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February 20, 2006

Conference Call on the Able Danger Hearings With Attorney Mark Zaid

This evening I participated in a conference call about the Able Danger hearings with Mark Zaid, attorney for Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and other Able Danger figures, with several other bloggers. The call was organized by Mike Kasper of the Able Danger Blog.

The bloggers were:

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters
AJ Strata of The Strata-Sphere
Mark Coffey of Decision '08
QT Monster's Place
Pierre of The Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill
Rory O'Connor
Moi, representing The Dread Pundit Bluto , The Jawa Report, and Vince Aut Morire. Each blogger will undoubtedly be posting about the call.

Mr. Zaid was quite forthcoming, but unfortunately, more questions were raised than answered, and I got the impression that the hearings are a pro forma exercise that will probably shed little light on the Able Danger program. He described the conduct of the hearings as "very disconcerting" and said that the Representatives involved displayed "very superficial knowledge" of the Able Danger saga.

Unaswered questions raised by Mr. Zaid:

Who was the Orion subcontractor who supplied the photo of Mohammed Atta?

Why did Zelikow testify before a closed session when he wasn't supposed to be discussing anything classified?

Who ordered armed Federal agents to raid Orion and confiscate non-classified materials related to Able Danger?

Why did Jamie Gorelick say that she had done nothing wrong, when no one had accused of doing anything wrong?

The biggest question I have is this: why isn't the mainstream media all over this story? It stinks to high heaven of coverup. NBC can provide nightly coverage of the Katrina aftermath for five months, but a story that has profound implications for national security doesn't rate thirty seconds?

Mr. Zaid was very diplomatic when I asked him about the lack of media attention, praising Fox News, the New York Times and Chris Matthews of MSNBC, but the fact is that a story isn't real to most of America until they hear it on the network news.

I'll have more on this later. In the meantime, you could do worse than write your Representatives to demand a real investigation, and maybe stop by the Able Danger Blog to make a donation to Colonel Shaffer's legal fund.

Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto and Vince Aut Morire.

Posted by: Bluto at 08:31 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 388 words, total size 3 kb.

1 I find the "able danger" threads on Jawa to be the least commented on, although for me the subject is very interesting.

What a fine job the MSM has made of making sure this story doesn't get big.

Posted by: dave at February 21, 2006 12:38 AM (CcXvt)

2 I've read, watched and listened to as much info as I can find on the Able Danger program and I really do believe this is a huge and very credible story. It's easy to be skeptical because, unfortunately, on the surface it just sounds like a 'fringe' conspiracy theory. It is fairly complicated and I think some of the impact gets lost in the details.
Does anyone know if Sen. Specter plans to continue his hearings at some point? He seemed appropriately outraged at the hearing in Sept. 05.

Posted by: JohnM at February 21, 2006 02:13 AM (K8Iva)

3 It's my understanding that Atta's photo was supplied by a woman (either in California or from there) who worked for a security contractor, hired by Orion Scientific, that obtained his photo and other militants by surveilling a mosque. It is also my understanding that the photo we see regularly now of Atta was not the photo that was on the missing/destroyed chart.

Who that security contractor was - I don't know.

Posted by: Oyster at February 21, 2006 06:27 AM (YudAC)

4 did you see the part about that the data they mined was so vast they had to mount sections of the relationship tables on twenty-foot boards with tiny text, and was over two Terabytes disk storage?
For someone that works with Gigabyte databases, that to me is mind boggling -- especially as I know exactly how much data is available in a Database not even 0.5% of the size of able danger.

Posted by: dave at February 21, 2006 10:19 AM (CcXvt)

5 I haven't commented on it because nothing is going to come of it anyway. This country is so screwed up that the only thing that can save it is a massive bloodletting. We need a good, old-fashioned revolution.

Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at February 21, 2006 04:42 PM (0yYS2)

6 Why doesn't this information get national news coverage? I think the answer to that one is that the Administration has complete control of the major networks.

Posted by: Earl J Prignitz at February 22, 2006 10:20 AM (A9bgE)

7 The reason why the "Able Danger" story doesn't get national media attention is perfectly clear. The media is controlled by the Bush Administration, period.

Posted by: Earl J Prignitz at February 22, 2006 10:24 AM (A9bgE)

8 Yes, Earl a story that would put the Clinton Administration into bad light due to the fact that four of the 9-11 hijackers were identified as early as 2000, and all action was stopped due to the Clintons "judicial wall" is being held up by the Bush Administration.

Perhaps you might want to actually read about Able Danger.

Posted by: dave at February 22, 2006 11:07 AM (CcXvt)

9 Dave, if you are not just incredibly ignorant of this subject, then you are definitely an operative for an organization with a sinister agenda... Everyone who has taken the time to read these comments should read Colonel Shaffer's sworn testimony in its entirety, found here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/index.html#ad

Posted by: jim at February 23, 2006 12:50 PM (6Q9ZO)

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February 20, 2006

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