Lifting the Tent Flap
While I haven't had nice things to say about the FBI in recent years, it's not some mindless paean to questioning authority, but the simple fact that the organization has come apart at the seams since the edificial Hoover passed behind the curtain of the ladies dressing room. Curiously, for all his flaws, and there were many and serious, no one has come in to effectively grab the reins; to fix what was broke, but to keep what was working on track.
Some of the errors have been truly egregious, like keeping the wrong man in prison for 30 years to protect an informant, or the Wen Ho Lee persecution. Last week, another newspaper report revealed that a civilian employee of the FBI's Boston office got a call from a man trying to turn himself in but ignored his attempt to surrender; the man killed three people the next day.
And now The Bureau is charged with finding terrorists in our midst, both furriners and the mad anthrax mailer. In the over three months since the attack, with all the resources they could ask for at their disposal, the FBI has announced but a single hijacker-related indictment, and has gotten nowhere on the anthrax killer. This despite the fact that the anthrax that was being mailed about in lethal fashion has been traced to a U.S. government-controlled lab. This, from government officials who also acknowledged that our Army has been working in recent years with anthrax in a powdered form that could be used as a weapon.
I'm not sure they should be having so little success. It's not like the evil-doers of September 11th didn't stand out to some degree, at least in retrospect. I wonder if some concerted effort might be launched within the Arab-American communities around the country to get to know their members to make sure they're all on our side. I doubt that would be enough, but it might engage Middle-Eastern emigrants in our one struggle, and help to better integrate them into the society at large. It would likely be more productive than random searches of nonagenarians at the airport.
Or calling people names. As did Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem. Describing for reporters the hunt for the enemy, he said, "I guess maybe searching for fleas on a dog is one way that I would think of it. If you see one and you focus on the one, you don't know how many others are getting away." If it weren't the enemy to whom he was referring, we'd call him a racist. Those fleas flew an airplane into his office building. Or think of it this way, we spend $39,242,527.95 in tax dollars every hour of every day on our military, and they still can't deal with fleas.
There might be a break in Florida. A Saudi princess was arrested for beating her maid. Princess Buniah al-Saud, the 42-year-old niece of King Fahd, was charged with aggravated battery on her live-in maid, Memet Ismiyati, 36, an Indonesian citizen. The arrest was delayed while local officials checked on her claim of diplomatic immunity. Her embassy said yes, but our State Department said no, so she was pokey'd without bail on the felony charge. Said a Florida police spokesman, "We don't care where you're from. You just can't do this sort of thing in this country." On a student visa, cough-cough, the princess squandered her immunity by failing to file travel plans and now faces 15 years in prison. But whoever thinks she won't be Mecca-bound before too long, I've gotta nice bridge to Brooklyn you might like to buy.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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