August 12, 2005 | Data Mining the Able Danger Allegations

There's much time table ado about Congressman Curt Weldon's assertion that a Pentagon data mining program identified Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of a terrorist cell in 1999 but declined to share the information with the FBI over a perceived legality.

Many, including myself, are skeptical of the claim, though I think there's a very interesting story in here. I just don't think it has come out yet.

Eric Umansky points to a Dan Eggen Washington Post story, which includes this information:

Commission officials confirmed a report in yesterday's New York Times that two staff members interviewed a uniformed military officer, who alleged in July 2004 that a secret program called "Able Danger" had identified Atta as a potential terrorist threat in 1999 or early 2000.

Panel investigators viewed the claim as unlikely, in part because Atta was not recruited as an al Qaeda operative until a trip to Afghanistan in 2000 and did not enter the United States until June of that year, officials said.

Umansky also raises the question of whether the list of names was actually quite large, perhaps in the range of thousands, which might explain why Atta's name wasn't noticed on the list until fairly recently.

Over at Intel Dump, Jon Holdaway, a veteran with experience in military intel operations, has a rundown on the laws controlling data mining and an insider's take on the Pentagon's capabilities. But he also thinks something about this story doesn't pass the smell test.

Able Danger appears to be the codename to the forerunner of the Information Dominance Center, or at least IDC-type tools were being applied to the Able Danger mission, but analysis presumes collection, or investigation. If Able Danger was conducting an investigation in to Atta et. al., it would have no jurisdiction to conduct collection or investigative activities in Brooklyn - that would fall under FBI.

To say that the "wall" prevented DOD from talking to FBI doesn't make sense. The "wall" existed between FBI-Criminal Division and FBI-Intelligence Division and was managed by the DOJ Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR). DOD was free, in fact required, to discuss counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations taking place in the United States (or even taking place outside the United States if they involved US persons or potential prosecutions) with FBI-Intelligence officials.

Regardless, as I noted before, data mining raises some serious questions that need to be thought through publicly.

Posted by Ryan Singel at August 12, 2005 08:46 AM

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