The terror stories about the alleged "plot" at JFK airport have been given a critical eye in two previous diaries, so right off the bat I will note that I intend to cover some ground not already covered there. For some biting skepticism, see "Notice a Pattern here?" by ClammyC, and "I'm planning to blow up LAX," by Goldy at Horse's Ass.
The issue that concerns me, on giving the matter some second thought, is the outrageous lack of balance in mainstream TV, cable, and print coverage. The major news organizations have research staffs, and there is abundant information in the public record from the government and media watchdog groups for the mainstream press to have put together news reports that bore some semblance of fairness and decent context.
The stenography is just too overpowering. (Speed jump ahead.)
One of the major policy issues at work here in terrorism stories is whether Bill Clinton's approach of treating many cases as criminal cases was correct, or W's unitary executive, first-strike policy towards terror is correct. The way the stenographic coverage was presented, the EDITING assumption was to include approving coverage of the pre-emptive approach, without giving any weight to well-known instances of shoddy police work by the current powers in charge, nor giving any weight at all to other instances of other approaches in previous administrations--Clinton, Reagan, Carter, etc. This grows increasingly problemmatic as the Repubs use their noise machine to invoke Reagan, and slam anything Clinton and Carter, etc.
By now, most are familiar with the brief, stenographic coverage of the news media. A loud headline focusing on fear, timed nicely for the June primaries, yet not mentioned in the news accounts, and possibly also timed nicely to try to deflect some heat from the Repub rebellion over the immigration issue, where they for once differ with Bush. Judging from some of the comments on DKos, Dems are reacting with skepticism and "Bush fatigue," and the wingers are back on message with "fight them over there before they come over here" meme.
But, IMO, it would be a mistake to shrug this type of sloppy media coverage, because it only permits the Three Blind Mice (see Ken Auletta's excellent book of the same name) to serve up more of the same in the future--and as we get deeper into the 2008 election, there will be less public attention on the media's role as an enabler of the Bush administration.
According the the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ), reporters have a responsibility to provide the full story (see their website for fuller details). I will confine my remarks to just a few significant items that are missing from the coverage of the JFK terror plot story. My object in doing so is to help provide grist for the mill of those inclined to write blogs, letters to the editor (LTE) of newspapers, and, most importantly, to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to lodge complaints over failing to broadcast in the public interest. Missing items:
* Any mention of the funding cycle for Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) money. By now, it is well known that New York City has been feuding with DHS over the amount of money NYC gets under the DHS formula. NYC argues (with great merit, IMO), that some of the most dangerous two miles in the US runs near there, from about Newark NJ to NYC. (Full disclosure: I live in northern NJ, so I have some partiality to that argument, having watched the twin towers burn). Unreported, but posted on a press release at the DHS website, is that plans were just announced on May 21, 2007, on how DHS planned to allocate the money for 17 "Sector Specific Plans" for critical resources. (As a sidenote, the lead agency for DHS funding for Banking and Finance--ie Wall Street and the big money center banks--will fall under the supervision of the Treasury Dept, while the transportation sector---i.e. JFK airport, lots of Port Authority facilities (former owner of the World Trade Center)--will be DHS itself).
To make matters worse, the media did not just omit mention of the national plan for funding counter-terror measures (but there are plans posted to the web by DHS showing the information that can be available to the public); but they also omitted previously-reported skepticism in the press about NY Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's role in promoting terror stories that seemed very thin on police work, more than hinting that the "news" release had more to do with DHS funding than countering any actual terror plots. For fuller treatment of this aspect, I refer you to the excellent article Plot Targets tunnels on Rail Lines from NJ, by Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, 7-8-2006). Suffice it to say that an alleged mastermind was presented, Assem Hammoud, 31, but down deeper in the article it was noted how the announcement came around the anniversary of the London Transit bombings, how terror cases in Toronto and Miami were weak, and how NYC and Washington DC were upset that their terror funds were cut by DHS while other places got more.
To recap this point, if you watched TV, etc., you had no idea that:
* DHS had just publicly released funding plans for 17 sectors of the economy; and that
* Ray Kelly and the DC police were being questioned as to "political timing" of "terror" arrests in their jurisdictions
As a sidenote to the coverage, I found it odd that DHS head Michael Chertoff was nowhere to be seen--at least prominently--on TV, making one wonder whether the "terror" plot bust at JFK had the full backing of DHS or was just a turf war for money. And since lower taxes and smaller government is a favored Repub theme, it would probably surprise some of the network stenographers to visit the FBI website and see just how much the FBI has grown in man/personpower and budget. If there are so many more "police" and more resources to investigate crimes, one would think that the work-product would be of much higher quality.
Which leads us, finally, to the question of the quality of the police work. It appears to me that the "first-strike" policy, and the repressive and secretive laws enacted under AG Gonzales, the so-called Patriot Act, actually create a climate where shoddy police work is permitted, because the police can hide behind government secrecy rules, and conduct a modern-day Court of Star Chamber or, if you prefer, Inquisition. After 9-11-2001, the FBI announced that it had thwarted som 100 terrorist incidents BBC, 12-15-2002, headline of the same words, including one Jose Padillo, for an alleged "dirty bomb plot." But let's look at the results of the "police work" on that case. A trial court found the case "light on facts." An appeals court overturned, and, when the case hit the Supreme Court, they kicked Rumsfeld v. Padilla back to South Carolina, saying Padilla should not have filed against Rummy, but against the head of the prison. Padilla, it is worth remembering, is a US Citizen, born in Puerto Rico. His Crime? Well, no less a neo-con principal than Paul Wolfowitz has said Padilla's offense did not go beyond surfing the internet. Padilla's punishment? The government labelled him an "unlawful combatant, and Padilla was subjected to being held without habeus corpus, questioning using "stress techniques" and other abuses that he claims were torture. His defense said in court that the torture left him so mentally damaged that he's no longer mentally competent to stand trial; the government's mental health expert says otherwise. The picture that emerges: someone searching the internet on terror topics, a US Citizenwas arrested without a warrant, held incommunicato while questioned with methods made infamous in Baghram, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib, and arguably driven mad by the process.
My contention: the press can't tell the full story of these alleged "terror plots" without casting a skeptical eye on the police work and methods being employed.
In the scheme of terror investigations, the police work in the US is only a small part of what is occurring worldwide.In 2004, the National Center for Counter-terrorism published a lengthy (92pages?) summary of events worldwide, and US viewers would be surprised to see how much seems to be taking place in India, for just one of the more obvious examples.
Lastly, the news coverage actually slights some of the more solid police work that seems to be going on--but not covered--which as some posters have already noted--prosecutes the crimes by right-wing extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center had tracked some 60 right-wing terror plots--domestic ones-- which were mentioned in newspaper articles 7-12-2005. A few examples:
*Skinheads using 60 lbs. of Urea, which can be used in explosives;
* A case involving white supremicists; and
* A case where police discovered 500,000 rounds of ammunition, and 2 lbs. of sodium cyanide.
Thus, apparantly shoddy police work goes on TV unquestioned, while truly solid police work that actually protects people gets the silent treatment by an unbelieveably lazy, professionally incompetent class that holds themselves out as reporters, but are, sadly, sockpuppets with a ratings book and Q-quotient.
When the Democrats come back into real power in 2008, IMO, there is serious reform work to be done at the FCC. It is time for the pendulum to swing back in favor of real reporting, and real balance.