Gen. Shelton confirms Able Danger data mining briefing before 9/11

By Aussiegirl

Gen. Hugh Shelton, the military commander during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, acknowledged that he authorized a data mining operation and received briefings on the secret mission well before September 11, 2001. Another link in the chain is thus established. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to stonewall in not allowing witnesses to testify before Congress on what they found even as the witnesses are being demoted, fired, discredited and otherwise punished for their whistleblowing.

The 9/11 Commission in the meantime, has parlayed itself into a full-time private lobbying group which runs around kibbitzing the administration's terror efforts while obfuscating its own role in covering up the real story on the 9/11 disaster. It was the 9/11 Commission which ignored Able Danger and declared it to be insignificant.

The fact is, it appears that both administrations possibly dropped the ball in the intelligence lead-up to 9/11 and as such, every effort seems to be underway to deep-six any testimony or public airing of the Able Danger project. A speaker on the John Batchelor radio program who attended a DIA conference stated that he was told that the top priority of the Defense Intelligence Agency was suppressing the Able Danger story.

The American people should demand to know why. Why is this being covered up even by the present administration? Why was this ignored? Why was the wall erected between agencies which supposedly forbade the sharing of this information in the first place? Why was Jamie Gorelick on the 9/11 Commission when she had a vested interested in covering up her own role in creating that "wall". And finally, why are the intelligence agencies not utilizing a form of this data-mining now in order to track potential terrorist activities and cells?

Still, now we have an admission of what had only been alleged before -- that the military leadership was briefed on the findings of Able Danger (even if Shelton claims to not remember the name of the project), and that this project not only existed but tried to get its information to the relevant authorities. Somewhere along the line something went seriously wrong.

Louis Freeh (who it should be noted has his own failings to answer for), has stated in a recent article that had he known about the information gathered by Able Danger he could have possibly prevented 9/11.

Politics - Former top military leader confirms data-mining search for al-Qaida leaders - sacbee.com

Gen. Hugh Shelton, who was the military's top commander during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confirmed that four years before the tragedy he authorized a secret computer data-mining initiative to track down Osama bin Laden and operatives in the fugitive terrorist's al-Qaida network.

In his first public comments on the initiative, which some former intelligence officers now say was code-named Able Danger, Shelton also confirmed that he received two briefings on the clandestine mission - both well before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Right after I left SOCOM (Special Operations Command), I asked my successor to put together a small team, if he could, to try to use the Internet and start trying to see if there was any way that we could track down Osama bin Laden or where he was getting his money from or anything of that nature," Shelton said Tuesday in an interview.

"It was just kind of an experiment," Shelton said. "What can we do? So, he pulled together a bunch of really bright, computer-literate guys from across the services."

Shelton's assertions are significant because they raise new questions about the government's knowledge of the al-Qaida network before the Sept. 11 attacks, and about the subsequent findings of the 9/11 commission, set up by Congress to probe the attacks.