Shaffer's ABLE DANGER Statement - Part 1 cont'd

Page 7: Part 1 of

Tony Shaffer's ABLE DANGER Statement

UNCLASSIFIED DRAFT

cont'd from Page 6

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2006

(U) It is my judgment that the ABLE DANGER effort should have been then, and should be today, governed by U.S. Title 10 – for reasons which the Department of Defense have declared to be secret and I cannot discuss in open session.

(U) When I made this judgment known to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) they took issue – they felt that ABLE DANGER should have been a Title 50 intelligence operation all along – and in by closed door session with them, they took strong issue with me. Gentlemen, knowing what I know about the bureaucracy of both DoD and CIA, ABLE DANGER type operations must be responsive and focused – and none political – therefore should reside under the control of the Pentagon. 3000 people were lost to the country mostly, in my assessment, due to bureaucratic game playing by both DIA and CIA officials – and I will further illustrate my point below.

(U) While there are necessary legal separations regarding Title 10 (DoD) and Title 18 (Department of Justice) organizations, the primary breakdown occurred due to artificial and what I believe were purposeful misinterpretations of Title 50 (intelligence) restrictions – misinterpretations that continue today – and have become DoD’s excuse for the destruction of the data in 2000. There have been subsequent document and data destruction of the ABLE DANGER data and background documents that I and others did retain and preserve until at least 2004. The fact that there was then, and has been within the recent past ABLE DANGER information destruction is not at issue; DoD and DIA leadership have admitted this – what is at issue is why they as senior leadership displayed questionable judgment regarding this data.

(U) At the heart of the failure of ABLE DANGER is information sharing – and this is the real reason I am before you today – to help identify, with the hope of fixing, problems and shortcomings of the pre 9-11 US Government – shortcomings that my former ABLE DANGER colleagues and I judge, based on our experience over the past five years, to even now continue to hamper our ability to conduct effective military, intelligence and law enforcement operations in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).

(U) My veteran ABLE DANGER colleagues and I share the common fear that the seeds of the next 9-11 attack have already been sewn – and that much of the critical data that was harvested for the ABLE DANGER project, that could be used again now in the search for sleeper cells and others that matched the “Atta” profile is now gone – destroyed at the direction of DoD officials in the 2000 timeframe. You have heard from Eric Kleinsmith of his work on ABLE DANGER, and his receiving direction to “destroy the data and background documents or go to jail” – which he did. However, it must be noted that despite citing AR 380-10 as the “authority” for this action, the DoD lawyer is wrong and, worse, deceptive. There are two exceptions that allow the retention of U.S. person information – both of those were met by then MAJ Kleinsmith – yet lawyers directed that he destroy the data anyway. Those exceptions are:

2. Publicly available information. Information may be collected about a United States person if it is publicly available.

3( c ) Persons or organizations reasonably believed to be engaged or about to engage, in international terrorist or international narcotics

(U) Therefore, there was no “legal” reason for the directive that the ABLE DANGER information and charts be destroyed then. So then, what was the real reason? What is the real justification for these documents – this critical data – to have been destroyed? Embarrassment and political CYA to protect themselves from accountability for their bad, and in this case, fatal decisions, made in 2001 regarding ABLE DANGER.

(U) Further, I will provide details as to the troubling “coincidences” that relate to the suspension/revocation of my security clearance, and confiscation of my ABLE DANGER documents that occurred just after I spoke to the 9-11 staff director, Dr Phillip Zelikow, in October of 2003.

(U) If we are to win this war on terrorism, and hope to preclude the next 9-11 type attack – an attack that many experts fear will be one that utilizes a weapon of mass destruction such as chemical, biological or nuclear – it is my judgment that we must examine and make sure that the bureaucratic and policy problems that hobbled ABLE DANGER effort have been fixed.

(U) From my experience, to date, the problems have not been fixed as the officers and culture that existed before 9-11, and permitted the ABLE DANGER project to fail, are still in place today.

(U) There is no incentive for the bureaucrats to change – and instead of embracing change, and being accountable to their actions, they obfuscate and inveigle and hide their own failures. In my specific instance, DIA has been allowed by DoD to make an “example” of me to try and intimidate the others from coming forward by spending what we now estimate $2 million in an effort to discredit and malign me by creating false allegations, and using these false allegations to justify revocation of my Top Secret security clearance. How can it be that we, as a country at war, have such officers in the government who are more concerned about suppressing the truth than winning the war? How many sets of body armor, or enhanced protection for military vehicles in Iraq or Afghanistan would $2 million buy?

(U) Each of us, whether we serve in the executive branch or legislative branch, take an oath of office to defend the Constitution, and our country against enemies both foreign and domestic – I take this oath seriously and am certain that each of you on this committee share my passion on this point. I believe that our oath overrides one’s loyalty to any branch, department or culture of the U.S. Government should such loyalty become inimical with the preservation of this nation’s security. I had to make a choice between loyalty to a DoD culture or the safety of our country – and my choice is clear.

(U) We face two enemies at this point – the first, Al Qaeda – insidious and adaptive – but vulnerable and flawed – tied to a 10th century philosophy of life and of warfare – a philosophy that we can use against it to defeat it. The second, a more vexing and implacable enemy that is our own “bureaucracy” – where career bureaucrats, who are more concerned about self aggrandizement and advancement, who gamble with the security of future generations through neglecting to recognize the need to change and adapt more rapidly than our adversary. Through these bureaucrats collective actions, both in the initial ABLE DANGER failure and their current cover-up and obfuscation of ABLE DANGER, they continue to wager our children’s future and country’s wellbeing.

(U) It is our collective responsibility to see that both of these enemies are resoundingly defeated – and this may require painful change of culture and best practices – but necessary change – to ensure the ABLE DANGER failures do not again occur.

Continued in Part 2…