Able Danger

Everyone knows how I hate to write about national politics, as Kentucky and Ohio Politics are so deliciously absurd, but I couldn't help but talk about Able Danger. First off, Able Danger sound like an anagram to me, but I haven't been able to figure out for what.

It also appeared to me, at first, from this NYT story, that the right was leaking this story for the following line:

Colonel Shaffer went public with his assertions last week, saying that analysts in the intelligence project were overruled by military lawyers when they tried to share the program's findings with the F.B.I. in 2000 in hopes of tracking down terrorist suspects tied to Al Qaeda.

I thought the decision to disallow sharing of information between Able Danger and the FBI that was made by military lawyers would surely be used to smear these lawyers in the continuing 1002 Arabian Night at Abu Ghraib.

It further seemed Clinton, ghoulish spectre, he, or Jamie Gorelick was actually to blame for 9/11 helping to clear the apparently besmattered conscience of our wingnut friends. The smear was apparently scurrilous, but there's more.

Liberal blogs spent many pixels pointing out the many inconsistencies in the stories of those who revealed Able Danger. Again, the stories escape me, but here is the offending passage, from the Times story referenced above:

The former contractor, James D. Smith, said that Mr. Atta's name and photograph were obtained through a private researcher in California who was paid to gather the information from contacts in the Middle East. Mr. Smith said that he had retained a copy of the chart until last year and that it had been posted on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. He said it had become stuck to the wall and was impossible to remove when he switched jobs.

Now, it turns out the worm may have turned and the real story is connected to what Al Franken dubbed Operation Ignore in his latest book. Apparently, this Zelikow fella, who was on the 9/11 commision and also gave the order to shut down Able Danger in March of 2001, may have had a hand in Able Danger being declared not historically signigicant. I don't know if the sources look any more credible, but the attempt to blame things on Clinton sure has backfired.