A Modest Proposal for an Intelligence System

Preface

A number of the story lines in Screen Saver revolve around the fact that I was an Intelligence Officer in the Air Force for four years, including a year in Vietnam and several months in Japan related to the Pueblo Crisis. So I feel as if I have some platform from which to make the following observations.

For all the money we have spent on TSA, and for all the inconvenience, all the shoes removed, all the grandmothers and cripples who have been frisked, all the totally legitimate items that have been expropriated: jeweler’s screw drivers, finger nail clippers, and vieuve clicquot, we have apparently apprehended two would-be suicide bombers. And both of them were apprehended in the act. They got through security, got on the plane, and after the plane was airborne they attempted to detonate. Fortunately they both were duds.

"But that can’t be right", I thought I heard someone say. Surely there have been many, many, many apprehended in the act of trying to get through security.

If so, why haven’t we heard about them?

"Because those many successful apprehensions have all been kept strictly secret", I thought I heard someone say.

"Oh. Then why haven’t we kept the two actually almost successful attempts strictly secret?" I thought to say.

"Because all the passengers on those planes knew about it and it would have been impossible to keep them all quiet", I heard that voice again pipe up.

So, in all the vast number of successful apprehensions that have been nonetheless kept absolutely secret there were no people around. Those successful apprehensions all occurred when there were no other passengers in the check in line? Or, alternately, given that indeed the likelihood of no potential witnesses being in line is zero, in all that vast number of TSA successes, the would-be bomber didn’t talk, didn’t resist, didn’t even twitch? Didn’t even shout "Allah akbar"? That sounds like the plot of a Dean Koontz book.

But ultimately whether there have been two very public failures accompanied by vast numbers of successes or just two failures, the fact is that we are bringing our air transport system to its knees (and what happens when the bombers decide to go after trains and buses?) that we are spending vast quantities of money and are still not solving the problem – we just remove an additional item of clothes every time a new terrorist thrust succeeds – and look amazingly inept to the world of Islamic terror.

But I guess clearer heads at TSA are prevailing. It is obvious that the response to a guy hiding a bomb in his crotch is to ban carry-on baggage. That logic has a massive precedent: we thought that the 9/11 attackers came from Afghanistan so we invaded Iraq.

But assuming that somewhere there are people in our intelligence apparatus that are not cretins, how about we put an intelligence system in place that would go well on the way to solving the problem?

"Well you have to understand how hard it is to connect the dots", I thought I heard someone say. "It’s just too hard. And we have to avoid profiling. And the agencies have trouble communicating. And, anyway, it all pays the same. Whether we succeed or fail we get our paychecks, get our health care, get our government retirement. We’re working as hard as we can, but it’s just real hard."

I have a suggestion. See the post down in the stack after "End Game".