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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (19156)	4/4/2006 5:58:54 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Able Providence Background By Captain Ed on War on Terror Captain's Quarters Earlier today, I wrote about the funding of a new program the promises to use the "engine" of Able Danger to develop leads on potential terror cells, both here and abroad. The new program, Able Providence, wants to produce data as a shared resource for all intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, placed under the joint supervision of the DNI and the Joint Chiefs. For those of us who have followed the Able Danger effort and worried that a vital effort had been abandoned, this is exceptionally good news. However, it is not a shock, as the intelligence-community magazine Government Community News (GCN) wrote a little-noted article about the Able Providence proposal last October: <<< A draft proposal floating behind closed doors would reconstitute and improve upon a former Army data-mining program called Able Danger. Able Providence, as the new program has been dubbed, would establish “robust open-source harvesting capabilities” to give military and law enforcement agencies the information to take the initiative in the war on terrorism—that is, to be able to plan and execute offensive measures—in addition to continued defensive actions. In addition, the program would be driven by a presumption that use of weapons of mass destruction within the United States is possible. As a result, Able Providence would need to detect, track and target terrorists as they move from location to location and reorganize their cells. As one part of the new data-mining effort, the proposal suggests using information about terrorist financing and the Islamist system worldwide to identify correlations. The proposal, which GCN has seen, would place the Able Providence project within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with the Defense Department having joint oversight responsibilities. A first-year budget of a little more than $26 million would cover the cost of a director drawn from the Senior Executive Service, a deputy director from SES (or a brigadier general), five planners, software and hardware, and office space. >>> The program itself is not classified, but also has not received much attention, especially in light of the treatment afforded to the Able Danger team members who have fought to have their successes recognized and repeated. Able Providence appears to be the program that they have desired, and the with the funding now in place, the datamining should soon commence as soon as their team forms. One improvement over the experiment of Able Danger is a recognition of the enemy being targeted. AD had been a toss of the dice to determine whether the datamining concept could succeed in identifying potential targets. Now that the model has been proved, the focus of the data being mined can narrow towards the Islamofascists. Able Providence has already taken this focus into account, as this slide from the unclassified briefing shows: captainsquartersblog.com We can see that the new program correctly focuses on those areas that bore fruit in Able Danger. The new datamining will pay attention to the mosques and the interaction between them, presumably the most radical in nature getting first priority. It's refreshing to see a government agency accepting the religious nature of the conflict, even in a low key. The effort is explicitly pre-emptive, designed to stop an attack before it happens rather than pursue an investigation amid the smoking ruins, as on 9/11. More to come ... in the meantime, be sure to keep up with Mike Kasper's Able Danger coverage, including more information on Able Providence. Mike also has a good post on Sandy Berger's fundraising for Curt Weldon's opponent in Pennsylvania. That sounds rather ironic -- the man who stole key materials from the National Archive raising funds against the man who stood up to the 9/11 Commission to ensure our national security. captainsquartersblog.com gcn.com abledangerblog.com abledangerblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (19156)	4/5/2006 11:39:54 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Able Providence: Bypass But Inform Bureaucracy By Captain Ed on War on Terror Captain's Quarters One of the Able Providence briefing slides shows that the Pentagon did learn something from the 9/11 Commission debacle and the subsequent ruination of the American intelligence community -- don't trust the bureaucracy. In a graphic designed to show the flow of information out of the new data-mining project in the war on terror, this note conspicuously appears: captainsquartersblog.com *Bypass but inform bureaucracy.* That directive aims at the action-validation process, which under the current DNI would have to go through multiple levels of bureaucrats, thanks to the 9/11 Commission recommendations that slapped an entirely new bureaucracy on American intelligence. Able Providence would go to the Joint Chiefs and/or the DNI directly for approval on field ops, with an AP "away team" coordinating with the AP team at home. This is a much-improved model over the existing morass of intel agencies. Someone's listening and learning. captainsquartersblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (19156)	5/22/2006 3:44:22 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Able Danger Documents Discovered? By Captain Ed on 9/11 Commission Captain's Quarters The Able Danger blog has news from a FOIA request filed by Scott Malone of NavySeals.com and Christopher Law of PublicEdCenter.org that has produced an interesting response from the Pentagon. When they demanded the release of all information regarding the Able Danger project, the DoD rejected the request after a bit of bureaucratic misdirection. However, they acknowledged the existence of over 9500 pages of documentation -- apparently the same paperwork that they told Congress no longer existed: <<< In two possibly related developments in the past week, the Pentagon denied access to almost 10,000 pages of classified documents relating to a top-secret intelligence program senior officials have three times previously testified were destroyed or unable to be located. And the attorneys for the secret team members who disclosed the existence of the data-mining counter-terrorism program, called ABLE DANGER, have argued in a new court filing that they be “cleared” to review such files. The Defense Department’s Inspector General’s office (DoD-OIG) and the joint Special Operations Command (SOCOM) have amassed some 9,500 pages of documents on a program that senior DoD and 9/11 Commission officials have stated repeatedly were destroyed or can no longer be located. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, “The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, has determined that approximately 9,500 pages of these collected documents are potentially responsive to your FOIA request.” >>> That news should stun those who have been following the Able Danger story for the past year. The official story has had all documentation being destroyed in a particularly aggressive form of housekeeping that took place after Col. Tony Shaffer revealed the existence of the program to the 9/11 Commission. The missing documentation proves, according to Shaffer, that the intelligence community identified Mohammed Atta and the other members of the core 9/11 cell prior to the attacks as potential al-Qaeda agents. The assertion that 9500 pages of evidence still exists at the Pentagon will no doubt surprise members of Congress that received little from their investigations into the program. Hopefully this will pique their curiosity once more. Be sure to read all of the links at the Able Danger blog. captainsquartersblog.com abledangerblog.com navyseals.com publicedcenter.org navyseals.com