ABLE DANGER - WHISKEY / TANGO / FOXTROT ?!

I've been sorting through the "new news" today on ABLE DANGER. Whew! What a tangled web! The exciting development today is that one of Cong. Weldon's AD sources "outed" himself today ... and his name is LtCol Anthony Shaffer.

Here's some required reading ...

Captain Ed marvels at the developments in this story and says it hasn't run it's course yet - not by a long shot, but he appears to be enjoying the dance.

Laura Rozen gives an updated account of today's events and some of the explosive stuff that came out.

Philip Shendon over at the NYT also with a good story on new developments.

And prolly the most interesting one to me - LtCol Shaffer himself, posting anonymously over at INTELDUMP. Shaffer has verified that yes, it's him.

So where is this story going now? I don't know - but it appears that someone in the Pentagon DID keep ABLE DANGER from sharing information with the FBI. Shaffer claims he "brokered" three meetings between SOCOM and the FBI to "share" the information - and SOCOM cancelled everytime. At this point, if things are what they seem - there was probably little if any White House - or Justice Department involvement in this affair. It may all be just one of those typical "military snafu's". Certainly, you can see that Shaffer mentions the fact that information wasn't shared because the OSD was afraid of "blowback" if something went wrong. They didn't want another "Branch Dividian" scenario to raise it's head and bite the Pentagon - so the CYA move was to sit on the information - probably figuring they had no legitimate right to collect that kind of information anyway. So the failure to get this information to the FBI could have very well been due to "politically correct" lawyers in the Pentagon.

But that doesn't get the 9-11 commission off the hook. Shaffer says he told the 9-11 commission specifically about Mohammed Atta and three others - but they poo-poo'd it.

But over at the commission they say "no" - he didn't tell them. And basically they're saying something else to Shaffer - "proove it".

So Shaffer may be in a pinch here. My guess is that the commission rummaged (very quickly last week) through all their ABLE DANGER paperwork (the stuff DoD turned over to them) and found no mention of Atta's name. With very happy faces, they concluded that they had complete justification to deny ever hearing his name from Shaffer. Since apparently Shaffer wasn't the one they got the documents from - he's basically SOL at this point - it's a "he said / she said" and the 9-11 commissioners know how to milk that game for all it's worth.

And indications here that the 9-11 commission intends to strike back - AT DoD! Ben Veniste shrugs his shoulders now and wonders, if these ABLE DANGER allegations are credible, why then didn't the Pentagon turn over more information on the program? Good question (considering the source) -- and it's one that's going to keep the Pentagon hopping for at least the next week - maybe longer.

We'll see what new information comes out in the coming days. I'm not making a call on this - but right now it looks like Shaffer is going to lose both of his government jobs and the OSD is going to be pronounced the "bad guy" of the scandal - the people who could have prevented 9-11. The only good thing about this is they can't stink up RUMMY on this issue - this issue happened on CLINTON'S WATCH.