One said the alleged plot was "not as far along" as described and was "more aspirational in nature."
Thus, in a sense, the better a job the intelligence community does, the easier it becomes for those who wish to do so to downplay the threat posed by terrorism or from Islamism.
In other words, jeez, come on, these were just some guys. After all, they hadn't done anything yet. (Which means there isn't proof they could have done anything yet!) They weren't even in the country.)
Of course, as is admitted (almost at the end of the article, of course):
The Hudson River tunnel threat appeared to combine several themes that have emerged as sources of anxiety for U.S. authorities over the past 18 months.
They include terrorists using the Internet to accomplish tasks that used to require travel and in-person meetings, such as casing targets and recruiting members. The alleged plots also brought a renewed focus on the vulnerability of rail and transit systems, which have gotten less federal aid for security than other transportation modes, such as commercial aviation.
Of course, were the FBI or other agencies to wait a bit longer, they'd be nailed for taking unacceptable risks.
In this case it's even easier to downplay the risk, because if you want to you can point out that the ultimate goal of the plot (flooding the city) probably was impossible. Of course, that overlooks the fact that the means to that end (blowing up a number of suicide bombers on PATH trains) was a lot more plausible, and while it might not have breached the wall through to the river (and breaching that wall likely wouldn't have flooded the city) it sure as hell would have killed a lot of people and done a lot of damange.
Update: More, via Memeorandum, from ABC's Brian Ross: first, yesterday they were speaking about the fall generally, Ross pins it to "as close to September 11th as possible," which certainly rings true given the general terrorist desire to hit meaningful or symbolic dates. (Remember the first Bali bombing, which killed over 200, falling on the anniversary of the Cole attack, or the Oklahoma City bombing coming on the anniversary of Waco.)
Second, again, we shouldn't be focusing so much on this question of whether or not this fantasy of flooding downtown could work. Read Ross's description and ask yourself how much it reminds you of Madrid. The point is their efforts to try to create a man-made Katrina, which might have been impossible, would have involved a major terrorist attack on mass transit, and there's no reason to believe that wouldn't have been possible.
Third, when you read Ross's account, it becomes clear how much work remains to be done to really wrap this thing up. No wonder the FBI was angry the News broke this story when it did. They tried to make it sound as if all was well in their press conference, and to somewhat downplay the impact of the story breaking, but in fact there are a number of cell members still loose, who now know they're being tracked, and at the very least that the chat rooms are the way they're being tracked -- they clearly did not know that was how their ring leader got tagged as they continued to plan using the chat rooms after his arrest. What Ross's account actually makes clear is how damaging it may have been for this news account to have been released as early in the investigation as it was. His account also makes clear they weren't in the US yet -- but they were as close as Canada.
Now, in point of fact it's often the case that the mere fact that a particular plot is known or suspected is enough to scare terrorists off, so says the literature, and if that's the case, this news story will likely scatter the remaining cell members and guarantee that this plot never proceeds any further towards completion. But that probably also means (since they now know not to log back on, at least not under their current identities) that the cell members have just dived underground.
It does not guarantee that they've given up their intent to do us harm.
So the Daily News, when there is no attack, will be able to say, see? Our story did no harm. And since no one knows the identities of the other members, if, God forbid, they later on do pull something off, we'll never know, never be able to track that back to their having eluded arrest because this story flagged them they were under surveillance, and so on and so on and so on. And, in all honesty, causality chains being what they are, we'll never know for sure what would have happened if the story hadn't run. My point is not that some day there will be an attack, and we'll be able to blame the Daily News. My point is that when there isn't an attack, the News will claim their story absolutely, positively, therefore did no harm -- but really things are far more complicated than that.
Update: Why do these things always have to be either or? This man was arrested in April. Authorities often want news of an arrest held for a number of days, so that they can exploit, for example, addresses and phone numbers found with the person they arrested before all his contacts figure out they'd better scatter. But, really, by now this guys palies have figured out he's not just ducking their phone calls. So the release of some information was not going to be devastating.
But if they were still using the chat rooms, they had not figured out that those were being monitored. (So, no, despite general discussions that in the War on Terror intelligence communities monitor such sites, this group had not gotten the memo.) That particular piece of information's release is damaging. However, is it necessary to release that piece of information for the paper to tell their story?
Maybe telling the story at all causes the cell to scatter -- it's a risk. Surely telling the story at all requires mentioning cooperation with other governments (although, to the Daily News' credit they don't list them all.) The government would prefer no story would appear. My point is, if the paper is hell bound to write something, they still could have mitigated the harm done enormously, just by leaving out that one detail that is not essential to the narrative.
As the conversation goes forward, we don't need to frame it as "publish/don't publish." We should be having a conversation about "did they need to publish in this exact way?"
Update: The fallout begins: was the Swift program legal under European law? (How long will it take to figure out?)
My thoughts exactly! Do you recall that when the Canadian bomb plotters were caught a comment you got on your article said "They ddi not have 3 tons of anything." Because they were trying to buy it from an undercover agent and so never got it. So since they never got it they were no threat, I suppose.
In WWII the Nazis hatched a plot to blow up Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin when tehy met in Tehran. The plot failed because their "native guide" was in fact an Allied agent undercover. He let them dig the tunnel and place the explosives but, Jack Bauer-like, stole the detonators and called in reinforcements. Got them red-handed, in a neutral country - and he was never rewarded and instead was roundly crticized for it, so much so that in later years he denied ever being imvolved in any such operation.
Posted by: Wayne | July 08, 2006 at 12:10 PM
Well, hopefully, all these plots will continue to be "just a bunch of guys."
Posted by: dauber | July 09, 2006 at 09:16 AM