August 23, 2005

Navy Captain Backs Shaffer

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's credibility has been significantly strengthened with Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott issuing a statement supporting Shaffer's claim. In his statement Phillpott told Fox News, "My story has remained consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger in January/February 2000."

The Pentagon has found no documentation to back up the two men's claims. But that shouldn't be needed. Able Danger was a data mining project. All that's needed is to "re-mine." Do the same data mining process on the data set and see if Mohamed Atta's name pops up again. That would be substantial proof. I know the Pentagon would shake and quake for having to shine the light on a classified program, but this was an open source data mining experiment. Even if some of Able Danger's techniques became public it would be really hard for our enemies to counteract it. A plus of open sources is they're by nature decentralized. They're news reports, names in phone books, etc. In this day and age it's very hard to disappear. Aliases can be used, but those fake names will be spotted. (The tricky part becomes linking the alias to the real person.) This is a case of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy biting them in the ass.

Captain Ed goes to argue the Pentagon is trying to undermine Shaffer's credibility.

Thankfully, Jim Geraghty put together what we know and what we don't. He's been skeptical like me so I don't feel like I'm out on a island.

AJStrata blows away the charge about Shaffer's loss of security clearance:

One thing that keeps coming up is Schaffers revocation of his security clearance, supposedly for $67 worth of personal calls on his military supplied cell phone. When one recalls Sandy Bergler still has his security clearance after stealing and destroying classified papers which directly related to the run up to 9-11, the total idiocy of this whole mess becomes crystal clear.

"Navy Captain Backs Able Danger Claims"