Sounds like the
Senate Intelligence Committee is wondering why they never heard about Able Danger locating two of the three cells:
The Senate Intelligence Committee is asking the Pentagon to let it interview anyone who worked on Able Danger, and last week drafted a letter asking the White House for a copy of a chart that Congressman Curt Weldon claimed in a recent book he gave then-deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley just after the 9/11 attacks.
Anyway, while not available to talk to reporters about Able Danger and the 9/11 Commission Report:
The State Department, where Zelikow now works as a counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said he was traveling and unavailable for comment.
Doctor Zelikow was able to talk to writers at the Sun Valley Writer's Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, August 19-22:
Philip Zelikow, chief architect of the 9/11 Commission Report, told how he ran the operation, scrutinizing 200 million pages of documents out of a hotel room -- there was no office, not even a telephone.
He also cautioned that the U.S. government needs to refrain from either inflating or downplaying the danger posed by Al Qaeda. "There is a problem there, but Al Qaeda is not 12 feet tall. They're not everywhere. They've been hurt and they can be hurt."
The reason the United States has not been attacked since 9-11 is not because Al Qaeda doesn't want to inflict more damage, he added. It's because they've been hampered in their ability to mete out more damage.
From the participant list:
PHILIP ZELIKOW, a lawyer, diplomat and historian, served as the executive director of the commission staff that produced THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Recently appointed as counselor to the State Department, Zelikow has taught at Harvard University and the University of Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. With Condoleezza Rice, he co-authored GERMANY UNIFIED AND EUROPE TRANSFORMED: A STUDY IN STATECRAFT, which was awarded a citation for excellence by the Overseas Press Club of America.
You might recall, that was not all that was going on in Idaho during this four day period:
August 19-22 2005
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley Writer's Conference
"Writing in Unpredictable Times"
Bush takes a vacation within his vacation:
August 22, 2005
President Bush Visits Idaho
By Sarah Lanse
Boise & Donnelly
President Bush is taking a vacation from his vacation in Texas.
He made his first trip to Idaho for some mountain biking.
I was wondering why Bush chose Idaho of all places for this speech on 8/24.
It's also worth noting that the TIME piece gives some more detail about the Bush administration representative at Bagram, who heard Lt. Col. Shaffer's hour plus talk on Able Danger in addition to Zelikow (now Rice's aide):
The panel also said that a Bush Administration lawyer--who, sources told TIME, was a National Security Council attorney present as a "minder" on behalf of the White House--agreed that Shaffer did not mention Atta's name. But Shaffer told TIME that he remembers specifically saying that the staff on the secret project had "found through the effort two of the three cells which conducted the 9/11 attack, to include Atta."
As Shaffer has said, this is not about Atta, they identified two of the three cells! Anyway, here is a transcript of Shaffer on Savage Nation of all places. It's not gonna be easy for them to turn this right wing message machine against him once his story does not look so friendly to Bush any more, unless we help them do it - like complete idiots.
http://qtmonster.typepad.com/ qt_monsters_place/2005/08/able_dangers_of.html
A fool would say that they're not afraid of the potential consequences of being in a situation such as I'm in right now. I spent, Michael, the entire day Sunday thinking about this event, this potentially happening. And I talked to my family, I talked to my friends, I wanted to make sure that I was doing this for the right reasons. I'd like to believe my entire life that has been kind of my bell weather. Am I doing the right thing for the right reason? The other thing is that the American taxpayer pays a lot of money to train us. This may sound, you know, like it's out of a movie or something, but I'm telling you, I've always kind of considered how I make decisions as what would the American taxpayer believe if they knew about this. Would they think that I'm doing the right thing by taking this action in this operation or would they say, that's stupid, why would you do that?
So I think the American people have to understand that there's a group of us who really have tried to do the right thing for the right reason all these years and very often you've got people who are careerists, who are bureaucrats, who have an agenda which is not necessarily in line with the best interests of the country. And I think that's one of the things that we talked about earlier regarding the laws being changed, but I don't think we've changed the culture yet. And that's something, the cultural change is something that will take some time to do. And I think that what happens to me now will either help other folks to feel empowered to either take and do the right thing or if I get squashed, then obviously people like me who want to do the right thing, are going to say, "well, I guess it's just not worth it."
...The idea, you know, I have an 11 year old son, and I want to do everything in my power to make sure that we're using every tool in the arsenal to detect these guys before something happens. I mean, I live in Washington. This town is a target. A lot of different cities are targets I believe and the enemy would like nothing better than to get some sort of a weapon into this city I believe. Therefore, I think it's in everyone's best interest, everyone, I mean not just someone living in Cottonville, KS, not just people in the midwest, not just people in New York, and not if you're Republican of Democrat. We need to figure out a way to really fight this war.