Arkin: Boy, I Misjudged
My initial enthusiasm for William Arkin’s Able Danger series has declined in direct proportion to the number of installments; his summation of the program in installment one was quite good, but by this third installment, here’s what we’re left with:
Shaffer and other shadow warriors just don’t like lines. They think that they can conduct surveillance, analyze intelligence, enforce the law, and fight the war on terrorism all by themselves. As a result, they see the rules segregating intelligence from law enforcement, let alone intelligence from war fighting and policy (remember Iraq) as niceties that the global war on terrorism can no longer afford.
Umm, hmmm…well, so much for reasoned arguments…now, we’re in the realm of paranormal psychic abilities.
I’ve got your back my friend!
Man, do we need a carnival of the Chillin’ or what? Roberts sailed through. Far cry from Thomas.
Of course this is my week to host the RINo’s. BTW, where is your submission????
tsk, tsk.
This is one of the sillier posts on the topic.
First, Arkin has sources that he chooses not to name. The reader, of course, is welcome not to believe unnamed sources; indeed, I challenged Jehl’s story in part because his sources were initially anonymous. Since Arkin has an exceptional record of inside sources, though, those who know the record are likely to believe him.
Arkin has made a good case that a) Able Danger did not achieve what Schaffer and Philpott have been quoted as claiming, b) at least part of what Able Danger was doing was illegal, c) there is a connection between the illegality and the destruction of records of AD, perhaps even the Pentagon’s sudden amnesia.
In stories like this, there is evidence on both sides. Evidence will continue to come in for years or decades. It’s a judgment call. But Arkin has pegged exactly what I saw as the mindset of Schaffer from the beginning. He seems like a guy with a dream of the magical properties of a technique but not enough experience for how it can go wrong. In this case, we know where the unsupervised monitoring of citizens by the military or other all-but-unaccountable agencies leads. It leads to nightmare states like the Soviet Union.
There were plenty of legal ways to have caught the 911 plotters. Senator Bob Graham lists about a dozen in his book, Intelligence Matters. The 911 plotters slipped through because people were not doing their jobs. If the choice is between competence in law enforcement with little risk to liberty, and the KGB under a different name, it wouldn’t take paranormal psychic powers to guess my choice.
The hideous cocktail that was the SU had a few more ingredients than those, but I see where you’re going. “The KGB under a different name,” though – come now.
Able Danger:KGB::Guantanamo:GULAG.
Charles, I am suspicious of anyone who purports to claim what ‘Shaffer and other shadow warriors’ think. Let’s stick to actions, shall we, or directly attributable information, even directly attributable to an anonymous source. I presume that Shaffer himself was not Arkins’s source – a safe bet, don’t you think? Therefore I find it not a bit helpful for Arkin to waste our time with his knowledge of what Shaffer thinks…let alone those other unnamed ‘shadow warriors’.