Able Danger and total awareness

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What will Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, discover as he looks into covert military intelligence program Able Danger, said to have discovered Mohamed Atta, by name, and his al Qaeda cell working in the U.S. before the attacks of September 11, 2001?

Here are some of the senator's likely findings, including the "who knew what... and when" part:

• Able Danger was a military intelligence activity apparently looking at open-source, and other, yet unspecified, information, including some that was "domestic" rather than foreign.

• Able Danger was very similar to -- if not the same as -- the "Total Information Awareness" or "TIA" program, the ill-fated Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) study killed off by Congress because of an avalanche of adverse publicity, much of it uninformed.

• The September 11 Commission either knew, or should have known -- or didn't and could not have known -- about Able Danger's specific activities. From public accounts so far, this seems to hinge on the response and objectivity of the commission senior staff, who were briefed on Able Danger.

Mr. Specter is also a past chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and as such is uniquely qualified to take his inquiry as far as needed to address these and other key issues. How might he proceed?

He would want to know, in detail, about the "reporting of crimes" procedures in effect between the Defense Department and the FBI -- and if both followed them, in letter and spirit. These longstanding procedures would have been the vehicle for reporting -- to the FBI -- any criminal activity allegedly discovered by Able Danger. As a collateral matter, the procedures themselves should be reviewed for currency.

He would want to know if the FBI otherwise knew about Able Danger, as they perhaps should have -- if other Defense and FBI agreements on intelligence operations and activities were followed and if these agreements remain adequate.

He would want to know if Able Danger complied with internal Defense Department regulations, insofar as it used "domestic information." Important in this determination would be whether Able Danger was technically an "intelligence activity" in the first place and if it should, or perhaps should not, have been.

He would want to know how effective Able Danger -- and TIA, for that matter -- were or could have been to discover domestic terrorist plots and other dangerous activity in the U.S. and who or what agencies should research technologies and carry out discovery and prevention.