Able Danger: When Was Atta's DIA File Purged ?

[leveymg]

What does everyone make of Cong. Curt Weldon's latest: 2.5 tetra bytes of Able Danger data -- including information on Mohamed Atta --were ordered erased from AD files before 9/11?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050916/ap_on_go_co/sept11_hijackers

This AP story is ambiguous as to when that order was issued. Was it in 1999 or early 2001? Based on feedback at DKos, the order to scrub AD's files came after Bush was elected.

The question remains, does this reveal something larger about the nature, purpose and methods of the Able Danger? Was the data ordered destroyed -- whenever that order was issued -- really unclassified, as has been claimed, or was the source actually NSA intercepts and DIA files.

I think this 2.5 tetrabytes of data indicates that the data source was, in large part, raw NSA intercepts.

Does anyone know how large open-source internet data flows were in 1999?

In either case, is this just another attempt by Weldon to deflect Bush Administration responsibility for ignoring and then shutting down AD in March 2001? Or, if Weldon is correct, is there a bigger picture that's emerging here about the scope and methods of the Pentagon surveillance program?

Here's an alternative explanation. AD was not initially restricted to "open source" (non-classified) data. It was a program to develop methods of analyzing NSA intercepts so that useful intelligence could be processed by then recently developed "real-time" software, and more efficiently collated from the vast amount of electronic data that the NSA and its allied intelligence agencies take in every day.

It is illegal for NSA to retain intercepts of communications of "US persons", US citizens, lawful permanent residents, and US-based companies and organizations. The intelligence community is required to obtain a FISA warrant if it wishes to retain information on US persons, otherwise the data is supposed to be destroyed after a period of time. That would explain why the data was ordered destroyed.

One way around this restriction on survillance of US citizens is through international agreements with friendly foreign intelligence agencies. For decades, the NSA, British, Australian and New Zealand spy agencies have collaborated so that they share electronic intercepts on each others citizens. That program is called Echelon.

The other way that US intelligence has evaded this requirement to destroy warrantless intercepts on US persons is to develop really fast data processing systems and real-time algorithms that generate usable intelligence before the date the data must be destroyed.

Weldon claims that the Pentagon ordered that 2.5 tetra bytes of data --including the Atta data -- be destroyed two years before 9/11. Several things may have actually occurred:


1) all the project's data was destroyed;
2) none of the project's data was destroyed;
3) data that had already been mined of useful information was destroyed.

We know that the AD project continued until March 2001. That strongly indicates that 1) did not occur. Second, given the imperatives of military organizations, it is unlikely that the order was altogether ignored -- so, we can assume that 2) did not result. That leaves us with 3) as the most likely outcome -- this explains why copies of the chart showing Atta and the other "Brooklyn cell" members (the principle 9/11 hijackers) survived and got into Weldon's hands.

A number of conclusions can be drawn from this. Anyone want to take a crack at it?