Chattering Classes
They're talking about chatter again. Or a least some of them are. That was a somewhat strange Washington moment, John Ashcroft and FBI director Mueller annnounce they are going to hold a press conference Sources: Major terror attack planned this summer. Then they appear replete with seperate flip charts of these suspect individuals we need to be afraid of. All arranged in a semi circle - subliminal inference Al Qaeada has you surrounded. U.S. Cautions Against Threat of Al Qaeda (www.washingtonpost.com). This leaves Tom Ridge, from the Homeland Security directorate to book his own time on the morning shows to say he thinks he's gotten all the same memo's but he's not sure its time to abandon our home and hearth and head for the hills just yet,
Division follows terrorism warning. It did seem to take a full day before anyone seemed to know what to do with this story that Boston Globe Story and this one
Ashcroft Assailed on Terror Warning (Post, May 28, 2004) from the Post didn't appear until Friday. It always used to astound when this administration was able to stay 'on message' so completely right down to the words and phrasing. I'm not sure it really makes me feel better when they all say different things.
The last time these dark and clouded warnings were passed among us was back at the beginning of the year. I thought between then and now what differences have occured. First I thought of the Madrid train bombings. It is possible for al qaeda or one of their farm teams to operate in the capital of a western nation and carry out a major attack. The other thing I thought about was the work of the 911 commission, and all the staff reports of theirs I read, as well as clarke and woowards book (from which I have only read excerpts). The other thing that as come to the fore is just how many people we and other allied states have locked up in the "war on terror" dragnet.
The continuing reduction of tactical and strategic intelligence gathering from something that requires care and analysis to getting the answers complete in themselves - out of somebody somewhere in plain english. That it's just a matter of getting people to talk. Its not that this isn't part of intelligence gathering, but the over emphasis on this grows clearer by the day. Even at that, its arabic not english al qaeda tends to speak and U S intelligence can't even reliably make sense of arab names let alone street coloqualisms. Ashcroft and Muellers press conference showed as well that the jealousy and intrangenance of bureaucratic infighting highlighted as key factor in intelligence by the 911 commission hasn't subsided any. Problematic as well is the penchant for taking intelligence data out of the stream of collection and analysis and bandying it about for poltical purpose, this is not only unhelpful it is dangerous. It also points to a reliance on gesture, grand or otherwise, over the unglamorous work of disruption of violence and unself-interested engagement which may not get you a seat in the grandstands of history.
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