One Sucker's Saga, Part IX: Bumbling Like a Fox

[peristaltor]

There's one Arab terrorist with a sense of humor, and he said, "I bet I can get them all to take their shoes off at airports." If the next one is called, because of his M.O., The Underwear Bomber, we'll know I'm on to something.

Calvin Trillin on The Daily Show, June 16, 2006Sometimes I feel I am absolutely alone in wondering why professed

Comments

[peristaltor]

Pat-down at Heathrow? Wow. Interesting.

I, too, despise the conspiracy tendencies I've found myself contemplating. However, I can see no other reasonable framework into which I can install this growing body of evidence left unexplained.

For instance, the coverage of the tube bombings in London seldom mentions that MI-5 and the Metropolitan Police were conducting "crisis exercises" that day, exercises that mirrored the events:

Peter Power, former high-ranking employee of Scotland Yard and member of its Anti-Terrorist Branch, told BBC 5 and ITV News that his company, Visor Consulting, had carried out "crisis exercises," with an unnamed private company.

The exercise envisioned "almost precisely" the bombings that actually occurred, Power said.

Power described the simulation of "simultaneous attacks on a underground and mainline station" and "bombs going off precisely at the railway stations" at which the actual bombings occurred.

"There were a few seconds when the audience didn't realize whether it was real or not," he said.

Something is going on. I wish I knew what.

[albionwood]

One thing we know is going on: corruption. Public service has become so debased, it sometimes seems as if nobody really believes in what they are doing. That's not really true of course, it's a perception created by our biased observations; I deal with low- to mid-level functionaries in various branches of government from time to time, and most of them do seem to take their jobs seriously. The higher up you go, though, the less idealistic they get, and the more they seem to be working to justify their own employment. At the level of the appointed boards running (at least nominally) most of the agencies in Kalyfornyaa, you have people who are basically unelected politicians. Some of these people are utterly corrupt. And going one step further, to the elected officials who are nominally setting policy, they are universally concerned above all with re-election; with all the corruption that involves.

And another things that we know is going on: Information collection and analysis, aka intelligence. We're used to thinking of that in terms of State-level 'Spy vs. Spy' stuff, but most of what's happening now is 'industrial' espionage for private gain. And it's become really sophisticated, and the tools and techniques are widely available, from street-level on up. Everybody is spying on everybody nowadays.

So, if a private firm is contracted by a State ministry to conduct some kind of anti-terror training exercise, it's not much of a stretch to suppose a terrorist organization might obtain that information. And recognize an opportunity to leverage their capabilities. Terror is magnified by confusion, especially if you confuse the response authorities. I imagine the bad guys watch TV too, and shows like MI5 suggest it's not that hard to sow confusion among the multiple agencies involved in emergency responses. Setting off bombs at the precise times and places when a training exercise is going on - just the sort of thing to make evil geniuses cackle with glee.

And on the other side, savvy businessmen who design and sell sophisticated equipment undoubtedly gather intel on the large-budgeted agencies who might buy their products. So if I headed such a company, and we had a technology for, say, body-scanners... and I was as smart as, say, Calvin Trillin, with the extra advantage of intel on DHS and maybe even CIA (whose agents openly moonlight in corporate espionage), I might foresee a probability that the market for my product would suddenly expand.

[peristaltor]

Excellent points.

I'm still leaning in my admittedly difficult-to-justify position simply because of Occam's Razor. There's a convergence of goals between all of these players (that I intend to outline in my last post on this topic) that all but eliminates the need to suggest corporate corruption colluding with terrorism as you suggest above.

And, as always, I would love to be proven wrong on all of this.

Oh, and I love MI5. Best spy show on the telly. Puts that right-wing hack-job 24 to shame.