Fergie's Tech Blog

Intelligence Designs: Able Danger

Shane Harris:

In the spring of 2000, a year and a half before the 9/11 attacks, Erik Kleinsmith made a decision that history may judge as a colossal mistake.

Then a 35-year-old Army major assigned to a little-known intelligence organization at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, Kleinsmith had compiled an enormous cache of information -- most of it electronically stored -- about the Al Qaeda terrorist network. It described the group's presence in countries around the world, including the United States.

It was of great interest to military planners eager to strike the terrorists' weak spots. And it may have contained the names of some of the 9/11 hijackers, including the ringleader, Mohamed Atta.

The intelligence data totaled 2.5 terabytes, equal to about 12 percent of all printed pages held by the Library of Congress. Neither the FBI nor the CIA had ever seen the information. And that spring, Kleinsmith destroyed every bit of it.

Why did he do that? And how did a midlevel officer in a minor intelligence outfit obtain that information in the first place? Those questions lie behind the latest phase of a simmering controversy in Washington: whether something could have been done to prevent the terror attacks of September 11.

More here.

Note: Shane Harris writes feature and investigative stories about intelligence, homeland security, and counterterrorism. He is a staff correspondent for National Journal, and writes for other national publications and frequently speaks to the public and the news media. More here.

posted by Fergie @ 7/17/2007 03:48:00 PM