Anthony Shaffer (intelligence officer)

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For other uses, see Anthony Shaffer (disambiguation).

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer

Anthony Shaffer is publicly known for his connections and revelations regarding the United States Army's LIWA (the Land Information Warfare Activity) and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) program Able Danger. He contends that the program uncovered two of the three terrorist cells involved with 9/11 one year before the attacks, as well as identifying Mohamed Atta, an instrumental figure in the attack.

He says that when he and others involved in Able Danger decided they should share this information with the FBI, that they were blocked from doing so by lawyers in SOCOM over concerns over legality. These concerns may have included using publicly available information as intelligence sources upon the citizens of the U.S. Shaffer Interview on GSN

On August 15, 2005, Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa), charged before the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Special Operations Command data mining program run by a secret US intelligence unit had identified alleged 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and three other al-Qaeda operatives operating in the United States prior to 9/11. The 9/11 commission rejected the claim after citing a lack of supporting evidence. Dr. Phillip Zelikow later admitted in closed hearings in front of the House Armed Services Committed on 15 Febuary 2006 that there was no follow-up by the 9/11 Commission on LtCol Shaffer or Captain Scott Phillpott's disclosures to the Commission due to "lack of time and resources".

Shaffer's contentions were followed up upon by Representative Curt Weldon who believes that 9/11 could have been prevented if the information gained by Able Danger was properly dealt with.

The DoD IG report on the ABLE DANGER issue in September 2006 did confirm that Mohammed Atta's name was in an Army LIWA database before 9/11, but the DoD IG found that Atta's name being in this database was not relivant as it was found in an Army database. This finding was made despite the fact that the Army LIWA database was the primary source for the ABLE DANGER team's SOCOM database.

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Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer is a Bronze Star recipient who is a CIA trained senior intelligence operations officer and reserve Army lieutenant colonel.