More Able Danger Twistiness

Okay – returning to the Able Danger revelations, and get out your roadmaps, folks, because this one is going to get twisty.

Lt. Col. Shaffer said last week that he identified Mohammed Atta to 9/11 Commission staffers. This weekend, his statement is not very clear on it at all. Consider the water officially further muddied. For what it’s worth, I’m with Captain Ed on this one – Shaffer, I believe based on what we have publicly thus far, gave Atta’s name to the Commission, but not the names of his associates.

But the problem here is that all we have is what’s been coming out in dribs and drabs in the news media. Today we have more.

The Pentagon searched its archives for documents to back up or refute Shaffer, but couldn’t find anything. That, in itself, is not a refutation of Shaffer’s contentions, but it does put the Pentagon on a much larger hook than it was before the weekend. Why? Because the DoD should have found something on Shaffer’s allegations, one way or the other. That it found nothing at all speaks more to bureaucratic incompetence than it does Shaffer’s veracity.

So let’s leave that peculiarly-shaped building to stew in its own juices for a moment to introduce you to Navy Captain Scot J Philpott. He was a member of Able Danger and he released a statement to Fox News and the New York Times with his own brief account, an account that backs up what Shaffer said.

So now we have two members of the group publicly saying that they gave Atta’s name to the Commission in 2000, the Commission saying that they didn’t, and the Pentagon stumbling around its musty basement in a vain search for any documents on the matter?

What does all this mean? Well, it’s hard to say. Right now the Commission still needs to answer why we’re finding about all this now, instead of from their report. The Pentagon needs to answer why it couldn’t find any Able Danger records. Congressman Weldon, who was behind the latest statement from Philpott, and his remaining two anonymous Able Danger sources need to come forward with every single scrap of information about the program and their interaction with the Commission tomorrow. No more press releases. No more halting television and radio interviews. No more trickles of information. No more.

I’m tired of the silly games and I imagine that a goodly number of Americans are, too. We need an open and public Congressional investigation into the Able Danger revelations and they need to start tomorrow. Nothing less will suffice.