FBI & Homeland Security Now 0 For 41 In Predicting Imminent Terrorist Attacks On The USby Mike MasnickTechdirt Jul. 08, 2015 |
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I don't have cable. I almost never watch TV. I never see cable news unless someone points me to a clip online. Yet apparently, with the extended holiday weekend this past weekend, cable news went absolutely bonkers with vague, unsubstantiated claims from government officials about how everyone should be on heightened alert for an attack from ISIS: CNN has led the pack in whipping Americans into a panic over the Isis threat, running story after story with government officials and terrorism industry money-makers hyping the threat, played against the backdrop of scary b-roll of terrorist training camps. Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell ominously told CBS last week that "I wouldn't be surprised if we weren't sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States." MSNBC and Fox joined in too, using graphics and maps right out of Stephen Colbert's satirical "Doom Bunker," suggesting World War III was just on the verge of reaching America's shores.The Morell appearance was particularly ridiculous, with it posting during the episode the following map of "recent ISIS arrests" in the US to emphasize the bullshit claim that ISIS was already in the US and plotting attacks: The problem, of course, is that none of those arrests were really connected to ISIS in any serious way. Nearly all of them were actually plots cooked up by the FBI to trick gullible individuals that they were in on an ISIS plot. Before the weekend, Adam Johnson put together an astounding list of how Homeland Security and the FBI are 0 for 40 in their last 40 predictions for terrorist attacks inside the US -- raising serious questions about why the news media actually takes any of these "warnings" seriously. And that doesn't even get into the fact that DHS and the FBI have failed to stop actual plots like the Boston bombing. Here's the list that Johnson put together: October 2001: "Potential use of chemical/biological and/or radiological/nuclear weapons"And now we can add this past weekend, making them 0 for 41. Johnson highlights three reasons why these warnings still get issued: There's also one other reason which is related to the first reason above, but is slightly different: if there is actually a big terrorist attack (and not one they can wave off), DHS and FBI officials will be hauled before Congress and asked why they didn't spot it or warn about it. So this is, once again, an example of officials wanting to cover their own asses. As we noted recently in explaining why surveillance state defenders don't care that the programs they defend don't work, a lot of the mental calculus involves covering their own asses in the event something bad does happen. No one wants to have to explain that what they did was useless, so they feel the need to "do something." Combine that with the near total lack of downside, and of course, there are going to be random predictions based on nothing. So the real question, though, is how come cable news feels the need to fall for it too? As Tevor Timm notes, all this really does is help terrorists in "terrorizing" the American public: All of this doesn't mean that a terrorist attack on US won't eventually happen. Simple math tells us that, no matter the precautions taken or the civil liberties taken away, one may get through. But it is a rare event, and one which human beings have lived with throughout our history. By magnifying it and terrifying everyone, we're only doing the terrorists' job for them.And the cable news teams are helping this right along... |