Are The Airport Genital Gropers Smarter Than An FBI Agent?
From the WSJ, revelations about the Keystone FBI agents in the wake of the Boston jihad:
Over the weekend, the FBI confirmed what first emerged from press interviews with the mother of the Tsarnaev brothers: In March 2011, the bureau received a tip from the Russians that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was "a follower of radical Islam" and questioned him and his family members. The FBI says its investigation turned up nothing and the Russians didn't reply to a request for additional information.The FBI also says it didn't know Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent months in 2012 in Dagestan, a restive Muslim region in southern Russia next to Chechnya. A senior FBI official told some Members of Congress his name and date of birth were incorrectly entered--by the CIA, in one account--into a database that checks flight manifests against a list of potential terrorists. Another report said the airline made the spelling mistake.
This Keystone Cops routine gets worse. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday said that her department's "system pinged when he was leaving" the U.S. So DHS knew that Tamerlan Tsarnaev--who had been put on the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS--was headed back to Russia, but the FBI and CIA didn't. DHS didn't tell anyone else, apparently.
Tamerlan's return to the U.S. last summer failed to "ping" at DHS. His listing on TECS had lapsed, since the FBI had closed his file. Tamerlan's return to Russia should at least have extended his stay on the watch list. The Patriot Act and other policy changes after 9/11 were meant to prevent this kind of cock-up. One arm of America's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus is supposed to know what the other arm is doing.
Perhaps we should be firing all the TSA gropenclerks at airports who would otherwise be working at Denny's and Dress Barn and putting at least a little of the TSA billions and billions into hiring a few FBI agents who have the actual intelligence and competence to go along with the job in intelligence.
Do you really think your government will protect you? From the LA Times' Brian Bennett:
In a telephone interview, Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame law professor, a former federal prosecutor and former undersecretary for enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department, questioned why Tamerlan Tsarnaev wasn't interviewed by customs officials when he reentered the United States after the six-month stay in Russia last year."Why wasn't he pulled aside and questioned when he came back?" Gurule asked. "It seems to me that any false or misleading answers would have certainly triggered closer scrutiny. It might have led to a [surveillance] warrant to tap his phone. In my view, if he was under that kind of scrutiny it would have made it much more difficult for him to pull this off."
Gurule also questioned how a single misspelling on an airline manifest could mean the FBI is not notified about a suspected radical traveling abroad.
"Is it that easy to evade detection?" he asked. "Just one letter that's misspelled and the system breaks down and we can't track him? What about his passport number or his date of birth?"
Well, in our defense, we did buy the TSA workers many spiffy new uniforms.
And here's what happens when we spend billions treating every American who flies like a suspect -- per a Reuters story by Mark Hosenball:
The name of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was listed on the U.S. government's highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists. But the list is so vast that this did not mean authorities automatically kept close tabs on him, sources close to the bombing investigation said on Tuesday.
A good thing we feel up my breasts every time I go to an evolutionary psychology conference, because there's often evidence posted on my blog and social networking sites of my intentions...like that I hope to interview certain anthropologists and evolutionary psychology professors. (With a tape recorder, not a pressure-cooker filled with nails and ball bearings.)
So, yes, we keep close tabs on the genitals of every American who flies -- because that's great security theater, watching people get their genitals touched by people who'd otherwise be working as pizza clerks. Who cares about the actual security we can't see?
One of the things that this story confirms is that DHS has become redundant to the other investigation and intel organizations. The DHS was originally created to be an integration agency, taking the work of the FBI, CIA, etc., putting together the big picture, and making sure that information flowed across the boundaries. Instead, the DHS established its own capabilities that duplicate the functions of those other agencies. Boom, bureaucratic turf war, and the problem that DHS was supposed to solve gets worse instead of better.
Lesson: In the government context, creating integration bureaus never works. The bureau always winds up duplicating the work of the agencies it is supposed to be integrating. I saw this with the International Space Station program. NASA created an office in Reston, VA, that was supposed to integrate the work of the field centers (JSC, MSFC, GSFC, etc.) Instead, Reston tried to become its own field center, in competition with the other centers. Several overruns and schedule busts later, NASA had to close Reston and ask Boeing to integrate the program for it.
Cousin Dave at April 24, 2013 7:02 AM
Amy,
You are just so cynical anymore. Don't you know the TSA will start catching terrorists left and right any day now? That will be the same day we win the war on drugs. It's going to happen any day now. Have faith.
Jim P. at April 24, 2013 7:53 AM
Amy, you say these TSA workers are touching people's genitals and then you want them to make pizza? Not on my watch!
Fayd at April 24, 2013 9:27 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/04/are-the-airport.html#comment-3688437">comment from FaydI'm with you. Let's have them focus full-time on that pizza-making so they won't be making pepperoni out of our rights.
Amy Alkon
at April 24, 2013 9:33 AM
As the government would constantly remind us, through flag-waving events and media noise, law enforcement officers are our betters.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/gang-leader-impregnates-maryland-female-prison-guards/story?id=19033048
The best and the brightest and the bravest, serving America so we can be free to live our silly little lives, protected by these heroes.
9/11.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 24, 2013 3:11 PM
The Feds didn't think much of another man's return from Russia at the height of the Cold War-- fellow who called hisself Lee harvey Oswald.
jefe at April 25, 2013 9:41 PM
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