Jay Rosen gets it

You have to be able to think, and if you can it doesn’t matter (for your journalism) if you break down and emote. If you can’t think, and draw conclusions that inform your reporting, then bringing passion to the table isn’t going to change a damn thing. Finally, I don’t think the challenge for American journalism is to recover its reason for being, but to find a better one. The world has changed. It’s not enough to be tough.

RTWT

Return of another Vietnam syndrome

Most of the better histories of Vietnam highlight the fact that the brass micro-managed the war and robbed small unit commanders of their initiative. A captain in a firefight soon found his radio crackling with messages, advice, and questions. Battalion and brigade headquarters wanted updates. On a bad day, his division commander would soon be circling the battlefield in a chopper. Saigon might join in. Instead of leading, the hapless company commander was briefing his chain of command while the bullets were flying.

Later, everyone seemed to agree that it was no way to run a war.

Today the media, with its instant global reach, forces the military to repeat those mistakes.

Al Jazeera reports that Marines fired on a mosque. CNN has pictures of a car shot at a checkpoint. Reporters clamor of answers at the White House, Pentagon, and CENTCOM HQ. Investigations are promised; information is gathered.

What does that mean for the men at the tip of the spear?

The same thing is happening in Louisiana. The cameras capture sickening images, the reporters profess outrage, the whole world sees and hears. Politicians pontificate and pundits lay blame. Answers are demanded.

There is no context nor is there any understanding of the vast logistical obstacles that the responders face. At the heart of the outrage is a collective confusion. Everybody on TV seems to think that everything that is desirable is always feasible. If it is feasible then every delay must be evidence of misfeasance or malfeasance. While we search for the guilty parties, we add to the friction that those on the ground face as they try to bring order out of chaos. Yes, lives are at stake, but all the yapping and faultfinding is not saving anyone.

Von Moltke said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is as true for disaster response as for a military campaign. Von Moltke's solution was to create an army whose officers could improvise when faced with the unexpected. But improvisation is career suicide when the media is second guessing every step of the process.

Responding to the Monday morning quarterbacks sucks up time, attention, and critical resources. At the tip of the spear, all of these are scarce and should not be squandered humoring the likes of Scarborough, Grace, or Greenfield.

UPDATE: This is a great discussion of the real world logistics involved in a seemingly inexplicable delay.

Pets

Two starkly divergent views here and here. Count me on the side of the big Texan.

The best

These two posts may be the best thing i've read on Katrina and her aftermath.

ABLE DANGER: Filling in the blank spaces

Two interesting articles that provide some useful background for ABLE DANGER.

The Houston Chronicle profiles Fran Townsend. Clearly, she has become a major player in the Bush administration.

But by all accounts, Townsend has impressed Bush with a tough efficiency and a bit of a swagger that resembles his own. Her influence has grown to the point that Cabinet secretaries and agency directors who do not normally return media calls about White House staff members rush to phone with lavish praise for a profile.

She is also not shy about using her clout:

Asa Hutchinson, then an undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security, recalled that he deferred to his absent boss. But Townsend, the top White House adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, had a higher authority to invoke. "You don't understand," she said. "The president will be calling momentarily. We need your position."
From a basement office in the West Wing, Townsend runs President Bush's far-flung campaign against terrorism. Her two predecessors were four-star generals who brought decades of experience to the fight. Townsend, 43, a former mob prosecutor, has a different credential - the president's ear.

Townsend may be Bush's Gorelick. ABLE DANGER raises serious questions about her leadership of OIPR. Yet her powerful role in the White House may hinder our ability to discover the whole story.

This is especially true if Donald Sensing is correct that Chertoff is in trouble as head of the Department of Homeland Security. What if Bush replaces Chertoff with Townsend as head of HS?

The other article is a 2001 piece that gives a flavor of how domestic counter-terrorist efforts by the military were viewed pre- 9/11.

Military role grows on home front

A couple of representative quotes:

Some argue that the role makes sense in light of the threat posed by modern terrorist groups. But a diverse coalition of civilian law enforcement agencies, civil rights advocates and libertarian groups worry about allowing the military to play so prominent a role on U.S. soil.
"There used to be a bright line separating the military from involvement in civilian affairs," says Steve Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the American Federation of Scientists. "The pernicious aspect of terrorism is that it threatens to erode what is a clear distinction. We are seeing them on all these 'fronts.'"

And this:

Officials at several key civilian agencies - from the FBI to the Public Health Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency - say the military's growing role in preparing for a domestic terrorist attack is disconcerting.
"We used to be the main people involved in this," said a domestic preparedness official with the Public Health Service who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "Now, there are fewer of us and more of them."

See also:

The Wall and Fran Townsend

Time to check the plans

Captain Ed and Hugh Hewitt are right-- let's hold off on the political debate for a few days. There is more important work to be done and in any case, we do not have enough facts yet. There is no point in adding yards of commentary to a handful of rumors.

The military has a saying: "amateurs talk about strategy; professionals talk about logistics." I think that second part applies to disaster relief. CNN sits in a hotel in the city and wonders why the trucks have not arrived with water. Behind that question lies a host of others. Cable news is oblivious to the importance of those other questions and this ignorance confirms their amateur status.

Irish Pennants is very good on this point.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is entailed in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, no gasoline is available, and roads and airports were covered with water or debris. Yet this was done within four days of Katrina dissipating. The most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history is being libeled as a national disgrace.

Katrina has revealed weaknesses in our emergency response. In the coming weeks we can learn how to do better. But the key to that learning is asking the right questions and understanding what the real problems were.

All disaster recovery begins at the local level. The next disaster will happen some place other than New Orleans. Now is a great time for local media and bloggers to question our local agencies to make sure that the obvious mistakes of New Orleans are avoided. In particular, what happens on day 2 and 3? How solid are the steps to ensure that those people who evacuate will have food, water, and medical attention? Can those steps withstand an unexpected jolt?

The Harrisburg area has a well-publicized, well-defined evacuation plan because of Three Mile Island. I am confident that state and local government can get people out of harms way if that should be necessary. The potential problem, however, is that those people will be moved into rural areas. I'd like to know how the TMI plan addresses the need for food and water. I plan to ask many questions this week.

The Boy Scouts understand life's realities better than most journalists do. "Be prepared". (I think the Texas translation is even better.) A couple of small inexpensive items can do wonders in an emergency.

A tough flashlight and batteries. I'm partial to this one because the LEDs give outstanding battery life. (Up to 160 hours.)

Hand sanitizers, peroxide, and chlorine bleach.

A space blanket and disposable hand warmers can keep you comfortable if you have to spend the night in your vehicle or outdoors.

A multi-tool or Swiss Army knife is always a good thing to have at hand.

A water purifier. These are for campers, but they can save your life. They kill bacteria, parasites, and viruses. A nice thing to have if your water supply is compromised.

I keep my kit in a small bag in my truck. I've never had to use all of it at once, but I have used almost everything in it at one time or another. It has never been a life-threatening situation, but I was glad to have them anyway.

Jack Shafer speaks for me

Why cable news does a bad job with crisis coverage:

News you can lose

Good sense on disaster relief

Over at Macsmind

For example:

Getting help in isn't as easy as CNN or CBS would have you believe. Simply put you just don't drop a "pallet of food and water" into a crowd wating below. Unless you want to see little old people and the infirmed mauled by the "stronger".

Leadership

The slow disaster down in Louisiana makes one thing crystal clear. Crisis leadership is a rare thing and enormously valuable. The governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans may be fine human beings. They may even be able administrators. But neither one of them is Rudolph Giuliani.

Katrina

The most important thing i have to say is contribute to the Salvation Army. Words are useless, political wrangling is almost obscene. No amount of blogging is going to get water to the people in dire need.

Post-modern war

Must reads from the Junk Yard Blog and Steven Den Beste (in the comments here)

The Wall and Fran Townsend

Captain's Quarters (which seems to be down) had a good post up that traced the development of the FISA "Wall" that goes beyond mere Gorelick-bashing. Of all the players he discusses, I think Fran Townsend is the most interesting. For one thing, she was Reno's most trusted advisor while still enjoying a good working relationship with Louis Freeh. For another, she is still in government.

This US News profile raises several other points.

1. It changes the context of the Rowley memo:

in November 2000, the FISA court held a rare meeting of the full court to discuss "wall" -related issues. "The chief judge was so annoyed with me," says Townsend, "that he wouldn't permit me personally to attend, because I had pushed so hard against the restrictions they had imposed." Others say the real root of Lamberth's anger at Townsend was the false information given by the FBI in dozens of wiretap applications to the FISA court. Lamberth declined to comment. But he told Reno's successor, Ashcroft, that he had lost faith in Townsend.

So it just was not obtuse bureaucrats at FBI headquarters who were scrutinizing FISA requests more carefully. Why? What was the FBI lying about?

2. What groups were being investigated when the FISA court approved those warrants based on "false information given by the FBI"? Was it al Qaeda? Or did the FBI have other high priority terrorism investigations going on?

3. Some of her critics suggest that Townsend kept the Wall high for reasons having nothing to do with Reno's wishes.

But others suspect an ulterior motive. Some Justice Department prosecutors felt Townsend wanted to keep the wall up because it kept prosecutors out of national security investigations, leaving more authority in the hands of Townsend and friendly bureau agents.

If Townsend used OIPR to keep prosecutors away from FBI national security investigations, did she do the same when it came to other agencies? Did the DOD lawyers fear that Townsend would resent SOCOM for encroaching on the turf of her beloved Bureau? The FBI has a well-established reputation for demanding to be the lead dog on every investigation it touches. Did Townsend restrain that impulse on counterterrorism matters? Or did she use her position at OIPR to encourage it?

ABLE DANGER: Catch-up time


Terry McDermott makes a good point about retrospective memories and high profile events in this LA Times column. It not quite the strong rebuttal to ABLE DANGER that some think. First, he weakens his case by dismissing something he does not understand:

Data mining is a technique in which huge databases are fed into powerful computers that sift them looking for links. It's a technology that holds vast promise, but its main usefulness to date seems to be giving mortgage lenders the ability to find out how much you still owe on your house.

Financial institutions have been doing more than that with data mining for more than 10 years. McDermott should know that if he is going "refute" the ABLE DANGER story. Maybe he should try googling "Capital One" and "strategy" just for a start. Or maybe "data mining" and "banking".

The even bigger problem is in McDermott's assertion that

Atta's academic, immigration, credit, transit and telephone records provide a fairly complete account from the time he left his native Egypt in autumn 1992 to his death. This includes the period during which Able Danger is said to have identified him as a terrorist in the United States. The story those records, and corroborating interviews, tell is that Atta was not in the United States and made almost no contact with the U.S. until June 2000.

Of course, he has to say that. He just invested years of his life writing a book based on the sources who thought they knew all about Atta and his movements based on cell phone records and credit card statements. The whole picture changes if al Qaeda knew how to defeat FBI surveillance and investigations. That is why Hanssen is important; why other security lapses in the FBI are of vital interest.

In my Tailhook post I wrote:

Pretend that you are one of the officers in charge or involved. Your program has promise but it has not caught any terrorists or prevented any attacks. The lawyers think you should shut it down. They are "concerned" that word will get out and ignite a media firestorm over civil liberties, high-tech invasions of privacy, and racial profiling. You suspect that they are right and you also are not confident that one of the lawyers will not leak the details to some obliging reporter.

If the story is leaked, who can you depend on? The brass? Congress? George H. W. Bush's son?

This NY Post story suggests that that mindset was at work when ABLE DANGER was shut down:

The private contractors working for the counter-terrorism unit Able Danger lost their jobs in May 2000. The firings following a series of analyses that Pentagon lawyers feared were dangerously close to violating laws banning the military from spying on Americans, sources said.

Captain Ed is right to suggest that pre-9/11 there would have been a bi-partisan frenzy if word of the Rice/China chart had leaked.

I am deeply skeptical of most of what I read about ABLE DANGER. It is not that I think anyone is lying. But the stories we read are coming to us at the end of a game of telephone where each succeeding listener has less knowledge of data mining, statistics, modeling, and probability. Too many journalists are functional innumerates. That is clear, for example, when the NY Post reporter writes that the data-mining group "pinpointed" Rice. Data mining tools do not usually "pinpoint" individuals. The do not have to in order to be successful. Maybe the report's source overstated the accuracy of their work. But I think it is more likely that the reporter used Perry Mason language to describe a probabilistic outcome.

I worry that information is getting lost in transmission. That might explain why Lt. Col. Shaffer has had a hard time making himself understood to non-technical listeners.

More on Hanssen and al Qaeda

A follow-up on Robert Hanssen's spying and the FBI's ability to track al Qaeda before and after 9-11.

This article repeats Vise's allegation that Hanssen indirectly helped AQ:

From 1982 until 2001, Hanssen gave away secrets including outlines of America's contingency plans for nuclear attack, the identities of Russian double agents, US intelligence plans, the existence of a spying tunnel under the Russian embassy in Washington and a software program that was later sold by a Russian individual to the al-Qaeda network, enabling Osama bin Laden to evade detection for two years before the September 11 attacks. The extent of Hanssen's spying led former CIA director William Webster to liken his actions to ''a 500-hundred-year flood".

This Fox News report makes the same point but is based on William Webster's investigation in the wake of Hanssen's arrest:

Hanssen sold the COIN applications to the Russians, and U.S. intelligence believes that the software was in turn provided to Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden by Russian organized-crime figures.

Government officials say the software may enable bin Laden to track the international investigation of terror assets and keep his money from being seized.

The United States is not the only nation to use the COIN software.

Another key quote from the Autrailian story:

"The Hanssen case was a wake-up call. The belief that serious spying ended with the Cold War couldn't be more wrong," Vise said. ''At the time of Hanssen's arrest [just over a year ago], there were more Russian spies in America than there were at the height of the Cold War. The intelligence community thinks they number in the thousands.

''The information and intelligence they gather is of tremendous value, not only to the person who steals it but to the person he sells it to, as we've seen in the al-Qaeda's purchase of intelligence software that Hanssen stole.

Here is Hanssen himself as reported by the Webster Commission:

"Any clerk in the bureau could come up with stuff on that system (FBI's Automated Case Support program). It was pathetic. It's criminal what's laid out. What I did was criminal, but it's criminal negligence what they've done on that system."

I think this information in important in light of Terry McDermott's blithe assertion that:

Atta's academic, immigration, credit, transit and telephone records provide a fairly complete account from the time he left his native Egypt in autumn 1992 to his death. This includes the period during which Able Danger is said to have identified him as a terrorist in the United States. The story those records, and corroborating interviews, tell is that Atta was not in the United States and made almost no contact with the U.S. until June 2000.

Good news but you would never know it from watching cable TV

Despite high-profile cases, sex-offense crimes decline

Government figures show the rate of sexual assaults against adolescents ages 12 to 17 plunged 79% from 1993 through 2003, and the number of substantiated sex-abuse cases involving kids of all ages fell 39% in the same time period.

This about sums it up

When the Able Danger saga is done, Curt Weldon will deserve one of two things: a Congressional Medal of Freedom for his courage, or a straight jacket for his lunacy. There really isn't a middle ground.

Over at the Junk Yad Blog.

Not all whistle-blowers are created equal

I cannot help but note that not all whistle-blowers are equal in the in the eyes of the MSM and the blogosphere. The blockbuster charges of Lt. Col. Shaffer are treated cautiously with a lot of watchful waiting for more evidence. That is as it should be. However, this go slow approach differs sharply from the reception given to three other famous whistle-blowers.

Colleen Rowley ended up on the cover of Time and is trying to parlay that celebrity into a congressional seat. The basis for her fame? A memo she wrote six months after 9-11 castigating FBI headquarters for slowing down the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001.

Her indictment of FBI headquarters was accepted as she presented it. There were few demands for corroboration, contemporary accounts, or concrete evidence that the dropped ball mattered. (An exception was Mark Levin whose article makes interesting reading.) Moussaoui's laptop has become part of the conventional wisdom as an unconnected dot that could have prevented 9-11.

The same is true with the Phoenix memo. (See here to gauge the gap between the reality and the myth.)

Finally, we have Joe Wilson. His charges that the President lied in the State of the Union were widely trumpeted in 2003 and still echo more than two years later. If ever a "whistle-blower" deserved some skepticism and demands for corroboration, it was Joe Wilson. (See this from Powerline). For some reason, he was considered a more trustworthy source than Lt. Col. Shaffer.

I'm at a loss to explain why Rowley and the Phoenix memo were deemed creditable but the ABLE DANGER material is considered suspect. To me, they all fall into the "interesting but verify" category. There is one key difference. We know now that Rowley and the Phoenix agents raised vague warnings too late to be actionable. ABLE DANGER is still an open question.

Politics, surely, worked to Joe Wilson's benefit. That best explains why his remaining wild, unsubstantiated charges ("my wife was outed as payback") are accepted even though so many of his statements have been shown to be false, misleading, and self-serving.

As others see us


If the rest of the world watches our cable news channels, they must really hate us now. Every evening on three channels the stereotype of the Ugly American is on display: bullying, ignorant, arrogant, shallow, emotional, crass, fake, and sentimental.

Thanks Big Media.

This Blogcritics post is terrific.

The view from Aruba

"From paradise to paradox in Aruba", by David Adams

A couple of choice pieces you won't hear from Nancy Grace:

A Texas search group of mostly middle-aged men with large waistlines held a press conference to announce they would appreciate some free food.
*************
"We feed them (the media) chum to keep them happy," said Jim Knox, a West Palm Beach businessman who is sponsoring a two-dog search team on the island. "We don't like doing it. We do it to keep the story alive."

Is a new Tet looming?

Check out this post over at the Junk Yard Blog:

IRAQI TET OFFENSIVE RUMOR