Intelligence Breakdown: The Controversy Surrounding pre-9/11 Orders to Stop Tracking bin Laden
Submitted by GreyHawk on May 23, 2011 - 17:21An interesting story recently appeared on Truthout, titled Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden. Specifically, the story by Jeffrey Kaye intimates that
Questions about what intelligence agencies knew or didn't know about al-Qaeda activities go back some years, most prominently in the controversy over the existence of a joint US Special Forces Command and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) data mining effort known as "Able Danger."
What hasn't been discussed is a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, which indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11.
Here's where the story gets interesting:
Earlier this year, a blogger, Susie Dow, who has been following the story of Kirk von Ackermann , a US Army contractor in Iraq who disappeared on the road between Tikrit and Kirkuk in October 2003, asserted that von Ackermann had earlier belonged to JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division.
According to Truthout, the Asymmetric Threat Division was known within the Department of Defense primarily by its DoD designation, DO5.
The Truthout piece also goes on to mention Susie's work with ePluribus Media, specifically the piece she wrote, with Stephen Reich, entitled One Missing, One Dead; An Iraq Contractor in the Fog of War.
The potential implications are damning.
Susie Dow has also recently posted about the Truthout piece, now front-paged here. Check it out.