LA TIMES TERROR BEAT AND ANNIVERSARY WING-DING: Details, details

Like every newspaper, the Los Angeles Times has been in overdrive on terror stories tied to the 9/11 anniversary. At the newspaper, as at the rest, they tend to be the same -- monotonous mullings over whether we are or we aren't safe. The conclusion is phoned in ahead of time, you don't have to read to the end to get it. It's always, "No, we aren't safe."

A very limited variety of experts are brought in to be the chocolate jimmies on top of the cupcake of terror assessment. They all say the same thing. "Nope, ain't safe yet."

And then comes the long harangue on how the terrorists are one step ahead, the terrorists can do this and that in various flavors of easy, there hasn't been enough money spent, and there's not enough gadgetry installed.

The Times was firing on all six for today's "Danger Abides at L.A. Ports." In an accompanying story -- "In LA, 'You Can't Protect Everything'' with the qualifying subhed, "The region is safer today, but new security measures might not be enough," readers got the dimestore alarmist, a former official from the California Office of Homeland Security.

The menace is apparently nearly demonical and omnipresent: "I don't want to be an alarmist (yes, right), but I think the scheme of threats out there now is of a proportion that we have not even begun to fathom."

Of a proportion we have not even begun to fathom!!! Well, then the alert reader might ask, what was the point in asking? Just stock up on lime and bodybags.

As Senior Fellow at GlobalSecurity.Org and on this blog, DD has worked its way through the turgid mess of American doomsday threat assessment, the journalism on it, and the "quote" from experts that is always delivered hot and fresh.

And it's all been said. Many times over.

Reading it is a little like being strapped in the chair in the movie, "The Marathon Man," in which the Nazi dentist, Dr. Zell, is working your teeth over with his sharpened pick. Only this time, Zell is saying "We're not safe, we're not safe!" instead of "Is it safe?"

And he doesn't care if you furnish an answer. There will be no oil of clove.

For examples of the intellectual mind rot, here -- on the day after the 9/11 2005 anniversary, and here, in "Army of Fearmongers."

On Sunday, remarkbly, stuffed way down inside the Times' keystone frontpage terror piece:

"Indeed, some national security experts -- like John Mueller of Ohio State University -- argue that the terrorist threat has been overblown and that a terrorist industry of consultants, government contractors and politicians is hyping the problem out of self-interest."

So, paradoxically, in today's "Danger Abides . . . ", up pops Stephen Flynn, "consultant and expert on port security."

". . . are we keeping pace with terrorist capabilities and the potential consequences five years after 9/11? The answer is no."

Of course that is Flynn's answer. It always is. Here is his bio, from Congressional testimony on the terror menace to unprotected chemical plants back in 2005.


America the Vulnerable. America -- Still Unprepared -- Still in Danger. Yes, yes, we get the message.

Keep in mind Flynn has no experience in chemistry or the chemical industry, but there he was, putting in his two cents, as part of the threat-announcing national security apparatus/industry.

Dick Destiny blog dealt with this issue during the summer in its examination of Richard Falkenrath, another national security apparatchik.

But with regards to port security, Flynn was in the Coast Guard.

And he was also on the front page of the New York Times one Sunday back in June in a story entitled: "US Homeland Security, Inc."

Wrote Eric Lipton:

When the storm erupted several months ago over plans by a United Arab Emirates-based company to take over management of a half-dozen American port terminals, one voice resonated in Washington.

Stephen E. Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, repeatedly told lawmakers and reporters that domestic ports were so vulnerable that terrorists could easily sneak a radioactive device into something as innocuous as a shipment of sneakers. And he offered a solution: a cargo inspection system in Hong Kong that scans every container, instead of the fraction now checked in the United States.

"The top priority should be working with the overseas terminal operators and putting in place a system that is being piloted in Hong Kong," Mr. Flynn told a House panel in March. "We have to view every container as a Trojan horse."

Homeland Security Department officials and lawmakers had been aware of the innovative port security approach in Hong Kong, but they had been reluctant to embrace it, convinced that screening every container at a port would be impractical. Mr. Flynn's forceful advocacy has changed that view.

But as Democrats and Republicans rushed to act on his advice, one fact usually remained in the background: From 2003 until 2005, he was a paid consultant to the Science Applications International Corporation, or S.A.I.C., the San Diego company that manufactured the system . . .

In one Congressional appearance this year, Mr. Flynn had acknowledged some involvement in the Hong Kong project, saying, "I've been a leader of the side putting it together." Four publications this year also mentioned his ties to the company.

But in most of his public comments this year — in at least three television interviews, two other appearances before Congress, opinion pieces in The New York Times and Far Eastern Economic Review and in nearly two dozen newspaper or magazine articles — Mr. Flynn's connection to S.A.I.C. was not noted.

"A key vulnerability, Flynn and others say, remains . . . the cargo container, the mainstay of international commerce and a potential Trojan horse in the age of terrorism," wrote The Los Angeles Times today.

"Shipping industry representatives and maritime safety experts say that some of the problems might be overcome if a pilot program in the port of Hong Kong, the world's busiest harbor, is successful . . . There, a system designed by Science Applications International Corp. in San Diego X-rays containers, notes their identification numbers and scans them for radiation . . . " it continued.

The LA Times did not mention Flynn's connection with Science Applications.

Moving along, DD blog again comes to Rand's Brian Jenkins, another terror expert.

Last week, the Times unfurled a terror readiness exercise prepared by Jenkins. And promptly confused the alleged terror weapons chosen for it, anthrax and ricin.

DD blog was interested in nailing down where the error came from, so it went digging around in the writings of Jenkins and came across his new book, published by Rand, entitled "Unconquerable Nation."

As well as hardcover and softcover, it's available as a free .pdf on Rand's website. Just Google the title.

Reading it, DD blog came across:


And there you have it. Anthrax is not a derivative substance.

However, while Jenkins is not so hot on chemical and biological weapons, the book is an engaging read. He writes in an impassioned voice that torture must be out if we're serious about being the good guys.

"Torture can never be legal," Jenkins writes. "American values are not luxuries."

Jenkins also discusses the mechanisms of "vulnerability-based assessments," which is how the US national security industry now conducts business, and which has led to many of the things excoriated on this blog.

"What begins as hypothetically possible evolves into a scenario that is probable, which then somehow becomes inevitable, and by the bottom of the page is imminent . . . this encourages threat advocacy in which individuals, propelled by professional knowledge . . . champion specific threat scenarios.

"Threat advocacy is not threat mongering . . . "

Yes it is, most of the time. The monograph is thought-provoking but we'll have to disagree with that bit for now.