Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Henry Shelton will later say, “Right after I left SOCOM [Special Operations Command], I asked my successor to put together a small team, if he could, to try to use the Internet and start trying to see if there was any way that we could track down Osama bin Laden or where he was getting his money from or anything of that nature.” A team of six intelligence officers will be given this task and Shelton will be periodically briefed on the progress of the program. But apparently the team, later to be called Able Danger, will focus on data mining tasks relating to Bosnia and China for most of 1999. [Sacramento Bee, 12/7/2005; US Congress, 2/15/2006] General Peter Schoomaker, the head of SOCOM, helped come up with the idea for Able Danger and helps to set it up. SOCOM, based in Tampa, Florida, is responsible for America’s secret commando units. [Government Security News, 9/2005] Mark Zaid, a lawyer for several Able Danger whistleblowers in 2005, will give this description of Able Danger: “In the most understandable and simplistic terms, Able Danger involved the searching out and compiling of open source or other publicly available information regarding specific targets or tasks that were connected through associational links. No classified information was used. No government database systems were used.… The search and compilation efforts were primarily handled by defense contractors, who did not necessarily know they were working for Able Danger, and that information was then to be utilized by the military members of Able Danger for whatever appropriate purposes.” [US Congress, 9/21/2005] Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) will say in 2005 that the military’s purpose for the Able Danger program was to enable it to “manipulate, degrade, or destroy the global al-Qaeda infrastructure.” [Washington Post, 8/13/2005] Apparently, Able Danger does not begin to use real data to fight al-Qaeda until near the end of 1999.
July 31, 2005: Air Force Office of Special Investigation Re-Opens Investigation into Former Whistleblower’s Allegations
The Air Force’s Office of Special Investigation sends word to Sibel Edmonds’ attorney Mark Zaid that it is reopening the investigation into Edmonds’ former co-worker Melek Can Dickerson and her husband, Douglas Dickerson. Edmonds had warned her superiors in early 2002 that the couple was involved in espionage (see December 4, 2001). Journalist David Rose, who recently authored a lengthy piece on the Sibel Edmonds case for Vanity Fair magazine, believes the investigation may have been re-opened in part because of that article and because he submitted about 150 different questions about the case to the Air Force and other parts of the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and the FBI. [Democracy Now!, 8/10/2005]
August 4, 2005: Former FBI Translator Takes Whistleblower Case to Supreme Court
Lawyers for Sibel Edmonds file a petition with the Supreme Court asking it “to provide guidance to the lower courts about the proper scope and application of the state secrets privilege (see March 9, 1953), and to prevent further misuse of the privilege to dismiss lawsuits at the pleading stage.” The petition also urges the court to affirm that the press and public may not be barred from court proceedings in civil cases without just cause. In May, the federal appeals court had closed the courtroom to the public and media. Edmonds’ lawyers include the American Civil Liberties Union and Mark Zaid of Krieger and Zaid, PLLC. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Edmonds, she will return to the lower courts and start her case again. [Petition for a writ of certiorari. Sibel Edmonds v. Department of Justice, et all., 8/4/2005, pp. 2 
; Government Executive, 8/8/2005]
September 19, 2005: Able Danger Intelligence Officer Has Security Clearance Revoked
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, an Army intelligence officer who worked closely with a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, has his security clearance revoked. [Government Executive, 9/21/2005; Times Herald (Norristown), 9/22/2005] Shaffer alleges that Able Danger identified Mohamed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks (see August 17, 2005). Shaffer’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, states, “I specialize in security clearance cases.… Based on years of experience I can say categorically that the basis for the revocation was questionable at best.”
[US Congress, 9/21/2005] Shaffer is due to testify two days later in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Able Danger, though he is subsequently prohibited from doing so by the Defense Department (see September 21, 2005). His security clearance had been suspended 18 months previously (see March 2004).
