[...] The Army's hub in this effort was the aptly named Information Dominance Center, based at Fort Belvoir. Since the late 1990s, the IDC has been home to some of the most innovative, unconventional, and controversial minds in the intelligence business. In its futuristic-style building -- its interior spaces designed by a Hollywood set artist to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise, complete with a large captain's chair in the center of the main room -- the IDC covered a range of topics. [...]
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[National Journal Group] DAILY BRIEFING December 7, 2005
Army project illustrates promise, shortcomings of data mining By Shane Harris, National Journal
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.
Kleinsmith worked for an Army project code-named "Able Danger." This past summer, a number of former project members -- none of whom had worked for Kleinsmith -- came forward to say that Able Danger had identified Atta and linked him to a convicted terrorist who is still serving time in federal prison for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
The Able Danger members recalled charts showing names and pictures of suspects, and their links to each other. Rep. Curt Weldon, an outspoken Pennsylvania Republican and longtime supporter of intelligence reform, has demanded to know why the charts were never shared with an agency positioned to halt the attacks.
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