IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY: Dick Destiny taught the band to play. We've really gone out of style but I'm still guaranteed to raise a smile . . .

Just posted to the net, another old review of "Arrogance," by Dick Destiny & The Highway Kings, courtesy of a reprint on Dave DiMartino's blog at Yahoo.

DiMartino, now executive editor of Yahoo! Music, was editor of CREEM magazine in 1986 and the following is excerpted from an Eighties year-end wrap-up:

"Yo! Let's party!

"And what better way to party than to get a hold of Dick Destiny & The Highway Kings' Arrogance, a hard-rockin' metal extravaganza that takes up where the Dictators left off with even less class! Yep, you may have a hard time finding this record--and if I had any sense of moral responsibility I'd go downstairs and get it, but I don't--so find it anyway . . . "

The entire piece, which is hilarious in the old style of CREEM is here. Dig the pics of David Lee Roth and the Monkees!

I wrote some things for CREEM and DiMartino, including my first paid-for-record-review ever, a live set by of Hawkwind. They're lost somewhere in the CREEM archives or a dusty box in the closet.

Some MP3's from the old albums and performance, sprinkled through the pages, here and here.

DICKHEADS 2.0: Two awards for intellectual excellence in meaningfully framing the threat of agroterror. One expert says casualties of 9/11 a bonus for al Qaeda, then compares it to theoretical foot-n-mouth plague

DD blog didn't think it would need to signify the intellectual excellence of our war-on-terror experts so soon after the Chris Shays nomination.

But then the second annual International Symposium on Agroterror in Kansas City came along, affording the chance for members of the bioterror-is-inevitable lobby to put hooves into mouths.

From the Kansas City Star, an FBI agent make this comparison:

Kansas City FBI agent David Cudmore said that the Sept. 11, 2001, attack was not necessarily designed by terrorists to kill a lot of people.

“That was a bonus for them; they wanted to attack our financial structure . . . They’re not going to kill people with foot-and-mouth disease, but boy will they hit our pockets. We’d lose billions; it will almost cripple us economically.”

Yes sir, it's obvious that ramming large jet liners filled with fuel and passengers into the World Trade Center buildings and Pentagon during the work day was not necessarily designed to kill a lot of people, that many fatalities were a "bonus."

---

A secondary award goes to the conference, as a group. Again, according to the Kansas City Star: " . . .experts say the vulnerabilities are endless."

Of course they do. It's their job.

Read The Kansas City Star.

LOW-TECH ANTHRAX STILL DEADLY? FBI research widens suspect list. 'Weaponized' theory undermined . . .

Writing for today's Register with GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow T-shirt on, DD digs into the data provided by a recent paper on the anthrax letters of 2001.

. . .While the FBI seems stalled in its hunt for the bioterrorist, it hasn't impeded the publication of good science on the anthrax letters.

To this end, we point you to the forbiddingly entitled "Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores," by Douglas J. Beecher of the FBI's Hazardous Material Response Unit in Quantico, VA.

Published in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a peer-reviewed journal, the article is fascinating for the many things it says about mailed anthrax . . . Read the rest here.

NO SPECIFIC THREAT: But the enemies are out there, you bet

"There hasn't been a specific terrorist threat against the U.S. food supply, but Americans should not take the safety of their food for granted, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Wednesday," wrote AP, reporting from the second International Symposium on Agroterrorism, in Kansas City.

"The bacterium that has infected some of our fresh spinach was not, to the best of our knowledge, the result of an intentional contamination . . . But it illustrates how much damage can be inflicted by an intentional act on our food supply," said Johans via AP. Since great minds think alike, it's a repeat of a knee-jerk comparison in the last few days. One could just as easily say every case of food-poisoning reported in the United States in the past month "illustrates how much damage can be inflicted" by agroterrorists.

It was said there was no "specific or current threat" to the agriculture or food sectors.

But, "We know that there are individuals who want to harm us, and we are aware there are people with the knowledge and the capability of sabotaging our food . . . "

The US government, it was reported, wants to tag the 9 billion livestock animals in the country so they can be monitored for bioterror by 2009. It's a plan likely to go nowhere since it faces strong opposition in Missouri from farmers and Congressmen.

The entire news clip is here.

AN AGROTERROR SIDESLIDE SHOW: Don't forget to visit the Protect-Our-Food vendor expo!

The second annual International Symposium on Agroterrorism in Kansas City this week serves a couple of functions. One is to allow a segment of the bioterror-is-coming lobby to run through its usual warnings and predictions. The second is to increase opportunity for commerce and profit in the war on terror.

Regarding the symposium, the FBI brightly says: "A Protect-Our-Food Expo will also be available, assembling vendors from a variety of disciplines to share information and promote relevant products and services."

And the vendor expo would not be best served if there weren't declarations coming from the presenters, declarations which indicate goods and services are needed, like cameras, more locks, various gadgets, security assessors, etc.

For example, Peter Chalk, a not-biologist or farmer or person even slightly trained in a hard sciencepolitical scientist at RAND, quoted on vulnerability to agroterror, for the Dow Jones newswire, in US Animal Production Vulnerable to Attack: "There also is a widespread lack of security and surveillance in place at [farms], [Chalk] said. Many simple items like locks and gates are lacking."

And animals on farms are packed together, which increases their stress, increasing their vulnerability to agroterrorism:

"The close confinement practices of U.S. agriculture in livestock production not only increases the contact animals have with each other, but it is thought to increase stress levels among the animals, which by itself increases disease susceptibility, Chalk said."

The FBI's symposium site also helpfully includes presentations from last year's confab, so DD decided to have a look and sample some of the best for you. And when DD says best, it means best in the sense of parts of presentations in which the alleged experts are caught clowning, phoning it in with material that is either stupid, deceptive or designed to indoctrinate a simple-minded audience with the idea that agroterror is inevitable and easy.

First off, parts of a colorful slide show put on by Jerry Jax, Associate Vice Provost for Research Compliance at Kansas State University.



This is a picture of the terrorist weapon known as the "anti-cow gravity bomb."



What does anthrax have to do with agroterror? Good question. It furnishes an opportunity for scary quotes.



What does the ricin-loaded umbrella that was used to assassinate Georgi Markov in 1978 have to do with agroterrorism? Perhaps al Qaeda is planning to use them to inject potatoes or apples with ricin pellets!



It's always good to remind the audience, in case they've fallen asleep from boredom, that agroterror is "#1 . . . nothing but Bad News."



Here's what the presenter didn't show in his slide. It's the most interesting part, too.

From a common college textbook, "Fundamentals of Microbiology" by I. Edward Alcamo:

"Perhaps the most famous and controversial use of [Serratia marcescens] was the US Army's 'Operation Sea-spray,' conducted in 1951 and 1952. To study wind currents that might carry biological weapons, scientists filled balloons with cultures of [the organism] and burst them over the ocean near San Francisco . . . Shortly thereafter, doctors at close by Stanford Hospital noted an unusual outbreak outbreak of pneumonia and urinary tract infections among hospital patients. They isolated Serratia in some of these cases, but could not establish the source . . . Serratia pneumonia is accompanied by patches of bronchopneumonia, and in some cases, substantial tissue destruction in the lungs . . . In addition, it is a widespread agent of urinary tract disease."




Wow!



Although this Jax slide is a mysterious bit of Photoshopped gibber, given that the President is a teetotaler, it could have used a better caption, like: "If only I still had Saddam to accuse of supporting bioterror, I could go back to drinking beer at the ranch."

Another slide show on-line at the FBI's agroterror symposium site is that of Joseph Annelli, Director of Emergency Programs, Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), USDA. It was entitled "Agricultural Threats -- Livestock and Crops" which seems a bit clumsy, leaving the reader to puzzle over whether or not livestock and crops actually are threats to agriculture.

The presentation's message was similar to Jerry Jax's, often using the same colors and styles.



Good thing that's "Unclassified/For Official Use Only."

Annelli also tried to build a case for an al Qaeda capability in agroterrorism. However, since the evidence of capability is nil, what one can only display is a desire of some kind. To this end, "documents" -- and the term must be very broady applied -- found in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban, were presented.

Documents, in this case, meant some Arabic [?] scribble on a sheet from a legal pad, more scribble on a partially burned piece of paper and a pamphlet from a model helicopter flight simulator computer game called AeroChopper. Lame!

[Note: An alert reader points out the legal pad notes may not even by in Arabic. The slide was such that it was difficult to magnify.]


Looks dangerous!

AGROTERROR CANT, AS PREDICTED: Al Qaeda interested in it, says FBI man, to crowd of pros whose livelihood depends on taxpayer spending on the matter

As predicted in the blog Sunday, a story entered the newswires today on the threat of al Qaeda-launched agroterrorism, courtesy of a second annual conference on the matter, held at a posh hotel in Kansas City.

Expect a few more before the end of the week, none mentioning the confab's function as an effort to boost commerce to academia and the private sector through anti-terror spending.

From the Kansas City Star:

Al-Qaeda has studied U.S. agriculture, which is in need of defense, FBI deputy director John Pistole told about 900 people gathered at the Westin Crown Center . . .

“I believe that the terrorist threat is changing and even adapting — but so are we,” Pistole said.

The second annual International Symposium on Agroterrorism opened to a packed crowd, primarily industry leaders from across the country and 20 countries. Those attending the five-day event represent various aspects of food production, as well as law enforcement and food scientists.

In his speech, Pistole discussed the potential threat of agroterror attacks. As evidence, he pointed to documents found after Sept. 11 detailing information on U.S. agriculture and translated into Arabic.

Ding, ding, ding goes the bullshit detector.

When an official declaims at a professional conference on what is said to be contained in al Qaeda documents post-9/11 re agroterror, the readers knows to ask for examples. Or to take it with a couple salt-shakers full.

Yes, jihadist documents certainly have discussed bioterror. And they've done it in the most imbecilic manner.

While the naive quality of such documents is never discussed, there is always plenty of testimony on how inevitable the worst possible outcomes are.

[Keyphrase: Agroterror tools can be bought at Home Depot, along with stuff for atomic bombs and hydrogen cyanide smudge pots.]

I SEE DUMB PEOPLE: Columnist conflates spinach contamination and bioterror

Bacterial contamination of food is a subject taught in every introductory microbiology class. And that is because it is a significant and ever present cause of human disease.

For example, on the subject of typhoid fever -- of interest because of the rumor of Osama bin Laden's death, "Fundamentals of Microbiology (3rd Edition)" by I. Edward Alcamo, typhoid fever is listed under "Foodborne and Waterborne Infections."

"Typhoid fever is in the series of classical diseases that have ravaged humans for generations," reads Alcamo.

Caused by Salmonella typhi, a Gram-negative rod, the organism is resistant to "environmental conditions outside the body."

"This factor enhances its ability to remain alive for long periods of time in water, sewage and certain foods. S. typhi causes disease only in humans and is transmitted by the five F's: flies, food, fingers, feces and fomites."

"In the small intestine it invades the tissues, causing deep ulcers and bloody stools but little diarrhea . . . [b]owel perforation and gall bladder infection are [possible] complications."

The disease also causes "mounting fever, lethargy and delirium."

If the death of Osama bin Laden from typhoid fever is not a rumor, there will be delicious irony in the fact that the leader of a terrorist organization interested in bioterror experienced the terrible fright that must come while dieing, untreated, from a painful microbial illness. (But if not, forget I said it.)

Moving along, "The outbreak of E. coli O157: H7 linked to fresh spinach was blamed for five more cases of illness Saturday," wrote Associated Press, "raising the number of people sickened to 117 . . . "

Ninety two people have been hospitalized, said the report. One has died and two other deaths "are under investigation for possible links to the outbreak."

California state have traced the contamination to three counties in the Salinas Valley where spinach is grown.

And earlier in the week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story in which scientists stated that most, if not all, of California's waterways in its growing region were contaminated with E. coli as a result of run-off and manure from domestic animal excrement, and that some of the contamination was likely, by odds, to be O157:H7.

While contaminated spinach has reminded everyone that foodborne poisoning is always with us and sometimes deadly, DD was waiting for some clown to use it an excuse to go on about the evergreen menace of bioterrorism.

And sure enough, Martin Schram, a political columnist for Scripps Howard, turned out a column entitled "Spinach and bioterrorism prevention," today.

To do it, Schram had to go back to the case of the Rajneeshee cult in the Oregon town of The Dalles in 1984. In an attempt to rig an election by making people ill -- this would, the idea went, force people to stay home -- the Rajneeshee contaminated salad bars in restaurants with Salmonella typhimurium.

Wrote a scientist from the CDC:

A communitywide outbreak of salmonellosis resulted; at least 751 cases were documented in a county that typically reports fewer than five cases per year. Although bioterrorism was considered a possibility when the outbreak was being investigated by public health officials, it was considered unlikely. The source of the outbreak became known only when FBI investigated the cult for other criminal violations. A vial of S. Typhimurium identical to the outbreak strain was found in a clinical laboratory on the cult's compound, and members of the cult subsequently admitted to contaminating the salad bars and putting Salmonella into a city water supply tank.

However, instead of noting anywhere in his article that bioterrorism has remained exceedingly rare, despite the desires of some and the case of the Rajneeshee, and that foodborne poisoning is common throughout the world, Schram goes in the other direction.

That other direction is the one well known to daily readers of DD blog when it has its GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow T-shirt on.

This could have been bioterror because it's easy. The nation's not ready and we're not ready. Someone or some agency is always horribly unprepared. Everyone is in need of wake-up calls and a good shaking.

This time, writes Schram, we're "understaffed" in the search for bioterror.

Schram writes it as if unaware of how many people deadeningly repeat the same bioterror message through his medium.

For instance, ABC's evening news broadcast rang the bell today, too. Agroterrorism -- it's easy, the news network reported. Richard Clarke was produced to say unnamed enemies had the capability to destroy or poison an entire food crop. It's not science fiction, reported ABC.

The spouting of prediction and warning on bioterror is long past the point of providing even the slightest bit of useful or even vaguely interesting information. It's now always the blurting of repetitive memes, all careful thought squeezed from the matter which is degenerated into a flavor of terror war propaganda designed to grab the listener, reader or viewer's attention and create unease.

Yes, I get it, Martin Schram. Everyone does. Having been beaten over the head with hype and cant so regularly, how could we not? Thanks for repeating the script. (It will be repeated again this week, just as soon as reporters start filing stories from an agroterror conference being held in Kansas City.)

"We have just witnessed a demonstration of how terrorists might use our food conveyor belt to spread their deliberate contamination from coast to coast," writes Schram. "Even while we think our food detectives are on the case, eyes wide open."

So order the bodybags and lime.

The next time Schram is sitting in the bathroom, his gut gripped by Staph food-poisoning, we should hope he has time to compose another essay on witnessing a demonstration of how terrorists might have used his food to put him on the commode.

UNITED STATES OF AL QAEDA: Terrorists led by the business practices of Max DePree, says pol

The first job of a leader is to define reality.

Leaders are concerned with substance, not artifice.

Leaders don't inflict pain - they share pain.

We cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are.

These are the aphorisms of Max DePree.

DD had no idea who Max Depree was until earlier in the week when Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra whipped the name on an audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Hoekstra was there to sell his "Al Qaeda -- The many faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat" report, distributed through the auspices of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

In a rambling, sometimes unintentionally nutty speech, Hoekstra warmed to his subject: how al Qaeda must have read from the work of his mentor, Max DePree, CEO/Chairman of Herman Miller Corp.(a manufacturer of office furniture), who wrote the books "Leadership Jazz" and "Leadership is an Art."

Al Qaeda was nimble, entrepreneurial and agile. It ran its business of terror along the advice of DePree and had good bosses who empowered their employees, according to Hoekstra. The mind wandered.

At one point, Hoekstra said al Qaeda liked its operatives to blend into the local population, to have no criminal records. A couple minutes later he said al Qaeda was recruiting in American prisons, which would seem conceptually the opposite.

Hoekstra pretended that his report, which is full of pretty pictures -- one of which we will reprint below -- was a cooperative effort between him and with his good friend Jane Harman, the Democratic Congresswoman from California.

This is what the Democrat minority portion of the Committee, among other sings, had to say about their cooperative effort, included in appendices at the end of the thing.


That takes the wind out of the sails.

Or this, from minority member, Anna Eshoo:


Hoekstra's report goes on to say that the Internet is an enabler of al Qaeda. There is much hand-wringing about the fact that the terrorist organization is able to use the technology of cyberspace. From a reading, one gets the idea that if Hoekstra could make it illegal to have Internet-connected computers everywhere but in the United States, that would be a good battle for us to win in the war on terror.

There is much talk about how the United States must win a "war of ideas" against al Qaeda.

Although having the United States being thought a torturer is not exactly a winning idea, the report does not mention it.

There is, however, much requote from the speeches of Osama bin Laden.

But most interesting is a map of the United States, one that takes up the center of the House select committee report. Although probably not intentionally designed for the way it is
employed, its purpose is to clearly show the US is infiltrated -- border-to-border and wall-to-wall with terrorists.

So fittingly, it's reproduced below with an embellishment.


"The first job of a leader is to define reality," said Max DePree. Hoekstra got that part right.

"Leaders are concerned with substance, not artifice," also spragt DePree. Not so hot on the second, though.

---

As this was going to blog, rumors of Osama bin Laden's death by typhoid, were hitting the news.
"The chief of al-Qaida was a victim of a severe typhoid crisis while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006," wrote the Associated Press, reporting from a document reprinted in the French newsmedia. "His geographic isolation meant that medical assistance was impossible, the French report said, adding that his lower limbs were allegedly paralyzed."

Even if not true, it is still logically consistant. Typhoid is a serious problem in Pakistan. And it can cause paralysis.

RUBBISH SCI-FI CHANNEL PROJECT promises to look into Bigfoot, the Mothman and UFOs -- Perhaps doesn't answer existential quantitative and qualitative question, "Do we really need more?"

Back at the beginning of summer, Dick Destiny was contacted by a journalist named Roger Trilling doing scouting work for a reality version of the 'X-Files' in development in southern California. The idea, as it was explained over the phone, was to assemble a team to go out every week and look into some aspect of the alleged unknown, most notably, UFOs.

It was hard to take seriously, and I wrote:

So I told the fellow in charge of the search -- a good journalist by the name of Roger Trilling -- that I didn't believe in UFOs, which more or less destroys the point of such a reality-based television show. And I answered a number of progessively more foolish questions.

"What would I do with an air force man or a civilian who had a UFO on film or in a photograph that was not explained away by reflections and optical phenomena?" Besides roll your eyes? Answering the truth, of course, would have been impolite.

Such questions made me feel dumb. And it wasn't the interviewer's fault they were idiotic. Anyone having to actually find a team of serious people with more than half a brain for such a project is going to be hard put to avoid the ludicrous.

At the time, I figured Sci Fi channel was a good candidate for the show, mostly for its love of trash like the "investigating" of ghosts or alleged news inquiries into how the world might end.

But I do watch the channel -- Battlestar Galactica is a favorite as was Farscape until the latter's cancellation. And I saw a teaser for a new program called Sci Fi Investigates tonight.

Seeing the premise -- the quick flash of a man in a bigfoot suit, a grainy old upside down plate as UFO photo, and a collection of pandering ninnies -- I knew I'd found the show I'd been interviewed for.

After the interview I was certain I wouldn't get a callback and didn't.

Reading the press release for Sci Fi Investigates confirmed my original dim impression of the project.

Slated for "investigation:"

Bigfoot – New sightings are making news and SCI FI Investigates does whatever it takes to secure legitimate evidence of the legendary creature's existence.

Mothman – A real-life nightmare that made headlines around the world, recent sightings of a terrifying winged apparition, known as the Mothman, takes SCI FI Investigates deep into the mountains of West Virginia.

Paranormal Hotspots – As hubs for such uncommon occurrences as UFO sightings, cattle mutilations and unexplained paranormal activity, Dulce, New Mexico and Sedona, Arizona are quite unique. SCI FI Investigates gets to the root of the disturbances that have put these cities on the paranormal map.

The complete summation, along with more ludicrous material, at Reality TV, is here.

The "investigative" team includes someone from the reality TV show, "Survivor," and an author (a believer in UFOs) of a self-published book on them and how the US national security state is covering it all up. [No link for obvious reasons.]

" . . . the UFO subject has had a corrosive, toxic affect on our civil liberties, freedoms, and sense of national identity," writes one citizen reviewer on Amazon. "Every concerned citizen should pay attention to this subject mainly because UFO disclosure has ramifications throughout our entire political and social system."

Surely that is indisputable.

[Keywords: John Greenewald, Boston Rob Mariano, Bill Doleman]

AMERICANS, MORE THAN TERRORISTS, ARE CRAZY FOR RICIN: Couple nabbed in murder plot

Journalists, pundits and terror experts are nuts for stories about Islamic terrorists and ricin.

They routinely pop off about how easy it is to "make" the plant poison at home, in a shed, or in some simple terrorist abode, even when a Porton Down chemical weapons expert informed a British court in 2005 that a popular Internet recipe that professed to show how to do it, actually destroyed a great part of it in the "extraction."

They go on and on and on about the dead terrorist, al Zarqawi, and how he was making ricin in the north of Iraq prior to the invasion, even though US intelligence survey teams looking for evidence of WMDs didn't find any at his camp.

And under government largesse caused by the war on terror, taxpayers continue to throw money at companies for widgets to find ricin and cures for it even though there has been only one political assassination by ricin in the last thirty years or so.

But when Americans are caught trying to make ricin, which is about once every two months, it's never significant news.

"A south Jackson couple has been indicted by the federal government for allegedly producing a biological agent to use as a weapon," reported the Jackson, MS, Clarion Ledger newspaper, recently. Note: It's below the news on a robbery of a local barbershop.

"Steven and Kimberly Edwards are accused of trying to make ricin, a poison, to kill her parents with. The indictment says Steven Edwards obtained a recipe from the Internet for ricin, and in early May, obtained castor seeds, an ingredient of ricin."

Kimberley Edwards, according to the federal indictment, here, was -- astonishingly -- even a Ph.D. chemist -- like DD.

But why did the Edwards couple -- dumb and dumber, so to speak -- believe ricin was easy to make?

Because they, and many others like them, have been told so again and again by ace biological and chemical terrorism journalists from the big newsmedia.

So when they go to Google and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky!" for the phrase "how to make ricin" -- this is what they find -- one of the scientifically trashed, but famous, net poison recipes.

The indictment adds that Steven and Kimberly Edwards were engaged in a conspiracy to murder the parents of Kimberly a with a biological weapon. As motivation, money -- the inheritance of an estate worth in excess of one million dollars.

THE CIA WANTS YOU! Especially if you enjoy Fox's animated series, King of the Hill

The last couple of nights, DD has noticed commercials for employment at the CIA between reruns of Fox's "King of the Hill" comedy cartoon at dinner time.

The CIA wants you!

And Dick Destiny is unsure what placement in the middle of the "King of the Hill" hour (two reruns) says about shared interests and skills among fans of the series, like me, and ideal candidates for employment at the CIA. Run, Dale Gribble!

In any case, I noticed the commercials after an excellent Los Angeles Times story entitled: "Spy Agencies Outsourcing to Fill Key Jobs."

"Largely because of the demands of the war on terrorism and the drawn-out conflict in Iraq, U.S. spy agencies have turned to unprecedented numbers of outside contractors to perform jobs once the domain of government-employed analysts and secret agents," wrote the Times.

The paper related "more than half the employees are not U.S. government analysts or terrorism experts" at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Problems and benefits associated with the reliance on outside contractors, or the private sector-ization of intelligence work are discussed in the Times article. On the plus side is the management and maintenance of the intelligence apparatus' computer systems and the necessary "plugging" of holes created by staff cuts during the previous decade.

On the negative side: The introduction of the profit motive which impacts the analysis and interpretation of intelligence as well as morale of employees in operations.

DD has discussed the issue previously, in Annals of Terrorism.

It comes down to being wary, as most people should be, of for-profit firms that purport to either compete with or replace functions of the work of national intelligence agencies, no matter how lousy one may think such agencies are.

An inescapable fact of the war on terror is that capabilities and threats are frequently exaggerated.

To get people to listen to your story or stories, to make them buy something you are selling, to make them believe you are providing value for your analytic labor, you must frighten them. And if the evidence at hand isn't sufficiently scary, or the people who you're serving aren't attentive enough, then the temptation is strong to embellish and sell the goods like something they ain't.

Unchecked, it's destructive to analysis. It also selects for the hiring of people who are good at telling you things that currently blow with the winds of received wisdom, as opposed to the delivering of information which is true, as far as it is in the best of your ability to know it, but which runs counter to the same.

Another way of looking at it is the pleasing of two bosses -- your corporate manager, who wants to keep the client thinking the vendor is producing great things, and the client, whose agency more urgently needs critical thinking as opposed to interesting, but not necessarily true, "stuff."

"The spike in the use of contractors is likely to diminish as the bumper crop of recruits at the CIA and other agencies rises through the ranks," concludes the Times. "However, officials said that was a process that would take years."

The entire story is here.

So you saw the CIA ad, too, and you think you want to be a spy?

Well, "[The] CIA is interested in hearing from you," I wrote -- way back in 1992.

"It interviews thousands of Americans for jobs as spies, intelligence analysts and technical specialists every year. But because of its classified mission, hiring methods are unusual and Kafka-esque, taking at least a year to complete and bound in smothering bureaucratic process, comic ineptitude and secrecy."

Hiring was a long process involving multiple interviews, essay writing, test-taking, background checks and the completion of an extensive personal history file.

One might reckon, unless you're Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. coming out of retirement, it still is.

Whether or not the agency still employs a brain-damaged personality test from the Fifties, one I took, to screen its applicants is an unknown. If you find out, let Dick Destiny know. That is -- if you can, without being fired or charged with treason.

Read Job Openings at the CIA. It's one of a kind. Nothin' else exists like it on the net.

The CIA also thought very highly of polygraphs. At the time, all candidates, if they were given an offer, were required to pass one.

"David T. Lykken, a psychologist who did pioneering research and public education on the limits and abuses of polygraph testing, died last week at age 78," wrote Steven Aftergood in today's Secrecy Blog at the Federation of American Scientists.

[Lykken said] the use of the polygraph for security screening of personnel, as is commonly done by U.S. intelligence agencies, cannot reliably achieve its purported goal of identifying spies or traitors and in many cases becomes counterproductive.

"I think it is now obvious that polygraph testing has failed to screen out from our intelligence agencies potential traitors and moles. On the contrary, it seems to have served as a shield for such people who, having passed the polygraph, become immune to commonsense suspicions."

A fascinating obit, read the rest here.

TERRORISM ISOLATES A TOWN IN KANSAS: Still a week to go until bin Laden's American Hiroshima, so you can sneak in one episode of 'Jericho' tonite

From The Daily Fallout, more on bin Laden's plan:


An ominous warning has apparently been issued by Abu Dawood, reported al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan. According to him, another massive attack upon the U.S. is in its final stages of planning, and is about to be commenced.

The leader specified that Muslims living around the New York and Washington area should leave immediately. This proposed attack has been dubbed the "American Hiroshima", an apparent reference to the 1945 American nuclear attack on Japan.

He continued to say that Americans will be receiving a recorded message from Osama bin Laden, which is being referred to as a "final" message. It is unknown whether Dawood's claims are credible, or the actual extent of his connections with bin Laden.

The Short News Any relation to the Short Count?

---

An attack from both borders

NUKES ARRIVE IN MEXICO

Concern about Shukrijumah's extended stay in Mexico was heightened in November 2004 with the arrest in Pakistan of Sharif al-Masri, a key al Qaeda operative. Al Masri, an Egyptian national jihadist with close ties to al Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2 man, informed interrogators that al-Qaeda had made arrangements to smuggle nuclear supplies and tactical nuclear weapons into Mexico. From Mexico, the weapons were to be transported across the border with the help of a Latino street gang. The gang was later identified as Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that Adnan had trekked across the North American continent to meet in a Honduran café, and the plans that he discussed with the gang leaders were the plans that had been purportedly finalized at the terrorist summit in Waziristan . . .

A NUCLEAR MISSION IN CANADA

Following the success of 9-11, Shukrijumah became singled out by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to spearhead the next great attack on America -- a nuclear attack that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S. cities (New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C.), leaving millions dead and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in ashes.[xii]

To prepare for this mission, Shukrijumah and fellow al Qaeda agents Anas al Liby, Jaber A. Elbaneh, and Amer el Matti, purportedly were sent to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a facility that boasted a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor, the largest reactor of any educational facility in Canada. At McMaster, Adnan reportedly kept to himself, made few new friends or acquaintances, kept strictly to his studies, and left the facility at the same time as his colleagues.[xiii] He also managed to obtain employment at the reactor - - allegedly as a guide.[xiv] Adnan's"normal' behavior on the Hamilton campus, a source said, gave him entry to places where dangerous materials were stored without raising undue suspicion. Bit by bit, the al-Qaeda operative allegedly managed to pilfer approximately 180 pounds of nuclear material from the university - - enough to build several radiological bombs.

Canada Free Press

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Today's LA Times delivered a preview on CBS's "Jericho," entitled "Terrorism surrounds a town in 'Jericho.'

" . . . a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon and all communication is lost."

"Snippets of radio broadcasts hint at nonspecific escalating 'global violence' and 'extreme reaction' and the heard-not-seen president (vaguely Bush-like) burbles the word 'terrorism' before turning into static. But there are no specific details, nor enemy proposed."

One star of the series, Gerald McRaney ". . . brings a bit of sit-comical wit into the mix and is a cool voice of caution and reason among the hysteria."

"Are we going to use our imagination to solve problems or to cause them?" he says, according to the Times.

No way Dick Destiny is gonna miss the premier. Now don't let me down, CBS.

THEIR VERDICT WAS IGNORED: Speaking truth to power, jurors in the London ricin trial protest overturning of justice

In April 2005, a jury in England destroyed one entire plank in Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on why Iraq was a terror menace to the United States.

It had been long in coming and was not sexy. It was a complicated and annoying finding to those who desire a smooth narrative of clear cut good and evil in the war on terror.

Powell's presentation, recently addressed here, presented a "UK poison cell" as connected to the terrorist al Zarqawi, who was connected to al Qaeda, which was in league in some way with Saddam Hussein. Information in the Senate intel report, released recently, confirmed what had been revealed in an English courtroom between 2004-2005, information that had been kept from the public.


The jury's verdict contradicted Powell's assertions -- and by extension, the American government's -- on anything having to do with the "UK poison cell."

But the American newsmedia, so hip to cover the story when ricin was allegedly discovered in London prior to the invasion of Iraq, was not at all eager to correct the historical record when the jury verdict reversed all such claims in April of 2005.

As GlobalSecurity.Org senior fellow, DD was the only person who wrote about it in detail. I was consulted during the course of the trial by the defense and given access to evidence, proceedings and thoughts that were going on in the case before the legal gag order came off in the United Kingdom.

And when I published on GlobalSecurity.Org on April 11, 2005, the US newsmedia essentially ran the other way. [And GlobalSecurity.Org is very well known to journalists, who --as a group -- publish their use of it daily as a valued source of military and security information. As many have come to realize, however, 'information' often has to be just the right kind, something that doesn't demolish previously received wisdoms.]

I was on the phone as the end of the trial came in and quickly discovered it was an embarrassment that American journalists hadn't bothered to attend it. The result was the press published all the risible claims made by the UK police and government prior to the trial, claims and assertions which in no way reflected what had just transpired.

The news that the reporting of a ricin positive in London, evidence of an al Qaida gang preparing for a chemical attack, was a negative -- a false positive -- was unwelcome.

That the mistake was a product of professional bungling which in turn had formed part of an elaborate mythology/hoax presented as a piece of the larger embarrassment of Colin Powell's UN speech was more shunned news. Even more appalling was that alleged key intelligence in the case had been derived from tortured informants.

A well-known reporter for the Washington Post growled at me over the telephone that I had put "them" in a awkward position by publishing the results of the trial before the newspaper could get to it and develop its own confirming sources.

"How dare you!" was the implicit message.

Since then, the newsmedia has neglected to return to the history of the London ricin trial, even when in the UK press, it has had a great deal to do with the mixed British reaction to the plot of the airplane liquid bombers.

Perhaps it is considered a small thing here.

It has, however, always been a significant undercurrent to the war-on-terror beat in the English press.

"When a buff envelope containing a jury service summons drops on the doormat, most people can look forward to spending two weeks in a local court. Our experience was different: in April last year we completed seven months at the Old Bailey sitting on a terrorism case, the so-called ricin trial," wrote jurors in the trial today, for the Guardian.

"The crown alleged a conspiracy by Algerian men, all loosely linked through the Finsbury Park mosque, to produce poisons, one a deadly toxin called ricin. We found one guilty and four not guilty. But there was a problem: despite hysteria in the media, no ricin was found. And rather than accept the fact that they were not conspirators, there was an assumption that those acquitted "got away with it.

"We were annoyed after the trial at the amount of misinformation in the news, but this turned to anger when the government announced that the acquitted men were to be deported to Algeria, where they could face imprisonment, torture or death. We took an unusual step in talking to the media about our concerns over the deportations and how we felt our verdicts had been disregarded. Two of the men from the trial were arrested last September and put in Belmarsh prison, labelled a threat to national security. They were 'released' on bail four months later on condition that they wore electronic tags, limited their movements to a small area and observed a curfew, among other measures."

The entire piece, on the overturning of legitimate justice, is here.

THERE AREN'T ENOUGH TERRORISTS: To do all the terror attacks the security apparatus predicts

"Since 9/11, it has been generally assumed that Islamic extremists have an almost infinite capacity to wreak large-scale destruction . . . " wrote Manhattan Institute scholar Heather McDonald in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal.

"The most pressing question for homeland security officials accordingly was: How do we shore up the country's equally limitless vulnerabilities? There is reason to think, however, that we may have overestimated Muslim terrorists' reach. To find out whether this is true, the next stage of the homeland security enterprise should be oriented around one overriding goal: determining the actual capacity of jihadists to strike the U.S. . . " she added.

McDonald's nicely done essay adds to the words of a growing number of experts who criticize the process of the nation's war on terror because of its working assumption that every form of attack is possible and inevitable, even in the complete absence of inkling of a verified threat.

Read the rest of McDonald's WSJ piece here.

THE DAILY FALLOUT: How to use nuclear war as a wedge issue, the nuke Iran now lobby, electromagnetic pulse barrage and American Hiroshima


Potential political strategy. If you can make sense of their statistics, you're better than me.


This is a great wedgie for Republicans. While a majority of Republicans oppose the use of pre-emptive nuclear attack, enough right wingnut extremists support it, and the Bush Administration wants to keep this option open. That makes it just about impossible for a Republican, right wing candidate to back this one. Bring it up. "Would you support the non-defensive use of a nuclear weapon? And then come back with, when you opponent replies affirmatively, come back with "So you're willing to start a nuclear war?"

OpEd News

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The United States will occupy Canada after an atomic attack.

Canada's culture of complacency threatens our survival as an independent society. We drift along without properly addressing our challenges, whether it is the never-ending menace of Quebec separation or our vulnerability to the vagaries of the American economy. Sometimes we do not even see the gravest threats to our survival. Here, for example, is a terrifying but far too plausible scenario: A terrorist group infiltrates the United States through Canada, and launches a radiological or nuclear attack against a major American city, like New York or Washington. Tens of thousands of people are killed, and the United States reacts by demanding unfettered access to all Canadian territory for its military, intelligence and internal security forces. As America establishes a continental security perimeter, Canadian sovereignty ceases to exist -- in fact, if not in law.

The Ottawa Citizen

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But one Canadian wants to nuke Iran now. Why? Because it would be churlish not to.

It is surely obvious now to anybody with even a basic understanding of history, politics and the nature of fascism that something revolutionary has to be done within months -- if not weeks -- if we are to preserve world peace.

Put boldly and simply, we have to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

Not, of course, the unleashing of full-scale thermo-nuclear war on the Persian people, but a limited and tactical use of nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's military facilities and its potential nuclear arsenal. It is, sadly, the only response that this repugnant and acutely dangerous political entity will understand.

The tragedy is that innocent people will die. But not many. Iran's missiles and rockets of mass destruction are guarded and maintained by men with the highest of security clearance and thus supportive of the Tehran regime. They are dedicated to war and, thus, will die in war.

Frankly, it would be churlish of the civilized world to deny martyrdom to those who seem so intent on its pursuance. Most important, a limited nuclear attack on Iran will save thousands if not millions of lives.

The Toronto Sun

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Plan American Hiroshima.

Hamid Mir, the famed Pakistani journalist who obtained the only post-9/11 interviews with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, believes a nuclear attack against the United States is on the horizon, to be coordinated by the cleric-fascist state of Iran and its terrorist surrogate, al-Qa'ida. "Al-Qa'ida and Iran have a long, secret relationship," Mir says, and they've named their plans for a nuclear attack on the U.S. -- using nuclear devices that Mir believes they already possess -- "American Hiroshima."

In one interview with Mir, bin Laden boasts, "It is not difficult [to obtain tactical nuclear devices], not if you have contacts in Russia with other militant groups. They are available for $10 million and $20 million." At the time, bin Laden claimed already to be in possession of such devices, and Mir believes that they may already be forward-deployed within the United States. While this information is, of course, not confirmable, and may be no more than enemy misinformation, it is plausible.

. . . Our only strategic option and our best hope of averting a nuclear attack, though it's certainly no guarantee, is pre-emptive warfare against our enemies. As the five-year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, let us be mindful of Islamic fascism's deadly determination. Let us match it with a deadly determination of our own.

TownHall

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Not Plan American Hiroshima, dummy, electromagnetic pulse barrage!

The gist of the various EMP scenario analyses inform us that as few as five weapons in the 10 Megaton range, properly deployed would wholly incapacitate the US electrical grid.

Let us assume that either the Iranians and/or North Koreans have managed to build five nuclear weapons of suitable size and have launch systems suitable to deploy them.

But this also includes virtually every other system that is even more vulnerable… such as the entire communications network (including radio and television), GPS and all satellite-dependent systems, most computers and ground transport within range that has an electronic ignition system. How will you even get your money out of the bank? The ubiquitous credit card? Useless. How will a business even ring your purchase? Business will grind to a halt, aircraft must land (if they can still fly… think ‘fly-by-wire’). The list is much longer than you think because our many, if not most of our societal systems are inextricably interdependent on electronics and communication.

Men's News Daily

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Humor, the best medicine.

Over 87 percent of Americans are unprepared to protect themselves from even the most basic world-ending scenarios, according to a study released Monday by the nonpartisan doomsday think-tank The Malthusian Institute.

Despite "more than ample warning" for the most likely means of worldwide destruction, less than one million American households have taken even the simplest precautions against nuclear shockwaves, asteroid impact, or a host of angels bearing swords of fire, the study concluded.

Millions remain vulnerable to the all-devouring terror of Jesus' wrath.

The Onion

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American Hiroshima/nuclear-Qaida: Bin Laden to attack with nuclear warheads in late September. Google Arabic translator still in Beta-test.

Adnan Chakri Friday. Nuclear-Qaida?

He added Hamid Mir that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden allegedly assigned people Adnan Chakri . . . for the implementation of new attack inside the United States so that more attacks September 11, 2001. He pointed out that his information was that Adnan Jumaa made explosives and nuclear materials into the United States across the Mexican border over the past two years, He disappeared somewhere in the United States has not been able Office of the FBI, "FBI" from disclosing the place until now.

. . . The name is Adnan Chakri Gomaa. Western press reports claimed the existence of nuclear technology base, has been trained by the latter and also the title of the "nuclear Qaeda." The American writer Paul Williams, in his book "association rule : international terrorism, organized crime, disaster assistance "to the nuclear arsenal of base comprises at least 20 nuclear briefcase bought bin Laden gunmen Chechnya compared with 30 million and 20 nuclear warhead obtained by the different ways of the former Soviet Union.

Al Arabiya, by way of translate.google.

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Product tie-in: You'll surely not want to miss "Jericho," the story of hope and survival during an American apocalypse, new on CBS!

JERICHO: New CBS drama on nuclear apocalypse everywhere except Heevahavaville, USA

Sunday's LA Times sported a brief piece on "Jericho," a new drama set to show the struggle of a Heevahavaville in the Midwest after the rest of the United States is nuked. It was a good read, if only for the unintentionally amusing declarations from the show's executive producer, Jon Turteltaub.

" . . . the creators of 'Jericho' . . . weren't surprised when their [show's] premise met with heaps of rejection," read the Times. "More than a half-dozen networks passed on the project . . . "

"Everybody [but CBS] thought it sounded like something Americans wouldn't want to watch," said Turteltaub to reporter Martin Miller. " . . . CBS was able to hear hope and survival."

If you've been reading the blog this summer, and the Daily Fallout series, from alpha to omega, you've seen there's no shortage of Americans wrapped up in anticipatory discussion of nuclear war.

One supposes, however, that Hollywood-types wouldn't be up on this.


"There's something very pleasant about all the noise from L.A. and New York just going away," said Turteltaub to the newspaper.

"There's something exciting about a survival story where you get back to a simpler life where neighbors matter."

This is the first time Dick Destiny has ever heard someone claim a nuclear attack which destroys all of the nation's cities except for a few, like HeevahavavilleJericho, in the Midwest, might be simplifying and good for getting the leftovers to bond with each other. That's creative marketing!

Well, Dick Destiny recommends Turteltaub have Congressman Chris Shays write a few episodes of "Jericho."

"And don't expect a quick resolution into the origins of the nuclear blasts," reads the Times. "That's a mystery . . . that will continue for a long time," finished Turteltaub.

Sorry folks, but Dick Destiny already has it figured out, courtesy of Shays. Since he said you can make a nuclear bomb from materials found at Home Depots, it's simple.

Teenage boys destroyed America.

Teens downloaded The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb from the Internet and then went shopping at their local big box hardware store. And all the little towns, like Jericho, those without a Home Depot, survived.

Gotta be the best comedy series this fall. Count me in as a fan, already.

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Please to send a copy of The Doomsday Scenario by Douglas Keeney, to DD.

THE DICKHEAD: New award for intellectual achievement of week, granted by Dick Destiny blog

Dick Destiny was mulling over whether the next short entry should be saved for its regular series, The Daily Fallout.

But it's so exaggerated, even by the gold standard of Congressional war-on-terror utterances, it deserves its own place in the diseased sun.

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Chris Shays (Rep. R, Conn.): "I believe there will be a biological attack against this country. I believe there will be a radioactive attack against the country. I even believe there will be a nuclear attack. I have been to Los Alamos and I have seen a weapon made with material you could get from Home Depot. The only thing you need is enriched uranium," Shays said [in a press conference.]

Christian Science Monitor

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Astounding! Just a couple months ago the bar for what weapon of mass destruction you could make by shopping at Home Depot was set at a subway cyanide bomb in Mubtakkar of Death.

If you're a regular reader, now you know the assessment of what can be done at the hardware store has just been revised upward to the crafting of an atomic bomb. Just add enriched uranium because, you know: "It's easy for terrorists."

In an America that suffered intelligence-insulting fools less gladly . . .

LEANNE KINGWELL: AUSTRALIAN FOR 'ROCK!' -- Plus some tipological listologic from the Gooze



That's Leanne Kingwell, on Australian ROVE Live TV, in primetime a couple days back, DD was informed. Kingwell, hailing from Kilda, which I think is a bit like Venice in SoCal, except with the seasons reversed, was recommended in "So you have bad taste." [Excerpts from the show on YouTube, here.]

And the title was a joke on the phenom of New Times firing the Village Voice's music editor over "matters of taste."

But back to Kingwell's album, Show Ya What, on her own Krill rekkids:

"Show Ya What" has many choices for singles. Leanne goes to hell where she wrote a book in "Look At My Life" and pistol whips her cheating ex in "Holding Your Gun." She loses a beau to swinging Tommy James and the Shondells chords in "So Long" and bawls emotion as a relationship crashes in "Blind," the latter with bonus tear-jerking organ by Chris Copping of Procol Harum who did it all for a bottle of red wine.

On the back of words like these, plus reviews from others from the Voice who thought she was very keen, Kingwell garnered college radio airplay in the US. And subsequent to that, interest picked up in Australia, resulting in a new distribution deal for the album and the appearance on ROVE live.

And you can find the album of which I speak plus lots more, here. Now, if she'll send a burned DVD o' that . . .

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Plus, the Gooze checks in with his "Greatest Albums of All Time," parts 1 and 2.

It's seventy to eighty percent of what I'd pick for select hard rock from the 70's and 80's. For my spin, you need a little more Texas. (See Point Blank. )

And selections from it were pickings for the "Sludge in the 70's" college radio show at WLVR-FM at Lehigh University, about twenty years back.

Turbonegro, however, were not worth the dust the wind might blow in their faces, as opined here and here.

I also would've pushed Status Quo Live and Slade Alive! into the Top 50.

Gooze -- delete the spammer at the foot of column one.

SCIENCE STORIES THAT GIVE THEM ERECTIONS: From the famous glossy comic book, Wired

When not doing groupie-like hagiography of the alleged geniuses of the tech world, Wired comic book also has had a long fascination with stories of exotic weapons, usually the kind that are always coming, just a year away, just a minute, then -- pfoof!

Premature ejaculation.

Reset the clock: This awesome weapon/computer/gadget, from American scientists is going to revolutionize warfare, and it's a half decade away, a couple years away, it's in your backyard, and it's starting to get hard . . .

The following flew into the DD mailbox, from Science Projects That Scare the [blank] Out of Us.

Lo:

Nanobomb
By manipulating the properties of metals on the nanoscale, Defense and Energy Department scientists are figuring out how to make faster and more energetic explosions. The goal? Compact weapons that pack several times the detonative force of even the MOAB (mother of all bombs). Next up: a briefcase nanonuke.

Ionosphere Heater
Here's an idea: Build an array of 180 antennas in Alaska to beam radio waves at the ionosphere – the upper layer of Earth's atmosphere – creating an electric field that interacts with charged particles. Operated by the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, this disruption can raise the temperature of the ionosphere by as much as 30 percent over a 9- to 40-kilometer radius. It's targeted global warming.

Pain Gun
Scientists with the US military are working on an electromagnetic pulse weapon that induces the sensation of pain from a distance. Ultimately, they hope to fine-tune the pulses to control muscles as well. Fantastic: a gun that turns people into puppets writhing in a theater of misery.

All of them, around for years.

Nanobomb is a jargon take on the hafnium bomb and its ilk. And Sharon Weinberger's excellent "Imaginary Weapons" gives it the examination it deserves.

As for "atmospheric heater," just Google "HAARP" and be astonished at all the conspiracy talk going back a decade or more.

The "pain gun"is another long-in-the-tooth wonder weapon.

Known as the V-MADS, or the Sheriff, it has shown up in stories for years in which journalists get invited out to Albuquerque to be burned by an inside-out microwave in the equivalent of a strapped-down chicken test. Ouch, they say. (The alert reader may note DD had no interest in being burned by a military microwave oven. I cook food with it. It makes things hot! Remarkable!)

Idealized pictures of it show a huge broadcast antenna mounted on a shed, or a Hummer. As GlobalSecurity.Org senior fellow, I have a "science paper" authored by the military that purports to show it was effectively tested on US soldiers to see if it could make them howl and squirm out of the way. (Think of it as many strapped-down chicken tests.)

The Defense Department, a few years in the past, once ludicrously called the thing "the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb."

And it will be shipped to Iraq for crowd control! Only it never quite happens, the Sheriff never quite comes to town. Perhaps because Iraq is a little beyond "crowd control" and it would last about thirty seconds against a machine gun and rifle-propelled grenade armed rabble.

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The theory driving the Sheriff is that it is "non-lethal," an alternative to gunning down an assembly. Although not entirely reflected in news on the subject, the "non-lethal" crowd of inventors in the military isn't highly regarded, many perceiving their projects as simply abuse of science in the development of machines that either don't work or which are for torturing people.

On the 12th, Reuters published a story in which an Air Force man described the dilemma in unusually frank language:

The United States should test nonlethal weapons it has developed for crowd control or police actions at home before using them for military purposes overseas, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said said on Sept. 1 2.

"We need to start using that here in the United States on Americans," Wynne told reporters. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation."

He said use of nonlethal weapons such as high-powered microwaves in wartime situations could lead to loud protests by those targeted about injuries or health effects.

"If I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claimed that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think I would be vilified in the world press," Wynne said.

The article, which essentially addressed the Sheriff system, also mentioned the Air Force was still reviewing its health effects. Since the USAF has been reviewing the Sheriff's "health effects" for a number of years, one might interpret this as codespeak for "we're trying to figure out a way to rid ourselves of it."

DD blog applauds Wynne's statements. The world press would be ready to villify the use of it --and was.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the producers and crew of a German TV program came to interview DD, as GlobalSecurity Senior Fellow, over unusual weapons that might be used in the war. One of their questions was: Are you going to use a death ray?

Although it's not a death ray, the military's microwaver was, even then, perceived as one. I believe the military would agree it would be tough to spin the employment of a death ray.

So, I think the army should be compelled to proceed at once with deployment and use in the United States, perhaps at peace demonstrations. Lease the Sheriff to the police or a special detachment of non-lethal Truppen from the Dept. of Homeland Security. Enough with the years of dithering.

This would serve a number of purposes.

It would reveal whether the Sheriff works at all in the real world. And it would immediately set a platoon of lawyers loose on the military, with suits from people who'd been injured by it -- whether in a way the military argues is intended or not -- burned in an unusual way and/or crushed in the stampede of a crowd. It would also mean the quick and deserving end of the careers of those who designed and deployed it.

Nasty? Not really. None of this is going to happen. The military has enough smart people to argue the same points. Litigation, career destruction, horrendous publicity. The lands-of-foreign-dictators market, where people can only throw rocks, might be an option though.

PIN THE TALE ON THE ZARQAWI: The favorite game of journalists who don't like reading intelligence reports

"9/11 -- The Movie -- And the Cynical Tragedy of Zarqawi" whined Rolling Stone's National Affairs Daily on the 11th.

What did the ABC's "Path to 9/11" have to do with al Zarqawi? Nothing, as far as I could tell and I sat through all but the last five or ten minutes of it.

For Rolling Stone, it was just a lead-in for what reporter Tim Dickinson really wanted to address. Bush didn't bomb al Zarqawi when he had a chance!

Although the Senate intelligence report, released last Friday, contained much ammunition to add to the assault on the administration, the music magazine's journalist, who maybe didn't bother to read it, instead resorted to a story that was wretched in 2004.

What it boils down to is this: Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction, but Zarqawi did! And Bush wouldn't launch missiles at him!

One news story in 2004 is the touchstone for the mythology.

Everyone who wants to bash the Bush administration over the head on al Zarqawi links to it: Jim Miklaszewski's "Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind," here.

A brief one source item, the meat of it from Richard Clarke associate Roger Cressey, it is written around the premise that Zarqawi was making poisons -- weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration, it was said, was presented with intelligence on this, and failed to act because it was more "obsessed" with Hussein.

" . . . intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin for attacks in Europe," reads the NBC piece.

If you try this convenient DD blog-approved search string, the Miklaszewski article is at the apex, the font from which all mythology on the matter must flow.

In April of this year, before the US military offed the terrorist, Harry Reid issued a press release clubbing the Bush administration over it.

" . . . intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe," read Reid's release, reiterating from Miklaszewski.

"In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq."

Except it's not true. As GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow, DD has gone over the subject repeatedly. I was a consultant to the so-called "ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq" trial.

The linkage Colin Powell made between al Zarqawi, an alleged detained al Qaeda man, and a "UK poison cell" did not exist. It's detailed most recently, here.

Historically, it was destroyed in 2005 by the verdicts and results from the actual trial of the UK poison cell.

In the trial, prosecutors desperately tried to link a group of Algerians associated with a loner named Kamel Bourgass to al Qaeda. And they failed. A jury found everyone but Bourgass not guilty. A subsequent prosecution set to run and predicated upon favorable results from the first then collapsed.

No ricin was found at Wood Green, the haunts of the alleged poison ring. Early news from the site had indicated a ricin positive but a scientist from Britain's biodefense laboratory, Porton Down, found it to be a false positive soon after, a fact that was never actually conveyed to the media.

What was present? Only a jewelry tin of castor seeds. And this did not emerge until the end of the trial in 2005.

There was no link to al Zarqawi. There was Kamel Bourgass, a loner, convicted of the charge of conspiracy to create a nuisance with poisons and explosives, and guilty of murdering of a police officer, during his arrest.

DD blog contacted Reid's office over the press release and asked about the material. All a Reid staffer could do was point lamely to the NBC news piece.

Did Reid's office know the results of the London ricin trial? Did it know no ricin had been found in London, just a lame handful of castor seeds? No, of course not! Staffers couldn't talk about that. It contradicted the attack plan.

But US journalists, politicians and bloggers love to keep coming back to the myth of Zarqawi and poison plots in Britain or Europe.

Perhaps it is because they never actually covered the London ricin trial in any significant way, or because the material is very complicated. To try and evaluate it requires drawing together different sources of hard intelligence and evidence presented in a terror trial -- not just reading whatever comes up first in Google and judging its worth by how many people requote from it.

And it doesn't lend itself to simple assertions and pleasing terror stories, like theirs and Colin Powell's, that the now dead terrorist was a poison spider sitting in a web in northern Iraq, obviously pulling strings to launch attacks in Europe.

But back to Rolling Stone.

Dickinson quotes from another alleged grail, Michael Scheuer, from a single newspaper article in Australia.

“Mr Bush had Zarqawi in his sights almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq and he didn’t shoot… Almost every day we sent a package to the White House that had overhead imagery of the house he was staying in. It was a terrorist training camp … experimenting with ricin and anthrax … any collateral damage there would have been terrorists.”

That Zarqawi was experimenting with "anthrax" is also an interesting claim. The comprehensive report from the Iraq Survey Group, a better source than a short newspaper article, found no anthrax anywhere in Iraq. But it's a long and heavy treatise so perhaps this is why many journalists and bloggers, who quote from the Scheuer-talking-to-an-Australian-newspaper piece, prefer the latter.

Hard evidence on Zarqawi's production of alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as opposed to short bits of journalism and opinion on the subject, is extremely thin. For example, "overhead imagery" can't tell you whether anthrax, ricin or Boone's Farm are being made at any compound. And as for newspaper reports on production of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, one name suggests why, as a practice, they should not often be taken too seriously: Judith Miller.

In any case, the first section of the Roberts/Kennedy report on Iraq intelligence returned to the matter of al Qaida's alleged training and development in chemical and biological weapons. DD blog discussed it last week and republishes pertinent snapshots from the documents.



The relevant quotes: "A variety of reporting led CIA analysts to believe that al Qaeda maintained a toxins laboratory in Sargat . . . Abu Taisir [who was associated with Zarqawi in Iraq in Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council] reported was preparing contact poisons and ingestible compounds consistent with cyanide and possibly ricin."

At this point, while provocative, the intelligence is not firm. "[V]ariety of reporting" is simply not conclusive in the milieu of Iraq prior to the US invasion, particularly in the absence of hard physical evidence and the now known unreliability of sources.

The report continues " . . . there was no evidence explicitly linking the facility to the production of toxic substances." (Note: INR is an acronym for the State Department's intel operation.)

However, when the US invasion destroyed the Hussein government, it was possible for a variety of teams, like the Iraq Survey Group and others, to enter the country and search areas of interest for evidence of chemical and biological weapons.

In this case, "The DIA reported that the exploitation of the Sargat site revealed the presence of cyanide salts, which seems to confirm suspicions of work on cyanide-based poisons . . . "

No evidence of ricin production by Zarqawi is included in the report. And while the presence of cyanide salts is potentially troublesome, it is not remarkable. Grasping the elements of cyanide production is not indicative of any special capability in chemical weaponry, particularly when contrasted with the reality on the ground in Iraq. Where the weapon of choice is improvised explosives.

In fact, no chemical or biological attacks have as yet been reported in Iraq.

---

Interesting review in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section today of Frank Rich's book, "The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina."

Reviewer Tim Rutten lauds the book. And he makes an enticing argument for something DD blog might like to read. But the message seems to be that "truthy" stories replaced "truth" following 9/11, and that it was primarily the active business of the Bush administration and its advisors and fuglemen in the newsmedia.

Naturally, there seems to be -- hah-hah -- quite a lot of truth to the assertion.

But today's blog shows there's a certain percentage of those on the other side of the political fence who also have no problem with "truthy" stories.

And it's by no means a recent phenomenon. The Cardiff Giant lives. It is a "peculiarly American superstition that the correctness of a belief is decided by the number of the people who can be induced to adopt it."

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.

THE TORTURED DEBATE ON TORTURE: More readings, for purposes of intellectual and moral clarity, needed

How grim is it when five years after 9/11 the United States still can't make up its group mind t