunni Muslims somehow disconnected from the World Trade Center bombing, as Patrick Fitzgerald suggested in 2005, al Qaeda was a tightly integrated network with directions coming from the top down directly via bin Laden and Dr.However, this occurred because the inspector at the Miami District Office who changed Atta's admission date failed to follow the proper procedure to ensure that the previous entry would be corrected, and a new entry was created in NIIS. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. They’re identified in open-source data and then, under the guise of conforming to this EO, it gets destroyed. She admitted she did not personally share the information and cannot identify who told her they had been shared.

For those in the Bureau who continued to insist that there was no connection between the two attacks on the Trade Center, this video should have been proof positive that they were wrong. Kevin Drum, writing for The Washington Monthly notes that reports of the precise date at which the information was allegedly passed to the FBI vary considerably. In an interview with Fox News, Smith reported that the project had involved analysis of data from a large number of public sources and 20 to 30 individuals. He also claimed he was ignored by the 9/11 Commission's staff when he approached them on two occasions to explain Able Danger's work.

As early as 1998, the NSA had picked up references to al-Midhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother Salem, who would also become a suicide hijacker on 9/11. The handler, Steven Butler, later claims that during the summer Shaykh mentions the names “Nawaf” and “Khalid” in passing and that they are renting rooms from him. Patience Wait has reported that a follow-on project appears to have been funded and implemented by the Intelligence Community and was originally named Able Providence. Weldon also claimed that Able Danger information was found in Pentagon files as recently as two weeks prior to his statement and that a general was present when the files were taken from the cabinet.

Curt Weldon, with a man who identified himself as a member of the Able Danger team, but asked that his name not be revealed. When al-Midhar left the Yemeni safe house in early 2000, agents from eight CIA offices and six allied intelligence services were reportedly asked to track him.Curt Weldon's assertion that Able Danger identified the 9/11 hijackers was picked up by the national media in August 2005, after it was reported in the bimonthly Government Security News. Shaffer claimed that he alerted the FBI in September 2000 about the information uncovered by the secret military unit "Able Danger", but he alleges three meetings he set up with bureau officials were blocked by military lawyers. On September 21st, 2000, he issued another fatwa, this one released to Al Jazeera, the Arabic television network, on videotape.