The Right Wing is trying to lay Able Danger dropping the ball on Atta at the feet of Bill Clinton, but as I theorized before it was actually neo-cons in the Pentagon who blocked the ID from going to the FBI and thus Clarke and Clinton. The brass even told the AD team to put yellow sticky pads over the photos and names of Atta and the Gang!! (see diary links below)
Booman23, Topdog08 and I have been covering this. That Clarke was never told has now been confirmed, and his deputy at counter-terror, Roger Cressey, even said they were not told because Clarke would have acted on it! (Plus an Atta arrest would have helped elect Al Gore President in 2000).
Update [2005-8-26 13:55:41 by Sherlock Google]: UPDATE 1 "inoperative".
Update [2005-8-26 14:30:20 by Sherlock Google]: OK, I see from the rest of the transcript that Cressey, who works as an MSNBC analyst and cannot get near saying anything like LIHOP. I shall delete that from the diary I guess--the big news here, as the title suggests is that Clinton and Clarke never knew--and it's just some of us bloggers and Internet lurkers that believe in LIHOP.
I would now have to agree with Lawnorder and some others that this shows Clinton and Clarke were not told and to focus on that.
Update [2005-8-26 14:57:2 by Sherlock Google]: Columnist Gil Spencer says that Shaffer exonerates Schoomaker “Not Schoomaker….It rose to the level of a 2-star, 3-star general,”. What was Franks at the time?
War and Piece Blog
(Kudos to Ponderer)
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Let the facts speak for themselves.
This is the deputy Counter-Terror head, Roger Cressey on Hardball being questioned by a 9-11 Widow:
BREITWEISER: If I could just jump in--if I could just jump in for a second, I particularly would like to ask Roger directly if he had known about this operation. Clearly, he and Richard Clarke were in a position at the time that this operation would have been put in place to know of such a thing.
And, Roger, I`m just wondering, did you know this?
CRESSEY: No, not at all. This was not shared with the National Security Council staff.
(CROSSTALK)
CRESSEY: And, Kristen, let me say that, if this information is correct, the real--the central issue is, why was it not shared with the counterterrorism policy community?
(CROSSTALK)
CRESSEY: Because that was where this could be acted upon.
GREGORY: Let me just interject for a second.
Roger, why wouldn`t that be something that would be shared with you when you were doing that kind of work at the time?
BREITWEISER: Right.
CRESSEY: If this was an internal DOD effort and it was being done by SOCOM, then it would be up to the Pentagon itself to determine what came into the policy-making realm.
(CROSSTALK)
CRESSEY: And, if this is accurate, then this is a case where it wasn`t shared.
GREGORY: Right.
(CROSSTALK)
GREGORY: Kristen, isn`t--isn`t--isn`t the sad truth about all of this, as Roger points out, there are so many clear, glaring examples of information not being shared from the left to the right hand of the government, that this would be just another incredibly sad and devastating example of that, or do you think this is something completely unique?
BREITWEISER: You know, David, I think this takes the threshold beyond another mishap.
You`ve got situations with the CIA failing to give information to the FBI. You have testimony from FBI agents saying that everything that possibly could have gone wrong went wrong. I think we`ve passed the point of this being an institutional failure. These were failures on behalf of certain individuals.
It is startling to me to think that, if this operation did in fact occur, that someone with Roger Cressey`s credentials in his position didn`t know about it. I would like to know what level of secrecy this operation was carried out under.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8925092/
The only possible culprit in letting Atta go free was Gen. Pete Schoomaker, in charge of Special Ops and the DIA, who we now know was a secret neo-con because he was promoted by Rumsfeld to Army Chief of Staff in 2003, and Rummy even took him OUT OF RETIREMENT (never been done before).
Please do not clutter up this diary with troll remarks that Shaffer is a liar or that the Gorelick Wall legally prevented the DIA from talking to the FBI. All that has been debunked in the previous diaries by Booman23, TopDog and me (in order of their appearance):
The Failings of the 9/11 Commission
Confirmed: Able Danger ID of Atta before Bushco Shut it Down
Rice aide hid disbandment of Atta's trackers from 9/11 report
Must Read! The Neo-Con Able Danger Scandal -- Atta Coverup! UPDATE 5
Shaffer lawyer: Army ordered documents destroyed in '03
For the Truly Lazy, here is a quick summary:
- DIA team Able Danger Id'd Atta and 3 other 9-11 terrorists by early 2000. Confirmed by AD team members Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer and Captain Scott Philpott.
- SOCOM (Schoomaker or another 2 or 3-star general) did not allow AD team to tell FBI their recommendation to arrest Atta and used phony excuse of the Gorelick Wall to stop them. This prevented FBI, Clarke and Clinton from finding out that al-Queda had sent 4 terrorists into the US--even after the Millennium Bomber caught in '99!
- Able Danger was disbanded in Feb. 2001 when the Neo-Cons took power. Don't know who gave order but it must have been Rice or Cheney. We know Clarke demoted by Zelikow on Rice's order at that same time, along with most if not all counter-terror programs and recommendations started by Clinton and Gore.
- Philip Zelikow appointed by Bush to head 9-11 Commission. After meeting with Shaffer and AD team, Zelikow and his top staff DELIBERATELY covers up early Atta ID and never tells other Commissioners about it.
- Army destroyed all AD documents and charts proving early ID of Atta.
- Zelikow, promoted for his coverup work to Senior Counsel to Rice at State, continues coverup today, as do the rest of the Neo-Cons and the Republicans on the 9-11 Commission.
- RW hate radio hosts and bloggers suddenly back off Able Danger story when they sense it could have incredible blowback on them. They begin to intimate Shaffer is a liar when the day before he was their way to blame 9-11 on the Clenis.
Folks, we need a timeline here, and our own Democratic investigation of 9-11 with Shaffer and Clarke and Philpott testifying.
Please read the earlier diaries BEFORE you start posting foolish stuff about Shaffer being a liar or that there was no ID of Atta in 2000. All that has already been debunked.