Pentagon Gets Cold Feet

Well, if this isn't a fascinating development. On the very day before the public Senate Able Danger hearings are set to begin, the Pentagon suddenly changes its collective mind and orders the military intelligence witnesses that were slated to testify to renege on that testimony:

The Pentagon said today that it had blocked a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the September 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks.

The announcement came a day before the officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ...

Mr. Specter said his staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that "credibility has been established" for all of them.

"There are quite a few credible people who are prepared to testify that Mohamed Atta was identified long before 9/11," he said. "Now maybe there's more than one Mohamed Atta. Or maybe there's some mistake. But that's what we're trying to find out."

And clearly what the Pentagon - at Donald Rumsfeld's direct order, reportedly - doesn't want them, or anybody else, to know about.

I must say the logic of this move escapes me. Not only does this abrupt about-about-face blatantly telegraph that these witnesses have explosive revelations to make, but at least two other of the scheduled witnesses are civilian contractors and beyond DoD's ability to muzzle. And one of them, former Major Eric Kleinstadt, received the orders to destroy the Able Danger database. From his testimony alone it should prove possible to piece together quite a bit of the overall picture - at least enough to justify the issuance of formal congressional subpoenas to compel the de-clamming of the Pentagon's rescinded witnesses.

I'm beginning to suspect that one of the things that will come to light if Able Danger breaks wide open is some sort of top-secret deal between the Bushies and the Clintonoids wherein the former agreed to help cover up the latter's criminal negligence in leaving the nation so nakedly vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks. And in exchange for what? Manipulation of the Democrat side of last year's presidential primaries to help ensure an opponent Bush could beat? Letting the Democrat party be run into the ground by the Sorosians and moveon.orgers, leaving the GOP with a majority almost by default? Or maybe nothing at all - just the ultimate extreme of Bush's "New Tone" paradigm.

I've never understood why Bush agreed to creation of the 9/11 Commission after initially resisting it, or why the Republicans let the Democrats completely hijack it into an all-out Bush-bashfest, or why the White House never uttered a word in its own self-defense (at least until John Ashcroft gave his testimony - and he wasn't invited back for the second term, was he?) in the throes of its own re-election campaign. And now Bush's own SecDef is publicly obstructing Congress' investigation of what are by definition Bill Clinton's national security derelictions? What's wrong with this picture?

As the old saying goes, "No matter which way you slice it, it's still baloney." Something about this just doesn't add up. Here's hoping that Chairman Specter has better luck at investigatory oversight than all the feckless GOP chairs on both sides of the Capitol that came before him.

[HT: Strata-Sphere and CQ]