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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (52955)	6/9/2002 6:45:19 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

In Years of Plots and Clues, Scope of Qaeda Eluded U.S. The New York Times June 7, 2002 nytimes.com <<...WASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week...>>

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (52955)	6/9/2002 10:43:51 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

Dept. of Political Security [I was just scanning the paper before I head to the airport and I thought I'd post one more article on 'the famous war on terrorism'....Here's Maureen Dowd's New York Times column for this Sunday, June 9th.] __________________________________________ Dept. of Political Security By MAUREEN DOWD nytimes.com WASHINGTON — With the most daring reorganization of government in half a century, George W. Bush hopes to protect something he holds dear: himself. After weeks of scalding revelations about a cascade of leads and warnings prefiguring the 9/11 attacks that were ignored by the U.S. government, the president created the Department of Political Security. Or, as the White House calls it for public consumption, the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Bush's surprise move was a complete 180, designed to knock F.B.I. Cassandra Coleen Rowley off front pages. He had resisted the idea of a cabinet department focusing on domestic defense for nine months. But clearly, Iago Rove saw his master's invincibility cracking and did a little whispering in W.'s ear. Why not use national security policy for scandal management? So the minimalist Texan who had sneered about the larded federal bureaucracy all through his presidential campaign stepped before the cameras to slather on a little more lard — and nervous Republicans all over town found themselves suddenly praying that bigger government could save those in need (of re-election), after all. By introducing yet another color-coded flow chart, the president tried to recapture his fading aura of wartime omnipotence. The White House even gave lawmakers "sample op-ed" pieces they could rewrite and submit to their local papers, beginning: "President Bush's most important job is to protect and defend the American people." Even that champion of bloated government, Teddy Kennedy, seemed dubious: "The question is whether shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic is the way to go." And others wondered whether it would be too unwieldy to have a department with 22 agencies devoted to eradicating both Al Qaeda and boll weevils. (The proposed Homeland behemoth does not include the F.B.I. or C.I.A., but it would envelop the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.) All day Thursday, before Mr. Bush addressed the nation, Special Agent Rowley, who was sporting a special badge allowing her to pack heat in the Capitol, and Bobby Three Sticks Mueller, who wasn't, had given the Senate Intelligence Committee a stunning and gruesome portrait of just how far gone the bureau is. Their testimony made clear that there is no point in creating a huge new department of dysfunction to gather more intelligence on terrorists when counterterrorism agents don't even bother to read, analyze and disseminate the torrent of intelligence they already get. "I think at the present time it's not done very well," Ms. Rowley said about the clogged-up information flow. Looking at the bureaucratic trellis of the F.B.I. reorganization chart, she asked: "Why create more? It's not going to be an answer." There are already too many pompous gatekeepers between the F.B.I. chief and the field offices, she said. And the computers are ridiculous, unable to send e-mail or access the Internet or to search for two words together, like "aviation" and "school." The blunt Midwesterner with the oversized glasses suggested that the disarray was less about modernity than the ancient flaws of ego and ambition — "careerists" with a "don't rock the boat" attitude that hampered aggressive investigations. (Mr. Bush's plan would do nothing to disempower them.) Mr. Mueller was confessing all kinds of dysfunction, as well. "When I first came in, I did a tour," he recalled. "There's a computer room downstairs . . . there were a number of different computer systems. There were Sun Microsystems, there were Apples, there were Compaqs, there were Dells. And I said, `What's this?' And the response was, every division had a separate computer system until a year or two ago." Asked how long it would take to get their computers up to snuff, Mr. Mueller replied: two to three years. If we're really in a national emergency, couldn't the president call America's software geniuses and tell them to wire up the F.B.I. this week? Maybe if Mr. Bush brings Rudy Giuliani in as the new cabinet officer, he can work magic. But reorganization is an old dodge here. The shape of the government is not as important as the policy of the government. If he makes the policy aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art. __________________________________ __________________________________ Columnist Biography: Maureen Dowd Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times' Op-Ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for The New York Times Magazine. Dowd joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter in 1983. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for The Washington Star, where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter and feature writer. When the Star closed in 1981, she went to Time magazine. Born in Washington D.C., Dowd received a B.A. degree in English literature from Catholic University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973.