by Larry C. Johnson (bio below)
After listening to this confused little man on Jim Lehrer and Wolf’s The Situation Room, I had to say something.
Having watched former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin spend the day trying to back and fill for President Bush’s decision to circumvent the FISA Court procedure (which occurred during McLaughlin’s tenure), we begin to understand why the CIA declined so badly under his watch.
McLaughlin argues, as always, in a calm, polite voice–the quintessential bureaucrat–that the threat is new and terrorists move too quick. Now, either he’s lying, which I don’t think, or he spent too much time cloistered at the Headquarters in McLean and is sadly misinformed. The so-called “new practice,” where terrorists call on one phone, dump it, pick up a new phone, dump it, and so on, was pioneered by the Colombian drug cartels, among others, more than ten years ago. DEA, while facing some challenges, has actually become quite adept at chasing these guys while working within the constraints of FISA. Surely McLaughlin is not asking us to believe that the intelligence community is too stupid to learn lessons from DEA?
But, let’s assume for a moment that McLaughlin is right. That the terrorists really started doing something new after 9-11. If the intelligence community and President Bush realized that FISA was inadequate to meet the challenge, why didn’t they seek authority from the Congress to deal with the new threat? That, my friends, is the crux of the issue. Bush and Cheney and McLaughlin want to argue after the fact that they had to act to “save” the nation, while sacrificing the law and Constitution without seeking a change to either. This stinks and this is wrong.
That McLaughlin is allowed on television without tough questioning by media is a whole other issue.
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Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.
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Everything about this administration stinks. personally, I think McLaughlin has his marching orders and is trying to prevent further damage to his friends and colleagues still at CIA by going with the flow. After all, there are more agents who could be outed, and this time they’d be smart enough not to do it out in the open.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it
Could you please tell me WHO all these TERRORISTS are that are threatening our country. Are they in the U.S.? I don’t see or hear anything about them.
Could it be 911 was a one shot deal and everyone has gone completely mad over it?
Well to start, there’s the eye patch guy over in the blogads . . .
Even 9/11 has several dubious inconsistencies. We seriously need some kind of reassessment to see what in the hell we’ve actually accomplished.
We don’t seem to be getting the truth on any of this from the administration. How do we trust them?
I think McLaughlin is trying to protect himself and not his friends in the Bush Administration. The NSA story is probably barely scratching the surface in terms of what these thugs have done. He too is complicit–no Eichmann defense necessary.
number one, if the media ever did their job to begin with, then ppl like this mclaughin would not ever be on tv to begin with. why would he have to be on the tube to defend anything or anyone at all.
secondly, he is the one being made the fool of not the administration. the more they try to sideswipe the problem the more it is known to be a problem. the real problem is bush’s mouth and what comes out of it.
on nightline last night, cheney’s arrogence came thru without any problem, so he is the msot active president in the vp office I have ever known in my lifetime.
Biggest a*h** as veep too.
Not so long ago we saw the Soviet Union as our main threat. They had thousands of nukes pointed at us. They had agents in our country, plus no doubt sleepers and traitors. At any second the whole country could have been sent back to the stone age. Funnily enough while facing this threat we did not need suspend our constitution, remove our civil rights or engage in massive illegal spying on our own citizens. In fact unless my memory fails me our civil rights were expanded. Funnily enough we managed to not only survive this period but to also prosper.
Now we are told we face terrorist groups who threaten the US on a daily basis. These groups if their capabilities are not totally overblown, may be able to carry out occaisional acts of terrorism. 9/11 was certainly a heinious act and lets hope it is never repeated. However, these groups are not capable of destroying our whole country in a single strike, and will proabably only be able to commit small strikes if any at all.
Why, when facing this reduced level of real threat, do we need to subvert our constitutuion, illegally spy on our own citizens, and seemingly give the president the powers of an absolute monarch?
Exactly!
How did we “win” the cold war? Certainly being vigilant was necessary, but ultimately the repressed people behind the Iron Curtain wanted what we have: peace, prosperity, FREEDOM.
That is exactly what OBL was striking at on 9/11. He wanted to wreck our economy and our reputation. He has succeeded beyond he wildest dreams. Bush ignored this threat prior to 9/11 and has screwed it (and our country) into the ground since then.
I’m not a “defeatist”, I’m an American. We love winners and hate loosers. Bush is a looser.