Over the past month, Sherlock Google has been a regular pressence in the recommended box with a series of diaries claiming that a "neo-con cell" conspired to let 9/11 happen on purpose. (See
here,
here,
here, and
here.)
In each one of those diaries, SG pointed his finger directly at General Pete Schoomaker as the person who deliberately withheld information about Able Danger from the President "so an al-Queda attack on American soil could proceed."
Although SG never produced any evidence to support this claim, he indicated in his third diary that explosive evidence would be coming from Able Danger team member Tony Shaffer.
Well, Shaffer has now spoken, and his evidence puts the lie to SG's claims.
As an introduction to Shaffer statements, let me just remind everyone that in Sherlock Google's initial diary, he wrote that "anybody who now doubts Shaffer . . . is likely a RW troll."
With that background, here's what Shaffer has to say about General Schoomaker:
He was the overall supporter and advocate of Able Danger and [after he left] everything kind of went downhill. He was the intellectual godfather of this effort. He understood what he was trying to achieve, this entrepreneurial, out-of-the-box thinking.
And here's Shaffer about an earlier decision not to share certain information from Able Danger during the Clinton Administration, which SG lays at the feet of Schoomaker and higher-up "neo cons" who sought to allow an Al Qaeda attack:
We're talking about the lawyers. . . . from Day One, they were worried about, "Where are you getting this data from? What's the source of the data? This is open source. How can it be this detailed? . . .
I started getting problems with this issue back in my headquarters in D.C., through the DIA lawyers. I know they were talking to each other and it became a big issue that all the lawyers in DoD were talking about. One of the investigators currently looking into this, when I talked to him this last week, confirmed to having the same problems even now. What open source collection really means, and what level of oversight is appropriate to protect U.S. persons' rights, even when intelligence officers look at stuff off the open Internet. The debate remains now. . . .
They're trying to protect U.S citizens' rights. I briefed the general counsel on this. I briefed George Tenet on this. The problem was, where do you draw that line regarding protection of U.S. persons -- between U.S. citizens, such as yourself, and these other folks who are here legally, but not technically deserving of the same protections? That's the kernel of the issue. . . .
[T]he SOCOM lawyers recommended to the chain of command of SOCOM that we could not share that information with the FBI . . . .
[T]he lawyers had gotten involved and recommended to the chain of command that they not pass the information. According to Captain Philpot -- and again you'll have to ask him directly -- it went up to the J3, the operations officer, a two-star general at Special Operations Command, where lawyers and Captain Philpot both briefed and the general came down on the side of the lawyers.
The thinking at the time this was going on was that there was an investigation of Special Operations Command regarding its support to the siege of the Branch Davidians [which had taken place in Waco, TX, in 1993].
The concern, as I understand it from talking to Captain Philpott, was that if SOCOM shares this sensitive [terrorist] information with the FBI, and the FBI takes action with it, and something goes wrong, we at SOCOM will get blamed for the bad outcome. . . .
GSN: Who was the commander at the time? General Pete Schoomaker?
SHAFFER: This never got to the commander. This got to the operations officer level and, as I recall, it was General [Geoffrey] Lambert, the J3 special operations command. I believe it was at that level where this decision was stopped.
GSN: This is below the level of General Schoomaker.
SHAFFER: I'm confident that General Schoomaker was never told of this.
GSN: So the information gets blocked, basically because of these legal objections. What's the reaction from you and your Able Danger colleagues? Here you are working hard to get the information together, which you consider very important, and you're being prevented from sharing it with the FBI by the SOCOM lawyers.
SHAFFER:You have to understand two factors were in play at that time. First off, we did not know Al Qaeda to be the threat it is now. There was no drum beat for us to do something immediately.
My second point is that this [objection by the lawyers] is only one of about a dozen operations I was dealing with in any given day, so when SOCOM blew off the meetings I had set up with the FBI, I was perturbed, but it was one of a dozen things I had to deal with in a given day as the overall leader of Stratus Ivy.
GSN: So, you're saying the Able Danger guys didn't go ballistic.
SHAFFER: No. We were concerned by the fact that this kept getting turned off, but again we had no fire under our butts to do something. This was but one other bureaucratic roadblock that we'll have to fight. We'll get to it. But, I've got other things right now that I've got to do.
Compare Shaffer's statements that Schoomaker was (1) the principal supporter of Able Danger and (2) not involved in the decision to withhold certain information from Able Danger in 2000 . . .
with these allegations from Sherlock Google:
In Diary #1:
This diary will show that Pete Schoomaker and Philip Zelikow are two of the main Perpetraitors in this scandal, that they deliberately withheld information from the President of the United States that would have prevented 9/11, that they and their neo-con rulers Let It Happen On Purpose.
Of this there can no longer be any doubt.
(Several weeks after posting this original accusation, Sherlock Google edited it to change "Perpetraitors" to "Players" and to change "they deliberately withheld" to "Schoomaker or a higher-up deliberately withheld." As demonstrated below, however, Sherlock Google has since repeated his baseless claims against Schoomaker.)
In Diary #2:
The only possible culprit in letting Atta go free was Gen. Pete Schoomaker.
In Diary #3:
Schoomaker and Franks and apparently others used a flimsy excuse to erase all info on Atta and the Gang so an al-Queda attack on American soil could proceed.
In Diary #4: Yesterday
Schoomaker and Franks and apparently others used a flimsy excuse to erase all info on Atta and the Gang so an al-Queda attack on American soil could proceed.
Rather than apologize for these false accusations of treason, this is what Sherlock Google writes today in light of Shaffer's statements:
It's obvious to me reading this that Shaffer is a loyal soldier and tends to accept what his superiors tell him as being the truth. As we know with Neo-Cons, this is not a wise assumption . . . .
This could easily be Neo-Cons allowing an al-Queda attack, so America could be forced into the PNAC Plan (LIHOP, or Let It Happen On Purpose).
To summarize:
- When Shaffer was saying something that Sherlock Google could twist into supporting his "neo-cons let 9/11 happen on purpose theory," anyone who doubted Shaffer's story was a right-wing troll.
- Now that Shaffer has blown Sherlock Google's conspiracy theory out of the water, anyone who doesn't doubt Shaffer's story is being unwise.
