Dear Department of Homeland Security,
Here's a hint: When parents are warning that their adult children might do something violent against the government or public, take it seriously.
Despite the Department of Homeland Security spending more than $254 million from 2004-2007 on "fusion centers," 8 years after the terrible events of 9/11, our government is still not connecting the dots. Not just little dots. Big, obvious spatter.
In the cases of the underwear bomber and the Pentagon shooter, their parents had warned authorities that their children were on the edge, potentially dangerous, and may harbor anti-government sentiment.
In the case of "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a transatlantic jet on Christmas, his father warned U.S. officials about his son's extreme views--but somehow this warning did not warrant placing the accused on the "No-Fly List." The government can allow me to linger on the "No-Fly List," but this guy didn't qualify?
And now in the case of the "Pentagon shooter" John Patrick Bedell, the man who this week opened fire on officers standing outside the Pentegon, we learn that his parents had alerted police 8 weeks before that he might be armed. Additionally, in early January, a Texas Highway Patrol officer stopped him for speeding and found him lurching up and down and rocking on his knees in a car that was in total disarray. According to today's Washington Post,
Concerned about Bedell's mental state, the officer called his parents and learned that they had filed a missing persons report--one that noted Bedell had been "detained for mental evaluation before."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... Warning bells, right? Nope. On February 1, he was again stopped for another moving violation, charged with drug possession, and released on bond. Warning bells yet? No.
If that were not enough, Bedell left a lengthy electronic trail of written, video and audio manifestos. In an audio address posted on the Internet, he suggested that after the assassination of President Kennedy,
the United States had been infiltrated by a cabal of gangsters he called the "coup regime." Beddell believed that the group has continued manipulating the country "up to the present day" and was probably responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war.
Id. at A6. Warning bells? Nah.
Despite the Department of Homeland Security spending more than $254 million from 2004-2007 on "fusion" (makes me think of cuisine) centers, 8 years after the terrible events of 9/11, our government is still not "connecting the dots." The Department of Homeland Security brags that the purpose of these 72 state and local fusion centers (yes, the same ones that have put anti-death penalty activists on their lists) is to share information and intelligence within their jurisdictions as well as with the federal government. So much for that!
In case you want more evidence of DHS malfeasance, the Transportation Security Adminstration announced that 9 more airports will receive body-scanning technology (manufactured by a company represented by former DHS director Michael Chertoff)--part of 150 machines bought under the public radar in addition to 40 machines already in use at 19 airports.