Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA)

In 1999 LTC Shaffer was working in Tampa Florida in a program called Stratus Ivy that was part of a larger effort called Able Danger. His mission was to discover “The Global Body of al Qaeda.. and prepare offensive operations options.”

To do this… “I used… LIWA and its massive data crunching ability. The idea was to use high-powered software to bore into just about everything: Any data that was available--- and I mean anything. Open-source Internet data, e-mails believed to be terrorist related, non-secret government data, commercial records, information on foreign companies, logs of visitors to mosques, obtained by an outside researcher and much much more.”

Thirteen years have passed since Tony Shaffer was involved in this effort… hold that thought.

“…LIWA had begun looking at global terrorist infrastructures. Over six months in 1999 it had acquire a vast four-terabyte database… and assembled the scattered pieces of information about al Qaeda into a comprehensive global picture.”

Chew on that for a minute.

“Its researchers did huge sweeps of the Internet and used highly advanced algorithms to compare and amalgamate data. It was a powerful way to link individuals and organizations and make sense of disparate streams of data. It was like Google on steroids.”

Are you beginning to get a picture of what that gigantic new NSA facility in Utah will be involved in? Is this that “Prism” program everybody is whispering about?

“Its model was based on targeting methodology developed by J. D. Smith, an analyst for Orion Scientific Systems (a LIWA contractor) who deconstructed every individual involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing into basis data points--- the year they were born, their associates, tribal affiliation, mosque memberships and so on--- and built an algorithm. It was then used to examine immense amounts of publicly available data and identify other potential terrorists by comparing them to the original ’93 World Trade Center terrorists… we looked at their associations with other like individuals… and started to create a map of a worldwide organization and its direct links with al Qaeda leadership.”

It was through these efforts that the face of Mohammad Atta first flashed on the DIA’s radar, a year prior to 911.

This capability was up and running over a decade ago. Think about the enhancements since then. If a political appointee can set a cell at the IRS to achieve a partisan political purpose, think about the mischief this NSA capability could cause? The only difference between the NSA and the IRS is that the NSA can hide any abuse under a security blanket. We already see this happening in the cloaking of the missing hours when the President was “Disengaged” the night of Benghazi. “Honorable” men and women are enabling the most disingenuous cover-up in history at the very highest levels of government. What we are creating is a tool that is a double-edged sword. With the one edge it can protect us, while with the other, cut the juglar of our Democracy. How long can we flounder in a sea of Susan Rice and Lois Learner look alikes?

Source: Operation Dark Heart, Anthony Shaffer, Chapter 14 Able Danger, Pages164-169.