Pentagon Buys 10,000 Copies of Book on "Able Danger" and Burns Them

[spooked911]

nothing to see here, move on...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=549505

Yet the fact is that the Pentagon bought and destroyed 10,000 copies of a book, "Operation Dark Heart," written by Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient and career Army intelligence officer, that contained a chapter on a pre-9/11 intelligence operation, Able Danger.

In a statement, the Pentagon said it "decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security." The books were destroyed on Sept. 20.

The book, critical of operations in Afghanistan, had been cleared by Shaffer's superiors at U.S. Army Reserve Command, but was seized after objections by Pentagon intelligence officials.

(snip)

One of the redactions DIA sought in "Operation Dark Heart" was the removal of references to a meeting between Shaffer and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow.

Shaffer alleges that in that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Zelikow was informed about the existence of Able Danger and its identification of Atta before 9/11. The reaction, Shaffer said, was "stunned silence."

[deconstruct911]

1. Not much time passes in this forum before

someone brings up the "missing" trillions prior to 9 11. It's good to see the pentagon continues it's effective spending strategy to make sure nothing causes damage to "national security".

[immune]

2. Hey ...

are you suggesting that the trillions that were allegedly "unaccounted for" were actually allocated and that Rummy's statement was basically a "bad accounting system red herring" to keep anyone from looking too hard at recent expenditures?

Hmmmm.

[deconstruct911]

4. Nope not suggesting that

I have yet to see where exactly that money went or legitimate documents proving what happened with it exactly.

[SDuderstadt]

5. Yeah...

like no one but you guys are following up on it.

Seriously, do you understand the money isn't "missing"?

[deconstruct911]

6. sorry but to my knowledge

the 911myths thing didn't help me with my question in my previous post.

[SDuderstadt]

7. Dude...

use your head...

How much was the entire federal budget for FY 2001? What was the Pentagon's bufget for FY 2001? Do you know how the budget process works? Are agencies, including the Pentagon, just allowed to carryover huge sums from year to year? How long do you think that, even if allowed, could go one before there would be drastic budget cuts for that entity?

Do you honestly think that $2.3 T could be missing from the Pentagon and not even one Dem would come down on them hard? Sy Hersh wouldn't be on it in a flash? Do you understand accounting? Rumsfeld's message is pretty clear, except to you and those who share your delusion that the money is missing.

This is getting beyond stupid.

[deconstruct911]

8. So it's been accounted, sounds good

What was the money used for specifically?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRqeJcuK-A

[SDuderstadt]

9. Dude...

do you really think $2.3T is "missing"? You understand that would be more than the ENTIRE federal budget for FY 2001, right?

This just goes to show that anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.

P.S. The maker of that stupid YouTube video doesn't know what he is talking about, either.

[deconstruct911]

17. If YOU say so

I know I can assure myself thats the case. For the record I believe some records of the transactions might have been destroyed. That is certainly a possibility I will not rule out until it's clear what happened to every last penny of the unaccounted money. It's clearly not unusual for the pentagon to loose track of transactions but when something like 9 11 happens and part of the pentagon is up in flames things become far more questionable.

[immune]

11. It has nothing to do with what we think.

You are claiming Rumsfeld couldn't have meant what he said because the money couldn't have been there to begin with, so tell us why he made that statement and why no one DID come down hard on him or demanded an audit.

Since you sseem to know more than anyone else, make it "pretty clear" for the rest of us poor dumb schmucks.

[SDuderstadt]

12. He was talking about the problems with the Pentagon's...

antiquated (and still problematic) accounting systems, dude. Duh.

How in the world could $2.3T (more than the entire 2001 FY federal budget) be "missing"? The problem for you guys is that the phrase "$2.3T in transactions cannot be properly tracked" isn't ominous so you guys spin it as $2.3T is "missing", as in "stolen", which is a ludicrous statement to anyone who does not share your delusions.

No one is saying that this isn't a problem or does not present a risk for fraud. However, unless you can explain how the Pentagon could possibly have an amount 3-4 times its annual budget be "missing" (or "stolen") and even operate, then you have what you always have...dick.

You do realize that the Pentagon's books ARE audited...right?

[immune]

13. Right.

"But essentially if you try to understand what's going on in the Pentagon and this is the most important aspect, and it gets at the heart of our democracy. Is that we have an accounting system that is unauditable. Even by the generous auditing requirements of the federal government.

... Now under the CFO Act of 1990 (Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990) they have to do this audit annually. Well, every year they do an audit and the inspector general would issue a report saying we have to waive the audit requirements, because we can't balance the books. We can't tell you how the money got spent.

Now what they do is try to track transactions. And in one of the last audits that was done the transactions were like… there were like $7 trillion in transactions. And they couldn't account for about four trillion of those transactions. Two trillion were unaccountable and two trillion they didn't do, and they accounted for two trillion.

In October 2003, a new General Accounting Office report showed that the Pentagon sells its surplus to anybody, and at a substantial discount. Quotes from the article:
Congress ordered the GAO -- its investigative arm -- to set up a phony company to see how easy it would be to buy surplus lab equipment from the Pentagon.

Using fake names, GAO investigators went to a Web site that sells Pentagon surplus and ordered items needed to produce bacteriological weapons, including evaporators, centrifuges, bacteriological incubators amd protective clothing.

In its report, the GAO found that the "Department of Defense has not attempted to determine who is buying excess biological equipment or how these items were being used."
They don't know where the money's going." <3><4>

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Loose_Cannon_Pentagon

I guess GAO shares my delusions. capisce?

[SDuderstadt]

14. Maybe you missed the part where I said...

that no one is denying that the situation is problematic or runs the risk of fraud, dude.

The problem is you and others keep yammering that $2.3 T is "missing" (i.e., stolen) when that is not the case at all.

If you can't grasp that, there's no point in continuing this discussion, not that there ever was to begn with, dude.

[immune]

16. You missed the part about

the SEVEN trillion dollars. And here you were trying your best to deny and deflect over the TWO trillion dollars. Vhat a budget!!!

But yeah, I can see why you might not want to continue this discussion. Facts are a bitch.

[deconstruct911]

19. That's not the problem at all

The problem is you keep dwelling on that when you yourself know it's irrelevant.

You know damn well we are talking about the risk of fraud when it comes to the pentagon burning.

[SDuderstadt]

21. I see...

so what, exactly, is your argument? That someone crashed a plane into the Pentagon to enable fraud? Or. the fact that someone crashed a plane into the Pentagon allowed someone to take advantage of it???

[smiley]

18. go away

back on ignore...

[SDuderstadt]

20. It's an absolute pleasure to be on "ignore"...

by people like you.

[LARED]

3. I have a copy of the book on my family room coffee table.

I just started it last night, only got about 10 pages read. The writing is not impressive so far.

[defendandprotect]

10. Cover Your Ass is more like it .... !!!

Right wing is consistent --

they buy up their own books to make it look like they are selling well --

and they BURN other people's books because truth is such a danger to their lies!!

Consistently telling lies -- and against free speech --

[immune]

15. Whoa!

a classified military intelligence program known as “Able Danger,” is now using its unique expertise to offer a competitive information advantage to sophisticated accredited investors.

The “Black Swan” Program is an unclassified intelligence initiative designed for multi-national corporations and financial institutions seeking to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace by using data mining and link analysis techniques of open sources of information. The program’s name is inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 book, The Black Swan, in which “Black Swan Events” are defined as rare, hard to predict, and high-impact incidents of large magnitude such as 9/11 and the current global financial crisis.

http://abledangerblog.com/

[spooked911]

22. Amazon is currently selling the censored version

http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Dark-Heart-Frontlines-Afghanistan/dp/031260369X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1287488558&sr=1-1-spell

[KDLarsen]

23. I thought you were a no-planer?

The underlining message of the book is that Mohammad Atta flew American Airlines fligh 11 into WTC1.

[Guggenheim]

24. Thanks for the link . The New York Times also reported on this story

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10books.html

"WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute. "

What are they afraid of?