Politics Over Security II: Selling Snake Oil in L.A.

Regular visitors to Kiko's House know that while I have made no secret of my disdain for President Bush and his divide-and-conquer presidency, I rally to his side when it comes to national security threats.

One's personal view of the commander in chief simply doesn't matter in times like that. So I was there yesterday in spirit when the president jetted into Los Angeles to reveal details of an Al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airliner into L.A.'s Library Tower, which is the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

Well, my fellow Americans, we were diddled.

We wuz had.

Again.

It was all a public relations ploy.

A publicity stunt.

Snake oil disguised as real news.

And most obscenely, yet again politics masquerading as national security.

But when you're King George and you find yourself backed into a corner, as he does over a growing number of issues, you send in a play from the Karl Rove playbook and scare the sh*t out of your royal subjects.

It turns out that the hijacking plot had been vetted in detail in a Los Angeles Times article two years ago. The only thing "new" about the whole affair was the president's pressing need to:

* Divert attention away from the mounting controversy over the National Security Agency's illegal and probably unconstitutional domestic spying program.

* To try to put a happy face on an anti-terrorism "stragegy" that is deservedly drawing growing criticism, including a fair amount from within his own party.

Bush and his chief security maven, Frances Townsend, who accompanied him to L.A., came thisclose to suggesting that the plot had been foiled because of NSA spy program intercepts. But while that implication loomed large, no one in the know is suggesting that was the case.

And although Bush gave the U.S. credit for helping to foil the plot, there's no evidence that it was directly involved.

What actually happened was that security services in several South Asian nations caught wind of chatter to the effect that members of Jemaah Islamiyah, which is Al Qaeda's South Asian wing, had met in Afghanistan with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, about a month later, and the L.A. plot was discussed in general terms.

Let's go a little deeper on this.

Bush acted yesterday as if the attack was imminent, but intelligence experts told the L.A. Times, among other media outlets, that it was only one of many contemplated by Al Qaeda that had not gotten beyond the conceptual stages. The Library Tower (misidentified by the serially bumbling Bush as the "Liberty Tower") had not even been identified by name.

Need further evidence that the whole thing was a publicity stunt?

Neither Bush nor Townsend bothered to inform L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or any other city officials of the sensational "new" details of the plot involving their own city before the networks and cable news channels were primed to be prepared to cut away from their regular programming for a "major" announcement.

(And perhaps it was a Freudian slip of a sort, but CNN posted the L.A. plot story under "Politics" on its website.)

To sum up, I don't like to be had, especially when it comes to something as important as national security. But the Chicken Littles who raised and lowered those brightly colored homeland security alert flags to help the commander in chief as his 2004 presidential campaign ebbed and flowed, have done it to us again. Politics trumps national security.

I am angry. Very angry. You should be, too.

There also is a karmic component to all of this grandstanding. How many times will King George cry wolf before there is a real attack on the homeland, one that possibly could have been prevented if he had a real strategy and was paying more attention to real threats than his diminishing political capital?

* * * *

Bush’s first mention of the LA. plot was in October when he cited it as part of a list of disrupted terror plots.

Here, courtesy of BBC News, is the rest of the list:

East Coast airliner: In mid-2003 the U.S. and a partner disrupted a plot to attack targets on the East Coast using hijacked commercial jets.

Jose Padilla: In May 2002, the U.S. disrupted a plot that involved blowing up apartment buildings. One of the plotters, Jose Padilla, also discussed the possibility of using a dirty bomb in the U.S. (Kiko’s House footnote: The more serious charges have been dropped for lack of evidence.)

2004 U.K. urban targets: In 2004, the U.S. and partners disrupted a plot that involved urban targets in the U.K. These plots involved using explosives against a variety of sites.

2003 Karachi: In the spring of 2003, the U.S. and a partner disrupted a plot to attack Westerners at several targets in Karachi, Pakistan.

London Heathrow Airport: In 2003, the U.S. and several partners disrupted a plot to attack Heathrow Airport using hijacked commercial airliners. The planning for this attack was undertaken by a major 9/11 September operational figure.

2004 U.K.: In 2004, the U.S. and partners, using a combination of law enforcement and intelligence resources, disrupted a plot to conduct bombings in the U.K.

2002 Gulf shipping: In late 2002 and 2003, the U.S. and a partner disrupted a plot by Al Qaeda operatives to attack ships in the Persian Gulf.

2002 Straits of Hormuz: In 2002, the U.S. and partners disrupted a plot to attack ships transiting the Straits of Hormuz.

2003 tourist site: In 2003, the U.S. and a partner nation disrupted a plot to attack a tourist site outside the United States.

* * * *

With that list in mind, note that Bush used the old news about the Library Tower plot to trumpet the "progress" his administration is making in the War on Terror.

The list would seem to be impressive, but former CIA agent Larry Johnson ain't buying in a commentary at The TPM Coffee House:

Bush is right that the United States has not been hit since 2001, but that is little consolation to the Brits who died in July of 2005 or the Spaniards who died in March of 2004 in Al Qaeda bombings. Moreover, despite Bush’s initial pledge to get Bin Laden dead or alive, Bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, are still very much alive and still planning new mayhem.

And who is the person Bush has put in charge of finding Bin Laden? I don’t know and neither does the Administration. No one has been put in charge of this supposedly important task.

Bush’s preference to play politics with terrorism rather than achieve concrete results is underscored by the “news” . . . a 2002 plot to fly a plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles. . . . If the United States did discover such a plot was underway thanks to listening in on conversations not covered by FISA— conversations in which specific terrorists met with Bin Laden in 2002—then I have one question. Why didn’t we get Bin Laden? He disappeared after escaping from Tora Bora in December 2001. Is President Bush now saying that we took people into custody through intercepts in 2002 who knew the whereabouts of Bin Laden? Or, are they saying, these guys met with Bin Laden in 2001, before we started our offensive in Afghanistan, and were later apprehended? If the domestic spying op was really generating “actionable” intelligence, then where are the terrorist scalps?

President Bush is right that some key Al Qaeda operatives have been captured in the last three years (exclusively because of CIA and host nation operations), but too many are still at large. Most of the “plans” we have disrupted have not been in the final stages. Instead, as was the case with the much ballyhooed "plans" to hit the New York City financial center, the plans represented earnest desires and intentions but had not progressed to the point of implementation. It is good that the individuals were identified and taken into custody. But what about Bin Laden and his number one buddy, who are alive and kicking and still issuing video tape promises to hit us again. Getting them should be the priority, rather than trying to spin the American people into a frenzy over a threat that never materialized.