When the history of the Boston Marathon bombings is written (as it most surely will be), it will be one of strong people and weak institutions:
Thousands of videos, tweets, and other bits of information from citizens came together in a wealth of evidence and reporting.
Then thousands of people turned out for a healing service held by multiple faiths and attended by three levels of government – the mayor, the Massachusetts governor, and President Obama.
And on the one-week anniversary of the blasts, throngs of Boston-area residents joined in a moment of silence near the bomb site and elsewhere. People are still bonding in a “Boston Strong†campaign, such as soliciting donations for the victims and their families.
The 9/11 Commission Report brought into sharp focus the role of flaws in inter-agency communication in the attacks. Communication between the CIA, FBI, FAA, and local police forces and governments were choked with dense thickets of bureaucracy, inter-agency rivalry, and turf protection.
We have, apparently, learned nothing in this regard. We now know that both the FBI and CIA were warned by the Russian authorities about Tamerlan Tsarnaev repeatedly and years before the tragic bombing of the Boston Marathon. Equally apparently the standards of proof required by the two agencies were different and neither saw a need to involve the Boston authorities.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Judith Miller speculates that if the Tsarnaev brothers lived in New York there would have been a different outcome:
In August 2007, Mr. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, then also an NYPD analyst, wrote what was then considered a controversial police-department report arguing that with the attrition of al Qaeda’s leadership, the primary threat to New York would come from “homegrown” Muslims under the age of 35 who had become Islamists in the West.
Based on an analysis of 11 plots against Western targets between 9/11 and 2006, their report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” concluded that most of the plotters were “unremarkable” citizens who had undergone often rapid radicalization, 90% of them in the West. The analysts identified a pattern of radicalization and listed common characteristics before a person committed a terrorist act. The report also warned: “The Internet is a driver and enabler for . . . radicalization.”
Since 2007, the NYPD has looked for such warning signs among New York’s Muslim population of 600,000 to 750,000—about 40% of whom are foreign-born—as homegrown terrorist plots have increased. In 2005, there was one homegrown terrorist plot in the U.S.; by 2010, there had been 12.
Our system is decentralized, fragmented, and chaotic in the extreme. As with any other human institutions, our institutions are mired in bureaucracy and the personal ambitions of the individuals who work in them.
None of these institutions was held to account following the 9/11 attacks and, indeed, the Commission Report went out of its way to avoid doing that. None will be held accountable following this attack. The combination of ambiguity, bureaucracy, human nature, and lack of accountability is not a happy one.
I agree with you about the lingering, perhaps untreatable problems with regards to inter-agency collaboration.
I wonder though: what do you make of the FBI’s excuse that they had to be careful Russia was not using them to tamp down dissidents abroad? It strikes me as a valid concern, given all the factors involved. Would also be very curious to hear Andy’s perspective on this.
My view, as I’ve been saying in a number of different ways since the bombing, is that the FBI is using the wrong standard. They’re looking at things from the standpoint of winning a criminal case. I think that’s an unnecessarily high standard in the case of a non-citizen resident.
The NY Times reporting suggests that the Russians did not give us hardly any information, just suspicions, and ignored requests for more information after the interview and examination of publicly available information. I don’t think we should treat Russian suspicions as sound without corroboration.
Again, my view is that we should be using different standards—one for citizens, another for non-citizen legal residents, and a third for illegal aliens.
We should just deport illegal aliens when found. Non-citizen legal residents should be deported if there’s a reason to do so. It doesn’t even have to be a fair reason. Citizens should be tried for criminal misconduct if there’s a winnable case.
IMO the FBI is viewing all cases through that third prism. I think that’s too high a standard and I also think that in the particular case of immigration having multiple standards is reasonable.
My gripe is that Tamerlan Tsarnaev wasn’t deported back in 2009. There was a reason. That should have been enough.
Each agency has its own mission, and everything is geared towards it. For the FBI, all training, processes, documents, procedures, promotions, etc. are geared towards the criminal system. For the CIA, it is intelligence. For INS, it is immigration.
The DHS should assemble Tiger Teams with people from the various agencies, including military, and a judicial process for oversight (FISA-like). The parent agencies could proceed with their investigations.
In this case, the team would decide which was more important, but the other agencies would be able to input their agency’s concerns. The judicial panel would have security clearance, and their work would be classified as necessary.
Something that is not considered is how sources are treated. If a source feels they were burned, they will no longer be a source. This a far more delicate matter than most realize. An informant can have a variety of reasons to cooperate, but he can also have a variety of reasons to not cooperate. Understanding the motivation is necessary, but the same motivation can be a reason to cooperate with one person/agency but not another. I suspect that this accounts for a lot of the “turf” protection.
@Dave- So your view is that we should be manipulated by Russia? Other countries? A family leaves to avoid unfair discrimination, a foreign country calls and says we have suspicions, offers no proof or evidence (this is my current understanding of what the Russians did) and we boot them? Should we follow this policy fro people who helped us, say the translators in Iraq or the Vietnamese and Cambodians of the 60s-70s? Do we deport them back to their country of origin or the country that made the complaint? Bet the Russians would love that.
How does that play out with remaining immigrants if they know they can be deported with no evidence of wrongdoing, just a word from ther country they fled? Does it promote more self-radicalization? Does it make those who might have sympathetic enough to report suspicious behavior less willing to cooperate?
If the Russians have names, dates and locations, at least something to go on, then fine, I dont think we need the level of proof we need for a court case. There should be, I think, some level of verifiable, believable evidence before we start doing the bidding of other countries. The unintended consequences may be worse.
Steve
That isn’t entirely true. We have learned out to ferret this kind of dunder headed nonsense out faster to make these fantastic agencies look dumb sooner rather than latter.
I know, lets give them even more power and bigger budgets!
As a person who loves and owns several dogs let me put it in a way Dave will almost surely agree with.
When a dog does something you don’t like you don’t reward that behavior. Even if it is fear you don’t try and “soothe” the dog as that can end up just reinforcing that behavior (in that situation). In this case, giving these agencies more bigger budgets and more power would be a mistake. It would simply reinforce the behavior we don’t like. By getting a bigger budget and more power they will have zero incentive to change. In fact, they will have an incentive to stay with the current behaviors.
Now the analogy is not perfect since in the case of a dog that is experiencing fear you don’t want to reprimand the dog. In this case, since we are dealing with humans…admittedly humans who collectively have only marginally more intelligence than a dog…they should be reprimanded and punished. Maybe not cut budgets or decrease their power, but at the very least tell them no to increases, to sort their shit and learn to do it right with the ample resources they already have.
But…that wont happen. Our political process wont allow it to happen.
Decentralization is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is fragmentation and decentralization can lead to things like bad incentives, duplication of work (e.g., wasted resources) and so forth.
Our political system likes to identify a problem then simply throw money at it and who gives a shit if that actually has any impact on the problem.
So we’ll have another Boston like event and we’ll get another sappy article about people tweeting their concerns, sadness and so forth.
steve, I don’t think Dave’s view is we should be manipulated by Russians. Dave’s post is directed to the U.S. response the information from Russia, which can’t be 100% satisfactory. I feel far less comfortable making any such evaluation without a better understanding of what Russia told us. What we were told informs the nature of the response.
dave, on immigration I would support zero-tolerance policies like that; I may have actually supported tossing Andrew Sullivan out for committing a crime. If our natural sympathy is not to enforce zero-tolerance rules like that, or we will do so arbitrarily, I would just assume be more prescriptive of who gets a resident visa in the first place. I am very curious about how this family got amnesty, particularly given that the father moved back to Russia.
” In this case, giving these agencies more bigger budgets and more power would be a mistake”
And if the problem was simply that they had the budget to follow 1000 suspects and Tsarnaev was #1001?
Steve
steve, easy they should have moved Tsarnaev to #1. 😉
But you said that such a thing is bad form.
“So your view is that we should be manipulated by Russia? Other countries? A family leaves to avoid unfair discrimination, a foreign country calls and says we have suspicions, offers no proof or evidence (this is my current understanding of what the Russians did) and we” and we follow them around, watching them?
If that is the case, then the solution is even easier than PD offers…go with Dave’s option and deport him.
You can’t have it both ways.
Or maybe the local cops should stop busting down doors with a SWAT team because somebody in side is smoking a joint…or even worse, doing nothing illegal.
Maybe the FBI should ease off the drug related cases or illegal gambling.
I pretty much agree with PD on this – IMO we don’t have enough information. Yes, it’s easy to say now the FBI made a mistake with the benefit of hindsight, but was it a reasonable decision considering the policies, processes and information they had at the time? An inquiry will likely find out if there are any issues that should be fixed.
Regardless, there’s no such thing as perfect security or perfect intelligence and, authorities must balance decisions regarding what actions to take against specific individuals given specific information. That’s a process that can never be perfect.
Totally off-topic for this thread, but on-topic for happening today:
I wasn’t planning on watching any of the ceremonies surrounding the Bush library dedication. But, my husband called me to the TV saying I might find the speeches interesting. I came in on President Obama’s remarks, which I found contained more humility (and less divisiveness) than most times I’ve heard him speak. He was followed by GWB, who, during his second term I usually didn’t listen to, as I became profoundly disappointed, and perhaps fatigued, by his presidency.
But, this occasion grabbed me, as did the sincere words of Bush. There was no flourish or fan-fare, just plain speaking verbiage saying how honored he was to be President of this country, and that his library was intended to be for the education of the people, not all about him.
The Washington Times gave him tribute by saying that GWB outclassed Barack and Bill without even trying. I don’t know if this was true. However, he definitely didn’t glom onto the spotlight, like most presidents seem to do. Instead, he was rather self-deprecating as well as appreciative of still being able to be of service to the people, while letting go of the politics that so many former presidents, still alive, seem to gravitate towards.
It was overall a gratifying cameo to watch so many leaders of this country, on one stage, who, except for one moment of hawking immigration reform, simply acted like five normal people sharing one common experience together, without too many attempts centered on upstaging one or the other.
As far as learning anything from past failures:
Following 9/11, when an information wall was exposed between different security sectors of the government, I was angry. It seemed so typical of government entities to either compete with each other, or not cooperate, for whatever reasons, maybe just to have an upper hand. It was as if there was not a common protocol to be followed, by all agencies involved, dealing with this country’s security oversight and best interest. What’s that all about!
When I recently heard excerpts from Janet Napolitano addressing Congress about the latest Boston bombing terror attack, I felt the same kind of dismay. First of all what is a “ping?” Why weren’t the various agencies, FBI, CIA, DHS, all on the same page with the same information? And, most importantly, how, after such a short time, could Secretary Napolitano possibly ascertain that this was not a terrorist attack having global implications — that she thought it was merely a plan hatched up by two disenchanted brothers, intent on committing their own personal Jihad on this country!!! This reminds me of Benghazi, where so much was either hushed or disassociated from being a part of any terrorist franchise. However, just making statements that terror groups are no longer an issue does not make it so.
I’m with Steve. A phone call from the Russians is not enough to justify yanking someone out of their home and life and kicking them out of the country. That’s not just a lower standard of proof, it’s turning US law enforcement into foreign agents.
It’s not just one phone call from the Russians. It’s multiple phone calls from the Russians, being indigent, and being arrested for beating up on his girlfriend. It’s returning to Dagestan for the better part of a year doing who knows what other than what’s been documented: attending the most radical mosque in Dagestan. I think that Michael and steve need to tell us how high a threshold they want.
I don’t think we’re really in need of a large pool of immigrants although some businesses have built their business models around them. I think that’s true at both the entry level and at the skilled level (as a recent study has found). The effect of a large pool of new immigrants is mostly to reduce wages. At the entry level that mainly hurts black men. At the higher levels that mostly hurts young natives.
I think the threshold for immigrating into the United States should be relatively high and the threshold for booting out immigrants who can’t support themselves or obey our laws should be pretty low.
What do you think?
As to the specific issues regarding immigration from Islamic countries, it probably needs to be pointed out that the referenced study highlighting the rising problem of ” homegrown†Muslims is really about the problem of second-generation immigrants, like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, for whom immigration is not an irrelevant issue. The study suggests young men facing questions of identity, can end up drawing on personal and family history and frequently travel to Islamic countries as their interest in radical theologies emerge. I think one thing to consider is whether older male children, over sixteen years, from areas known as hotbeds of radical Islam are good fits for this country.
As to the larger issue of immigration, this might be the study Dave is referring to:
http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-literature
It basically concludes that immigration redistributes incomes from the lower levels of America to the higher, though some higher skilled Americans also see their wages stagnate. I suspect the higher-skilled stagnation is in STEM areas, though I don’t think it says.
If a non-US citizen here legally shows interests in terrorist groups by contacting them or reading their sites regularly, dont make them a citizen, have them investigated and have a low threshold for deportation. If that same person has a domestic quarrel with a GF or wife, let immigration services do with them whatever they do now. It seems to have worked pretty well.
As PD notes, I think I said this earlier, the problem lies mostly with second generation kids. They dont belong anywhere. How do you predict which 3 y/o or 10 y/o will become the rare bomber? Other than refusing to let anyone who is a Muslim who has kids or is of childbearing age, how do you set policy to stop bombings once every few years. Does that mean we deport Americans who convert to Islam?
Steve
I have no problem with defining a standard. And no problem with the standard being set lower than that for criminal conviction. But that can’t be an unsupported phone call from a semi-hostile foreign intelligence agency with an axe to grind. Nor do I think that a trip to one’s homeland is sufficient cause. Would anyone have suggested such a thing for Irish immigrants who returned to Ulster for a visit during their various outbreaks of violence?
We’ve had a handful of violent incidents. Boston was very bad, but is it really reason enough for sweeping changes that involve a zero tolerance policy toward immigrants?
The CAMP Raids
Wow, so glad out government is keeping us safe from pot, and letting guys like Tamerlan Tsarnaev run around free.
Tell me again about funding problems steve.
But it wasn’t just that, was it?
Dave says, based on A, B, C, and D he should have been gone.
You reply, oh A and B aren’t good enough.
Can you two talk past each other any more?
Michael, I don’t share your views on Russia’s agenda. I think that Russia has its own interests and those interests don’t necessarily run counter to ours.
From what’s been said by CIA representatives it sounds to me as though there were reasonable basis for concern about Tamerlan Tsarnaev but from what’s been said by FBI representatives it sounds to me as though there wasn’t enough for a prosecution. That’s basically my point. I think the FBI has too high a threshold.
I think Russian intel qualifies as “semi-hostile.” I think the CIA qualifies as the same regarding them.
This:
Is the standard I’m objecting to. And this further explanation:
An arrest is not a conviction. So an arrest for beating up his girlfriend? We don’t know what that was. It could be anything from a horrifying attack down to loud yelling that drew the cops to the house. There were allegations. Allegations mean nothing.
As for multiple calls from a semi-hostile intelligence service with a hard-on for Chechens, how many calls does it take? Because if call #1 is bullshit then multiplying it doesn’t make it less bullshit.
The trip home is simply not relevant. Take the Irish example or take any random rabbinical student from Brooklyn who might travel to see friends on the West Bank. And poverty as a cause?
So a member of an unpopular ethnic group is trashed by the unreliable intelligence arm of an authoritarian state, he loses his job, his girlfriend makes an accusation and he happened to go home for a while, so all you good libertarians want a SWAT team to kick in his door, drag him away from his home and family without any due process and send him back to a country he barely knows?
None of this rises to the level that should be required for violating the basic human right to be left alone in the absence of a compelling state interest. Again: not saying it has to be the criminal standard of proof, but this is vapor. And if we were talking about a Catholic or a Jew and not a Muslim we would not be having this conversation.
A follow-up: Citizenship rights are not the only rights. The starting point is, or at least should be, basic human rights. We hold these truths etc.. that all men, not all citizens.
A human being simply by virtue of being a human has a right not to be dragged from his home by agents of the state in the absence of reasonable due process. This is 9-11 thinking all over again, losing your grip on basic truths because we had a terror attack.
A human being simply by virtue of being a human has a right not to be dragged from his home by agents of the state in the absence of reasonable due process. This is 9-11 thinking all over again, losing your grip on basic truths because we had a terror attack.
It’s interesting how you seem more concerned about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s immigrant’s rights, as opposed to the rights of those effected by the warrantless search and seizure, conducted by some of the armed 9400 police entities swarming over Boston/Watertown after the bombing. Such a massive show of government force, in a gun-restricted state, somehow fails to give pause in the other direction — as to how people are losing grip (because of a terrorist attack) over their own safety, and, instead, handing it to centralized authority figures to take care of.
A passive populace has never survived, in the long run.
Mark Steyn is a right wing irritant to the far left, as he declines to use selective political correctness to tell it like he sees it. Regarding the professorial elites attempts to explain the bombing on perhaps an American assimilation failure, he writes a sharpened commentary entitled: The collapsing of the American skull:
The bulk of Steyn’s article, though, goes on to attack the barbarian acts of Dr. Gosnell towards vulnerable women and full term babies. However, his primarily purpose appears to be aimed at exposing the unadulterated hypocrisy of the left, regarding it’s soft shoe approach in first speculating about the etiology of terrorism, while, at the same time, completely ignoring the atrocities committed in the name of womens’ reproductive rights at an abortion clinic serving the poor.
With such comparisons and contrasts, as brought up by this opinionated man, I find it hard not to believe that we are quickly devolving into a weak, indentured, and morally self-deluded country.
@michael reynolds
A human being simply by virtue of being a human has a right not to be dragged from his home by agents of the state in the absence of reasonable due process. …
I am glad you have rethought you position, and now you are concerned about the jack-booted thugs.
Do human rights extend to not being blown-up because you happen to be sitting next to somebody who has been given a death sentence by the US President?
I am not making a value judgement about your views, but I do question your consistency.
I have been assured that there is no hostility between the US and Russia. We are best buds. If you cannot trust your BFF, who can you trust?
Or, was a certain presidential candidate not quite as wrong as was proclaimed?
Consistency is a bitch.
Taty:
Sorry, but no. There’s no inconsistency. Let me explain to you the difference between Boston and, say, Yemen.
In Boston we have the rule of law. In Boston we have police. In Boston we have courts. In Boston if we have reason to believe someone is a terrorist, we call upon the law, the police, the courts to deal with him.
In Yemen we have none of the above. So we blow his ass up.
Which has been my consistent position. As evidenced by the fact that I frequently point out that we do not blow up terrorists in Paris or London or Berlin or even Boston. Where there is law: go to the law. Where there is jungle: jungle rules.
Jan:
You would be impressed by Mark Steyn.
@michael reynolds
The US President has claimed the power to eliminate anybody by declaring them a terrorist. The decision is made in Washington, DC, USA, and there is no judicial process or appeal. This power is for US citizens and non-citizens, and it is applicable inside and outside the US.
When the older brother was in Chechnya, he could have been droned because a President had a wild hair that morning, but when he got to Boston, he could not have been deported without due process because the President does not have that power.
Do I have this correct? A non-citizen has not committed any crime in the US, but he is a potential terrorist. He gets a deportation hearing, and if he is determined to be a potential terrorist, he can be deported. Without any hearing, a President can proclaim him to be a terrorist, and he is subject to assassination depending upon his location.
If determined to be a terrorist, could the deportee appeal for human rights asylum because he would be targeted for assassination upon returning to his home country? Would it matter which country was targeting him? Even the US?
There are laws in Pakistan and Yemen, but their laws have been deemed “null and void”. Apparently, human rights do not exist there either. I wonder why they could possibly hate Americans.