The more details emerge, the worse this looks for the Bush administration and its allies. Here's a breakdown of their ties to Able Danger:
Schoomaker says he deferred to Franks on Al Qaeda
(He is now the Chief of Staff for the Army)
Franks was in charge of CENTCOM from July of 2000
(He was one of three to get the Medal of Freedom)
Goss chaired the Committee that helped to end it
(He is now the Director of the CIA)
Tenet met with Shaffer but failed to cooperate
(He also received the Medal of Freedom in 2004)
Haynes was the lead Pentagon counsel who axed it
(Nominated for the Fourth Circuit Court in 2003)
Townsend was a key piece of the intel problem
(She is now Bush's key Counterterrorism advisor)
Rumsfeld never filled a SOLIC post that ran it
(Bush still refuses to accept his resignation)
Dell'Orto was lead Pentagon counsel before Haynes
(He will replace Haynes if Hayes is confirmed)
More details and excerpts to follow below.
Schoomaker says he
deferred to Franks on Al Qaeda:
General Pete Schoomaker, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army and former Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, said that if the Special Operations Command had been a supported command before 9/11, he would have had the al Qaeda mission rather than deferring to CENTCOM’s lead.
On page 236 of his bestseller,
American Soldier, Franks describes speaking to the "CENTCOM intelligence staff" on September 7, 2001:
I spoke about the excesses of Reconstruction after the Civil War, which had resulted in the enactment of Posse Comitatus, the law that prevents military forces from serving as policemen inside the United States. Would that stricture survive a full-blown terrorist attack?
"So, the thing that keeps me awake at night, Sergeant," I emphasized, "is the possible use of our armed forces against American citizens. We do our job well, but we're trained to fight foreign enemies. We're not police officers, sheriffs, or the FBI. If we were ever required to act in that capacity during a major emergency like an attack on the World Trade Center, the effect on America could be devastating. Martial law would not sit well in a free and open society."
Goss chaired the Committee that Shaffers says
ended it:
He also complained that Congress, particularly the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), had effectively ended a human intelligence network he considered valuable.
Tenet
met with Shaffer:
It did to me - and we fought it - and I was in meetings at the OSD level, with OSD laywers, that debated this - and I even briefed the DCI George Tenet on this issue relating to an internet project.
But still
failed to cooperate:
Why would they not do that? Because of the effort that they were taking as part of a finding they had on bin Laden himself and if the military's project was successful it would, quote, steal their thunder. Steal the CIA's thunder.
Dave went on to say that short of the CINC, General so and so, calling the Director, George Tenet, directly, the CIA would never provide the best information to the military on al Qaeda. To my knowledge, that information was never provided.
Bush has since
nominated Haynes for the Fourth Circuit Court, but
Haynes was the lead Pentagon counsel who
axed it:
The Pentagon's Office of General Counsel is ultimately responsible for legal decisions, he said, and he believes getting hold of the legal papers on "Able Danger" is paramount to resolving the controversy. "If I could have one (set of) documents, I would ask for the lawyers' notes," he said.
Townsend was a
key piece of the intel problem:
Townsend found herself in the middle of that debate over how much of a "wall" should exist between intelligence-gatherers and prosecutors, and her tenure at OIPR remains controversial today. Many FBI agents say Townsend was crucial in obtaining FISA wiretaps, especially during the period of heightened terrorism concerns around the new millennium. But many prosecutors felt that Townsend was less than helpful in making sure the FBI shared wiretap data with lawyers at Main Justice when there was evidence of criminal activity. Townsend believed that the FISA court and its chief judge at the time, Royce Lamberth, would refuse to approve search warrants and wiretaps if they believed too much information sharing was going on and if prosecutors were controlling or directing the intelligence-gathering efforts....
Both the Government Accountability Office and the 9/11 commission have blamed OIPR in part for the government's intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks. Sources say that OIPR's narrow interpretation of FISA led to misunderstandings and overly cautious behavior by the FBI. As a result, in July and August of 2001, FBI intelligence analysts prohibited their own criminal-case agents from searching for two men on the government's terrorist watch list who they knew had entered the United States. The men later proved to be two of the 19 hijackers.
Rumsfeld
never filled the Pentagon post in charge of Al Qaeda before 9/11:
Brian Sheridan—the outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in DOD—never briefed Rumsfeld. Lower-level SOLIC officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense told us that they thought the new team was focused on other issues and was not especially interested in their counterterrorism agenda. Undersecretary Feith told the Commission that when he arrived at the Pentagon in July 2001, Rumsfeld asked him to focus his attention on working with the Russians on agreements to dissolve the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and preparing a new nuclear arms control pact. Traditionally, the
primary DOD official responsible for counterterrorism policy had been the assistant
secretary of defense for SOLIC. The outgoing assistant secretary left on January 20, 2001, and had not been replaced when the Pentagon was hit on September 11.
Dell'Orto was lead Pentagon counsel
before Haynes and will replace Haynes
if he is confirmed by the Senate:
A law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon working group's 2003 report, prepared under the supervision of general counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."
Haynes -- through Daniel J. Dell'Orto, principal deputy general counsel for the Defense Department -- wrote a memo March 17 that rescinded the working group's report, and Dell'Orto confirmed that withdrawal yesterday at the hearing. According to a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post, the general counsel's office determined that the report "does not reflect now-settled executive branch views of the relevant law."
If you're still wondering why more Able Danger team members are hesitant to come forward, please go back and read this over again.