There's a balloon floating in Washington lately, wafted in and out of view by hot air from bloggers and other new media. Is the name on that balloon Judith Miller? Tom Delay? Even Karl Rove?

No, it's Able Danger.

Able Danger was the code-name for a Pentagon data-mining surveillance project set up in the 1990s to track Al Qaeda activity worldwide. The project is reported to have identified Al Queda operatives in the US—including Muhammad Atta and three other of the 9/11 hijackers—prior to September 11, 2001.

The backstory on Able Danger comes from Flopping Aces blogger Curt, who wrote in mid-August that what "really sticks out to me is the timeline with Sandy Berger's burglary of Archive documents." But the blogger's piece was titled " The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger," indicating hw is also concerned over 9/11 commission-member Jamie Gorelick's "wall of separation" between FBI, CIA, and Pentagon intelligence efforts.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), a champion of integrated intelligence-sharing among U.S. agencies, wrote to the former chairman and vice-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission late Wednesday, telling them that their staff had received two briefings on the military intelligence unit—once in October 2003 and again in July 2004. Weldon said he was upset by suggestions earlier Wednesday by 9/11 panel members that it had been not been given critical information on Able Danger's capabilities and findings.

Austin Bay Blog commented on the "Gorelick Wall" with thoughts about why such a separation was appropriate for its time, saying a wall between military and Federal agencies and the police has a definite civil purpose, and noting that the wall has been lowered in the past when the US was at war.

Until 9/11 America did not consider the terrorists' attacks as war. Washington treated the terrorists as criminals. That was the strategic error, no matter what you think of Clinton or Bush... If Jamie Gorelick wasn't the weakest commission member, she was the most compromised. Gorelick should have recused herself from participation on the 9/11 Commission—because she did "raise the wall" during the Clinton Administration. Had she done that she would have enhanced her reputation. But she didn't.

A "multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues," The Counterterrorism Blog, cites a number of writings on the subject of Able Danger, but leads the list with this intro written by Bill West, who served in what was then the Clinton Administration's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

If the news about the DoD intelligence is true, that infamous intelligence "wall" truly did create a huge missed opportunity... The INS Headquarters National Security Unit (NSU), which was created in the late 1990s in spite of considerable obstacles generated by the INS High Command... tried to post a liaison officer to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) specifically to tap into DoD intelligence on counter-terrorism matters. The NSU Director at the time approved it and DIA bought off on the plan... but INS senior management above the NSU Director nixed it so it never happened...

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