After revoking the security clearance of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a key figure in the ongoing Able Danger ‘information warfare’ controversy, Department of Defense officials – apparently inadvertently – sent at least six classified documents to the whistleblower. The documents – two directly related to the once-clandestine Able Danger operation, which identified Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers a year before the terror attacks – were among the items found in six boxes of “personal stuff” the Defense Intelligence Agency returned to Shaffer via his attorney, Mark Zaid, according to a source close to the attorney. The source added that DIA officials told Zaid they had spent “15 hours scrubbing” the material to make sure no classified information was contained therein.
The documents DIA returned “confirm and expand the information about the amount of support” Able Danger was getting from another program known as Stratus Ivy – and “included information to confirm that Shaffer had other officers working to support Able Danger,” the source said.
In addition, twenty-six pieces of mail addressed to someone named Domingo A. Romo (and his wife Sandra) – ranging from financial statements to insurance information – were also found among the materials provided to Lt. Col. Shaffer.
The Pentagon scrubbing did have at least some cleansing effects, however. Although DIA did return Shaffer’s leather briefcase, items it once had contained – an Able Danger set of TOP SECRET documents (mission planning order, cover plan, etc.,) as well as some of the briefing books and charts that had been used to brief Pentagon leadership about the program – have all been hidden or destroyed by DIA.
Shaffer was unavailable for comment. His employers at DIA have effectively muzzled him, and told his attorneys their client cannot speak publicly about the Able Danger program – not before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Shaffer had been scheduled to testify last month, and certainly not to reporters.
A second round of Able Danger hearings had been set for October 5, but was postponed indefinitely. A spokesman for Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, says Specter is “still trying to work it out” with DOD to allow hearings to go forward, but thus far the Pentagon remains adamantly opposed to the public dissemination of any more information about the Able Danger program.
