"Update A White House with a clear determination to draw paranoid conclusions
from ambiguous data has finally gone over the top. It has now implied that the
al-Qaeda computer geek arrested last month in Pakistan was involved in a plot to
destabilize the USA around election time.
Two and two is five
As we reported here and here, so-called al-Qaeda "computer expert" Muhammad
Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani, was arrested on 13 July in possession of detailed
but rather old surveillance documents related to major financial institutions in
New York, Newark, and Washington.
Since that time, other intelligence has led the US security apparatus to imagine
that a plot to attack the USA might be in the works. (No doubt there are scores
of plots in the works, but we digress.) Therefore, last week, the ever-paranoid
Bush Administration decided that Khan's building surveillance documents, and the
hints of imminent danger, had to be connected. Indeed, if al Qaeda is to strike
at all, it is most likely to strike the targets mentioned in Khan's documents,
as opposed to thousands of others, the Bushies reasoned.
New York, Newark and Washington were immediately put on high alert, at great
expense, and to the inconvenience of millions of residents. The sites mentioned
in the Khan documents have received extraordinary attention, while thousands of
other potential targets remain exposed to easy attack. (Anyone doubting this
should look at the photos of unguarded access and control points to a Manhattan
gas pipeline over forty inches in diameter, photographed without difficulty by
Cryptome's John Young.)
But government panic over dubious intelligence was not enough. Another Bush
Administration hobby horse is a notion that foreign evildoers intend to disrupt
the November elections. We've been hearing about this ever since it was assumed
that a terrorist attack determined the Spanish elections back in March.
So it did not take long for Bush security apparatchiks to begin leaking to the
press strong hints that this is precisely what's behind the Administration's
current terrorist hysteria.
According to an article in the New York Times, Khan the cyberterrorist "was also
communicating with al Qaeda operatives who the authorities say are plotting to
carry out an attack intended to disrupt the fall elections, a senior
intelligence official said Saturday."
Given the amount of skepticism the Administration has had to confront over its
most recent Chicken Little act, and its hammerheaded aversion to acknowledging
even the tiniest of mistakes, perhaps it was inevitable that the terror hype of
last week could only be hyped further. It was impossible to retreat.
It has now got every citizen and law enforcement officer obsessing on a handful
of targets that, thanks to the news cycle, al Qaeda knows not to mess with."
More on the website.
-Gel
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