Transcript of Rep. Curt Weldon Being Interviewed by Tony Snow on the Tony Snow Radio Program, 2/17/2006 (audio of this interview is here, HT: Free Republic):
Tony Snow: To that effect he held hearings on Able Danger. Some of the hearings were open, most were classified. Representative Weldon, good to have you here.
Rep. Curt Weldon, (R-PA): Great to be back with you Tony.
TS: Let's talk a bit about Able Danger. In the wake of the all but destruction of the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program, it seems to me that we've got to turn to other ways to find bad guys. Do you think that there's any (inaudible) on the part of people in the Defense Intelligence Agency or elsewhere to revive either operation Able Danger or now of course its successor program which is called Able Providence.
CW: Well, we've made a lot of progress Tony, and in spite of my frustration with bureaucrats not wanting to tell the real story of what happened before 9-11, the good news is that the prototype that we established is in fact operational using open source data. We proposed even enhancing that more with Able Providence and I'll continue that fight this year but yes, we have made progress, yes we are doing open source data mining against the bad guys overseas, not violating anybody's rights and yes, it's working.
TS: OK. Furthermore, why did Able Danger, have you ever been able to figure out why Able Danger got killed with a big old rock? Let me just explain Able Danger was, as you've pointed out, an open source data mining operation. What they did is that they used a lots of computers and lots of sophisticated techniques to go through stuff that was public. It could be newspapers, it could be magazines, it could be public records, and were able to stitch together a kind of vague outline of what Al Qaeda in the United States was going to look like. The idea was to come up with an Al Qaeda sketch and lo and behold, not only did they come up with a sketch, they came up with, among other things a Brooklyn cell that included Mohammad Atta and they managed to find some of the, at least four of the people who were involved in killing Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. So this was a pretty effective way of going about finding the bad guys (inaudible). Sorry Rep. Weldon, but it's always important to remind people what was going on with Able Danger.
CW: No you're right Tony, and the significance here is that the FBI Director back then, Louis Freeh said in October of last year on national television, that if he had had the Able Danger information the FBI might well have been able to stop the hijacking. In our hearing past week, and we had both classified and unclassified, we had five people that testified under oath that they believed the same thing. That if the data they collected, that if the analysis they did had been able to be passed to the FBI, they agree with Louis Freeh, that would have been able to prevent 9-11 from ever happening. They also information that they had a hit on the attack on the USS Cole two weeks before the Cole was attacked. Two days before the attack on the Cole the information they had was specific to the port of Aiden in Yemen. So this technology and this technique is very effective. It's a shame that as it's going right now, we're never going to get the full truth out about Able Danger and the reason why it was ended in 2000 and the data mining operation that was supporting it is because they did a profile of Chinese proliferation and in that profiling some very well known names in American political circles surfaced. Names in both parties. Immediately the Army was told to shut down the data mining operation. And it was because the Chinese students who were doing this research on sensitive technology were basically at a couple of our universities, one of which was Stanford. And you can just guess two of the names that surfaced that were tied in with Stanford where these students were in fact doing their work.
TS: Condoleeza Rice would jump to mind.
CW: (inaudible) and Condoleeza Rice. Now that's not saying they did anything wrong, but the students that surfaced that were doing this very very sensitive work, many of them were at Stanford and were doing this research work. There were other names that the Clinton administration back then did not want to come out under any circumstances because you remember the Cox Committee, which I was a member of, had been tasked to look at the acquisition by the Chinese of our sensitive technology. Well a lot of those names surfaced in that data mining initiative. That's why the Clinton administration.
TS: Does this include Bernard Schwartz?
CW: It would include a ton of names and Loral Corporation, yes. And that's why in the material that LIWA was destroyed or allegedly destroyed, and a new data mining operation was set up in Garland, Texas by the the commander of Special Forces, General Schoomaker.
TS: Who is now Army Chief of Staff.
CW: Right. The value of this was so critically important he wouldn't let it die. So he said, look, I need this capability. So he stood up a whole new effort under Raytheon's control in Garland, Texas and eventually brought that capability to SOCOM's headquarters in Florida. It's unfortunate that the way we're going right now, we're not going to get the truth because too many people in two administrations will be embarrassed over this. I'm going to continue to push for improvements in data mining to give us the capability to understand these transnational terrorist threats. (inaudible) but using open source information around the world have the data mining capability of understanding that they're threatening our security.
TS: OK. So these programs are up and running again is what you're telling us.
CW: Yeah. The TTIC, the Terrorism Threat Integration Center which Bush announced in '03, which is exactly what I had proposed back in '99. That's now been integrated into the NCTC, the National Counter Terrorism Center. They are doing this effort, and there are open source data mining initiatives being done in Homeland Security, the CIA has an effort, so there is a lot of good activity going forward. But that doesn't in any way diminish Able Danger, and what really offends me is that the 9-11 Commission totally ignored this as a part of their effort to tell us what really happened. That's outrageous to me, and when they called it historically insignificant it absolutely set the people off that did this work, and that's why I've been so tenacious in trying to get the true facts on the table.
TS: Well, here in New York, Attorney General Elliot Spitzer did not permit one of his deputies, who had been a member of the 9-11 Commission to testify.
CW: Yes, that's right, we wanted Dietrich Snell down here. He's going to be the subject of a major new book coming out this year because he's been the nexus of the trial of the blind Sheik and evidently FBI information that a writer has gotten hold of that people in our federal agencies knew about a plot about a plot to attack the World Trade Center with planes the 9-11 incident happened, in the early '90s. The 9-11 Commission did not include that in their report either.
TS: Well, look, the 9-11 Commission report was an act of political butt covering.
CW: That's exactly what it was, Tony. Exactly what it was.
TS: That's what happens when you get commissions. No more commissions. I just want you guys to do jobs like you're trying to do and forget the commissions, commissions don't get us anywhere. All they do is create trouble, they almost never come up with the truth. Let me ask you a question about our friend, Tony Shaffer, Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer has taken a real beating because he tried to report to the 9-11 Commission what Able Danger had come up with. He's paid some political price for it. Is his career safe, or is he still getting batted around like a dead mouse by a cat?
CW: It's still up in the air. Steve Cambone testified that they're not going after anybody and I almost had to laugh openly when he said that. Tony Shaffer has done nothing wrong. In his file are letters from all the former DIA heads. He's briefed George Tenet, former head of the CIA three times which never happens with a person at his level, totally respected career, bronze medal recipient. He was within two days of the DIA going after him and losing both the health care benefits for his kids and his salary.
TS: I remember that.
CW: Gordon England stepped in along with the new DIA director who's a good guy, and they put Tony back on the payroll until an IG investigation is done. That IG investigation is well underway. I'm satisfied with the progress that's being made, and we expect to have a report in May.
TS: Is this the IG investigation as to whether he broke the bank with $37 worth of cell phone calls?
CW: It's the IG investigation of the harassment against Tony Shaffer for simply telling the truth. My optimism tells me that Tony will be exonerated and will be put back into the good graces of the federal agency, and that's what should happen. But the point is this, we shouldn't have to have our military people go through this when they simply want to tell the truth. Whether it's Captain Scott Philpott, whether it's Col. Tony Shaffer, whether it's Dr. J. D. Smith, any of these witnesses that have come forth. They don't have an agenda, they simply want America to understand and to learn. That's what the 9-11 Commission was supposed to get at, but instead, at the staff and I don't believe this happened with the commissioners, at the staff level, for political reasons, they just decided they were not going to in my opinion to tell the most sensitive story that would have embarrassed both administrations, largely the Clinton administration, but both administrations.
TS: Yeah. At least job well done. You've gotten things stirred up more importantly you've got the program up and running again. I dare say that if you hadn't been raising hell about this, it probably wouldn't have happened.
CW: Well, you know that's our job. I sat on the House floor back in October and I wouldn't allow a Lt. Col. with a distinguished career and a Navy veteran to be railroaded out because they told the truth. I don't want to be in Congress, it's not worth it for me to get through that. I'm not going to stand for that and sit by and let the bureaucracy roll over people. We've seen too much of that. You know I'm a loyal Republican, a supporter of the President, but it's the bureaucracy that's the problem. The upper level bureaucracy doesn't want to be embarrassed and if they can squash somebody because they're telling the truth, then they'll do it. And that can't be accepted. And if we tolerate that, then it flies in the face of every value this country was formed on.
TS: Absolutely right. Well if Tony Shaffer had been (inaudible) the administration directly then he'd be hailed as a whistle blower and he'd be OK.
CW: That's right.
TS: Curt Weldon, as always, it's a pleasure to have you, thanks for joining us.
CW: Thank you for your support and thanks for letting me be on your show Tony.
TS: Thank you.
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