Able/Danger.

This is coolbert:

Very interesting article in the newspaper today about the Able/Danger "secret" military unit that supposedly "identified" Mohammad Atta as being an Al Qaeda operative living in the U.S. prior to 9/11. This has been a controversial topic in the news recently.

This article DOES shed some light on the subject.

Among the highlights are:

* Atta and several others [9/11 co-conspirators] were originally ID'd as being Al Qaeda operatives with links to the group that perpetrated the first World Trade Center [WTC] bombing in 1993. [Atta was an Egyptian. The perps from the first WTC attack were primarily Egyptian.]

* The Able/Danger unit was disbanded in 2000 and the voluminous amount of material gathered by the unit DESTROYED!!

* Able/Danger WAS an EXPERIMENT in Information Warfare [also called Information Dominance].

"Information warfare is the offensive and defensive use of information
and information systems to deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy, an
adversary's information, information-based processes, information
systems, and computer-based networks while protecting one's own.
Such actions are designed to achieve advantages over military,
political or business adversaries. -- Dr. Ivan Goldberg"

An EXPERIMENT!!

The data miners of Able/Danger used programs such as Spire, Parentage, and Starlight. Read further about data mining by clicking here, here, and here. [the last link contains a very detailed description of Able/Danger and it's mission.]

It is possible that "such data mining can make false connections along the lines of "six degrees of separation", the popular theory that any two people on Earth can be linked through their relationships to no more than six other people." Read further about the "six degrees" theory by clicking here.

Atta was linked "through "a foreign source" who monitors radical mosques in Europe."

"Atta, whose full name was Mohammad El-Amir Awad el-Sayid Atta, called himself Mohammad el-Amir while living in Germany and thus would not have been readily identifiable as "Mohammad Atta." He switched to the surname Atta as he prepared to move to the U.S" [this is supposed to be a big problem for U.S. Embassies world wide when issuing visas for Arabs and Muslims who travel to the U.S. Arabic names can have different forms, spellings, and one person can call himself with justification several different names, as did Atta.]

coolbert.