Decision ‘08

Able Danger and Arkin: Day Two

The second installment of William Arkin’s Able Danger overview is up, and I’m beginning to feel a little duped (again!). Arkin plays the role of the apologist pretty much through and through this installment and takes for granted conclusions that, to be charitable, are still very much unsettled matters (i.e., was Able Danger illegal, or potentially so? Do 3 employees who agree with Shaffer amount to corroboration, or do the the 77 who don’t remember amount to proof that Shaffer is wrong?).

Two examples that I find troubling:

In April 2000, Able Danger, only months old, was abruptly shut down. Caught violating Reagan administration Executive Orders and Defense Department and Army regulations restricting intelligence agencies from collecting information on United States “persons,” the highly compartmented cell within the Army’s Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) was halted in its effort to use data mining and link analysis to characterize the worldwide nature of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Halted by whom? Caught by whom? Again, potential or actual violations, and who made that determination?

The second example:

The real story here is how another renegade intelligence effort subsisting on hyper secrecy ran afoul of regulations first implemented in the Ford administration when U.S. intelligence agencies were caught collecting information on community, religious and labor leaders, civil rights protestors, and anti-Vietnam war demonstrators.

This paragraph bugs me more than anything else in the piece; it suggests an equivalence between a ‘dirty tricks’ operation from the Nixon White House and an operation that was aimed at combatting the very real (soon to be devestatingly proven so) threat of Al Qaeda.

Of course, AJ is all over it, with much useful information that you won’t find elsewhere…

5 Responses to “Able Danger and Arkin: Day Two”

1 mark, the lesser Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
William Arkin?

This is a guy who MSNBC had to let go because he was a little whacky during the taking of Iraq.

Recently, he has been set-up for a frame job, or has been accused of taking payments from 94-98 from Iraq for his ‘work’.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45614-2005Mar17.html

Article has the scoop…

But Arkin has been way out there on a lot of things. The most bizarre side of this is that he is reporting for the Wash Post, the paper who opened the theory on him getting paid off by Saddam.

I think he is clear in this matter/but:
“In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Arkin said: “I am extremely concerned that someone familiar with Defense Department classified reporting has forged this document and given it to the press in the hope that it would be reported as genuine. Such an action raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of the department’s processes and raises the possibility of an organized effort to intimidate me as a journalist.”

He definitely has made enemies, and may not be an unbiased source.

his bio, by his own hand:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulf-secret04.htm

“Arkin’s interest in Iraq began when he was director of military research for Greenpeace International. During the Gulf War, he headed Greenpeace’s war response team and co-authored On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment: A Case of the Gulf War (May 1991),which was the first comprehensive study of the war’s human and environmental effects.”

“consultant to Human Rights Watch”

http://www.thinkingpeace.com/pages/Articles/Archive1/arts060.html
This is an article about how America is waging a holy war, based on a General’s relgious beliefs bleeding over into a speech. (This may be the reason for the forged docs).

The guy has great insight, and I would not dispute it.

Does he have a dog in the fight? He has a pack. Take him with a grain of salt. or read this weekly standard article:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/279oetfg.asp
2 Colin Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Greenpeace! Really? I find it hard to believe anyone who is connected to such a fringe organization. If he had worked for Brookings or the Council on Foreign Relations, that’s one thing, but Greenpeace is damn near a terrorist organization in its own right. Its a shame the Post would hire such a man. They usually are a good source of hard news. That’s going to color everything the Post has to say on Able Danger for me for as long as this story lasts.
3 mark, the lesser Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
I’m actually still on the fence with him.(It’s hard, but I try and keep an open mind on WA)

Good insight, in that he will present sides of things that others don’t make you consider, but the interpretation is where he sometimes wanders. His personal opinions bleed into his writings and speeches. Don’t boycott the guy, just be wary of what is opinion and what is fact in his reporting. Be real wary.

(He hates Rummy more than anyone. If he could get him hanged he would.)
4 mark, the lesser Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
hate to double up…but a friend pointed me to this…
http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring032505.html

(At the bottom)

“No security breach
We reported on a cable in our Feb. 4 column stating that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, had ordered an investigation into disclosures of secrets in a new book by journalist and former Greenpeace activist William Arkin.

Gen. Myers’ spokesman, Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, now tells us he believes the document was forged, although the origin of the document could not be determined with 100 percent confidence because the Pentagon’s computer system contains millions of classified documents.

“This may have been a message at some point,” Capt. Thorp said, noting that at least one part of the cable was accurate but others were outdated.

The document stated that Mr. Arkin’s book “Code Names” had compromised several secret programs and called for an “operational security assessment” of the disclosures.

Mr. Arkin was quoted in our item as saying he had been “very careful not to reveal anything related to ongoing operations or an intelligence source and method” in the book.

The Arkin book did not trigger anything close to the reaction of senior military and defense officials to the leak of the Iraq war plan in 2002, months before the March 2003 military operation began.

A second senior Pentagon official said a major undercover investigation has been under way since 2002 to try to locate the source of the war plan disclosure, first reported by Mr. Arkin in the Los Angeles Times.”

Gertz v. Arkin? This was written a week after the WaPo article cleared Arkin. There seems to be the hint that Arkin has good sources, but also that there is some animus between Gertz and Arkin.
5 Mark Says:
September 28th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Geez, I’m getting an education here…thanks for the many useful tips and biographical info on Arkin…Greenpeace makes me a bit leary to, to say the least…