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

[richie73]

As someone who has in the recent past travelled from NZ and from Germany to the United States, I can confirm that I did not have to take my shoes of

[peristaltor]

And is Y merely allowing terrorism to rise through decades of foreign policy that makes other countries hate us? Or did intelligence cell take a more active role and actually trained and recruited the supposedly Muslim terrorists?

I have thoughts on these points. In my opinion, for now the short answers are No (you did specify "merely") and Yes (though these terrorists need not be un-Muslim to be under orders).

As to your open questions, I think that's where people should be concentrating. I'll outline my suspicions, filling in the open questions, in a later post.

Oh, and have I mentioned lately that I really hate harboring these suspicions? It's just that I don't see much choice.

[peristaltor]

Oh, and thanks for the confirmation on your footwear.

[l33tminion]

During the Cold War, one of [the CIA's] main activities was exaggerating the Soviet threat... in order to justify their own budgets

And one of the KGB's main activities was spying on themselves.

Once the air starts leaking our of the federal budget, their fortunes will deflate along with it.

I doubt it, at least not if "their" refers to CIA agents and not the CIA as a government agency in its current form. The CIA evidently has relaxed their moonlighting policy quite a bit. They claim that policy is intended to avoid highly-trained operatives being lured away by high private-sector salaries (certainly that's one reason for such a policy). If the federal intelligence budget deflates, moonlighting will quickly turn into full-fledged defections, the fortunes of ex-CIA-operatives will remain bright, and any attempt to regulate Wall Street at that point will be effectively be pitting the SEC against the CIA. Not a scenario that fills me with optimism.

[peristaltor]

That's really interesting. Hardly surprising, given CIA connections in Wall St. banks noted extensively by Ruppert in Rubicon, but interesting.

It's like they're not even trying to hide this anymore.

I wouldn't worry too much about the budget woes ever affecting agents . . . at least agents in the know. Ruppert also mentions lots of extra money floating about for those willing to look the other way in support of activity not condoned by congress.

[albionwood]

We flew to LHR and thence to Glasgow in January, then Glasgow to Berlin via LHR in early February; returning via LHR to SFO. SFO TSA of course requires shoe-removal, and you go through the bomb-sniffer (the one that puffs at you). IIRC they also had the body-scanners operating. At LHR, since we went from an international terminal to a domestic, we had to go through security again. We did not have to remove our shoes there - though they did require it for boots! No sniffer or scanner, either. Same for the Glasgo-LHR-Berlin trip. Returning, Berlin (Tegel airport) was thorough and efficient; no shoe business, but quite a lot of inspections and pat-downs.

LHR to SFO, though... holy shit, what a clusterfuck! Inbound flights to USA since the Underwear fiasco now require all passengers* to be searched and their carry-on luggage inspected. Being Heathrow, they naturally manage this in the most inconvenient and irritating way imaginable. You wait around for a gate to be assigned for your flight, which typically does not happen

[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.

[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

[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.