Able Danger hearing today

[pberq]

See this thread for more info:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x430652

[pauldp]

1. Thanks for the post. n/t

[mirandapriestly]

2. Shafer Cut Deal with WH argh

< http://www.total911.info/2006/02/able-danger-witness-cut-deal-with-bush.html >


A source close to Shaffer tells this website the Army colnel has indeed cut a deal with the White House in advance of Congressinal hearings today , as reported in Congressional Quarterly below. Hopefully not all of the "Able danger" witnesses will be so corrupted.

Chickenhawk Congressman Curt Weldon has been using the Able Danger story as a pretext for the reestablishement of a strong, permanent, legally-acknowledged "data-mining" program to use supercomputers to spy on America and Americans.

But the real lesson of Able Danger should be clear. It doesn't matter whether it's data-mining or shoe-leather -- independent-minded government investigators who get too interested in designated patsies find their reports ignored, their work product destroyed, their careers ruined. (The ones who live, anyway.)

...
Shaffer, who spent years as a super-secret DIA agent handler, surfaced last year in stories about a deeply clandestine DIA data-mining unit code-named "Able Danger," which he says latched onto the movements of Mohammed Atta and other al Qaeda hijackers weeks before the Sept. 11 attack. Another leader of the units says the same.

...


The fact that Shaffer, now on paid leave from the DIA, is finally getting such a forum to tell his story is testimony to the weakened power of the White House to control events related to intelligence abuses on Capitol Hill. More than 200 members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have signed on to a demand that the Defense Department investigate Shaffer's claims.

...As Shaffer's scheduled testimony drew near, there were whispers that the White House had engineered the lifting of Shaffer's gag order in exchange for a promise that he would focus on Clinton administration intelligence failures, not their own.

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Also interesting: It looks like Shaffer is no longer a member of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, a group dedicated to establishing legal protections for whistleblowers working in the military, CIA, FBI, Gestapo Homeland Security, etc.