Hal O'Brien

Speaking of Tom Barnett, he recently had a post where he lays into Michaele and Tareq Salahi for their crashing of the state dinner between President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, calling for their arrest and trial.

I posted a longish reply, including the quote from Kohr. Tom's comments are moderated and it hasn't appeared yet. He has a thing about the length of comments, while I operate on what might be called Ebert's Principle -- No good comment is too long, no bad comment is short enough. But, hey, it's his sandbox. Then again, this is mine.

One of the things I said in my comment to Tom was, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I strongly believe that. I agree the Salahis shouldn't be news, but that's because both a) the president should be accessible enough to the citizenry that this story wouldn't be unusual, and b) if such events happen less frequently than once a year I'd be surprised. It's precisely because we "shield" such information from the public that every encounter with the topic is unfamiliar ground. As it happens, Bruce Schneier has a recent post on how unfamiliarity feeds into fear.

Because of the back and forth nature of comments, I try to think ahead in the discussion, and anticipate what's going to be said next. What I thought Tom would come back with would be the issue of presidential safety. To lay out my position there, I also said in my comment to him that just like the only guaranteed way to stop airplanes from crashing into buildings is to ground them, like we did after 9/11, the only guaranteed way to keep the president safe from all threats is to make his bubble even smaller than it already is. And even that might not make the president any safer.

I'm now going to use a metaphor, because Big Google is listening, after all. It's imperfect, as are all metaphors. I ask you to please keep your mind's eye on the larger point I'm making, and not on the flaws of the metaphor itself.

I think many people are familiar with Hollywood's Walk of Fame. One of the features there are inlaid tile mosaic stars to honor various luminaries of entertainment.

Imagine there was one particular star known to be attractive to very destructive vandals. As one might expect, that star would have exceptionally high protection. The curious thing about the vandals targeting that star is how focussed they are in harming only that one star, and nothing else around it. So security for the star is set up to "flood the zone" and keep access to the star very tightly controlled.

However, if one vandal decided, "If I don't care about leaving the other stars intact, and accept that there will be a tremendous amount of damage to the sidewalk, the street, the security detail, random pedestrians and drivers going by, etc... Well, if I set off a big enough boom then that one star is certain to get hurt."

I suggest the Secret Service, for the most part, works off of what Schneier calls, "a movie-plot threat," which is, "an overly specific attack scenario." In the case of the United States' President, that specific scenario is the lone gunman, one of the type who has killed at least four presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy).

I suggest that's not the only threat out there. Call it the Timothy McVeigh scenario. I have no idea if anyone in the Murrah Federal Building had a bodyguard that day; all I know is, it didn't do them much good, if so.

Schneier defines "security theater" as, "(S)ecurity measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security."

Does cutting the president off from contact with the American people improve his security? Or does it merely make him (and the broader citizenry) feel more secure?

How one answers those questions probably predicts how much of a threat one considers the Salahis to have been.

James Fallows writes about how Google Maps has restored clarity to images of the Naval Observatory grounds -- Dick Cheney's old house, now inhabited by the current Vice President, Joe Biden.

Here's what I wrote to Jim:

*^*^*

Jim:

I can't find it just now, but one of the things I noticed back in the day was not only was the White House somewhat fuzzed out -- which I could see the reasons for, even if I didn't agree with them -- but the courtyards of the adjacent Old Executive Office and Treasury buildings were as well.

That just drove me nuts. Because it would not have occurred to me to look for something suspicious there. But by fuzzing them out, whoever sent out that order tipped their hands that there was something worth paying attention to there.

It was one of many times I would shout at my monitor the words of Casey Stengel about his hapless Mets : "Doesn't anyone here know how to play this game?!"

Perhaps the biggest mystery about the Bush-Cheney years was how they could sell themselves as "experts" or "vigilant" about national security and intelligence issues, while flubbing the details so routinely.

Update: I am happy to report that Google has unfuzzed the whole White House area. Which means those anonymous looking courtyards are now just as anonymous looking as they *should* be.

-- Hal

*^*^*

This is as clear an indication as any that security theater is out, and genuine security is in.

No, not me. {this time.}

I meant John Ashcroft.

Seems he had a press conference yesterday, introducing a report to Congress intended to establish how vital the Patriot Act is to violating his oath to defend the constitution to successfully prosecuting the "war on terror"

Instead, to a trained eye, it makes him look like a rube.

Here's the key quote:

"The report says that in the period starting with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and ending May 5, terrorism investigations by the Justice Department resulted in charges against 310 people, with 179 convictions or guilty pleas. The Patriot Act, it says, was instrumental in these cases."

What that means is that Ashcroft's Justice Department is getting a conviction rate of 57.7% on the terrorism cases cited.

This is abysmal.

Most prosecutors think that if they're not getting a conviction rate of 90% or higher, they'll never get re-elected as District Attorney.

To put this in perspective, consider:  A conviction rate of 50% means you might was well toss a coin to determine the guilt or innocence of whom you're trying.

But it gets better.  Consider the basic argument Ashcroft is making:  Without the benefit of the Patriot Act, he and his bozos would be doing even worse.  That's right, without the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft thinks a coin toss would do a better job than he can at convicting terrorists.

No wonder he wanted to keep these stats secret.

Not only does this support my long-running idea that most "national security secrets" are really just cover-one's-ass moves.  But the fact you're hearing about this angle to the story from me and not in prime time and/or above the fold in a newspaper shows just how cowed the So-Called-Liberal-Media are.

Thanks to darkmane, to whom I originally commented when he flagged this story.