The Most Serious Story that You're not Watching

Able Danger.

It's the story that's flying under the radar in politics right now. Washed out, if you will, by hurricane's and war. It's there, percolating. Ready to explode in Senate hearings and on the internet. But not yet. Two more weeks and it might bubble up.

Here is a quick summary of the Able Danger story, in case you have missed it:

- Army Special Forces command, probably responding to a tasking to prepare for terrorist activity, set up a secretive task force called "Able Danger" using existing personnel reorganized into a project team.

- Able Danger set out to identify the terrorist threat

- Able Danger employed the work of a brilliant computer specialist who developed a "data mining" technique to plow through huge amounts of "open source" (non-classified) data to find patterns identifying terrorists. The open source data consisted of driver's license data, voting records, etc. The amount of data utilized exceeded 2 terabytes. (Almost 25% of the material in the Library of Congress. Huge amounts of data)

- According to the Able Danger team, in 2000 they had identified several potential terrorists, including Mohammed Atta - eventual leader of the 911 hijacking teams - and his terrorist cell in Brooklyn. They had it charted out on the wall, including Atta's picture.

- The Able Danger team tried to pass this information on to the FBI for action. They scheduled 3 meetings with the FBI. Each meeting was cancelled, probably by Defense Department lawyers.

- The Able Danger team was disbanded before 911, apparently because their dragnet had also picked up information on U.S. nationals and caused some embarrassment. All 2.4 terabytes of data were deleted, without the consent of the general in charge.

- Two weeks after 9/11, Congressman Curt Weldon claims that he took a copy of the Able Danger chart with Atta's picture on it to the White House where he gave it to a National Security Council deputy.

- The 9/11 Commission staff was briefed on Able Danger, but discounted it and did not include it in it's report.

- Congressman Weldon has been trying to highlight the Able Danger information to make the case that the 9/11 Commission did not do it's full duty in this regard. He and a Lt. Col from the team have been making the rounds of talk shows discussing the controversial fact that they had identified Atta before 9/11.

- The 9/11 Commission and the Pentagon have both been publicly trying to discredit the Able Danger witnesses. Four more team members have publicly come out to support the Lt. Col's version of the story and are ready to testify.

- Sen. Arlen Specter opened hearings last week in the U.S. Senate on Able Danger. Congressman Weldon testified. The 5 members of the Able Danger team were ready to testify, but were prohibited by the Pentagon from doing so in open hearings.

- After mounting pressure, the Pentagon reversed itself this week. The five team members will testify on October 5th in the Senate.

The pressing issues are:

- Why was the team not allowed to coordinate their findings with the FBI? Was it "the wall", erected by Commissioner Jaime Gorelick when she was Janet Reno's deputy AG at the Justice Department? Has the "wall" been taken down?

- Had Able Danger given the leads to the FBI, could 9/11 have been prevented?

- Why did the 9/11 Commission discount the information and not include it in the final report?

- Most importantly: If the team had that level of sophistication in identifying potential terrorists, why isn't it in operation today protecting us?

Tune in to the hearings on October 5th. Yes, you may have to find it on C-Span. But, it's worth your time. You can fit it in between hurricane stories.