Operation Dark Heart

by Anthony Shaffer

  “I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I thought for the moment. “Perhaps it’s what we believe it to be. Maybe God allows us to pick our heaven.”

  “I had never thought of that,” Kate said. “That would be nice.”

  “What do you think heaven is?” I asked. I started to stroke her black hair.

  “Feeling safe …” she said as she faded off into sleep in my arms.

  Not able to sleep, but enjoying the energy circulating between us, I lay there and felt her breathing as I held her.

  Safe. What a concept.

  14

  ABLE DANGER

  THE event that would change my military career started innocuously enough with an announcement by General Bagby at the morning meeting. Members of the 9/11 Commission investigating the September 11 attacks were at Bagram, he said, and if anyone had any information for them, we could meet with them.

  Two words immediately leaped to my mind: Able Danger.

  I hadn’t thought much about it since coming to Afghanistan. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it much for a while. I’d forced myself to stop thinking about it. The frustration was too great.

  I approached Colonel Negro after the meeting. “Sir, I have some information that the 9/11 Commission might be interested in. It’s about an operation I was working on called Able Danger. I’ve mentioned aspects of it to you because we used some technical operations there that I’m proposing for Dark Heart. What do you think?”

  “Write up a talking points memo, send it to me, and I’ll send it along to General Bagby,” Negro said. “I’ll see what he says to do.”

  I went back to my office and, in front of the computer, the memories of that operation came flooding back. Christ. We had those guys, and we blew it. We all freakin’ blew it.

  I started typing, bulleting points to talk from if I was asked to brief, to show the 9/11 Commission what we knew more than a year before the attacks: the basic details of *** *** **** *********** *********** ** *** ** ** ******* the concept of operations and notable details; of Able Danger, and the notable and numerous problems. The commission had to know the whole story—or as much as I could give them in one session.

  In 2000, while targeting al Qaeda, our Able Danger task force had discovered two of the three cells that later conducted the 9/11 attacks. Including Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker.

  I figured someone had already clued in the 9/11 Commission since I was not the only one who knew. By my count, ten folks in all of DoD had that information. We—actually, the army—had found evidence of al Qaeda cells operating in the U.S. in 1999 through its data mining program. Within DoD, there was knowledge of al Qaeda operating for the better part of two years before September 11, 2001. We had known, for example, about the threat that al Qaeda posed to U.S. interests based on the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. I assumed the commissioners were aware of some of that, but I wanted to walk them through the entire operation just in case. It was important for them to learn the whole story—or as much as I could give them in one session.

  Able Danger. Where would I start?

  Suddenly, I was out of this combat zone in a godforsaken country halfway around the world, and it was 1999 in Tampa, Florida, again.

  ** *** ***** * *** ********** **** ***** ******* **** * ****** *************** ******** *** **** ******* ** ***** ** ********* ****** ******* ** *********** *** ***** *** ********** *** *** ******* *********** **** ***** ****** ** ***** * *** ******* *** ****** ********* ******** *********** ** ***** ******* *** ******* ***** ** ***** ** *** ** **** *** *********** ** *********** ***** ******* ** *** ********* ****** ** ***** ** **** *** ***** *** ****** ********** ********* ** *** **** ****** we took cutting-edge, “out-of-the-box” technological concepts and developed them into real intelligence operations. Much of it was so black that we couldn’t talk about the existence of the operations on any computer network, even at the top-secret level, so I had to keep a lot of records in hard copy only and work on stand-alone computers. I often briefed higher-ups in person rather than sending an online memo.

  I got involved in Able Danger in September 1999, when I was at SOCOM headquarters in Tampa for my annual reserve training. Because of my work on Stratus Ivy, I was brought in to brief Gen. Peter Schoomaker, then SOCOM commander.

  Schoomaker, a stout officer with graying short hair, decisive eyes, and a low, deliberate voice, stopped me in the middle of my PowerPoint briefing. He asked me a key question about one of the black operations that involved the penetration of a major transnational state. I gave him a key phrase that was code for the exact nature of the capability. Schoomaker got it. “I need you for a special project,” he said.

  He turned to one of the colonels in the room. “I want you to read Major Shaffer into Able Danger ASAP.” He left no room for negotiation. It was a done deal.

  The next day, navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, who managed the project, took me to the Special Technical Operations office, presented me with a three-inch-thick briefing book, and said with a big smile, “Here ya go. You’re going to like this.”

  I remember opening the briefing book, starting to read, and then stopping.

  Oh my God. This is the A ticket. The ultimate mission.

  We were taking the gloves off and going after al Qaeda.

  At that point, in 1999, it was clear that al Qaeda was a formidable and deadly opponent. In 1993, a car bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The 1,500-pound device was supposed to bring down the towers, but it didn’t. Still, it killed six people and injured more than 1,000. According to the narratives of the event that I respect, this was al Qaeda’s first decisive, though not entirely successful, strike on U.S. soil.

  Then there were the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam orchestrated by al Qaeda. Truck bombs killed hundreds of people and injured thousands.

  Schoomaker’s concept was to bring together the best and the brightest military operators, technicians, planners, and intelligence officers from the army, the DIA, and SOCOM. They would combine cutting-edge technology with traditional human intelligence operations and link both directly into military planning.

  It was like bringing the best minds from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft together to focus on a single challenge. The mission here was to discover the global “body” of al Qaeda and, with this information, prepare offensive operations options. Those options could include everything from raids to highly complex psychological operations to manipulate, degrade, and destroy al Qaeda.

  In other words, gather the intelligence to kill the largest and most dangerous terrorist operation in the world.

  Gen. Hugh Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had directed that SOCOM have the lead command on Able Danger. This was the first time that SOCOM was the lead command. Usually the regional commands—CENTCOM, EUCOM, SOUTHCOM, or PACOM—would be the lead command with SOCOM supporting their operations, but in this case, the rationale was that al Qaeda was a global transnational threat that didn’t have one particular regional focus. It was a huge departure from tradition, however. SOCOM would be telling the regional commands what it needed, not the other way around.

  With the approval of the DIA director of operations, Maj. Gen. Bob Harding, I put several folks to work on a herculean effort to try to assist SOCOM in several key areas of its mission.

  The first was to map something that had never been mapped before, using a clean-sheet approach in which no existing methodology existed.

  My staff coordinated—almost as a concierge for SOCOM—the operational requirements and documents. Our task included getting copies of the large, classified “corporate” databases of DIA and ***—terabytes of data. The patterns found in open-source data would confirm, or be refuted, by comparing them to information and patterns contained in classified databases.

  We would follow the data wherever it took us and build a global map of al Qaeda. Since we were not terrorism expe
rts, we had no preconceived notions or bad habits. We were “pure” in our drive.

  Still, it wasn’t just about the data.

  We would find ways to support the military operationally when it started to act against al Qaeda. **** ** ** *** *** ** **** **** *** **** ***** ***** ** ****** *** *********** ********** ** ******* *** ********* ** ************* *** ********* ****** ***** **** ** ******* **** **** ******* ********* ********** **** ******* ** *********** ** ******

  *** ** *** *** ****** *** * ******* ****** ******* **** ** ***** ** ** *** ********* **** ******* **** *** ***** **** **** ***** ** *** ************ ******* **** ********* *** *** was a key, vetted asset, with solid access to the Taliban and al Qaeda, whom we’d had on the books for years, and he was our ticket into the heart of al Qaeda. Using the knowledge we would amass through Able Danger, ** *** *** ******* ** ****** ***** ***** ************ ******* ***** ** *** *** ******** **** ** ** *** ******* ** ** ** **** ****** **** **** ****** ** ***** *** ******* ***** **** ********* ************ **** ***** ***** ** ** ********** *** ******* ******* ** **************** ***** ** ************

  For the first four months of the project, our SOCOM Able Danger team floundered because it lacked operational methodology and usable intel. The “clean sheet” approach was more like a sterile one.

  I had used the U.S. Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) unit to support two other black operations that Stratus Ivy was running: LIWA had provided key data that had helped us plan operations, and I was impressed with its results. So I recommended to SOCOM that it look at LIWA and its massive database and data-crunching ability. One of the lead organizations on Able Danger was LIWA, which had begun to adapt to the information age and was considered the army’s lead data-mining center. Its idea was to use high-powered software to bore into just about everything: any data that was available—and I mean anything. Open-source Internet data, e-mails believed to be terrorist-related, nonsecret government data, commercial records, information on foreign companies, logs of visitors to mosques obtained from an outside researcher, and much, much more.

  Even before moving in to assist Able Danger, LIWA had begun looking at global terrorist infrastructures. Over six months in 1999, it had acquired a vast four-terabyte database and had assembled all these scattered pieces of information about al Qaeda into a comprehensive global picture.

  Its researchers did huge sweeps of the Internet and used highly advanced algorithms to compare and amalgamate data. It was a powerful way to link individuals and organizations and make sense of disparate streams of data. It was like Google on steroids.

  Within two months, LIWA had produced some impressive results in establishing a global map of al Qaeda using only open-source data. Its model was based on targeting methodology developed by J. D. Smith, an analyst for Orion Scientific Systems (a LIWA contractor), who deconstructed every individual involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing into basis data points—the year they were born, their associates, tribal affiliation, mosque memberships, and so on—and built an algorithm. It was then used to examine immense amounts of publicly available data and identify other potential terrorists by comparing them to the original ’93 World Trade Center terrorists. As we identified individuals who matched those characteristics, we looked at their associations with other like individuals and started to create a map of a worldwide organization and its direct links with al Qaeda leadership.

  In early January, I brought charts produced by LIWA from Fort Belvoir to Able Danger’s operations in Tampa. I remember opening them up and laying them down on the table in the conference room located next to Schoomaker’s command suite.

  “This is what they got for us,” I told Scott Phillpott, the operations officer of Able Danger. “They say they can do more of this.”

  We both looked at the charts, blown away.

  They were two-dimensional representations of the large open-source database containing between three and four terabytes of information on known and suspected al Qaeda operatives, enablers, and affiliates. The charts had hundreds of photos (from passports, visas, and other sources) and names (sometimes multiple for one individual). Some photos were grouped on the chart by terrorist affiliation, others by suspected geographic location.

  One group was the “Brooklyn cell,” as we came to call it: associates of Omar Abdul Rahman, the “blind Sheik,” who was serving a life sentence for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

  An al Qaeda cell in the United States.

  Scott stared at the chart, transfixed. “This is it,” he said. “This is exactly what we need.”

  We both leaned over it, examining photos of some of the most dangerous people in the world as they stared up at us.

  Scott pointed to one in the Brooklyn cell. Thin-lipped, close-cropped hair, a sculpted face. Eyelids pulled partly down over a set of dead eyes. The photo was grainy, but it still captured a sinister feeling.

  “That’s one scary-looking dude,” Scott said.

  I remember several names under the photo. One of them was “Atta.”

  The significance wouldn’t become clear to me until much later. At that point, it was just a menacing face set within the Brooklyn cell.

  I was just satisfied that Scott was impressed with LIWA’s work. *** ************ ******* **** *********** ** **** **** **** ****** *** **** ** **** ******* ** **** ******** **** **** ** ** **** ****** ******* *** ** **** ** ******** ******* **** *** ********** ******** ** ******** * ******** ** ****** ** ******* **** ****** **** *** *** ** ******* *** ********** ******** ** *** ********* ** ******** ** *** *** ** ********* ** ******* ************** ** ****** we were aiming for the electronic records used to track individuals being trained in terrorist tactics.

  In my Bagram office, I sat back in my chair, staring at the bulleted points I had made on my computer screen, the memories of that time coming back in waves. The bureaucratic resistance we had faced was positively epic—even for the military.

  Senior DIA officers—men and women who never left the air-conditioned environs of the DIA Analysis Center in Clarendon—wanted Able Danger to become exclusively an analytical operation, and there were several attempts to take Able Danger away from us and give it to the director of Intelligence and its Office of Transnational Counterterrorism. They would focus only on the analysis of the data and would rarely produce actionable information.

  Other problems persisted. Several agencies treat their intelligence information as if it were proprietary in nature. This was typical of DoD. Intelligence agencies do not like to share their data with the operations side of the organization despite the fact that it is all U.S. government. Senior bureaucrats like to believe the data is exclusive to their command—owned outright. Sharing it might enable some sister organization to be successful. Imagine that. An intelligence service being successful in its mission because it had data from another agency. Cooperation and sharing—even if it resulted in successful identification of threats before they do harm to the United States? Nonsense. That wouldn’t be cricket.

  In early 2000, after an Able Danger briefing to DIA deputy director Jerry Clark, he told the DIA officers who were at the briefing to drag their feet and slow down the process of providing people and data to our effort. He didn’t see the need to “share” DIA’s best resources. *** also refused to provide SOCOM access to its database. My deputy worked her magic and was finally able to convince *** to give us a copy, which we then sent on to SOCOM.

  It got worse. After refusing to provide us with all of DIA’s information, DIA finally gave us the data—raw data, everything it had collected—20 terabytes of data on a bowling-ball-sized hard drive known as the Military Intelligence Database (MIDB). However, it came in an unusable format. It appeared that DIA techs had purposely tried to “scramble” it to make it unusable. Fortunately, an experienced programmer on the Able Danger team was able to create an algorithm that corrected the problem.

  Behind some of the resistance, in my view, was sheer denial within DoD tha
t al Qaeda was even a threat to the United States. A senior DoD black-operations program manager once told me that I was wasting my time, that al Qaeda wasn’t really a danger because the United States was such a lucrative fund-raising center for it through Muslim charities. Its leaders would never be so stupid as to attack us and risk cutting off that funding.

  Right.

  Later in 2000, a huge roadblock was thrown up—by our own government. Scott called me.

  “You will not believe what is going on here.”

  “What?” I had assumed that things were going well.

  “The SOCOM lawyers are telling us there is a whole group of folks we can’t look at because they are here legally in the United States or they are affiliated with folks who are here legally. They are ‘U.S. persons,’ they say.”

  “That’s loony,” I said. “Clearly, they’re on our radar because they’re linked with terrorist organizations. That makes them a valid target.”

  “I agree with you,” said Scott, “but the lawyers won’t budge on it.”

  I broke out President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333. It restricted the use and retention of information on U.S. persons for intelligence-collection purposes, but it clearly had an exception for information on individuals suspected of criminal activity, affiliated with, or suspected of being a part of a terrorist organization.

  I tried talking to the DIA lawyers, but they didn’t want to get involved. This was a SOCOM project and they wouldn’t touch the controversy.

  On my next trip to Tampa, I saw the chart I had brought them; there were yellow Post-it notes over most of the photographs on the Brooklyn cell. The SOCOM lawyers had determined they were off-limits to the Able Danger effort. Not to be looked at or evaluated as potential targets.

  Shortly after that, the Army got cold feet because of the “U.S. persons” issue, determined that it wasn’t in compliance with DoD intelligence oversight policies, and shut down all army support, pulling LIWA out of the project.