| Testimony
of Erik Kleinsmith to the Senate Judiciary Committee for Able Danger
and Intelligence Information Sharing, 21 September 2005 Good Morning. My name is Erik Kleinsmith. I was asked to testify as a witness today on my involvement in the Able Danger program. Currently, I am an employee for Lockheed Martin Information Technology. I manage an intelligence analysis training team of about 28 instructors that specialize in integrating counterterrorism and asymmetric threat analysis with data mining technology. My primary customer is Headquarters, US Army Intelligence and Security Command or INSCOM. As part of the program, I also teach a counterterrorism analysis course for INSCOM. From March of 1999 until February of 2001, I was an active duty Army Major and the Chief of Intelligence of what was then called the Land Information Warfare Activity or LIWA. My branch provided analytical support to Army Information Operations, but because of the data mining capabilities we possessed in the Information Dominance Center, we routinely provided direct analytical support to several combatant commands as well as other customers. One of our most prominent operations was in support of the data mining proof of concept demonstration for the Assistant Security of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence or ASD-C3I. Called the JCAG project, it demonstrated how data mining and intelligence analysis could be conducted in a counterintelligence and technology protection capacity. That project ran throughout the later half of 1999 and our results were ultimately subpoenaed by Congressman Dan Burton's office through the House Reform Committee on November 16th, 1999. In December of 1999 we were approached by US Special Operations Command to support Able Danger. I assigned the same core team of analysts that worked the JCAG project, and with Dr. Eileen Preisser as the analytical lead, four of us conducted data mining and analysis of the Al Qaeda terrorist network coordinating with SOCOM and other organizations throughout that time. In the months that followed, we were able collect an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed us to map Al Qaeda as a world-wide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States. In approximately April of 2000 our support to Able Danger became severely restricted and ultimately shut down due to intelligence oversight concerns. Supported vigorously by the LIWA and INSCOM chains of command, we actively worked to overcome this shut down for the next several months. In the midst of this shut down, I along with CW3 Terri Stephens were forced to destroy all the data, charts, and other analytical products that we had not already passed on to SOCOM related to Able Danger. This destruction was dictated by, and conducted in accordance with intelligence oversight procedures. Ultimately, we were able to restart our support to SOCOM at the end of September 2000. Additionally, the bombing of the USS Cole on October 12th brought USCENTCOM to the IDC, who then became our primary customer until my departure from active duty on April 1st 2001. I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and am happy to answer any questions that you may have. |