Spies Like Us
I was sending out an article to my news colleagues about how the CIA knew of the would-be Christmas plane bomber. In the subject line I wrote, "he could have worn a button saying ‘I’m a terrorist’ and he probably would have been upgraded to first class." But before I hit the send button, I changed the subject line to say "Check my drawers."
It was one of those flashes of paranoia when I thought that putting "I’m a terrorist" in a subject line might have attracted the government eavesdroppers who are watching email traffic. It was too easy to imagine some social reject who spent his life writing algorithms looking for possible threats to our national security. He would read my comment and decide to shove my nose in it.
Of course, he and his colleagues would have plenty of time and the facilities to incarcerate me since they aren’t going after the real terrorists. Like this Nigerian guy about whom they had all sorts of information going back for years.
But once again our intelligence agencies simply screwed up. They failed to share information; too busy protecting their turf instead of the United States.
Oh, but the White House says that they really normally do a fine job and if someone had just put together all of the little clues, then a little red flag would have popped up and the guy wouldn’t have been allowed on a plane heading for The States.
In point of fact, it’s hard to understand why many of these clues alone weren’t enough to raise a big red flag. I mean, who else are they looking at? The Berrigan brothers? (Psst, Phillip died in ‘02)
Are these people politically-motivated scare mongers driving up business for the military-industrial complex? Or should we hope instead that they are just stunningly incompetent?
We’re spending $45 billion a year on so-called intelligence and getting bupkis. It’s too bad that the president doesn’t have the guts to clean house. They’d do better hiring outta work journalists instead.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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