From: Caso, Russell
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:04 AM
To: curtpa07
Subject: Fw: Post Holiday update/additional notes

Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Red

Curt

This is the guy we met on that saturday of several weeks ago. He is still working to support our efforts.

Russ
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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

—–Original Message—–
From: Dennis Erickson <dwericks@msn.com>
To: Caso, Russell <Russell.Caso@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Tue Jan 17 11:14:44 2006
Subject: Post Holiday update/additional notes

Mr. Caso;

Wanted to touch base with you to provide you some additional information relating to our earlier discussions that we had prior to the Holiday recess. I have done much thinking concerning the topic as well as further research into what we still possess from that time period in the way of analytic products. To me the 9/11 Commission Report while being a laudatory effort, in my opinion, fell short in a couple of major areas which concerns me. The first is military intelligence and what it had and was doing pre-
9/11 as far as tracking and identifying possible terrorist activity and secondly, the role of information operations pre and post 9-11. You will find little, if any, mention of either in the released document nor the intelligence support functions/methodologies that go along with each. There are certainly problems as well as successes to be noted with each and I would be more than happy to address those in an information paper (from an Army
perspective) as well as offering some solutions. With all of that said, I have found another key personality who was briefed or involved with our operation in the fall of 2001 and that was Gen. Downing. I have also found additional analyst notebook charts that were produced, the most interesting is a copy of the CENTCOM mujahidin network which had been a work in progress since prior to 9-11 and I think was actually begun after the Cole bombing incident in 2000. In conducting some cursory searches through the data, I was able to come up with the following
‘hits’:
Atta – 891
Mohammad Atta – 5
Muhammad Atta – 2
Brooklyn – 2
New York – 52
Florida – 2
Seattle – 2
California – 1
Washington – 49

The other analyst notebook charts are:
Mujahidin in Yemen (last accessed 3/19-02) UBL Center of Gravity chart (which we discussed during our last meeting) CENTCOM facilitator network NGO/Al Haramain (last accessed 1/3/02) Zarqawi network (June 01 – Oct 01) Qutaiba (Nov 00 – Oct 01) Terror groups (last accessed 1/11/02) Taliban leadership (last accessed 9/24/01) Al-Barakaat financial network (last accessed 12/20/01)

Important dates for our effort in tracking CT:
– 25 Oct 00 Cole bombing brief to Congress
– 26 Oct 00 CINCENT request to IDC for support
– 26 Dec 00 CJCS, CINCENT, CINCSOC, VCSA, Dir DIA, DCSOPS validate IDC task
– 5 Jan 01 CINCSOC, CJCS, CINCENT re-validate task
– 12 Feb 01: CSA (Gen Shinseki) tell CG INSCOM that CT mission is ‘top priority’
– Jun/Jul 01: begin center of gravity analyst notebook study in support of tasking

You can probably throw in some of the Able Danger dates in amongst my notes that I took during the time. I hope that you all had a happy holiday season which I am sure was a busy one for all. If you get a chance tell the Congressman that I did marry my gal from Pennsylvania on Dec 24th and had the opportunity to spend some time in Pittsburgh over the holidays. I am now a partial Steeler fan convert.
Thanks again,
Dennis Erickson