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Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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 Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 1:28 am Post subject: Able Danger: Weldon Just went Ballistic on House floor |
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I saw this on C-Span - wow. Best part was bringing up Sandy Burglar.
http://michellemalkin.com/
| Quote: | Watching C-SPAN right now. Rep. Curt Weldon is on the House floor blasting the Defense Intelligence Agency and vigorously defending Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer. Rough transcription:
Yesterday I met with another Able Danger official...this official has impeccable credentials...can't reveal his name today [publicly]...[will tell any member the official's name privately]. In a meeting, he told me he's never been talked to by the Pentagon and DIA in their investigation...The Pentagon says all the material has been destroyed, but I have a second senior official telling me there may be a second pot of information...
You can't let a Lt. Col.'s career be ruined because of a bureaucrat in the DIA...We're seeing lying. Distortion. Wolf Blitzer told me that a Defense Department official told [Blitzer] that Shaffer was having an affair with a member of my staff...he doesn't even know my staff! What do we stand for if not the truth? I'll leave my post, but not until I get justice for this man and the American people.
...scum at the Pentagon are spreading malicious lies.
What we have here is an aggressive attempt by CIA management to cover up their shortcomings.
If it means I have to resign, I will resign. [Excoriates feds for dragging out info that Shaffer stole pens when he was 15.] This is not about the DIA or the CIA. This is about CYA...
...What's happening here is unacceptable. Unimaginable. Un-American.
This man is being abused and used. He's being maligned. [Weldon vows to call for an investigation into leaks of scurrilous information about Shaffer to the media.] Urges viewers to e-mail SecDef, President, and members of Congress to let the story be told. Let Tony Shaffer talk. Let the others who have been silent have the chance to tell their story to Congress.
905pm EDT. House adjourned
whoa. |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:05 am Post subject: |
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AJ Strata taped Weldon's speech. He replayed it and gives a running commentary. WOW!!
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/809
| Quote: | Another bombshell: The DIA Deputy Director was in a meeting with Lt Col Shaffer nearly a year before 9-11, and Lt Col Shaffer showed him a disk on Atta and Al Qaeda. Weldon then claims the Deputy Director (DD) stopped the meeting and said Shaffer could not show him that information. The DD was afraid it might contain information he shouldn’t see.
Weldon then goes on to drop the next bombshell: there were other people in the room and he knows their names. They have witnesses. Weldon then says the DD denies he was at the meeting and the story! Wow - this is big stuff. The staff seems to be rising up against the DD. Weldon is going to pursue it. |
| Quote: | Weldon promises we will find out what is going on. OK, this is the bombshell I heard earlier in my sneak peaking. Yesterday Weldon met with another Able Danger official who he was not aware of because this person lives outside the DC area. This official has ‘impeccable’ credentials. This official has never been talked to by the Pentagon, DIA or 9-11 staff in any of the investigations into Able Danger.
He had a leadership position in Able Danger and has said there was a separate repository of Able Danger data. Note: I have said for a while the only data purged was the LIWA and Orion data sets. Any data at SOCOM (Able Danger HQ) was not part of the purge and exists to this day.
The data set is from 20 different agencies from 1999-2000 and may well still exist. Furthermore, Weldon goes onto to say this official disputes the 90 day limit on data containing information on US persons is not applicable (which many have stated already). My guess is we are going to see that it was the China study that was the culprit here.
UPDATE 12:12
Next bombshell: When SOCOM asked the Army (LIWA) for the data, that was when the data was destroyed. Weldon claims this was to stop the data from going to SOCOM. Weldon then says the official will say that they kept Able Danger data for months, and kept in contact with a lawyer in the DoD named Schiffrin (ph?) who told him not to worry - just fill out the proper forms and it is OK.
Weldon nows has a very credible witness countering DoD statements. Weldon then goes back to Watergate for comparison (OK, he’s upset) to the deaths of 3,000 people.
UPDATE 12:22
Next bit of information: In a clear reference to Capt Phillpott (who I gather is about to take command of a Navy Destroyer and has 23 years in) Weldon says a navy officer will testify that he saw Atta’s face as early as January 2000. The new person will testify to the name Atta - but not the face.
Weldon is on fire now saying people are trying to ‘cover up’ the truth and ruin a man’s career in the process. And yes, he is pounding the podium. He is making a great point. We cannot let a military officer’s career be destroyed to protect a civilian employee (bureaucrat) - no military person will feel safe or the desire to sacrifice for our country. He is dead on right about that.
UPDATE 12:30
Weldon is now totally beside himself and just livid. He recalls Wolf Blitzer of CNN telling his staff that a defense department employee said that Lt Col Shaffer was having an affair with one of Weldon’s employees!
Oh geez, this is all Bush and Rumsfeld need with the Plame Game coming to a head. I believe Weldon - that is classic DC BS (and so childish to boot). Take it from a native of the DC area, that one probably did happen. This will break wide open now. No doubt.
Need to refill the scotch - be back in a minute!
UPDATE 12:39
Weldon is barely in control of himself. But rightfully he calls on Wolf Blitzer to name the jerk smearing Shaffer. Weldon has other media people who will come forward who knew of efforts to smear Shaffer. Oh boy, this is a Battle Royale! |
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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Navy wife
Research Director
Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 353
Location: Arlington, VA & Ft. Worth, TX
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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Shawa and Rdtf,
I heard Weldon last night on the Michael Savage radio show. You are so right! He was practically screaming as he told about all of this! He is absolutely furious that lies are being circulated about Lt. Col. Shaffer. I do hope this blows open.
Why wouldn't the Deputy Director of the DIA want to see the information on Atta and Al Qaeda? Is this the wall that everyone talks about?
Navy wife |
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becca1223
PO3
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 293
Location: Colonial Heights, VA
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Son of a VET
Master Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 791
Location: TN
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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Rush covered it. He used some audio clips. WOW! Was he pissed.
Rush Limbaugh Audio
note: URL converted to hyperlink/me#1
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Stolen Honor |
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GM Strong
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 1579
Location: Penna
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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This is my congressman, I am proud to say,  and I will work my ample butt off to re-elect him. 
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8th Army Korea 68-69 |
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USAFE5
PO2
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 362
Location: Reno Nevada
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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He was also on Hannity this afternoon. I think he should be considering something a bit higher - VP with Condi??
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"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I’m here to help." Ronald Reagan |
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kate
Admin
Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 1891
Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 7:24 am Post subject: |
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Entire transcript of the CSpan speech at Weldon's website.... definitly worth the time
a Sandy Burgler snippet
| Quote: | Now, Mr. Speaker, I sat here in the 1990s and I sat here during the 9/11 investigation and watched a ridiculous situation develop with Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser under President Clinton. He walked into the National Archives before he was to testify before the 9/11 Commission looking through documents. He took documents out of the archives and stuffed them in his socks and pants so that no one would see them as he left the National Archives. Now, that is a felony, tampering with Federal documents and removing classified information regarding our security and information that the 9/11 commission needed to see.
Sandy Berger initially lied about it. He said he did not do it. Then he admitted it, and he was given a punishment. And, oh, by the way, his security clearance was temporarily lifted, but he will get it back again, for lying, for stealing, and for committing an act of outrage against our country's security. Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, a Bronze Star 23-year military veteran, simply told the truth and now his life is being ruined.
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a Cole reference
| Quote: | What we have here, I am convinced of this now, is an aggressive attempt by CIA management to cover up their own shortcomings in not being able to do what the Able Danger team did: They identified Mohammed Atta and the al Qaeda cell of Brooklyn 1 year before Ð9/11. But even before that, as the story unfolds, you are going to hear the story that they also identified the threat to the USS Cole 2 weeks before the attack, and 2 days before the attack were screaming not to let the USS Cole come into the harbor at Yemen because they knew something was about to happen.
Mr. Speaker, bad news never comes easy; but in a democracy, the bad news has to come out so we can make sure it does not happen again |
Also.....
October 20, 2005
Transcript of Curt Weldon Interview on the Sean Hannity Radio Show
transcript
audi clip
for those so inclined
Drop a line of support to Congressman Weldon, and, it wouldn't hurt to contact your own congresscritters telling them to get behind this .
contact info at Weldon's website
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SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
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| Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 8:51 am Post subject: |
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HERE'S THE ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
| Quote: | 151 Cong Rec H 8979, *
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- HOUSE
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
109th Congress, 1st Session
151 Cong Rec H 8979
REFERENCE: Vol. 151, No. 133
SECTION: House
TITLE: ABLE DANGER FAILURE
SPEAKER: Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania
TEXT: [*H8979]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Reichert). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania . Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk to our colleagues and through our colleagues to the American people about an issue that troubles me greatly.
I have been in this institution 19 years, and during those 19 years I have been on the Committee on Armed Services. Currently, I am the vice chairman of that committee and chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the purchase of our weapons systems. In the past I have chaired the research subcommittee. I have chaired the readiness subcommittee, and I have spent every available hour of my time working to make sure that our military troops were properly protected and have the proper equipment and training.
I am a strong supporter of our military. Whether it was in the last 2 years of the Reagan administration, the four years of the Bush administration, the 8 years of the Clinton administration, or the current administration of President George W. Bush, I have been a strong supporter of our military. I am a strong supporter of President Bush. I campaigned for him. I am a strong supporter of Secretary Rumsfeld. I say all of that, Mr. Speaker, because tonight I rise to express my absolute outrage and disgust with what is happening in our defense intelligence agencies.
Mr. Speaker, back in 1999 when I was Chair of the defense research subcommittee, the Army was doing cutting-edge work on a new type of technology to allow us to understand and predict emerging transnational terrorist threats. That technology was being done at several locations, but was being led by our Special Forces Command. The work that they were doing was unprecedented. And because of what I saw there, I supported the development of a national capability of a collaborative center that the CIA would just not accept.
In fact, in November 4 of 1999, 2 years before 9/11, in a meeting in my office with the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Deputy Director of the CIA, Deputy Director of the FBI, we presented a nine-page proposal to create a national collaborative center. When we finished the brief, the CIA said we did not need that capability, and so before 9/11 we did not have it.
When President Bush came in after a year of research, he announced the formation of the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, exactly what I had proposed in 1999. Today it is known as the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center. But, Mr. Speaker, what troubles me is not the fact that we did not take those steps.
What troubles me is that I now have learned in the last 4 months that one of the tasks that was being done in 1999 and 2000 was a top-secret program organized at the request of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, carried out by the general in charge of our Special Forces Command, a very elite unit focusing on information regarding al Qaeda. It was a military language effort to allow us to identify the key cells of al Qaeda around the world and to give the military the capability to plan actions against those cells so they could not attack us as they did in 1993 at the Trade Center, at the Khobar Towers, the U.S.S. Cole attack, and the African embassy bombings.
What I did not know, Mr. Speaker, up until June of this year, was that that secret program called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda in January and February of 2000, over 1 year before 9/11 every happened. In addition, I learned that not only did we identify the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, but we identified Mohamed Atta as one of the members of that Brooklyn cell along with three other terrorists who were the leadership of the 9/11 attack.
I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, again, over 1 year before 9/11, that Able Danger team attempted on three separate occasions to provide information to the FBI about the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, and on three separate occasions they were denied by lawyers in the previous administration to transfer that information.
Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday on "Meet the Press," Louis Freeh, FBI Director at the time, was interviewed by Tim Russert. The first question to Louis Freeh was in regard to the FBI's ability to ferret out the terrorists. Louis Freeh's response, which can be obtained by anyone in this country as a part of the official record, was, Well, Tim, we are now finding out that a top-secret program of the military called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta over a year before 9/11.
And what Louis Freeh said, Mr. Speaker, is that that kind of actionable data could have allowed us to prevent the hijackings that occurred on September 11.
So now we know, Mr. Speaker, that military intelligence officers working in a program authorized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the general in charge of Special Forces Command, identified Mohammed Atta and three terrorists a year before 9/11, tried to transfer that information to the FBI were denied; and the FBI Director has now said publicly if he would have had that information, the FBI could have used it to perhaps prevent the hijackings that struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the plane that landed in Pennsylvania and perhaps saved 3,000 lives and changed the course of world history.
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because we have been trying to get the story out about Able Danger and what really happened. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I have to rise tonight to tell you that as bad as this story is, and as bad as it is that the data was not transferred to the FBI, and as bad as it is that the 9/11 Commission totally ignored this entire story and referred to it as historically insignificant even though it was authorized by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even though Louis Freeh has now said it could have provided information to prevent the attack against us, the 9/11 Commission ignored it. Not because the commissioners ignored it, but because someone at the staff level on the 9/11 Commission staff decided for whatever reason that they did not want to pursue the Abel Danger story.
Mr. Speaker, in August and September I met with the military officials involved with Abel Danger and one by one they told their story, until, Mr. Speaker, leaders in the Defense Intelligence Agency, including the deputy director, decided they do not want the story told. I think because they perhaps are fearful of being embarrassed and humiliated.
So what direction had they taken, Mr. Speaker?
They have gagged the military officers. They have prevented them from talking to any Member of Congress. They have prevented them from talking to the media. And the Defense Intelligence Agency has began a process to destroy the career and the life of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer.
Now, it might be easy for us to ignore this, Mr. Speaker. We all have busy careers and worry about reelections every 2 years and worry about our own families and our jobs. But I cannot do that in this case and neither can this body, and neither can the other body. You see, Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer took an oath to defend our Constitution. He took the words "duty, honor, country" seriously and devoted 23 years of his life in four deployed intelligence operations of our military to protect America.
During the time he served our country, he has received the Bronze Star, an award that does not come easily, for showing acts of courage, leadership, and bravery in the course of his activities. [*H8980]
He has received public commendations from previous directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency, including General Patrick Hughes, including generals at Special Forces Command, and including Admiral Wilson of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has received dozens of letters and commendations for his work. The laudatory comments I reviewed in his files are unbelievable.
But, you see, Mr. Speaker, there is a problem. The Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was in a meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer almost a year before 9/11, and Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer showed him a disk in his office with information about al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta, and the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency stopped the briefing and said, you cannot show me that. I do not want to see it. It might contain information I cannot look at.
Now, Tony Shaffer was not in the room alone, Mr. Speaker. There were other people, and we know their names. So we have witnesses. Now, the Deputy Director has denied that meeting and denied he was there and denied this particular story, but the fact is he knows that we are going to pursue it.
So what has happened to Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, Mr. Speaker? The Defense Intelligence Agency has lifted his security clearance. One day before he was to testify before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, in uniform, they permanently removed his security clearance. And now our Defense Intelligence Agency has told Colonel Shaffer's lawyer that they plan to seek a permanent removal of his pay and his health care benefits for him and his two children. Why, Mr. Speaker? Because Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, like Commander Scott Philpot of the Navy, like J. D. Smith, and like a host of other Able Danger employees, has told the truth.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I sat here in the 1990s and I sat here during the 9/11 investigation and watched a ridiculous situation develop with Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser under President Clinton. He walked into the National Archives before he was to testify before the 9/11 Commission looking through documents. He took documents out of the archives and stuffed them in his socks and pants so that no one would see them as he left the National Archives. Now, that is a felony, tampering with Federal documents and removing classified information regarding our security and information that the 9/11 commission needed to see.
Sandy Berger initially lied about it. He said he did not do it. Then he admitted it, and he was given a punishment. And, oh, by the way, his security clearance was temporarily lifted, but he will get it back again, for lying, for stealing, and for committing an act of outrage against our country's security. Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, a Bronze Star 23-year military veteran, simply told the truth and now his life is being ruined.
His career is ended. He is no longer in military intelligence. They have taken his security clearance, and they are about to destroy him as a person. They are about to deny him the basic health care and the salary that he has earned, and they are doing it in this way. This is outrageous. It is evil. They do not want to fire Tony because they also do not want him to talk to the media. So by suspending him and removing his pay and his health care, they hurt him bad, but he cannot talk because he is under suspension and his lawyer has advised him that to talk to the media, to talk to Members of Congress, even when he is not being paid, would cause him further problems and totally prevent him from ever having this gross problem reversed. Mr. Speaker, this is outrageous. Mr. Speaker, this is not America.
Over my 19 years in Congress, I have led 40 delegations to the former Soviet Union. I have sat in the face of the Soviet Communists and confronted them on full transparency. I sat at the table with President Lukashenko of Belarus, who has been called by our Secretary of State the last dictator in Europe. I took both delegations to North Korea, Mr. Speaker, and sat across the table from Kim Gye Gwan and I told him we abhor the way they treat their people, the way they lie about what is happening, and the way they distort information.
Mr. Speaker, I took three delegations to Libya to meet with Qadhafi, and I told him that we are absolutely outraged at what Libya did in helping complete the Lockerbie bombing and the bombing of the Berlin nightclub.
You know, Mr. Speaker, I never thought I would have to take the floor of this Chamber and make the same statements about the Defense Intelligence Agency. As a supporter of the President, as a supporter of the military, Mr. Speaker, if we allow this to go forward, then we send the signal to every man and woman wearing a uniform that if you tell the truth, you will be destroyed if a career bureaucrat above you does not like what you are saying. If you tell the truth, we will take your health care benefits away from your kids. If you tell the truth, we will ruin you.
Mr. Speaker, this is not America. Mr. Speaker, this is not what I have been told by Secretary Rumsfeld that we are doing with our troops in protecting them, in giving them the best equipment and the best training. This is not what I spend hours in committee hearings on. This sends the wrong signal to America's troops. It tells them, do not be honest. Do not respect the fact that you have to be truthful. If there is somebody that the truth offends, then you better be silent.
Mr. Speaker, I have today asked for an independent investigation of the Defense Intelligence Agency and their efforts at destroying Tony Shaffer's life. This is outrageous, Mr. Speaker. They trumped up charges against him. They said while he was overseas in Afghanistan, forward deployed, that he forwarded cell phone calls from his official phone to his personal phone; and when they checked that out, it ran up a cost to the taxpayers of about $60. The second verbal charge they gave him was that he went to a course at the Army War College and he got reimbursed for his travel, his mileage and tolls, 100-some dollars. And they said he received a commendation for which he was not entitled, even though it was signed by his commanding officer and the acting Secretary of the Army.
But they went beyond that, Mr. Speaker. They went beyond that with this man. They said he had $2,000 of debt, personal debt. Well, I would like to have every Pentagon employee tomorrow, I would like to have the senior leadership show us what debt they have in the Defense Intelligence Agency so we can make that public.
They even went to this length, Mr. Speaker: the Defense Intelligence Agency wrote in an official document that Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer stole public property. A serious charge. Well, when you check what that public property was, it was an assortment of pens, government pens. But what they did not say in the Defense Intelligence report was that he took those pens when he was 15 years of age and was with his father when he was on assignment at one of our embassy outposts. He took the pens to give to other students at the school when he was 15 years of age. And by the way, Mr. Speaker, it was Tony Shaffer himself who admitted to that thievery when he applied for his security clearance. So the Defense Intelligence Agency knew that during his entire career of 23 years, but they put that in the document against him.
This is a scandal, Mr. Speaker. It is an outrage. It is a travesty. Everyone that worked with Tony Shaffer, the Navy officers, the private citizens have all said the same thing. This is a scandal to get Tony Shaffer because he has told the truth.
Now, this Defense Intelligence Agency and this Deputy Director had the audacity to have their legal counsel send Tony Shaffer's lawyer a letter on September 23. I cannot put that letter in the Record because it is privileged information, but it will eventually come out. But in that letter, in the second to last paragraph, the legal counsel for the Defense Intelligence Agency says to Mr. Shaffer's lawyer, he cannot receive any more classified information from the Defense Intelligence Agency because I checked and his security clearances have all been removed. Therefore, he is not allowed to look at anything that is secret or confidential.
Now, that is a letter sent by the general counsel of the DIA on September 23 of this year. Two weeks later, Mr. Speaker, to show the stupidity of the Defense Intelligence Agency, they send seven packages to Mr. Shaffer's lawyer [*H8981]
of his personal belongings, which the Deputy Director of the DIA told my staff 3 months ago did not exist any more. And in those seven boxes, Mr. Speaker, were five classified memos. The Defense Intelligence Agency sent five classified memos to Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, which they told him on September 23 he was not allowed to have access to.
Mr. Speaker, that is a felony; and I have asked the Inspector General and the legal officials to investigate and prosecute the Defense Intelligence officials who sent five classified documents through the mail or by hand delivery to Tony Shaffer.
In addition, Mr. Speaker, the Defense Intelligence Agency, in its absolute total stupidity, included in those boxes $500 worth of Federal property, including a multi-hundred dollar GPS system owned by the Federal Government, which they sent to Tony Shaffer, I guess to keep. They also sent, Mr. Speaker, 25 pens, brand new, and marked on them is "Property of the U.S. Government." The Defense Intelligence Agency, in its absolute utter stupidity, sent Tony Shaffer Federal property which they accused him of taking when he was 15 years of age.
Mr. Speaker, there is something desperately wrong here. There is a bureaucracy in the Defense Intelligence Agency that is out of control. They want to destroy the reputation of a 23-year military officer, Bronze Star recipient, hero of our country, with two kids because people in defense intelligence are embarrassed at what is going to come out.
And what is going to come out, Mr. Speaker? Well, we are going to find out, Mr. Speaker, that that unit, Able Danger, not only identified Mohammed Atta before 9/11, not only did they try to pass that information to the FBI, not only was that large data destroyed in the summer of 2000, but now, Mr. Speaker, I can add a new dimension to this whole story. Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I met with another Able Danger official. I was not aware of this official's knowledge because he does not live within the Beltway.
This official, Mr. Speaker, has impeccable credentials. I cannot reveal his name today. I will to any Member of this body, any of our colleagues that want to come to me, I will tell you privately who this official is, and you will agree with me when I tell you his name that he has impeccable credentials. This official yesterday, Mr. Speaker, in a meeting in my office, told me that he has never been talked to by the Pentagon. He has never been talked to by the Defense Intelligence Agency in their supposed investigation. He has never been talked to by the 9/11 Commission staff in their investigation; yet this official had a leadership position in Able Danger.
This official told me that there is a separate cache of information collected from over 20 Federal agencies in 1999 and 2000 on Able Danger that still may exist. Now, the Pentagon has told us all this material was destroyed, and now I have a senior official telling me there is a second pot of information that may well still exist.
Furthermore, at the hearing over in the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, when Senator Specter asked why this data was destroyed, the witness who destroyed the data said, well, I was told that we could not keep this data for more than 90 days because it might involve information that contains U.S. persons, so we had to destroy it.
Well, I found out that is not the story. The reason the data was destroyed was because Special Forces Command asked the Army for that data and within a matter of days, that data was destroyed so the Army would not pass it to Special Forces Command. Yet there still is, was and I hope still is a massive pot of data.
But furthermore, that official that I talked to yesterday will also say that there was no 90-day requirement, as was testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He said on a regular basis they kept information from Able Danger data mining for months and months and months. In fact, he will say he had a discussion with a lawyer in DOD named Schiffren who told him do not worry about it, just fill out a document, sign your name that you need it, put it in the box, and you can keep it as long as you want.
Mr. Speaker, that is entirely contradictory to what the Defense Intelligence Agency has been telling us, to what DOD has been telling us. Now we have someone who is willing to come forward and say that 90-day period is not real, they kept Able Danger information for months and months and months.
Mr. Speaker, there is something desperately wrong here. A sitting President of the United States resigned his position because he tried to cover up a third-rate burglary when some low-level operatives from the Republican committee to reelect him broke into the Democrat headquarters in Washington, D.C. No one was killed. No money was stolen. No State secrets were stolen. It was a third-rate burglary, but it caused the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the deaths of 3,000 Americans.
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about 2.5 terabytes of data about al Qaeda. That is equal to one-fourth of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Mohammed Atta and three of the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about military intelligence officers, including an Annapolis graduate who will command one of our destroyers in January of 2006 who risked his entire career to state on the record I will swear until I die that I saw Mohammed Atta's face every day starting in January of 2000, a year and a half before 9/11.
Mr. Speaker, this is not somebody off the street, this is a graduate of Annapolis, a 23-year Naval officer who will command one of our destroyers in January who is agreeing with Lieutenant Shaffer. We have three other people who have testified under oath that they saw the same photograph, and the person I met yesterday will testify that he had the name of a Mohammed Atta before 9/11 but not the face.
Mr. Speaker, this is not some third-rate burglary coverup. This is not some Watergate incident. This is an attempt to prevent the American people from knowing the facts about how we could have prevented 9/11 and people are covering it up today. They are ruining the career of a military officer to do it and we cannot let it stand. I do not care whether you are Democrat or Republican, you cannot let a lieutenant colonel's career be ruined because of some bureaucrat in the Defense Intelligence Agency. If we let that happen, then no one who wears the uniform will ever feel protected because we will have let them down. Anyone who wears the uniform of this country who is serving today expects us to back him or her up and that is not happening. We are seeing lying, distortion.
Mr. Speaker, do you know, Wolf Blitzer on CNN told my staff that a Department of Defense employee told him that Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer was having an affair with one of my employees. How low can we go, Mr. Speaker? How low can we go to allow this Defense Department to try to ruin the reputation and the personal life of a lieutenant colonel with a Bronze Star? To Wolf Blitzer, Mr. Speaker.
We need to know the name of that defense official who told Wolf Blitzer who told my staff, and he is not the only one. I have other media people who will come forward in this grand effort to destroy the reputation of a uniformed military officer, to create scandalous accusations. He does not even know my staff, to accuse him of stealing pens when he was 15, to take away his health care benefits for his two kids because he is telling the truth.
What do we stand for if not the truth? Is it more important that we be politically correct? Is it more important that I not rock the boat because my party is in the White House, because I campaigned for Bush, and support Don Rumsfeld. Is that more important? If that is more important, I do not want to be here. I will leave. I will leave my post, but I will not do it until we get justice for this man and for these people who the 9/11 Commission called historically insignificant.
Mr. Speaker, there is something wrong inside the Beltway.
Mr. Speaker, there is something desperately wrong when a military officer risks his life in Afghanistan time and again, embedded with our troops under [*H8982]
an assumed name with a false beard and a false identity, forward deployed with our troops, gets castigated, gets ridiculed, gets some low life scum at the Pentagon spreading malicious lies about this individual, and then say to his lawyer, we are going to take away his health care benefits, we are going to take away his salary.
Mr. Speaker, if we allow this to stand as Democrats and Republicans, then none of us deserve to be here. When we all go overseas and meet the troops, we tell them how proud we are of them. We provide funding for them. We give them training and take care of their families. What we are allowing to happen right now is the Defense Intelligence Agency to ruin the career and the life of a man who spent 23 years protecting his Nation. If Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer was telling this story alone in a vacuum, that would be one thing. But he has been corroborated over and over again. I have met with at least 10 people who fully corroborate what Tony Shaffer says. Those meetings with the FBI, the FBI employee still works there and she told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, I set those meetings up with the FBI to transfer information about al Qaeda and Able Danger. So she is still there and she testified.
What we have here, I am convinced of this now, is an aggressive attempt by CIA management to cover up their own shortcomings in not being able to do what the Able Danger team did: They identified Mohammed Atta and the al Qaeda cell of Brooklyn 1 year before 9/11. But even before that, as the story unfolds, you are going to hear the story that they also identified the threat to the USS Cole 2 weeks before the attack, and 2 days before the attack were screaming not to let the USS Cole come into the harbor at Yemen because they knew something was about to happen.
Mr. Speaker, bad news never comes easy; but in a democracy, the bad news has to come out so we can make sure it does not happen again.
Mr. Speaker, this whole thing started, not to embarrass anyone, this whole thing started because none of us knew that Mohammed Atta was identified before 9/11. It started because this Congress, this body in particular, tried to establish what is now in place back in 1999, a national collaborative center, but the CIA said we did not need it. The American people deserve to have the answers here. They deserve to know why 3,000 people died. They deserve to know what we could have done and should have done to better prepare ourselves and to work to prepare for the next incident. The American people need to know where those multiple terabytes of data is. Is it still being used? We know in January of 2001, General Shelton was given a 3-hour briefing on Able Danger. So even if they destroyed the data back in the summer of 2000, in January of 2001 there was enough material to give General Shelton, Commander of the Joint Chiefs, a 3-hour briefing.
Mr. Speaker, there is something here. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is something desperately wrong, Mr. Speaker. There is something outrageous at work here. This is not a third-rate burglary of a political campaign headquarters. This involved what is right now the covering up of information that led to the deaths of 3,000 people, changed the course of history, led to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has disrupted our country, our economy and people's lives.
Mr. Speaker, we could ignore this. I cannot. If it means I have to resign from this body, I will resign. I will not allow, after 19 years in this body and as a vice chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, bureaucrats in the Defense Intelligence Agency to concoct stories, to talk about the theft of pens when this lieutenant colonel was 15 years old, to talk about this man's personal debt of $2,000. I would hate to check the indebtedness of Members of Congress. I know mine is more than $2,000.
Mr. Speaker, this is not America. I had a group of college students down from Drexel University. There were about 20 of them, including representative students from eight other nations. We talked about this. Of course we have talked about all of the problem countries in the world. We talk about our values as a Nation, the need for a democracy to have people involved, to have transparency, to have people who respect the rule of law and the Constitution.
How do I tell them that is what is working here, Mr. Speaker, when the Pentagon says that these people who simply want to tell the truth are not allowed? They are saying it is for classified purposes, yet the DOD lawyer on the Senate side there is nothing classified about any of the information. It is not about classified programs. I would be the last to want to see anything classified revealed. I have seen many, many instances where I have been given sensitive information that only a few people in the Congress and the country had. I would never reveal it. It is not about that. This is not about the DIA, this is not about the CIA, this is about CYA. It is about CYA by bureaucrats in the Defense Intelligence Agency and possibly some political operatives that do not want the facts to come out about Able Danger and the information that the Able Danger team put together. And in the process, they are going to destroy a man, a man who has been recognized by his country, who has a family, and who simply wants to do the right thing.
Mr. Speaker, I hated to take the floor tonight, but I did not know what else to do. We have committees of Congress working on this. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), chairman of the FBI Appropriation Committee on Oversight. He is as outraged as I am. I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), who is looking at this, and the gentleman from California (Chairman Hunter). The Committee on Armed Services has a full-time staffer assigned to get to the facts of this. I want to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. King), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, because he is looking at this. I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Hoekstra) and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He has met with Tony Shaffer and has offered to get more information. I want to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for standing up and beginning to ask questions, and I want to thank Senator Specter and Senator Biden, who attended a Committee on the Judiciary hearing and expressed their outrage. I want to thank Senator Sessions, Senator Kyl, and Senator Grassley, who were all there. In fact, Senator Grassley called it a coverup.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you the number of Members who have come to me and said this is unacceptable. I would hope that as a result of what we have heard tonight every Member of Congress will ask for an inquiry. The gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney) wrote a letter to the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services asking for an investigation. We have from Republicans to Democrats, left to right, conservatives to liberals. What is happening here is unacceptable. It is unimaginable. It is un-American. All over the world tonight, young Americans are wearing our uniforms. They are doing a great job. They make us all proud when we travel overseas. They make us proud because of the pride they have. When I talk to them, they say I am glad to be doing what I am doing. I am doing the right thing for our country. I will go any place the Commander in Chief sends me. Whether I am in Afghanistan or Iraq, they will tell me that.
Whether we are in Kosovo or Somalia, they will tell us that. Whether we are at Hurricane Katrina, whether we are at Hurricane Andrew, or whether we are out in California, the earthquake, or the Midwestern floods, our troops are all the same. They respect our country. They respect our Constitution. If we allow this travesty to continue, Mr. Speaker, then we have let all of those people down for some nameless, faceless bureaucrat who is fearful that the information will finally come to light, that the DIA just did not get it.
Back in 1999 and 2000, they did not have a clue. They had millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, and could not do what a 20-member team did in being able to identify Mohammed Atta before the 9/11 attacks. DIA does not want that to come out, Mr. Speaker. They do not want that to come out. Heaven forbid the Defense Intelligence Agency, with hundreds of millions of dollars, would have a 20-member team do what they could not [*H8983]
do because they were using new technology and new software. They do not want that to come out. That is why that Deputy Director, when he was at that meeting, said, I do not want to see this. Do not show it to me. And that is why today that Deputy Director is trying to ruin the career of Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer.
The only way to resolve this, Mr. Speaker, is to have a full independent investigation by the Inspector General of the Pentagon. I have asked Secretary Rumsfeld today to do that. I would ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in that request. Let the independent inspector for the Pentagon go in, not DIA. DIA cannot investigate itself. It does not have the capability to do that. It does not have the integrity to do that. Let the Inspector General do the investigation and while that is being done, protect Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer. He does not deserve to have his career ruined or destroyed for telling the truth.
And while we are at it, Mr. Speaker, if DIA is going to continue to press this ridiculous set of facts, then as I said earlier, I want DIA prosecuted for the five felonies they committed in sending classified documents to a person that 2 weeks earlier they said was incapable of receiving classified information. And if this continues, I want DIA held responsible for illegally transferring $500 of public assets to a person, that in the process of sending that stuff to him, DIA committed fraud against the taxpayers. I want them held accountable: DIA's stupidity; DIA's incompetence.
We have a new nominee for the head of DIA, and I am going to ask every Senator to fully explore each of these issues before that person is confirmed. I will meet with every Senator personally and go over all of this information. And I would encourage the Senators and the House Members to interview the other people who worked with Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer and to get their assessments of what is going on there. They will all tell them the same thing: Shaffer is being abused and used as a scapegoat. If they can ruin Shaffer, they can silence the story.
It cannot happen, Mr. Speaker. We cannot let it. That is not what America is about. That is not what we say to our enlisted personnel when they sign up for duty. That is not what we say when we pass our defense bills every year.
This man is being maligned and mistreated. He is being harassed. The most scurrilous accusations, totally unfounded, have been given to the American media; and I will name names, and I will ask for an investigation of the people who made those statements to these media people because it all needs to be put on the record.
And as someone tomorrow who will chair another hearing on our defense oversight to try to get the best value for the dollars for our military, I ask all of our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, on both sides of the aisle to join us. This is not Republicans or Democrats. It is about what is fundamental to this country. I would ask our constituents across America we represent to join us, to express their outrage, to e-mail, make phone calls, write letters to the Secretary of Defense, the President of the United States, to Members of Congress to simply let the story be told. Let the Able Danger story finally come out to the American people. Let them understand what really happened. Let Scott Philpott talk. Let Tony Shaffer talk. Let the others who have been silenced have a chance to tell their story to Congress and openly to the American people. In the end, the country will be stronger.
SUBJECT: TERRORISM (92%); ARMIES (78%); ARMED FORCES (62%);
LOAD-DATE: October 20, 2005 |
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Here is another Weldon speech in Congress where he puts into the record actual letters of his efforts to get a collaborative system in place and the reponses he received from various agencies.
| Quote: | 151 Cong Rec H 5243, *
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- HOUSE
Monday, June 27, 2005
109th Congress, 1st Session
151 Cong Rec H 5243
REFERENCE: Vol. 151, No. 87
SECTION: House
TITLE: U.S. INTELLIGENCE
SPEAKER: Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania
TEXT: [*H5243]
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McHenry). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 44 minutes. [*H5244]
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania . Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to discuss for the next 45 minutes the most important topic that will allow us to protect the homeland, provide for the security of the American people and our allies and our troops around the world: our intelligence.
Last Thursday, Mr. Speaker, I had a meeting with the very able and distinguished chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra). We discussed many things, one of which was a source that I had hoped that we could get some information to assist us in understanding the threats in Iraq and the Middle East, and especially in regard to Iran.
I said to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), I am going to make a prediction to you. Based on my source, I said, common wisdom tells us that the winner of the election in Iran that will take place on Friday and Saturday our time will probably be Rafsanjani. He is the name that most pundits have said would be the likely winner in a two-person runoff against the more conservative and not well-known mayor of Tehran. But I said to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), based on information we had, the election was not going to be close; it will be a landslide. But the conservative mayor of Tehran, a relative unknown, had been anointed by Ayatollah Homeni in Iran and he would in fact win the Iranian election.
We all saw the results, Mr. Speaker, on Saturday night and Sunday morning as, in fact, the mayor of Tehran won the election with a margin of 62 to 38 percent, an overwhelming landslide. I raise this issue, Mr. Speaker, because good intelligence and good information is the most critical tool that we can have over the next several years and decades to protect our homeland.
Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in in New York City, along with two of the other terrorists.
I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal agency to proceed.
Mr. Speaker, what this now means is that prior to September 11, we had employees of the Federal Government in one of our agencies who actually identified the Mohamed Atta cell and made a specific recommendation to act on that cell, but were denied the ability to go forward. Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America.
Tonight, I am going to provide some background to my colleagues, because I think this represents a major problem with our intelligence that needs to be focused on by the committees of the House and the Senate, by the leadership of the House and the Senate, by John Negroponte, the new person assigned by President Bush, and a very able man, to integrate the 33 classified systems overseen by the 15 Federal agencies.
I want to also start off by praising Porter Goss, the director of the CIA. Porter served us extremely well in this body as the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and he went over to the CIA with an aggressive agenda to change that agency, and he has begun that process. We, in this body, need to rally the American people to support the efforts brought forward by Porter Goss and to allow John Negroponte to undertake perhaps the most difficult task in protecting the security of America, a task that will not be easy, given the history of our Federal agency system.
Let me take my colleagues back, Mr. Speaker, to 1999. It was, in fact, the spring of 1999 when I was first involved in taking a delegation of 10 Members of Congress to Vienna with the support of my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), and with the support of the Clinton State Department.
The 11-member delegation of five Democrats, five Republicans and myself, along with the State Department employee, traveled to Vienna to meet with five senior leaders of the Russian political parties. Our purpose was to try to reach a framework that could allow for a peaceful resolution of the war in Kosovo on the terms that the U.S. had desired after Ramboullet.
After securing a military plane, my Russian friends told me they were bringing a Serb along with them, a Serb who would be able to understand what we were talking about and help us decide and determine whether or not Milosevic back in Belgrade would accept any recommendations that we would develop. I did not know anything about the Serb. I knew the Russians. But I figure I had better ask the CIA what they knew about this Serb so I could be better prepared, and to make sure that the Serb was not a part of the Milosevic regime, because that would cause myself and my colleagues to be in violation of the Hobbs Act because we were at war with Serbia at that time.
So I called George Tenet. I said, Director Tenet, can you give me some information about this Serb? His family is evidently well known. I need to know whether or not he is a part of the Milosevic regime. I need to know any other information you can provide to me because we are going to meet with him when we travel to Vienna to meet with the Russian leaders to help provide a beginning of a solution to end the war in Kosovo.
He called me back the next day and he gave me a couple of sentences and said not to worry, he was not a part of the Milosevic regime. And he had strong ties to the Communist Party inside of Moscow and had ties to other leaders in the Russian Government. It was not much to go on.
But at the time, Mr. Speaker, I was chairman of the Defense Research Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. My job was to oversee the funding, approximately $40 billion of defense research money on new systems and new technologies. And one of the most striking technologies was the work being done by the Army's Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, formerly known as the LIWA, the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center. I had visited the LIWA several times and was tremendously impressed with not just the ability to provide security for our Army classified systems, but I saw a unique approach to doing well beyond that, data mining, data collaboration, using cutting-edge software tools like Starlight and Spires, able to do profiling. Having plussed-up funding for this facility after talking to George Tenet, I called my friends at the Army's Information Dominance Center and said, can you do something for me as a favor, off the record? And they said sure, Congressman, whatever you like. Would you run me a profile of this Serb, for the same reason I had asked the Director of the CIA. They said, no problem, Congressman; we will get back to you in a few hours. And they did. They gave me 10 pages of information, Mr. Speaker, about the Serb and his ties. Now, the information was not vetted but it was from a number of sources that the Information Dominance Center was able to pull together very quickly. I used that information as we traveled to Vienna to understand who we were meeting with. We had those meetings for 2 days and my colleagues, my five Republican and five Democrat colleagues, worked aggressively to establish a framework that would begin the end of the Kosovo war. In fact, it was historic.
When we returned to Washington several weeks later I was contacted by the FBI and they said, Congressman, we would like to debrief you. We would like you to tell us what you know about that Serb that you all met in Vienna. I said, no problem, I will be happy to do it Monday afternoon in my office. The Friday before the Monday, my D.C. office paged me with a 911 page. When I called them they said, you have got to call CIA Congressional Affairs immediately, which I did. CIA [*H5245]
Congressional Affairs said, Congressman Weldon, we are going to fly two agents to Philadelphia this evening. They will meet you at the airport, at a hotel, at your home, wherever you want to meet them. And I said, I am sorry, I cannot do it. It is a weekend. It is a Friday night. I have got events already planned. What is the urgency of this meeting? And the CIA Congressional Affairs person said well, Congressman, we have been tasked by the State Department to brief our Ambassador, who is negotiating the final terms to end the war in Kosovo, and he needs to know something about this Serb that you met in Vienna. I said, well, the FBI has already called me for that. Can we not do it together? And finally, after pushing back for 10, 15 minutes, the CIA agreed. And so on Monday afternoon in my office I hosted four agents, two FBI and two CIA. These agents asked me four pages of questions about the Serb that I had met with along with our colleagues in the House.
When I finished answering all their questions and giving them all of the information I had, I said to them, now you know where I got my data from, right? And they said, well, you got it from the Russians. I said, no. Well, you got it from the Serb. I said, no. I said, before I left Washington, before I left my office, I called the Army's Information Dominance Center and asked them to do me a favor. They ran a profile and gave me 10 pages. The CIA rep and the FBI rep said, what is the Army's Information Dominance Center, congressman?
It was then, Mr. Speaker, that I knew we had a problem; that our intelligence systems were not linked together, that the stovepipes were so great that we would never be able to deal with emerging transnational terrorist threats. So beginning in the spring of 1999, I began a process working with the Army, and their subgroup working with them, Special Forces Command down in Florida, which had a similar capability to develop a national prototype, a prototype that could be providing support for the President, the National Security Adviser, and all of our policymakers. In fact, working together over a multiweek period, we came up with a plan, a document. And Mr. Speaker, I would like to place this document in the Record at this point in time.
National Operations and Analysis Hub: NOAH
Policy makers' tool for acting against emerging transnational threats and dangers to U.S. national security.
Policy makers need better decision support tools.
Policy makers continue to work in a vacuum. Briefings and testimonies are the primary vehicles for transmitting information to leadership.
The volume of information germane to national issues is expanding so rapidly that policy makers are overwhelmed with data.
Policy makers need robust situational awareness over growing asymmetric threats to national security.
Policy makers need an overarching information and intelligence architecture that will quickly assimilate, analyze and display assessments and recommended course of action from many national agencies simultaneously.
Policy makers need tools to aid them in developing courses of action against threats to U.S. policy, interests, or security.
Policy makers need virtual communications with one another.
White House, Congress, Pentagon and at the agency levels should each have centers they can go to and receive, send, share, discuss, and collaborate on assessments before they act.
National Level Collaboration Solution: NOAH, National Operations and Analysis Hub.
Tasks supported by NOAH's overarching collaborative environment:
Provide Multi Issue, Multi-agency Hybrid Picture to White House Situation Room, JCS;
HUMINT Support;
Peackeeping Missions;
Humanitarian Aid;
Battle Damage Assessment;
Develop and Leverage new Technologies of important to national security;
Support Congressional Committees/Hearings;
Apply Analysis of Foreign Threat to Policy;
Provide Hybrid Situational Awareness Picture of the Threat;
Incorprote Industrial Efforts of Interests to the Policy Maker;
Link academia directly to policy maker; and
National Emergencies.
NOAH can leverage existing networks to address diverse issues:
NOAH's Hub Center if linked to other agency centers electronically;
Each key agency must prossess a Pod Site and be connected to the NOAH network;
The Pod can consist of a large screen and appropriate connect for collaboration. Operations Centers can simply be converted into NOAH;
National Policy makers cannot control agency Pods, agencies must post replicated data on the NOAH system so that sister groups can access data;
Support multi-level security requirements and can sanitize and "push" data to many types of users to many levels;
NOAH can address National, law enforcement and military needs. The situation will determine the mission;
Ties policy maker, military and law enforcement together;
Goals of the NOAH Hub Center is to apply agency operations, strategies analysis, tactical assessments to a course of action for the policy maker; and
Optimizes group of expertise within each organization_experts always on hand regardless of issue.
NOAH and Pod Site Network:
Part of national policy creation and execution system;
Will existing sites and connectivities where available;
Will share tools available at LIWA IDC so every agency has same tools;
All agencies will post data on NRO highway in a replicated format sensitive to classification;
NOAH's Global Network will use NRO System as backbone;
All centers connect to other centers electronically; and
Mechanism for gathering, analyzing, displaying, tailoring, and disseminating all kinds of information quickly at the national level.
Overview_National Operations and Analysis Hub:
Center dedicated to National Policy Makers at White House, Congress and National Agencies;
Provides system of system advanced technological communications environment to harvest, analyze, display data as needed;
Coordinate and synchronize information among IC, S&T centers, military services;
Provide near real time situational awareness at the national level;
Link virtually via a pod site to every participating member agency; and
Pod sites designed to pull together agency resources on single system of systems.
NOAH's is staffed by members from participating agencies. The staff has a 24 x 7, high bandwidth, virtual connectivity to experts at agency Pod Sites. This provides decision makers with real-time situational awareness of adversary picture and courses.
Steps to Achieve NOAH Capability:
Establish baseline capability by building initial Hub Center and congressional virtual hearing room. Equip White House Situation Room to Collaborate with these sites;
Staff the Hub Center with two reps from each of the 28 key participating agencies;
Link up NOAH internal and external collaborative environment;
Hook in Back up Site for redundancy and begin training on collaborative tools;
Build the 28 Key Agency Pod Sites along model of the Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, VA;
Link all Pod Sites to NOAH hub center establish Protocols for Inter-agency data sharing;
Exercise live ability to retrieve, collate, analyze, display disparate data and provide policy makers course of action analysis at the NOAH Hub Center; and
Refine procedures and Protocols.
Agencies Represented in the National Collaborative Center:
Central Intelligence Agency; Defense Intelligence Agency; National Imagery and Mapping Agency; National Security Agency; National Reconnaissance Office; Defense Threat Reduction Agency; Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army/LIWA; Air Force; Navy; Marine Corps; Joint Counter-Intelligence Assessment Group; ONDCP; and FBI.
Drug Enforcement Agency; U.S. Customs; National Criminal Investigative Service; National Infrastructure Protection Center; Defense Information Systems Agency; State Department; Five CINCs; Department of Energy; Department of Commerce; Department of the Treasury; Justice Department; Office of the Secretary of Defense; National Military Command Center; and National Joint Military Intelligence Command.
Elements to be connected to the national collaborative center would include the White House Situation Room, a Congressional Virtual Hearing Room and a possible redundant, or back-up site.
This document, as you can see, Mr. Speaker, is entitled the NOAH, National Operations and Analysis Hub, Policy Makers' Tool for Acting Against Emerging Transnational Threats and Dangers to U.S. National Security. This 9-page briefing, Mr. Speaker, was put together in the spring of 1999.
I asked the Deputy Secretary of Defense, John Hamre, to take a look at this capability. He went down to the LIWA and he came back and he said, Congressman, you are right. I agree with you. This capability is amazing. It offers unlimited potential. How about sending me a letter describing your interest, Congressman? [*H5246]
So on July 30, 1999, I sent this 3-page letter to Deputy Secretary John Hamre, Deputy Secretary of Defense, at his request, talking about creating an integrated collaborative center for all of our intelligence. I would like to place this letter in the Record at this point in time, Mr. Speaker
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, July 30, 1999.
Hon. John Hamre,
Deputy Secretary of Defense,
The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
Dear Dr. Hamre: I believe the time has come to create a central national level entity that can acquire, fuse and anaylze disparate data from many agencies in order to support the policy maker in taking action against threats from terrorism, proliferation, illegal technology diversions, espionage, narcotics, information warfare and cyberterrorism. These challenges are beginning to overlap, thereby blurring their distinction while posing increasing threats to our Nation.
Before we take action to counter these emerging threats, we must first understand their relationship to one another, their patterns, the people and countries involved, and the level of danger posed to our Nation. The Department of Defense has a unique opportunity to create a centralized national center that can do this for the country. It would be patterned after the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) at Fort Belvoir, but would operate on a much broader scale. This entity would allow for near-time information and analysis to flow to a central fusion center, which I would designate the National Operations Analysis Hub (NOAH). I think this title is fitting, as NOAH will provide a central hub built to protect our nation from the flood of threats.
NOAH would be comprised of a system of agency-specified mini-centers, or "pods" of participating agencies and services associated with growing national security concerns (attachment 1). NOAH would link the policymaker with action recommendations derived from fused information provided by the individual pods. NOAH would provide the automation and connectivity to allow the pods to talk together, share data and perspectives on a given situation in a near real-time, computer-based environment.
The NOAH center in the Office of the Secretary of Defense would be comprised of representatives from an initial cluster of pod sites to include: CIA, DIA, National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NlMA), NSA, NRO, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTSA), JCS, Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, ONDCP, FBI, DEA, Customs, National Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), National Infrastructure Protection Center. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), State, the five CINCS, DOE, INS, Commerce. Treasury.
Elements which would be connected into NOAH would include the White House Situation Room, a Congressional Virtual Hearing Room and a possible redundant (back up) site.
The benefits of creating a NOAH include:
For national policy makers, a national collaborative, environment offers situations updates across a variety of issues and offers suggested courses of action, based on analysis, to help government officials make more informed decisions.
For the Intelligence Community, a national collaborative environment will help end stovepiping and create more robust strategic analyses as well as near real-time support to field operations.
For military commanders and planners, a national collaborative environment offers full battlefield visualization, threat profiling, robust situational awareness, as well as near real-timer support to special missions such as peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, national emergencies or special operations.
For law enforcement, a national collaborative environment provides investigative and threat profiling support, and field station situational awareness.
Along with its system of connected agency pod sites, NOAH would permit the display of collaborative threat profiling and analytical assessments on a large screen. It would be a national level operations and control center with a mission to intergrate various imagery, data and analytical viewpoints for decision-makers in support of national actions. I see NOAH as going beyond the capability of the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and the National Joint Military Intelligence Command (NJMIC), providing recommended courses of action that allow us to effectively meet those emerging challenges from asymmetrical threats in near real-time. Given its mission, I believe that NOAH should reside in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Attachment 2).
I am aware of the initiative to link counterintelligence groups throughout the community. I am also aware of the counterterrorism center at the CIA, the new National Infrastructure Protection Center at the FBI, and a new HUMINT special operations center. I have heard of an attempt to connect the Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and OSD assets with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. I also have seen what the Army has done at LIWA, which has created a foundation for creating a higher-level architecture collaborating all of these efforts. Each of these independent efforts needs to be coordinated at the national level. I believe LIWA has created a model that should be used as a basis for creating the participating agency pod sites.
I do not expect that establishment of NOAH should exceed $10 million. Each agency involved could set up its own pod to connect with the central NOAH site or to exchange data with any of its participants. Each agency could dedicate monies to establish their own pod site, while the $50 million available in DARPA for related work could be used to establish the NOAH structure immediately.
The NOAH concept of a national collaborative environment supporting policy and decision-makers mirrors the ideas you have expressed to me in recent discussions, and it is a tangible way to confront the growing assymetrical threats to our nation. I have a number of ideas regarding staffing options and industry collaboration, and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss them with you. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Curt Weldon,
Member of Congress.
Secretary Hamre was interested and he told me, Congressman, I will even pay the bill. The Defense Department will provide the funding for this. And I do not care where they put it, Congressman. It could be at the White House, it could be at the NSC, wherever it is most appropriate, but I will pay the bill. But, Congressman, the problem is not with me or the money. You have got to convince the CIA and the FBI that this is something they want to pursue.
In fact, he wrote me a letter, Mr. Speaker, dated October 21, 1999: "Dear Congressman Weldon, I wholeheartedly agree that combating asymmetrical threats challenging national security requires a collaborative interagency approach as suggested in your concept of the National Operations Analysis Hub. We are actively engaged in assessing how the department should leverage ongoing activities and develop a long-term strategy along these lines. I will keep you apprised of our progress. I would be happy to meet with you on the subject."
And then he puts a personal comment on the note that I will read. "Sir, this is a mealy-mouth response because no one wants to commit to a LIWA-based solution. You know I am very impressed by LIWA and see them involved in a range of activities. I would like to get together with you to review some of our thinking when you have time. John."
Mr. Speaker, I would like to place this in the Record.
Deputy Secretary of Defense,
Washington, DC, October 21, 1999.
Hon. Curt Weldon,
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Congressman Weldon: I wholeheartedly agree that combatting the asymmetrical threats challenging National Security requires a collaborative, inter-agency approach, as suggested in your concept of the National Operations Analysis Hub. We are actively engaged in assessing how the Department should leverage ongoing activities and develop a long-term strategy along these lines.
I will keep you apprised of our progress, and I would be happy to meet with you on this subject.
Sincerely,
John J. Harme.
Mr. Speaker, that was in October of 1999 at John Hamre's suggestion on November 4 of 1999, almost 2 years before 9/11. I had John Hamre and the representatives of the CIA and the FBI in my office. And at John Hamre's suggestion, we went through the 9-page briefing to create an overarching national collaborative center. When I finished the briefing which had been prepared for me with our intelligence officials off the record, the CIA said, Congressman Weldon, that is all well and good, but we really do not need that capability. It is not necessary. We are doing something called CI-21; and, therefore, we do not need to pursue that multi-system approach that you have outlined where we bring in all of these other classified systems.
I was very unhappy with that response because I knew full well the Army and our special forces commands were using that capability at that very moment in a special project against al Qaeda.
So, Mr. Speaker, in 1999 and in 2000 and in 2001, I put language in each of our defense bills calling for the creation of a national collaborative center to bring together our disparate intelligence capabilities and systems for 3 consecutive years. And, in fact, one of [*H5247]
those bills required a response by the CIA as to why this system had not been put into place.
But in the meantime, on November 12, 1999, the Defense Information and Electronics Report published an article about the need for a massive intelligence network for shared threat information. On April of 2000, Signal Magazine did another story on a fusion center concept taking root as we kept pushing this process.
Mr. Speaker, the following are both of these articles:
[Nov. 12, 1997]
Defense Information and Electronics Report
WELDON: DOD NEEDS MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE NETWORK FOR SHARED THREAT INFORMATION
Senior Pentagon officials are mulling over an idea proposed by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) that would link classified and unclassified documents in a massive intelligence clearinghouse that could be accessed by 33 federal agencies_a concept similar in some ways to one floated by DOD intelligence officials but with significantly fewer players involved.
"Our problem with intelligence is that we're stove-pipped," said Weldon, chairman of the House Armed Services military research and development subcommittee, during a Nov. 8 interview. "Each agency has its own way of collecting data and analyzing it, but they don't share that information with other agencies. The need is to have a better system of analyzing and fusing data sets across agencies and services_certainly within the Pentagon and the military, but my opinion is that we have to go further than that."
Weldon first proposed the concept of a "National Operations Analysis Hub" to Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre last July, although the congressman said he kept his initiative quiet until a stronger plan could be developed.
The Pentagon-funded network of agencies would be operated by DOD. According to Weldon, it would pull together large amounts of information to produce intelligence profiles of people, regions and national security threats, such as information warfare and cyber-terrorism.
"The NOAH concept of a national collaborative environment supporting policy and decision-makers mirrors the ideas you have expressed to me in recent discussions, and it is a tangible way to confront the growing asymmetrical threats to our nation." Weldon wrote in his July 30 letter to Hamre.
The NOAH concept, however, was not wholeheartedly embraced by Hamre, who met with Weldon last summer and told the congressman his suggested use of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity at Ft. Belvoir, VA, as a model for NOAH, would never stick.
Because LIWA is already short of resources, the Army is apprehensive about taking on any new tasks, Hamre told Weldon.
Weldon, in a July 21 letter to Hamre, also urged the Pentagon to support additional future funding for LIWA, citing critical budget shortfalls that he said have kept the agency from fulfilling a barrage of requests for intelligence files from Army commanders (Defense Information and Electronics Report, July 30, p1).
"There's massive amounts of data out there, and you have to be able to analyze it and create ways to focus on that data so its relevant to whatever you're interested in," he said this week about his support for LIWA. "Well the Army has already done that."
While Weldon continues to push for NOAH to be patterned after LIWA, he sees it operating on a much larger scale. Impressed by its ability to pull together huge amounts of both unclassified and classified data, Weldon noted LIWA's Information Dominance Center can create in-depth profiles that could be useful to the CIA, FBI and the White House. Yet most federal agencies don't even know LIWA exists, he added.
"Right now the military is limited to [its] own sources of information," Weldon said. "And in the 21st century, a terrorist group is more than likely going to be involved with terrorist nations. So the boundaries are crossed all the time. We don't have any way to share that and get beyond the stove-pipping."
Meanwhile, officials within the Defense Department's intelligence community have been considering another way to amass intelligence information through a concept called the Joint Counter-intelligence Assessment Group. A DOD spokeswoman said proponents of the idea, for now, are unwilling to disclose details about it. She was also unable to say whether a formal proposal to Hamre had been made yet.
In Weldon's July 30 letter to Hamre, however, Weldon alludes to an ongoing "initiative to link counterintelligence groups throughout the community."
"I have heard of an attempt to connect the Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and [Office of the Secretary of Defense] assets with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies," Weldon wrote. However, Weldon said in the interview he believes JCAG is simply more "stove-pipping."
"I also have seen what the Army has done at LIWA, which has created a foundation for creating a higher-level architecture collaborating all of these efforts," his July letter states.
NOAH would link together almost every federal agency with intelligence capabilities, including the National Security Agency, the Nation Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Energy Department, the CIA and the FBI. Both Congress and the White House would be offered a "node" for briefing capabilities, meaning intelligence agencies could detail situations on terrorist attacks or wartime scenarios.
"It's mainly for policymakers, the White House decision makers, the State Department, military, and military leaders," he said.
Although information sharing among the intelligence community has yet to be formalized through NOAH or JCAG or a similar system, military officials have said they need some kind of linked access capability.
Intelligence systems need to be included within the Global Information Grid_the military's vision of a future global network that could be accessed from anywhere in the world, said Brig. Gen. Manlyn Quagliotti, vice director of the Joint Staff's command and control, communications and computers directorate, during a Nov. 5 speech on information assurance at a conference in Arlington, VA.
"We need a more integrated strategy, including help from [the Joint Staff's intelligence directorate] with Intelligence reports or warnings of an attack," he said.
Quagliotti said the toughest challenge for achieving "information superiority" is the need to unite networks and network managers under one command structure with stronger situational awareness capabilities.
Part of [the challenge] is the overwhelming amount of information, the ability to access that Information, and the ability to reach back and get that information, which means that networks become more crucial to the warfight" she said.
Fusion Center Concept Takes Root As Congressional Interest Waxes
[From Signal, Apr. 2000]
Creation of a national operations and analysis hub is finding grudging acceptance among senior officials in the U.S. national security community. This fresh intelligence mechanism would link federal agencies to provide instant collaborative threat profiling and analytical assessments for use against asymmetrical threats. National policy makers, military commanders and law enforcement agencies would be beneficiaries of the hub's information.
Prodded by a resolute seven-term Pennsylvania congressman and reminded by recent terrorist and cyberthreat activities, the U.S. Defense Department is rethinking its earlier aversion to the idea, and resistance is beginning to crumble. Funding to establish the national operations and analysis hub (NOAH), which would link 28 federal agencies, is anticipated as a congressional add-on in the Defense Department's new budget. An initial $10 million in funding is likely in fiscal year 2001 from identified research and development accounts.
Spearheading the formation of NOAH is Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives National Security Committee's military research and development subcommittee. He emphasizes that challenges facing U.S. leaders are beginning to overlap, blurring distinction and jurisdiction. "The increasing danger is both domestic and international."
Conceptually, NOAH would become a national-level operations and control center with a mission to integrate various imagery, data and analytical viewpoints. The intelligence products would support U.S. actions. "I see NOAH as going beyond the capability of the National Military Command Center and the National Joint Military Intelligence Command. NOAH would provide recommended courses of action that allow the U.S. to effectively meet emerging challenges in near real time," the congressman illustrates.
"This central national-level hub would be composed of a system of agency-specified mini centers, or 'pods,' of participating agencies and services associated with growing national security concerns," Weldon reports. "NOAH would link the policy with action recommendations derived from fused information provided by the individual pod." Automation and connectivity would allow the to talk to each other in a computer-based environment to share data and perspectives on a given situation.
The congressman believes that NOAH should reside within the Defense Department and is modeling the hub's concept on a U.S. Army organization he closely follows. He says the idea for NOAH comes from officials in several federal agencies. However, it is also based on his own experiences with the U.S. Army's Intelligence and Security Command's (INSCOM's) Land Warfare Information Activity (LIWA) and Information Dominance Center, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Patterned after LIWA (SIGNAL, March, page 31), NOAH would display collaborative threat profiling and analysis with the aid of a variety of electronic tools, the hub would support national actions, Weldon discloses.
The congressman is conscious of other initiatives such as linking counterintelligence groups throughout the community. He also is aware of the Central Intelligence Agency's, (CIA's) counterterrorism center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) National Infrastructure Protection Center and a new human intelligence (HUMINT) special operations center, "We don't need another [*H5248]
analytical center. Instead, we need a national-level fusion center that can take already analyzed data and offer courses of action for decision making," he insists.
Weldon's wide experience in dealing with officials from the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) convince him that policy makers are continuing to work in a vacuum. "Briefings and testimonies are the primary vehicles for transmitting information to leaders. The volume of information germane to national security issues is expanding so rapidly that policy makers are overwhelmed with data," he claims.
Robust situational awareness of asymmetric threats to national security is a key in assisting leaders, Weldon observes. "Policy makers need an overarching information and intelligence architecture that will quickly assimilate, analyze and display assessments and recommend courses of action for many simultaneous national emergencies," he declares. The concept of NOAH also calls for virtual communications among policy makers.
Weldon's plan is for White House, Congress, Pentagon and agency-level leaders each to have a center where they receive, send, share and collaborate on assessments before they act. He calls NOAH the policy maker's tool. In the collaborative environment, the hub would provide a multiissue, multiagency hybrid picture to the White House situation room and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
NOAH's concept also includes support for HUMINT and peacekeeping missions along with battle damage assessment. The same system could later help brace congressional committees and hearings. The new capability would allow application of foreign threat analyses to policy, while providing a hybrid situational awareness picture of the threat, Weldon relates. Industrial efforts of interest to the policy maker could be incorporated, and academia also could be directly linked.
In meetings with high-level FBI, CIA and defense officials, Weldon stressed the need to "acquire, fuse and analyze disparate data from many agencies in order to support the policy maker's actions against threats from terrorism, [ballistic misile] proliferation, illegal technology diversions, espionage, narcotics [trafficking], information warfare and cyberterrorism." He is convinced that current collection and analysis capabilities in various intelligence agencies are stovepiped. "To some extent, this involves turf protection, but it clearly hinders policy making."
Weldon, who was a Russian studies major, offers some of his own recent experiences as examples of why there is a strong need for NOAH. He maintains close contact with a number of Russians and understands their programs and technologies. The congressman is quick to recall vignettes about Russian officials and trips to facilities in the region.
During the recent U.S. combat action involvement in Kosovo, Weldon was contacted by senior Russian officials.* * *
Weldon learned from the agents that they were seeking information on Karic to brief the State Department. When he explained that the information came from the Army and LIWA, the CIA and FBI agents had no knowledge of that organization, he confirms. Before his departure for Vienna, the congressman received a six-page LIWA profile of Karic and his family's links to Milosevic.
"This is an example of why an organization like NOAH is so critically necessary," Weldon contends. "LIWA's Information Dominance Center provides the best capability we have today in the federal government to assess massive amounts of data and develop profiles. LIWA uses its contacts with other agencies to obtain database information from those systems," he explains. "Some is unclassified and some classified."
Weldon cites an "extraordinary capability by a former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency official, who is a LIWA profiler, as one of the keys in LIWA's success. She does the profiling and knows where to look and which systems to pull information from in a data mining and extrapolation process," he proclaims. "She makes the system work."
Weldon intends to use LIWA's profiling capability as a model for building NOAH. "My goal is to go beyond service intelligence agencies and integrate all intelligence collection. This must be beyond military intelligence, which is too narrow in scope, to provide a governmmentwide capability. Each agency with a pod linked to NOAH would provide two staff members assigned at the hub, which would operate continuously. Data brought together in "this cluster would be used for fusion and profiling, which any agency could then request," he maintains.
NOAH would not belong to the Army, which would continue with its own intelligence capabilities as would the other services. There would only be one fusion center, which would handle input from all federal agencies and from open sources, Weldon explains. "NOAH would handle threats like information operations and examine stability in various regions of the world. We need this ability to respond immediately." The congressman adds that he recently was briefed by LIWA on very sensitive, very limited and scary profile information, which he describes as "potentially explosive." In turn, Weldon arranged briefings for the chairman of the House National Security Committee, the Speaker of the House and other key congressional leaders.
"But this kind of profiling capability is very limited now. The goal is to have it on a regular basis. The profiling could be used for sensitive technology transfer issues and information about security breaches," the congressman allows. LIWA has what he terms the fusion and profiling state-of-the-art capability in the military, "even beyond the military." Weldon is pressing the case for NOAH among leaders in both houses of Congress. "It is essential that we create a governmentwide capability under very strict controls."
Weldon adds that establishing NOAH is not a funding issue; it is a jurisdictional issue. "Some agencies don't want to tear down their stovepipes. Yet, information on a drug lord, as an example, could be vitally important to help combat terrorism." He makes a point that too often, federal agencies overlap each other in their efforts to collect intelligence against these threats, or they fail to pool their resources and share vital information. "This redundancy of effort and confusion of jurisdiction only inhibits our nation's capabilities," he offers.
NOAH would provide high-bandwidth, virtual connectivity to experts at agency pod sites. Protocols for interagency data sharing would be established and refined in links to all pod sites. The ability to retrieve, collate, analyze and display data would be exercised to provide possible courses of action. A backup site would be established for redundancy, and training would begin on collaborative tools as soon as it is activated.
The hub system would become part of the national policy creation and execution system. The tools available at LIWA would be shared so that every agency would have the same tools. Weldon explains that all agencies would post data on the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) highway in a replicated format sensitive to classification. NOAH's global network would use the NRO system as a backbone.
NOAH optimizes groups of expertise within each organization_experts who are always on hand regardless of the issue. This approach ties strategic analysis and tactical assessment to a course of action. "Before the U.S. can take action against emerging threats, we must first understand their relationship to one another, their patterns, the people and countries involved and the level of danger posed to our nation," Weldon say's "That is where NOAH begins."_CAR
So we have pushed the process, Mr. Speaker. We pushed it in legislation passed by this Congress 3 years in a row. I pushed it publicly in magazine articles, in newspapers, in speeches before intelligence symposiums and agency briefings; but the CIA continued to balk.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, I have one of the report languages from H.R. 5408, the conference report printed October 6, 2000, the section entitled "Joint Report on Establishment of a National Collaborative Information Analysis Capability."
That section is as follows:
Joint report on establishment of national collaborative information analysis capability (sec. 933)
The House bill contained a provision (sec. 905) that would: (1) require the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence to prepare a joint report assessing alternatives for the establishment of a national collaborative information analysis capability; (2) require the Secretary of Defense to complete the data mining, profiling, and analysis capability of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity; and (3) restrict funds to establish, support, or implement a data mining and analysis capability until such a capability is specifically authorized by law.
The Senate amendment contained no similar provision.
The Senate recedes with an amendment that would: (1) require the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence to prepare a joint report assessing alternatives for the establishment of a national collaborative information analysis capability; and (2) require the Secretary of Defense to complete the data mining, profiling, and analysis capability of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity. The amendment would not restrict funds, but would require the Secretary to make appropriate use of such capability to provide support to appropriate national defense components.
Mr. Speaker, to push this process, a report came back from the CIA dated May 1, 2001, just a few short months before 9/11. And I will read one sentence in this report in the summary: "A single overarching collaborative solution addressing the totality of mission requirements is not practical."
In other words, the CIA said, We cannot create what the Department of Defense already has. Now, Mr. Speaker, the Department of Defense and the Army and our special forces commands already had this capability, and they were using it in 1999 and 2000. I knew they were using it, but was not quite sure of the extent of the use until 2 weeks after 9/11.
Mr. Speaker, exactly 2 weeks after 9/11 where I lost some very good friends, Ray Downey, the chief of all rescue for the New York City Fire Department and one of my best friends, was the chief of all rescue at Ground [*H5249]
Zero when the first tower came down. It was Ray Downey who had taken me through the Trade Center in 1993 when bin Laden hit us the first time. It was Ray Downey who convinced me in the late 1990s to introduce legislation, eventually becoming law, to create a commission to make recommendations to prepare for the next terrorist threat.
My legislation was passed, became law, and created what is now known as the Gilmore Commission, chaired by Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore. Ray Downey was one of those commissioners. The Gilmore Commission and Ray Downey gave us three reports before 9/11 of recommendations of things we should be doing to prepare for the next terrorist attack. And they gave us those three reports before 9/11 occurred. In fact, almost 40 percent of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission were actual recommendations of the Gilmore Commission. But because the attack had not occurred, it did not get as much visibility.
On September 11, Ray Downey was killed. I brought his wife and five kids to my district 1 month after 9/11, and 40,000 of my constituents came out to honor Ray as an American hero at a parade ending at our county park.
We also lost one of my neighbors, Mr. Speaker, a fellow graduate of Westchester University, Michael Horrocks who served our Nation in the Navy, was a pilot on one of the planes that was commandeered on September 11. Michael left behind a young wife, a teacher in my district, and two young children in the Rose Tree Media School District. In fact, we built a playground in Michael's honor at the school of the two children.
Mr. Speaker, September 11 touched all of us; 3,700 of us were wiped out. Two weeks after 9/11, my friends from the Army's Information Dominance Center in cooperation with special ops brought me a chart. This chart, Mr. Speaker, this chart. Two weeks after 9/11, I took the basic information in this chart down to the White House. I had asked for a meeting with Steve Hadley, who at that time was Deputy National Security Advisor. The chart was smaller. It was 2 feet by 3 feet, but the same information was in the center.
Steve Hadley looked at the chart and said, Congressman, where did you get that chart from? I said, I got it from the military. I said, This is the process; this is the result of the process that I was pitching since 1999 to our government to implement, but the CIA kept saying we do not need it.
Steve Hadley said, Congressman, I am going to take this chart, and I am going to show it to the man. The man that he meant, Mr. Speaker, was the President of the United States. I said, Mr. Hadley, you mean you have not seen something like this before from the CIA, this chart of al Qaeda worldwide and in the U.S.? And he said, No, Congressman. So I gave him the chart.
Now, Mr. Speaker, what is interesting in this chart of al Qaeda, and you cannot see this from a distance, but right here in the center is the name of the leader of the New York cell. And that name is very familiar to the people of America. That name is Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attack against us. So prior to 9/11, this military system that the CIA said we did not need and could not do actually gave us the information that identified Mohammed Atta's cell in New York. And with Mohammed Atta they identified two of the other terrorists with them.
But I learned something new, Mr. Speaker, over the past several weeks and months. I have talked to some of the military intelligence officers who produced this document, who worked on this effort. And I found something out very startling, Mr. Speaker. Not only did our military identify the Mohammed Atta cell; our military made a recommendation in September of 2000 to bring the FBI in to take out that cell, the cell of Mohammed Atta. So now, Mr. Speaker, for the first time I can tell our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell. And they made that recommendation because Madeleine Albright had declared that al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization, and the military units involved here felt they had jurisdiction to go to the FBI.
Why, then, did they not proceed? That is a question that needs to be answered, Mr. Speaker. I have to ask, Mr. Speaker, with all the good work that the 9/11 Commission did, why is there nothing in their report about able danger? Why is there no mention of the work that able danger did against al Qaeda? Why is there no mention, Mr. Speaker, of a recommendation in September of 2000 to take out Mohammed Atta's cell which would have detained three of the terrorists who struck us?
Those are questions, Mr. Speaker, that need to be answered.
Last week, I asked the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, my good friend, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, my good friend, who I have the highest respect for both of these individuals, to allow us to proceed with an investigation that has not yet been brought forward to the American people and our colleagues in this body.
We need to know, Mr. Speaker, why those recommendations, if they, in fact, occurred, as my intelligence military friends told me that they occurred, why were they stopped. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have been told informally that they were stopped because the lawyers at that time in 2000 told them that Mohamed Atta had a green card and they could not go after someone with a green card.
I have also been told, Mr. Speaker, that it was because of the fear of the lawyers of the fallout that had occurred on the Waco attack in Texas just a short time earlier. Mr. Speaker, if that is, in fact, the case, that is an outrage and a scandal. If our reason for not going after the Mohamed Atta cell was because of the fear of the fallout from Waco, then someone needs to answer some questions.
The bottom line process in all of this, Mr. Speaker, is that this capability, which the CIA said we did not need, which the CIA said was not necessary, which was, in fact, being used by the military, both the Army and Special Forces command did something the CIA did not do. It identified the key cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11, and it actually gave us a suggestion to deal with that cell. Mr. Speaker, this story needs to be investigated. This information needs to be pursued.
Now, Mr. Speaker, in spite of the CIA's refusal to implement a national collaborative center, thank goodness our President did respond, and in January of 2003, standing in this very chamber, in the State of the Union speech, he announced the TTIC, the Terrorism Threat Integration Center. Mr. Speaker, the TTIC is identical to the NOAH, no different, same concept, same design, linkage together in one location of all 33 classified systems.
But, Mr. Speaker, we proposed that in 1999, 2 years prior to 9/11. The administration put it into place in January of 2003. That is the same capability that the CIA said we do not need that, Congressman; we cannot do that, Congressman; we have better ways to assess emerging threats. TTIC has now been reformed. It is now known as the NCTC, the National counter-terrorism Center, but Mr. Speaker, I still have concerns, and I rise this evening to express those concerns.
This capability was produced in 1999 and 2000 by the IDC, the Information Dominant Center. I asked them to update me on al Qaeda, to show me what they can do today at the IDC. This, Mr. Speaker, is al Qaeda today. It is obviously impossible for anyone watching our television monitor to see what is on this chart. I have had this chart magnified by a large factor and have large copies in my office.
Each of these little individual people are cells of al Qaeda, are groups of al Qaeda, clusters of al Qaeda around the world. In fact, Mohamed Atta's cell is identified in this chart. This chart, Mr. Speaker, was prepared through the national collaborative efforts of our IDC, using, Mr. Speaker, open source data. That chart was produced with open source data.
What troubles me, Mr. Speaker, is in talking to my friends in the defense community who work with the NCTC, I have learned that quite possibly the NCTC cannot duplicate this capability. That is a question I plan to get answered this week because we have a [*H5250]
very new and very capable leader of the NCTC that hopefully will tell me I am wrong, that they can produce this kind of capability to understand a threat group like al Qaeda.
I rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to raise the importance of intelligence collaboration. We can never allow ourselves to return back to the days prior to 9/11, to the days where individual agencies or individual agencies that think that they have all of the answers in providing security for our country and intelligence for our agencies and our policy-makers. Mr. Speaker, we can never return to the days of 1999 and 2000, and I hope this is not the case today, but back in those days where the agency bureaucrats were fighting with each other over who would take credit for the best information. Let me read a couple of excerpts, Mr. Speaker.
Back in 1999, when I was pushing the CIA to establish this collaborative capability and our military was actually using that capability, focusing on emerging threats like al Qaeda, this conversation went back and forth, Mr. Speaker, September 1999. This is, by the way, written from military intelligence officers, a summary of notes to me.
At the military's inception, the CIA drags its feet and limits its support to the effort. In an off-the-record conversation between the DCI and the CIA representative to this military unit, a man that I will call Dave and our military intelligence officer explains that even though he understands the military's effort is against the global infrastructure of al Qaeda, he tells me that the CIA will, and I quote, never provide the best information on al Qaeda, end quote. Why would they not do that? Because of the effort that they were taking as part of a finding they had on bin Laden himself and if the military's project was successful it would, quote, steal their thunder. Steal the CIA's thunder.
Dave went on to say that short of the CINC, General so and so, calling the Director, George Tenet, directly, the CIA would never provide the best information to the military on al Qaeda. To my knowledge, that information was never provided.
Mr. Speaker, never again can America allow intelligence bureaucrats to argue back and forth over who is going to steal whose thunder, that you heaven forbid would want to embarrass the CIA because a military intelligence unit got information that is supposed to be under their authority and jurisdiction.
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to read all these pages, but this classified information that I have to back up what I have given in unclassified format, will be provided and has been provided for the chairman of our intelligence oversight committee and our armed services oversight committee.
Again, I have to ask the question, why did the 9/11 Commission not investigate this entire situation? Why did the 9/11 Commission not ask the question about the military's recommendation against the Mohamed Atta cell? Why did the 9/11 Commission not document the internal battles and disputes between agency personnel going after the same terrorist organization al Qaeda?
If we are truly going to have an understanding of the need to reform our intelligence system, then we have to be honest with the American people about the past.
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because I am very troubled by what I have seen and by what I have heard. I have interviewed and talked to some very brave military intelligence officers who, back in 1999 and 2000, were involved in protecting America. They knew what we needed, and they were trying to do it. As I have read to you, there were some in other agencies, especially the CIA and some in DIA, who were saying you cannot do that, that is not your area. That is our area. You cannot steal our thunder. That is our job, not your job.
Never again, Mr. Speaker, can we allow agency bureaucrats to argue over who is going to get the credit for solving the next attack or planned attack against us. I do not rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to embarrass anyone. I rise tonight because of my own frustration. We knew 6 years ago what direction we had to go. The agency said we do not need that, Congressman, we know better than the Congress. Trust us.
Thank goodness President Bush put that system in place when he took office. If we had had that system in 1999 and 2000, which the military had already developed as a prototype, and if we had followed the lead of the military entity that identified the al Qaeda cell of Mohamed Atta, then perhaps, Mr. Speaker, 9/11 would never have occurred. Certainly taking out the Mohamed Atta cell and two of the terrorists that were with him, would have had a profound positive impact in shutting down the major plan against us that moved forward on September 11, 2001.
Mr. Speaker, I have placed these documents in the Record because I want our colleagues to have a chance to read them. I want our colleagues to see the facts and the information, and I want to support our very capable chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) as they move forward with an investigation.
We have to ask the question, why have these issues not been brought forth before this day? I had my Chief of Staff call the 9/11 Commission staff and ask the question: Why did you not mention Able Danger in your report? The Deputy Chief of Staff said, well, we looked at it, but we did not want to go down that direction.
So the question, Mr. Speaker, is why did they not want to go down that direction? Where will that lead us? Why do we not want to see the answers to the questions I have raised tonight? Who made the decision to tell our military not to pursue Mohamed Atta? Who made the decision that said that we are fearful of the fallout from Waco politically?
Were those decisions made by lawyers? Were they made by policymakers? Who within the administration in 2000 was responsible for those actions? This body and the American people need to know.
SUBJECT: TALKS & MEETINGS (78%); CAMPAIGNS & ELECTIONS (75%); RUNOFF ELECTIONS (75%); TERRORISM (66%);
LOAD-DATE: June 28, 2005 |
I am happy to say that Duncan Hunter is my House Rep!!
SBD |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 3:52 am Post subject: |
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Weldon is a very rare political animal. People will and have said he has done this to further his political career, but that is without reason. Weldon truly loves America and chose a very dangerous political play. To stand up for America. He was second guessed by numerous conservative(pseudo imo like kristol and the wheel chair bound guy) pundits, but has been proven to be right. I am tired of people claiming to be conservative and to care for our country, while showing no conservative value. If you are conservative you tow no ideological line. The definition of conservative is to stand up for those practices and institutions which have served humanity and not to buckle under passing fancy. But all too often these days we find our country under attack and so few willing to defend it on the home front. Thank God while we have troops spilling blood there is a man like Weldon willing to risk his political future to assure that blood is spilt for a reason.
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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GM Strong
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 1579
Location: Penna
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| Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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Curt Weldon is my Congressman and in this district we support him fully. My son's schoolmate is Mick Horrocks whose dad was a pilot on one of the planes hijacked into the Towers. Michael Horrocks was well liked and respected and he is missed. Curt Weldon is not working on his career here. He is doing what we elected him to do.
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8th Army Korea 68-69 |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 4:19 am Post subject: |
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| GM Strong wrote: | | Curt Weldon is my Congressman and in this district we support him fully. My son's schoolmate is Mick Horrocks whose dad was a pilot on one of the planes hijacked into the Towers. Michael Horrocks was well liked and respected and he is missed. Curt Weldon is not working on his career here. He is doing what we elected him to do. |
Hear Hear
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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