Able Danger Allegations: A Big Game of Telephone?

We're getting a better sense of just how little Super Source Anthony Shaffer actually knows. From the WP:

"I did see the charts and I did handle the charts, but my understanding of them was like a layman," Shaffer said. "We had identified them as terrorists. . . . But even now I do not remember all the names." ...

Shaffer said yesterday that his overall allegations were based on his recollections and those of two others -- Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and a civilian employee of the former Land Information Warfare Activity at Fort Belvoir, whom he declined to identify. Phillpott did not respond to telephone messages left yesterday with the Navy and at his home.

So Shaffer relied to some large but not exactly known  degree on one Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and an unnamed civilian worker.  I don't know anything  about the anonymous civilian worker. But let's look at the naval officer, Phillpott. Does he have more than a "layman's" understand of Able Danger? Here's what the 9/11 panel said last week about the then-unnamed Navy man:

The officer being interviewed said he saw this material only briefly, that the relevant material dated from February through April 2000, and that it showed Mohamed Atta to be a member of an al Qaeda cell located in Brooklyn. The officer complained that this information and information about other alleged members of a Brooklyn cell had been soon afterward deleted from the document (“redacted”) because DOD lawyers were concerned about the propriety of DOD intelligence efforts that might be focused inside the United States.  ...

The interviewee had no documentary evidence and said he had only seen the document briefly some years earlier. He could not describe what information had led to this supposed Atta identification. Nor could the interviewee recall, when questioned, any details about how he thought a link to Atta could have been made by this DOD program in 2000 or any time before 9/11.

Apart from the recent Able Danger news, I can only find a handful of references on the Web to Scott Phillpot. One  from 1995 describes him as commanding a ship, the USS Typhoon.  The next reference I see is from 2002, and it still describes Phillpot as a ship commander.  Why am I not shocked that a guy with, er,  that apparent level of expertise with data-mining, would be hesistant to attach his name to the Atta allegations. (Remember what the Post said, "Phillpott did not respond to telephone messages left yesterday with the Navy and at his home.")

Of course, none of this mean Phillpot was wrong.  But it certainly suggests he'd have no fucking idea if the wrong Atta was pegged. 

Comments

[Tom Maguire]

You will laugh out loud at the latest from Fox:

"Although Shaffer conceded that during his own personal briefing of Sept. 11 commission staffers in Afghanistan in Oct. 2003, he didn't specifically name the terrorists."

A week ago we were told the secret source would swear under oath that he had named names. I can't wait until next week.

[Arnold]

A local teenager was seriously injured after San Antonio police said he was brutally attacked by a group of men.
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