Just got off the phone with someone who claims to have gone through counterintelligence training with Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer in 1986, and speaks with enough impressive detail to sound credible. The source says Shaffer was an impressive guy, not a nut, knew what he was doing — and says it’s hard to tell exactly what was going on with Able Danger. The theory, for what it’s worth: maybe some of the information used in the Able Danger “data mining” set off red flags and blinking lights among Pentagon lawyers because there were problems with the way some of the data had been originally been collected. Maybe all the legal “i”s and “t”s hadn’t been dotted to ensure that the privacy of U.S. citizens and legal residents of the U.S. was being respected. Thus, this may not have been a case of “wall” paranoia but rather a case of legal prudence on the part of Special Operations Command lawyers.

And to buttress your criticism of me, Andy, this source agrees with you that the small group of Able Danger-ites would have known the 60 names backwards and forwards — and that Shaffer and his fellows would have greeted September 11 with particular horror because of what they knew.

I offer this just to expand out the general database of knowledge here. None of it answers the two questions that make no sense as yet:

Are 9/11 Commission staffers lying when they say Shaffer didn’t mention Atta during his discussion with them in Afghanistan in 2003?

Did the Pentagon withhold critical Able Danger files from the 9/11 Commission in February 2004?