A Muslim New Year Vacation

On its web site, AirTran Airways has a dozen tips to make "your trip more convenient than travel by sleigh" but, unfortunately for one family, no suggestion about subjects for conversation while boarding the plane.

As Atif Irfan and his family were looking for their seats on a Washington-Orlando flight Thursday, they were overheard discussing which part of the plane was "safest" and, as a result, were taken off, questioned by the FBI and, even after being cleared as terror suspects, denied booking on a later flight.

"The airline told us that we can't fly their airline," says Irfan, a US citizen and tax attorney who, with his brother, their wives, a sister and three children, was planning to meet with family and attend a religious conference.

"The conversation, as we were walking through the plane trying to find our seats, was just about where the safest place in an airplane is," his sister-in-law recalls, "the wing, or the engine or the back or the front, but that's it. We didn't say anything else that would raise any suspicion."

The airline insists it was abiding by Homeland Security rules, but for their next trip, the Irfan family may want to consider traveling by sleigh, which would be a lot slower than AirTran but much more pleasant.

Update: After all the publicity about the incident, AirTran a day later apologized to the family and offered them free return flights home. No word about possible seating arrangements.

Wakeup Call on the Red Phone Ads

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been running dueling commercials about who is better suited to be President when the phone rings at 3 A.M. with news of a terror attack.

Wrong question. While it's important to have a White House occupant who will respond, rather than keep reading "My Pet Goat" to school children, that moment will call for coordinating a response based on intelligence, military and diplomatic information and advice rather than pulling an answer from a backlog of experience in his or her head.

Good judgment, intelligence and emotional balance are the qualities that will be needed. (Read Robert Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis for an idea of how it's done.)

What's crucial is what happens before the red phone rings. Whoever takes office next January will have to overhaul a politically decimated, dysfunctional Homeland Security apparatus headed by a Director who uses physiological metaphors about possible threats and keeps putting his foot in his mouth as he does.

In the White House, the new President will need a staff with brains and expertise rather than cunning on how to win the next election.

Any candidate who claims to be a savior when the phone rings in the middle of the night is selling snake oil.

A Story About Terrorism

If there is a 21st century Kafka somewhere in America, he will get his inspiration not from working in an insurance company but with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Consider this Kafkaesque gem from the McClatchy newspapers today:

"Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a US citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

"On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a US senator demanded his release.

"'The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes,' Warziniack said..."

According to its web site, "US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) strengthens national security and upholds public safety by closing down homeland security vulnerabilities. Created in March 20003 (sic), ICE was tasked with closing down our nation’s vulnerabilities by targeting the people, money and materials that support terrorism and other criminal activities...an approach not taken prior to 9/11."

Warziniack is not alone. In the new-found fervor over illegal aliens, there is evidence that many other American citizens with no foreign ties are being swept up for deportation.

By the 201st century, our Homeland Security heroes may have figured out how to tell the difference.

Rudy's Albatross

The indictment today of Bernard Kerik promises to be much more than a case of a politically incorrect crony that Rudy Giuliani can fob off as easily as he has shed so much of the past in his campaign.

America's Mayor has already admitted a "mistake" in recommending his old friend for the Bush Cabinet position of Director of Homeland Security, but there are booby traps galore in the history of their post-9/11 partnership, Giuliani-Kerik, which was paid millions of dollars for advising companies, doing federal work and consulting with clients overseas.

In 2006, Giuliani's former Police Commissioner pled guilty to ethics violations after an investigation by the Bronx District Attorney's Office and was ordered to pay $221,000. Today's announcement will be, according to the New York Times, that a grand jury has voted to indict Kerik "on conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and substantive counts of wire and mail fraud, under a statute often used in corruption cases, according to people briefed on the vote."

The unveiling of Kerik's history promises a pattern of corruption, and Giuliani is going to have to do a lot better than throwing his former partner and best friend off the bus with a political shrug.

It has opened a garbage can of worms about Giuliani's amassing of millions from his 9/11 aura with such intensity that he couldn't find time to serve on the Iraq Study Commission.

Voters are going to be asking who will protect them from the man who is promising to protect America from foreign terrorists.

Stephen Colbert Sues FEMA

A court order is being sought by the Stephen Colbert presidential campaign to enjoin the Federal Emergency Management Agency from issuing any further fake news in California.

The campaign claims that FEMA's actions in having employees pose as reporters at press conferences is "infringing on Mr. Colbert's trademark performance as a faux journalist over many years" and "if allowed to continue, would do irreparable harm to his activities as such in seeking the presidency."

Colbert stressed that having pseudo-reporters ask FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson "sappy questions" was making a mockery of his finely honed journalistic impersonations. "No fake newsman worth his salt," he scoffed, "would ask 'Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?'"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has authority over FEMA, called the incident "inexcusable and offensive." There are reports that he will apologize to Mr. Colbert personally and consider endorsing his candidacy.

Hillary-Barack Face to Face

After Obama’s decision to curtail his role in the endless pseudo-debate schedule, how can the Democratic front runners give voters what they really need to decide who is best suited to clean up the Bush mess and lead the country forward?

Despite what polls show now, the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be close and crucial, and the two of them have an opportunity to get beyond canned campaigning and set an example to offset the politics of personal destruction that decided the last two presidential elections.

They would be serving their country, their party and, ultimately, their own interests by using a fraction of the millions they have amassed to buy TV time for a real debate of their differences--no moderators, videos or other gimmicks--about the war in Iraq, health care, immigration policy and the tension between homeland security and individual rights, among other subjects.

Conventional wisdom might argue against Clinton’s doing it because she is ahead in the polls, but conventional wisdom has never encompassed a Presidential contest between a woman and a man of color.

Clinton and Obama are members of the same party who have more in common than the manufactured sound bites and campaign gotchas indicate, and they may very well end up on a ticket together.

Why not provide an example of grownup politics for a country exhausted by the idiocy of show-business campaigning? Why not show what politics can be rather than what it has become? Why not give their supporters--and all voters--a sample of the kind of change they want?

They don’t have to be Lincoln and Douglas but, amid all the
madness to come in the next fifteen months, Clinton and Obama could show us some sanity that would eventually serve them and all Americans well. At the very least, it would provide a contrast to the Republican mud fight that is sure to come.

"Freakonomics" Tumult Over Terrorists

Until the New York Times stops making readers pay for “Select” content, which may happen soon, you will have to take my word for this.

In a new blog on the Times web site, Steven D. Levitt, the quirky economist who co-wrote the best seller, “Freakonomics,” asked: “If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?”

The post, which cited random sniper shootings as a nifty method, generated almost 600 responses, some with ingenious ideas for mayhem, many with questions and comments about Levitt’s sanity.

Yesterday Levitt responded: “(Y)ou have to believe that terrorists are total idiots if it never occurred to them after the Washington, D.C., sniper shootings that maybe a sniper plot wasn’t a bad idea. The point is this: there is a virtually infinite array of incredibly simple strategies available to terrorists.”

With due respect to Levitt, that’s not the point. It’s one thing to flash your brilliance at a dinner party and quite another to show off in public. The problem is not giving new ideas to terrorists but stirring up the fears we all have to live with since 9/11 for no useful reason.

Levitt’s obtuseness is insignificant compared to that of Michael Chertoff, our Homeland Security honcho, who keeps telling us his gut feelings about imminent attacks while covering his butt and taking bows for the great job he has been doing.

It may be time to amend the old adage, “discretion is the better part of valor” by adding “and vanity as well.”

Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater never was a great idea.

The Wes Craven School of Journalism

After consulting his gut last month about future terror attacks, Michael Chertoff is now trying to wrench ours.

The voluble Homeland Security Chief teamed up last night with ABC News, the new locus of wet-their-pants journalism, to deliver his latest irrelevant scare story about a year-old threat and his magnificent working in thwarting it.

"I think that the plot, in terms of its intent, was looking at devastation on a scale that would have rivaled 9/11," Chertoff told ABC, commenting on plans discovered by British Intelligence to detonate gel-based explosives on U.S.-bound flights from London last August.

"If they had succeeded in bringing liquid explosives on seven or eight aircraft, there could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous economic impact with devastating consequences for international air travel."

ABC of late has been juicing up its evening news with such items as a terrorist graduation video supplied by a “Pakistani journalist” and an enthusiastic but pointless report on the resurgence of bank-robbing in the U.S. emphasizing how few perps get caught.

Chertoff’s puffery is a natural fit for this new kind of enterprise journalism to get viewers’ attention at all costs. He prattled for the camera about a “heightened risk” but not “mathematical certainty” of attack based on his reading of news reports from Pakistan and Europe.

If Homeland Security has something to tell Americans that they should do to help avert attacks, let’s hear it by all means. Meanwhile, they and the too-eager media might want cut down on the color-coded self-promotion.

The Politics of Mock-Outrage

Barack Obama is having his “emperor has no clothes” moment in Presidential politics, being savaged for saying out loud yesterday what is obvious about Pakistan: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, in an editorial, shrieks, “Naive? Sen. Clinton was too kind. If he's serious, he's dangerous.”

Democratic Presidential rival Chris Dodd calls the statement “dangerous and irresponsible,” while Joe Biden merely labels it “disingenuous” for sounding like a “bold new initiative.”

Tony Snow responds with a platitude about respecting the sovereignty of Pakistan, but the hollowness of that answer has been exposed by White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend.

Last week friendly Fox News summarized an interview with her reporting that “the U.S. was committed first and foremost to working with Pakistan's president...But she indicated the U.S. was ready to take additional measures.

"’Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about,’" Townsend said, when asked in a broadcast interview why the U.S. does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple Al Qaeda.

"’Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,’" she said. Townsend also said, "'No question that we will use any instrument at our disposal' to deal with Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.’”

The bottom line is that Obama is attacked and ridiculed from all sides for the heinous political gaffe of telling a simple truth that even the Bush Administration acknowledges and is prepared to act on.

Will Terrorists Pick Our Next President?

In the terrorism-expert business, there is no profit in forecasting there won’t be an attack on the Homeland “soon.” No one will remember a negative and give you credit, and, on the other hand, the definition of “soon” is expandable.

So it’s no surprise that not only do the N.I.E. researchers, Homeland Security Director Chertoff and other less sensitive-gutted authorities on the government payroll but the all rented experts on TV agree about the imminence of an attack in this country. Where’s the news in not predicting one?

The more interesting question is what the terrorists may be thinking. Assuming a modicum of brains to go with their mad hatred, if the object is to sow fear and confusion in our society, what political outcome in ’08 best suits their purposes? And what could they do to help bring it about?

Since 9/11, George W. Bush has been collaborating with Osama bin Laden in destroying the traditional trust Americans have had in their government and in one another. Would Al Qaeda like more of the same?

If so, Giuliani is their man. His campaign, based on images of Rudy in the rubble, is following Karl Rove’s game plan for 2004. Any attack that rekindles 9/11 fears would help America’s Mayor get to the White House.

But if terrorists prefer, for whatever reasons, to see Clinton or Obama in the Oval Office, holding off on homeland attacks would help. It may all depend on their reaction to the Republican gas bags. If they take them at all seriously, Al Qaeda leaders might prefer a Democratic President who wouldn’t break American laws to get at them.

On the other hand, if they find hard-line campaign rhetoric laughable, another Republican to extend Bush’s incompetence and impotence to hurt them might just be the ticket for bin Laden et al.

The terrorists no doubt will go about their business their own way for their own reasons, but what they do in the next year will nonetheless have a profound effect on our elections.

That may be the saddest commentary of all on our post-9/11 world.

Straight Talk About Taking Out Al-Qaeda

Finally someone says the glaringly obvious about what we have to do to prevent terrorist attacks here: Stop wringing our hands about Musharraf’s shaky situation in Pakistan and cross the Afghanistan border to take out bin Laden’s people who are dug in there.

Lee Hamilton, 76 years old with no political ambitions, said it straight out on CNN yesterday: "If there's anything we should have learned, it's that we must not let Al Qaeda have a sanctuary, which they certainly do in Pakistan today."

For years now, Pakistan’s President has been playing the Bush Administration like a violin, promising cooperation and doing just enough to placate us while keeping the militants in his own country at bay. But Musharraf’s political games have left the United States increasingly vulnerable.

Even Bush and Cheney see by now what has to be done. “In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.”

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

According to the Times, “Ms. Townsend...acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.”

It will undoubtedly take a highly sophisticated combination of overt and covert operations to do what has to be done in Pakistan, but, as usual, it is taking someone like Lee Hamilton to say so out loud.

If Bush and Cheney are lusting to invade somewhere, they should forget Iran and do what has to be done in Pakistan. They won’t have to take over a whole country and stay, as they did in Iraq, just get in far enough to uproot Al Qaeda and get out.

Chertoff's Squirrel Spies

Now that the Iranians have blown their cover, the story of our rodent black ops can be told.

Last week, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to preserve their covert status, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff attributed information about imminent terrorist activities to his “gut feeling.”

Now it can be revealed that he was relying on the work of the Squirrel Intelligence Corps, whose existence was unknown until a number of agents were ferreted out and detained by the Islamic Republic’s Secret Police.

"In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders," the state-sponsored news agency IRNA reported. "The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."

Our secret squirrels were trained by the Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which concealed its efforts by leaking data about allegedly jocular experiments in “squirrel fishing.”

A critical element of the Iranian operation was timing. According to the journal Scholarly Squirrel, although males of the species “are notorious for chasing females...between July and August, female squirrels are ready to mate only one day out of each season.” Islamic agents apparently took advantage of our operatives’ distraction in anticipating the crucial date.

In keeping with security procedures, Director Chertoff would not comment, but a spokesperson reflected Homeland Security’s disappointment by an off-the-record reference to the observation of Sarah Jessica Parker, “You can't be friends with a squirrel. A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit.”

Chertoff's Gutsy Forecast

In addition to those color-coded threat levels, the nation now has a new indicator of the imminence of a terrorist attack--the intestinal state of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

Briefing the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, Chertoff reported a “gut feeling” that the U.S. would be attacked soon. "Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said, referring to Al Qaeda.

Chertoff’s stomach and keen insight into terrorist tastes should be enough to compensate for the fact that his Department has been politicized to the point of the lowest morale of all federal agencies with one-quarter of its top positions unfilled.

In this new era of vulnerability, we have to rely on non-traditional intelligence-gathering such as, perhaps, the Homeland Security head watching CNN coverage of the attempted attacks in Britain.

Chertoff is to be commended for his leadership daring but he may never reach the level of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s achievement in re-seating Democrats and Republicans of his Homeland Security Committee in boy-girl dinner party arrangement instead of opposite sides of the table to let citizens see them side by side as they “work together to make our nation more secure.”

In matters of such gravity, little things can be important. Chertoff’s guts and Lieberman’s sensitivity may help keep us safe.

Slight Glitch in Homeland Security

If we are going to be safe from terrorist attacks, Pat Robertson’s law school will have to expand.

According to a Congressional report released today, the Bush Administration “has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a ‘gaping hole’ in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat.”

"One of the continuing problems appears to be the over politicization of the top rank of Department management," the report concludes.

In the Justice Department, as we learned from the case of Monica Goodling, the Administration’s preference has been for graduates of Regent University where professors “integrate biblical principles into areas of the law.”

This year’s student body at Regent was inspired by a lecture on leadership by America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told them that terrorists “planned to kill us, and they want to do it again.”

But there won't be enough of such highly trained and motivated recruits to fill the Homeland Security void, which may be partly due to the fact that the Department’s employees reported the lowest job satisfaction among 36 federal agencies earlier this year.

But not to worry. The Senate’s Homeland Security Committee passed a bill in March based on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that Chairman Joe Lieberman called “a critical step toward building a safer and more secure America for the generations to come."

That nobody is around to implement them is just a minor housekeeping detail.

Busy Year Ahead for Secret Service

When a President’s daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson, was working for me, I got to know her Secret Service agents quite well. One of them almost shot me at Trader Vic’s in Manhattan.

An agent new to her detail saw me put my arms around her when we unexpectedly met and, as I later learned, was “ready to react.”

As we know from endless movies, protecting presidents is a job that calls for an unusual combination of courage, judgment and quick reflexes. In the coming year, the Secret Service will be hard-pressed to provide enough of them.

After 9/11, the Bush administration doubled the number of top officials for protection, from 26 to 54.

The agency will need 103 new agents for President Bush and his family when he leaves office in January and, for all those who want to replace him, is proposing to spend more than $100 million on campaign protection in 2008, roughly $35 million more than in 2004.

Because of undisclosed threats, the Service is already spending $44,000 a day on around-the-clock security for Barack Obama in addition to the protection provided for Hillary Clinton as a former First Lady. At some point, they will be assigned to other candidates as well.

This burden will draw some agents away from other investigations, of financial crimes and Homeland Security matters.

All in all, we are in an era when protection is a growth industry.