Last September, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on this matter, but the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying. This caused senators from both parties to accuse the Defense Department of even more obstruction.
One reason I think this scandal is rather odd is because it involves the Bush Administration's Department of Defense obstructing not one but two investigations of events that occurred during the Clinton Administration. Why would Rumsfeld's Pentagon do this? As I stated in August: "Wouldn't something like that support the Bush Regime's dominant theory regarding 9-11, namely, that the whole thing was Clinton's fault?"
In fact, it is mostly right-wing conservatives who are calling for disclosure on this -- you know, kind of like the whole Harriet Miers thing. Michael Savage has reportedly covered it on his show, and Michelle Malkin has chimed in as well. A website called The Conservative Voice had this to say a while back:
At least 7 former Able Danger team members have volunteered to testify before Congress that former Clinton Administration officials were warned ahead of time of both the USS Cole bombing and of Mohammed Atta’s presence in the US a year before 9/11/2001. These individuals have also been placed under gag-orders and are not allowed to speak to any Senate Committees or the media.Obviously, some members of the right wing think they finally -- after all these years -- have something on Clinton that will stick, and they want to run with it. But the Bush Regime won't let them do it for some reason, and there is much outrage.
The most recent article I could find on Able Danger is here:
A senior Republican congressman said Wednesday that the Pentagon's Able Danger intelligence program had detected preparations for the terrorist attack on the USS Cole but that American military leaders failed to act on the warnings.If this is simply about screw-ups that occurred under Clinton's watch, so be it. Yet Rumsfeld continues to stonewall, even though allowing this information to get out would arguably help Bush.
Citing information provided to him by Navy Capt. Scott Philpott, the former manager of the Able Danger project, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said that two weeks before the Oct. 12, 2000, attack - and then again two days before - the intelligence unit uncovered evidence of a plot against an unnamed U.S. target in Yemen.
"They saw information that led them to unequivocally understand that something was going to happen in the port at Yemen involving an American entity," said Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
"Two days before the attack, they were jumping up and down because they knew something was going to happen ... at the port of Aden," Weldon told a Capitol Hill news conference.
Why is the Bush Administration acting this way? I think that is the big story here.
Tim Roemer, a member of the 9-11 Commission, didn't do much to answer that question yesterday when he appeared on Lou Dobbs' show on CNN. In fact, Roemer openly questioned whether or not some aspects of "Able Danger" had been made up out of whole cloth, particularly the existence of a chart with photos of some of the 9-11 highjackers on it.
Rep. Weldon has asserted that he had personally presented this chart to then-Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley in 2001 just days after the 9/11 attacks. Roemer said something like this to Dobbs: "Where is this chart -- have you seen it? * * * We need to see evidence that this exists."
The reason Roemer probably hasn't seen any evidence of this chart is because the Pentagon is throwing sand in his eyes. Does this guy really think Able Danger is just a load of crap? If so, why is BushCo obstructing the the Senate's attempt to get to the bottom of it? The whole 9-11 investigation is sounding more and more like a whitewash every day.
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