[GPSCC-chat] Defense Intel Attempts Official Book Burning

[Brian Good]

   Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the whistleblower from the classified counter-terrorist 
outfit Able Danger, has written a book.  You may recall congressional investigations 
of claims that Able Danger's datamining team had as early as 1999 identified four 
alleged members of the 9/11 plot as al-Qaeda agents, and that 2.5 terrabytes of 
Able Danger's data was destroyed 2 years before 9/11. 

   Shaffer's book, Operation Dark Heart, had been cleared for publication by Army
officials, but now the Defense Intelligence Agency wants to buy all 10,000 copies
to keep it off the shelves, citing national security concerns. (1) Fox News claims that 
the damaging issue is Shaffer's assertion that he had informed the 9/11 Commission 
about Able Danger's identification of the alleged lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta.  Able 
Danger was left out of the 9/11 Commission Report.

  Is national security being invoked solely to protect the dignity of the 9/11 Commission
Report?  On another 9/11 front, the National Institute of Standards and Technology 
recently refused a FOIA request for data related to NIST's computer models of the
WTC7 collapse on grounds that doing so "might jeopardize public safety." (2)

  Since the the book-burning effort simply brings publicity to Col. Shaffer's allegations, 
those of us looking for signs of hope are tempted to speculate that elements within 
the DoD are doing that deliberately.  Unfashionable though the notion may be in 
some circles, there are people in the military and in intelligence and in government
agencies who have integrity and who are disgusted by what's been going on and 
who try to help when they see a chance.  Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, ex-FBI 
agent Coleen Rowley, Ann Wright, Richard Clarke, Gen. Janice Karpinsky, Col. 
Lawrence Wilkerson, and Lt. Col. Robert Bowman come to mind.  Still nameless are 
the NIST scientists who deleted the draft report's claim that their analysis is 
"consistent with physical principles" from the final WTC7 report.   
 
   In any case, the Defense Intelligence Agency's efforts to negotiate a purchase 
suggests that they have no legal grounds for their national security claims.  Official 
book-burning is a very poor precedent and should be resisted vigorously IMHO.

(1) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/09/military-intelligence-attempts-block-book-afghan-war/

(2) http://cryptome.org/nist070709.pdf



  
 















   
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20100910/67f90fde/attachment.html>