S. Hrg. 109-311: Abel Danger and Intelligence Information Sharing

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You need to feel as though you’re not being an apostate, that you’re a traitor to the cause, that you’ve disgraced yourself, that you’ve disgraced Islam. After the] African embassy bombings, it was clear to the Pentagon that al Qaeda was our new enemy, and that eventually we would have boots on the ground against them. Coming as it did in early 2000, the identification of Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi was a crucial find for the SOCOM operation. With my unit’s permission,” says Shaffer, “I was able to brief General Schoomaker at a level that was beyond Top Secret.

Again, this connect wasn’t surprising, since the CIA had earlier tracked Khallad bin Atash, the one-legged Embassy bombing plotter with heavy Yemeni ties. Because by the summer of 2000 they moved into the Lemon Grove section of San Diego, renting rooms from Abdussattar Shaykh, a local Muslim leader who was also an FBI informant In fact, Shaykh was considered so important to the Bureau that he was later described as a “tested” undercover “asset. of supervised release of five years on Counts One, Two, Three and Five and three years’ supervised release on Count Six? Key dots were being hidden for the oldest excuse inside the Beltway: CYA—the avoidance of embarrassment. But then, seeing this link chart with Ali Mohamed’s picture coming a week or so before the data was destroyed, gave me a sense that there could be another explanation.Shaffer has also told the story of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) opposition to Able Danger, prior to 9/11, based on the view that Able Danger was encroaching on CIA turf. Anthony Shaffer and those of four others, Able Danger had identified two of three al-Qaeda cells active in the September 11 attacks; the 'Brooklyn cell' linked to "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, including 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the plot's other 19 hijackers.

Do you understand that pursuant to the relevant statutes, conviction on those five counts would subject you to a total maximum sentence of incarceration of life imprisonment plus any term of years. However, on December 22, 2006, a 16-month investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Able Danger, "did not identify Mohamed Atta or any other 9/11 hijacker at any time prior to September 11, 2001,". From the FBI to the DIA and the CIA there has been an affirmative attempt to cover up the mistakes of the past—of which Ali Mohamed was perhaps one of the most egregious examples,” he said. A hearing is a meeting of the Senate, House, joint or certain Government committee that is open to the public so that they can listen in on the opinions of the legislation.In a Pulitzer Prize-winning story for the Washington Post in late September 2001 , Amy Goldstein reported that the two hijackers actually showed up at the Parkwood Apartments, a townhouse complex in San Diego, in late 1999. Bin Laden’s last major fatwa in 1998, the “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, had been signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu-Yasir Refai Taha, who had taken over for the jailed blind Sheikh as head of the al Gamma’a Islamiyah. It is entirely possible that the Pentagon did a damage assessment in April of 2000 and hit the panic button. It was later reported by Newsweek and the Washington Times that al-Bayoumi may have been the recipient of funds sent ito his wife indirectly from Princess Haifa bin Faisal, wife of the then-Saudi ambassador to the U.

Examining Sheikh Rahman’s Brooklyn cell—which operated out of Ali Mohamed’s old stomping grounds, the al Farooq mosque—the LIWA analysts made another alarming discovery.Five witnesses who had worked on Able Danger and had been questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General later told investigative journalists that their statements to the IG were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report, or the report omitted essential information that they had provided.