Talk of the Nation on August 17, 2005

By National Public Radio (NPR): Talk of the Nation 2:00 PM EST NPR

Neal Conan

August 17, 2005

'Able Danger' and Coordinating Pre-Sept. 11 Intelligence

August 17, 2005 : An Army intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, says his unit, known as "Able Danger," identified four future Sept. 11 hijackers as al Qaeda members in the United States -- well before the 2001 attacks. He says the 9/11 Commission did not thoroughly investigate this data.

Guests:

Harry "Skip" Brandon, former deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security at the FBI; retired in 1993 after 23 years with the FBI; founding partner of Smith Brandon International, a defense and security consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, oversaw the Army's "Able Danger" intelligence unit

Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission; former Republican governor of New Jersey

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch

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Highlights of the Interview:

Conan: We turn now to Harry 'Skip' Brandon, former deputy assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security at the FBI. He's with us from his offices at Smith Brandon International, a defense and security consulting firm here in Washington ...

Conan: Let me ask you also about the technique that was used; and, again, Colonel [Anthony] Shaffer was circumspect. He said Able Danger apparently did a lot of stuff. But one of the things they did was so-called open-source data mining.

Brandon: Yeah.

Conan: Tell us about that.

Brandon: Well, that's simply a technique for going at information that is out there that essentially is publicly available, or at least available to -- on the Internet and various other resources, and just pulling bits and pieces together and putting them together and seeing if you can get a complete picture. This can be done rather--I won't say crudely, but rather laboriously by using analysts just to go through information, or there are computer programs available that try to make the links for you. It's basically using artificial intelligence to gather bits of information and put it together. It's very efficient.

Conan: Google on steroids. Is that...

Brandon: Yeah, that's a great phrase, but to a degree, it is. But the programs that are used--and we don't know what was used, but I could only guess that might have been used by professionals -- would be probably much more sophisticated than that."