I glanced over at Powell, who simply said, "Deniability."
I nodded and asked, "He ordered it shut down? Why?"
"That was not explained, sir. I was simply told to shut it down and destroy all records of it. As I said, I found that very unusual, so I went outside of channels and got in touch with the Secretary."
"I like proper channels, Colonel. Who did you speak to?"
He took a deep breath and admitted, "I called General Shinseki. I had met him once or twice before. He's retired now, but he told me he could reach the Secretary. I simply stated I needed to speak to the Secretary. I did not speak of Able Danger."
I looked at Powell. "Shinseki called you?"
"And I called Shaffer here."
"What the hell is this all about, Colonel? What did this Able Danger do?"
"Sir, we found the names of some of the 9-11 hijackers. We reported them to the CIA."
I stared at him for a moment. "You knew who was going to attack those airplanes?"
"No, sir, not really. We figured that out afterwards.", he replied.
I looked over at Powell. He looked back at me in dead seriousness. Colin Powell had bought into whatever this was. I turned back to Shaffer. "Okay, you're going to need to explain that, like you're teaching a really stupid politician."
"What we determined was that there were groups of individuals who fit the profiles of possible terrorists, organized into groups, a cell organization it's called. We passed this information along to the CIA, since these were foreign nationals, so they could track down anything about them."
"I'm with you so far. So how do you know these men were the 9-11 guys? Those names haven't been released yet. The information is still being developed, in fact."
He nodded. "Yes, sir. Well, we had these names and we were tracking them, sort of, just to see if our algorithms were working. Then we noticed that none of the names had any changes or movement after 9-11. They had completely dropped from sight. That was when we started querying the CIA again."
"And that was when the State Department ordered it shut down and disbanded? How did they get involved? What does the State Department have to do with the Defense Intelligence Agency? None of this makes sense." I looked at Shaffer. "This program of yours, is it – was it – operational?"
"No, sir, it was just a pilot program, to see if we could develop information. We were still figuring it out."
"Colonel, I'm going to ask you to step outside for a few minutes." I escorted him to the door and showed him out, with instructions to stick around, but feel free to get coffee for himself. Then I went back and sat down with the Secretary of Defense. "Colin, why the hell do I feel like we're playing a game and I not only don't know the rules, I don't know the game."
"Carl, I am getting a very bad feeling about this."
"Some unknown light bird at the DIA finds some names and crossdecks them to the CIA, but it's the State Department which shuts him down. How did they get involved?"
"How would they even have heard?", commented Powell.
I was getting a really bad feeling about this. "Who is this Radziker or whatever his name is?"
"Radziwill, Jonathan Radziwill. I asked about that. He's a personal assistant to Scooter Libby.", he replied. "He also knew Wolfowitz, at least that's what I've heard."
That made me raise my eyebrows. Wolfowitz had previous history at State, and knew Scooter and Cheney. Scooter was the Deputy Secretary of State, the number two man over there, and Cheney's longtime assistant. "Scooter doesn't go to the bathroom without permission from Cheney. So, why does Cheney want it shut down?" I thought for a second longer and said, "Okay, so Cheney orders the evidence that we knew about 9-11 ahead of time buried, but we didn't know about 9-11 ahead of time. They just had some names of possible bad guys. Cheney might be the Antichrist, but even he wouldn't allow these guys to kill George Bush.", I argued.
"It's not about 9-11.", Powell rebutted. "It's about Iraq. All year long State and the CIA have been arguing that Saddam Hussein is the threat to the country, and after the attack, they've been saying he sent the terrorists. Now Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer pops up to throw sand into the gears. Here's a question for you. What happens if these names get sent to the CIA or the FBI? The CIA buries it in the vaults, because they don't talk to anybody. The FBI, however, puts some agents on these guys, maybe hauls them in for questioning, maybe figures it out and we don't get 9-11."
A chill ran up my spine! I had condemned thousands of Americans to die, when we already knew the bad guys were in the country and up to something. What if we had grabbed them? What if 9-11 hadn't happened? I didn't know whether to cry or throw up.
"I get the impression that Cheney is trying to cover this all up, but what's he covering up? That it was Al Qaeda, not Hussein? Is this even a cover-up? Is this even illegal? Or are they trying to cover up the fact that they wanted a war with Iraq, no matter what the facts are? Or are they trying to cover up the fact that they failed to act on the info, even though the CIA isn't allowed to act inside the U.S.", I replied.
"Have your Three Amigos heard about any of this?"
"Nobody has said anything to me, and I think they would have said something. By all accounts this is looking like George was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing they are finding says that he was being targeted." I shrugged for a second, and said, "I'm not even sure this is illegal, just sneaky and underhanded. Well, we need to figure this out, and neither you nor I are going to be able to do that. We need to get a lawyer involved. Will you ask the colonel to come back in? By the way, when all this is over with, we need to come up with a way to say thank you to Eric Shinseki. This is the second time he has helped me out."
Colin stood and went to the door, and summoned Shaffer back in. I stood and said, "Colonel, I'm not really sure where this is going to be headed, but I think we need to find out. I hereby order you to make backup copies of the project, and ignore any orders to destroy it. I also am ordering you to cooperate with any investigation from the Justice Department. Colin, I want you to get in touch with John Ashcroft, and take the colonel over there."
Both men replied, "Yes, sir.", and I sent them away. The whole thing was disgusting. Did Cheney and Wolfowitz and Libby and the rest of the neocons they surrounded themselves with want war with Iraq so badly they would bury evidence that it wasn't Iraq who did this? But I wasn't buying that and wasn't claiming it anyway, so who were they trying to bury the evidence from? Bush? He was the least of their worries! The moderates? Was that even illegal? Or is this simply hiding the incredibly embarrassing, but not necessarily illegal, way they ignored something that led to the deaths of over three thousand people?
One thing I was sure of was that it was going to come out. The biggest problem with cover-ups is that they don't work. Every scandal I had ever heard of, going all the way back to Watergate and before, it wasn't the crime that landed people in jail, it was the cover-up. The only way this was going to be at all something we could work through was if we could control the release of the information.
I could foresee two possible outcomes. First, we could try to bury it. We tell Shaffer to dismantle the program and send him to Nome for the rest of his life. Sooner or later, though, somebody would talk, it would hit the papers, and some Congressman would demand hearings. It would take months of time, and somebody would end up fired or in jail.