COLONEL TELLS OF SICKENING SPY BLUNDER: 'WE HAD' ATTA & DID NOTHING
NY Post  | 8/18/05 | DEBORAH ORIN
 

August 18, 2005 -- A veteran Army intelligence officer said yesterday the elite military intelligence unit known as Able Danger might have been able to prevent the 9/11 attacks — if it had been allowed to alert the FBI that Mohamed Atta was living in the country.

"My first reaction was, 'We had him.' It was a sinking feeling in my stomach," Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer told The Post in an interview yesterday, describing how he felt after learning that Atta was one of the hijackers.

Shaffer said that before the attacks, in 2000, Able Danger used complex computer analysis to identify two of the 9/11 terror cells, including one centered around the mastermind, Atta.

But Pentagon lawyers wouldn't let them sound the alarm with law enforcement agencies, he said.

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Shaffer said Atta's name didn't ring a bell when he learned the hijackers' names after 9/11. But he got "a sinking feeling in my stomach" when the woman Ph.D. in charge of Able Danger's data analysis told him Atta was one of those who had been identified as a likely al Qaeda terrorist by Able Danger.

"My friend the doctor [Ph.D.] who did all the charts and ran the technology showed me the chart and said, 'Look, we had this, we knew them, we knew this.' And it was a sinking feeling, it was like, 'Oh my God, you know. We could have done something.' "

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Shaffer told The Post that at least two other members of the Able Danger team plan on going public "as soon as they get basically some guarantees from their own organizations that they can talk without being retaliated against."

Both still work for the U.S. government...

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