MILNET Brief
  Able Danger
"Able Danger involved the searching out and compiling of open source or other publicly available information regarding specific targets or tasks that were connected through associational links. No classified information was used. No government database systems were used."

- Mark Zied, Attorney at Law, Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Able Danger 6

The Able Danger program, much to the chagrin of the U.S. Department of Defense became widely known due to claims that it had identified 9./11 terrorist Mohammad Atta well before the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.  The DoD has since disputed the claim after a "thorough", DoD Inspector General investigation.  The controversy did not end there, and still doubts linger.  In any case, the program itself was unique and leading edge, replaced by a follow on project presumably called "Able Providence", and then vanished into the classifed mystery of black budget projects in the DoD controlled intelligence center(s).

Able Danger was a first attempt at using public data -- called Open Source Intelligence in the intelligence community parlance.  Open Source Intelligence is actually what you are reading right now...MILNET was one of the first Open Source Intelligence locations on the Internet.  The goal was to take Open Source Intelligence on Terrorists and figure out if it could be used to create target lists for counterterrorist operations being contemplated by the DoD.

Open Source Intelligence is gleaned from public documents, reports, broadcasts, you name it.  With the advent of the Internet and web sites, then blogs, it became even easier to find vast amounts of public data.  Why would public data be important?

First it is important to match or validate clanestine sourced data.  Covert operations may yield data that has no other source of validating data, so public sources, subject to errors or even disinformation must be used.  To weed out disinformation, multiple public sources are used, especially if it can reliably be noted that those sources are not based on a single point of information.  For instance in the news arena, Associated Press or Reuters tend to feed every outlet.  Thus a story found on Fox, NBC, ABC, BBC, or others that have the A.P. logo are all written from the same A.P. newsfeed.  While some interpretation goes on (it isn't supposed to, but it happens), it is clear that is one source of information.  If Reuters and A.P. are feeding, the source may still be a single source, they are in the same room listening or talking with the same official.  Similar are interviews, most interviews of a single person or group of persons in a governement office are victims of a single source, the script writer for the person being interviewed.

Thus when validating open source information, the intelligence operator must use well learned and professional level skills in interpreting the validity of that open source information.   A confluence of separate sources or a smaller number plus a highly reliable public source, however allow the intelligence analyst to make rational assessments of the validity of their clandestine sourced data.

This is where Able Danger came in.  It's data mining tool approach to gathering data was, at the time, akin to magic. It not only pulled together lots of data, but also created association charts of that data.  The Able Danger DoD IG's report shows some fuzzy examples (one assumes the fuzziness was purposeful, in order to protect the "innocent" we would assume or not to show the high quality actually possible least someone get tipped off to how good the intelligence capability is...perhaps a remnent of old photo interpreter cautions ... don't let them see how good our resolution really is!).  MILNET has prepared a small sample of a graphical terrorist information database to demonstrate something like the capability that could be built upon the output of Able Danger.  Ours was hand built, there's was nearly fully automated.

Here is a picture chart that Able Danger might have created, followed by a sample of an Able Danger association chart.  Both are from the DoD's Inspector General's Report 1 :



Sample Able Danger Chart from DoD IG Report on Able Danger 1



Able Danger Association Chart from DoD IG Report 1


Here is a hand cobbled example of an Able Danger like photo chart.  Click on the image to see a close-up view of the image:"


MILNET's Hand Built Al-Qaeda Chart


And finally, here is a linked image from Peter Vance, the author of "Triple Cross" a book extremely critical of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies prior to 9/11 and CYA afterwards.


Peter Lance's "3.2.1" Chart 2



A MILNET Mockup of a Sample Association Chart
(Click on the image to navigate to the MILNET Briefing on Association Charts)
Sources:
  1. Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program... - ( MILNET Mirror), Office of the IG, Dept.of Defense, 9/18/2006
  2. Peter Lance's "3.2.1" Chart, First World Trade Center Bomber Links, Peterlance.com
  3. Graphical Terrorist Database, MILNET Briefing, 11/2006
  4. Able Danger, Wikipedia (see the bottom of the page for a rather extensive list of links covering the revealation of the program and the resulting controversy).
  5. The Able Danger Blog, (more info on Able Danger than anyone can process in a single read)
  6. Attorney Mark Zaid's Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Senate Commitee on the Judiciary, 09/21/2005
  7. The Able Danger Subcommittee Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Senate Commitee on the Judiciary, 09/21/2005
  8. Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer's Testimony Before U.S. House Armed Services Subcommittee, HASC, 02/15/2005
  9. House Armed Services Subcommittee Hearing on Able Danger, HASC, 02/15/2006
  10. Abu Sayyaf, European News Monitor's  JRT News Explorer  (May be slow on your datacomm connection - we recommend DSL or better to receive data, also requires FLASH Player 9 © or better). Flash Player is a trademarked application, trademark by Adobe.


© Copyright 2007, Michael G. Crawford