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bulletin was the lead federal prosecutor on the first World Trade Center bombing, and several other key anti-terror prosecutions. He knows the law relevant to counter-terrorism intimately. He is appalled by Pentagon actions related to Able Danger:

After the worst domestic attack in the history of the United States, the constant refrain was that “9/11 changed everything.” All “walls” were taken down. Intelligence agents and criminal investigators — until then hindered from cooperating — were now to work hand-in-hand. National security was in. Obsession over imaginary civil-rights violations was out. The message was clear: Gather all the information, get it into the right hands, and connect all the dots.

Well it looks like the memo never made its way over to the Pentagon.

In mid-2000, the Department of Defense (DoD) intentionally purged a gargantuan amount of intelligence about al Qaeda — the enemy that had just blown up our embassies in east Africa and was even then scheming to bomb a navy destroyer in Yemen. The materials were generated by the “Able Danger” program, which attempted to map al Qaeda by sophisticated data mining. Although that program was itself highly classified, it drew mostly on open-source (i.e., non-classified) information. According to participants, the effort yielded leads that might have uncovered the 9/11 plot if diligently followed.

…

In the Information Era, the world is increasingly small. Thus, in the course of carrying out those missions, it frequently happens that DoD intelligence services will incidentally capture information about U.S. persons. Does that mean these services need to shed that information, even if it could be vital to our safety?

Of course not. The whole point of the governing regulations is to allow the military to keep intelligence that might save American lives. Thus, Dugan conceded that the rules set forth 13 broad reasons for retaining information about U.S. persons. They are worth setting out, as Dugan did in his submitted testimony:

1. Information obtained with consent.

2. Publicly available information.

3. Foreign intelligence.

4. Counterintelligence.

5. Potential sources of assistance to intelligence activities.

6. Protection of intelligence sources and methods.

7. Physical security. [with a foreign nexus/connection]

8. Personnel security.

9. Communications security.

10. Narcotics. [international narcotics activity]

11. Threats to safety. [with a foreign nexus/connection — such as international terrorist organizations]

12. Overhead reconnaissance.

13. Administrative purposes. [training records — a narrowly drawn category].

There are few of these categories that would not provide, by themselves, a justification to maintain intelligence gathered on U.S. persons in the course of tracking an international terrorist organization and its members who were in the process of plotting to mass murder American civilians and military personnel. And that’s leaving aside that the information we are talking about was, for the most part, actually gathered from publicly available information (a justifying category unto itself — see, No.2, above)

So, al Qaeda and Atta did not even trigger U.S. person concerns, and even if they had there would have been abundant rationales for retaining the Able Danger harvest (not to mention getting it into the FBI’s hands). Why, then, was vital intelligence purged?

The answer has nothing to do with the regulations. It’s all about mindset. The suicide ethos.

Definitely read the complete article.

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