War of Choice in Iraq: Curveball Lied But Who Sent the Troops to Die?

The last of our combat brigades departed Iraq in August 2010. In eight months, the US State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police. Staffing at the US Embassy in Baghdad currently at 8,000 is expected to grow in the coming year to about 17,000 people, the vast majority of whom will be contractors. Yes, in this jobless economy, there are still jobs. In Iraq.

In Capitol Hill on February 16, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Iraq will face major security "problems" if U.S. troops leave the country by the end of this year as planned.

Over in Iraq, Baghdad's city government demands an apology and  $1 billion for the damage done to the city not by bombs but by blast walls and Humvees since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.  Via Reuters: "The U.S. forces changed this beautiful city to a camp in an ugly and destructive way, which reflected deliberate ignorance and carelessness about the simplest forms of public taste," the statement said.

"Due to the huge damage, leading to a loss the Baghdad municipality cannot afford...we demand the American side apologize to Baghdad's people and pay back these expenses."

On money matters, the FY2012 budget proposal includes a total U.S. government Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) effort in Iraq at $15.7 billion. Billions.

Meanwhile the US debt continues ticking on like the energizer bunny. Every citizen, including my minor son now carries over $45,000 as his share of the US national debt. 

Amidst all this, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi – codenamed Curveball by the CIA – surfaced recently and gave an interview to the Guardian where he explains why he lied about Saddam's chemical weapons capability. His false claims were quoted at the UN by former secretary of state Colin Powell and used to help justify the Iraq war.

Here is Curveball's video.

Full text of Colin Powell's UN speech on February 2003 using Curveball's 'evidence' is here. Excerpt below:

The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.

He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.

This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eyewitness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.

Curveball now admits to WMD lies that triggered the Iraq war; he 'invented' tales of bio-weapons, reportedly to try to bring down Saddam Hussein.

Curveball must be quite a political strategist to pull this off, or the intelligence communities here and across the pond should be awarded 400-lb medals for being great suckers to this Iraqi fantasist trying to topple Saddam.

It won't surprise me if Curveball will also get away with a ghost written book contract. No more allowance and free car from his adopted state, he needs to sell something ... like .... a book!  After all, just about everyone is this sorry episode, has already hawked their books on teevee and online. Why not Curveball?

Here is Curveball, a freedom fighter in the sly:

"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq. There were no other possibilities."

"Saddam did not [allow] freedom in our land. There are no other political parties. You have to believe what Saddam says, and do what Saddam wants. And I don't accept that. I have to do something for my country. So I did this and I am satisfied, because there is no dictator in Iraq any more."

More here on Curveball's lies – and the consequences. Check out the Guardian's Curveball page here.

As can be expected, old history becomes new again. And a serious ink fight has broken among the "formers," which is quite maddening to watch.

The Guardian reports that Curveball's admissions vindicate the  suspicions of CIA's former Europe chief: 

"My impression was always that his reporting was done in January and February," said Drumheller, adding that he had been warned well before 2003 by his counterparts in the German secret service (BND) that Curveball might not be reliable. "We didn't know if it was true. We knew there were real problems with it and there were inconsistencies."

He passed on this information to the head of the CIA, George Tenet, he said, and yet Curveball's testimony still made it into Colin Powell's famous February 2003 speech justifying an invasion. "Right up to the night of Powell's speech, I said, don't use that German reporting because there's a problem with that," said Drumheller. "[Curveball] recanting doesn't really change that. It just makes me feel better. It confirms what we found at the time."

He recalled a conversation he had with John McLaughlin, then the CIA's deputy director. "The week before the speech, I talked to the Deputy McLaughlin, and someone says to him, 'Tyler's worried that Curveball might be a fabricator.' And McLaughlin said, 'Oh, I hope not, because this is really all we have.' And I said, and I've got to be honest with you, I said: 'You've got to be kidding? This is all we have!' "

According to the Guardian, the ex-German foreign minister Joschka Fischer also accused the former CIA chief George Tenet over his knowledge of Iraqi defector's sketchy background. Mr. Fischer by the way, also has a new autobiography, I Am Not Convinced.

On February 16, 2011, George Tenet, former Director of the CIA, citing recent press accounts about "Curve Ball" says in his website that "The handling of this matter is certainly a textbook case of how not to deal with defector provided material. But the latest reporting of the subject repeats and amplifies a great deal of misinformation about the case.  In order to provide some perspective, the following excerpt if from my 2007 memoir "At the Center of the Storm" and offers additional detail that the media continue to ignore."

Excerpt from his book:

If Drumheller or anyone had brought to John McLaughlin or me these doubts about Curve Ball’s credibility, let alone his sanity, we would have gone to great lengths immediately to resolve the matter. Unfortunately, the first either of us learned of Tyler Drumheller’s lunch with the German BND official and of the latter’s supposed warnings—and his refusal to stand publicly behind them—was when we were interviewed by the Silberman- Robb Commission as it prepared its March 2005 report, two years too late to do a damn thing about it.
[...]
On January 27, 2003, right before the Powell UN speech, our man in Germany sent another cable, this one expressing his own reservations about the source. He did so because he had received no response to his December 20 cable. Curve Ball’s reporting was problematic, he said, and should be relied on only after “most serious consideration.” This cable, too, went to Drumheller for action. In the three days and nights we sat at headquarters working on the secretary’s speech, nobody ever told us of our senior man in Germany’s reservations or of the letter from the BND chief.
[...]
My successor, Porter Goss, asked his staff to run down the Curve Ball story. They found in 2005 that the letter, located in the European Division, had not been formally logged in as received. Despite extensive searching, no records have been found that the letter was sent to either John McLaughlin or me.

Sounds like a game of Drumheler, Drumheller, tell me who is IT?

Oh, dear god, all that money for the intel folks and they could not do a simple log in of an important piece of communication? And why is Mr. Tenet "talking" for both himself and John McLaughlin as if they were joined at the hip? Mr. McLaughlin should get a chance to write his own book, no?

The US was duped. Deceived. The most powerful country in the world, with billions allocated to intelligence, was  tricked and outsmarted by Curveball? 

Did the USA "allow" itself to be duped? That is the $3 trillion plus dollar question (counting the future med/health expenditures for all war vets). Anyone? Anyone?   


So now, Colin Powell is reported to have demanded answers over Curveball's WMD lies. The former US Secretary of State is asking why the CIA failed to warn him over Iraqi defector who has admitted fabricating WMD evidence.


And on and on it goes ...

He said vs. he said vs. who said vs. drat said vs. enough said!


And this is giving me a mighty headache.

Here's what confuses me ...

We used taxpayer's money to investigate a small blue dress and presidential sexual indiscretion. Fine.  But we don't have the balls to examine how we got into Iraq? Not fine. 

Our elected officials who served the American public should be publicly answerable for their actions. After all, aren't they the servants of the people? Wouldn't it be the honorable thing to do to stand up and be accountable for your actions instead of writing self serving books?

Colin Powell demands an explanation. What he should do is call for an Iraq War Truth Commission and volunteer as its first witness.

There are 4,754 reasons why.

And they're all dead. 

Related articles

• Curveball doubts were shared with CIA, says ex-German foreign minister (guardian.co.uk)
• Curveball 'deserves permanent exile' (guardian.co.uk)
• Curveball facing jail for WMD lies (guardian.co.uk)
• Powell wants answers about 'Curveball' (cnn.com)
• 'Curveball': I lied about WMD to hasten Iraq war (msnbc.msn.com)
• Curveball, Iraq WMD source,cause of invasion, lied for money & politics (politics.ie)

David Willson's Diary of Dying and Bureaucratic Complexity

David Willson is the author of REMF Diary (1988) and The REMF Returns (1992). Working from his diaries composed in Vietnam, Willson tells the story of the war as it occurred for most soldiers. Willson has now turned his eye to his current battle with cancer and the Veteran’s Administration. His REMF Diary of Dying and Bureaucratic Complexity appeared as a Special Feature of WLA Online. The magazine writes that it will be updated with new installments the first of each month. Four chapters ending in 2009 had been posted here.


Below is an excerpt from Charpter 1:

My ribs had been causing me some serious pain since June. I’d been to see Dr. Brooks several times and lots of theories had been pursued but none had panned out. Finally, in October, I was sent to a specialist. He did a biopsy and had me do a 24 hour urine collection. Dr. Lee gave me the diagnosis.

Multiple Myeloma. Okay. I thought I recognized the name of the disease from the Agent Orange Dirty Dozen list. Dr. Lee kept saying that she hoped that I had prostate cancer, and I didn’t get why she’d say that. She explained that prostate cancer could be cured, but that multiple myeloma had no cure and no remission. I got it then.

When I got home I looked up the Agent Orange disease list on the VA website and there it was, nestled between Hodgkin’s disease and respiratory cancers (lungs, bronchus, larynx, trachea.) Fine bedfellows. The big heading on this section was “Presumptive conditions for disability compensations.” An open and shut case. I am a Vietnam veteran who served in-country from September 13, 1966  through October 23, 1967. I was stationed in Tan Son Nhut and then in Long Binh, but because I worked for the Inspector General, I was all over the country. I was presumed to be exposed. I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma by several doctors, including Dr. Norman, my oncologist. I was told that I had Stage 2 B, and that my disease was in an aggressive mode. Looks to me as though I have hit the jackpot.

I sat right down and wrote the VA a letter apprising them of my situation. I included a copy of my DD 214, the one that my SS# is wrong on. Also I included a copy of a document from my doctor which showed that I had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, with no remission. This should do it I thought. Here’s the short letter I sent them.

Dear Claims Office,

I wish to start the process for a claim for disability. I served in Vietnam for over 13 months from 13 September 1966 until 23 October 1967, in the U.S. Army. (please see attached DD214.) I was recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma at Group Health, Tacoma. (See attached.)

Please let me know what the next step is in this process. I would also appreciate notification of receipt of this letter. Thanks.

David A. Willson

I got a letter back from the VA in a week or so. I was given a file number, but not a claim number. That’s a start, but I wondered about the difference between a file number and a claim number. Is a file number different from a claim number? Does that mean my status is lower? I didn’t know. The letter assured me they had received my application for benefits. They sincerely desired to decide my case promptly. They have a lot of claims, so I shouldn’t hold my breath. I am paraphrasing here. They will contact me if they need additional evidence or information. They tell me that they don’t want me to contact them. They will contact me. Well, that was food for thought. I was getting a sinking feeling. They tell me that if my mailing address is different from that shown above that I should contact them. Please advise them of my new address.

Why would the address be different, I thought? I just gave them the address I’m going to live at until I die. I’ve been living at this address for 16 years. I looked at the address on the letter. It was wrong. So wrong that I couldn’t figure out how the letter got to me. They’d inverted the second and third numbers of the street address. Not good. My eyes danced to my name. My name was wrong, too. Oh, oh. I was beginning to think this process might not work as well as I’d hoped. How much faith can I place in an agency that gets my name and address wrong, when the information I provided them was correct? I suspected this agency didn’t care about me. I started to worry and fret.

I talked to Vietnam veteran friends. They told me that I was doomed if I didn’t have a service rep helping me get into the VA system. As a long time member of the VVA, I decided that I needed to get the name of a VVA rep in the Seattle office. A dear old friend who works for the national office of the VVA referred me to Roosevelt Ward and I set up an appointment with Roosevelt Ward.

I wrote another letter to the VA:

Dear T. Clark,

I know that your letter dated November 4, 2008, told me not to contact you , that you’d contact me, but I am worried that further letters you send me might not reach
me. The reason for that fear is that you got both my name and address wrong on your first letter. Those errors did not inspire confidence. My name is David A. Willson. Two
“L’s” in Willson. My address is: 23630 201st Ave SE, Maple Valley WA 98038. Not “210”—Not.

I have been diagnosed with multiple myeloma Stage II B, and my disease is aggressive. I cannot afford the cost of the thalidomide my doctor prescribed for me. That is not good. I will die sooner without it.

I had to pay $4,000.00 last Friday for my prescription. The U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs Website tells me that multiple myeloma is on the list of Agent Orange presumptive disabilities. So, as I did 13 months in Vietnam, I want the VA to pay for my medicine. That seems reasonable to me. Also, please get my name and address right.

Thanks.

Yours,
David A. Willson


I hoped that the VA would fix my name and address problem. I drove into Seattle and met with Roosevelt Ward in the VVA office on the tenth floor of the Henry Jackson Building. I spent a couple of hours with him as he patiently helped me through the forms for the VA. He gave me a serious orientation into what I had to deal with. Basically the VA had developed a series of hoops that are incredibly hard to jump through. I couldn’t answer many of the questions the VA asked. Not off the top of my head. I couldn’t answer the questions related to my marriages and divorces. Mr. Ward explained to me that my disability application wouldn’t go anywhere with the VA without copies of the documents related to my marriages and divorces. I went away from my meeting with Mr. Ward armed with the information I needed to do battle with the VA. I’d learned that the VA would not be easy to deal with.

My wife, Michele, and I spent the next Friday morning in the Seattle courthouse and the records center. The marriage records were in one building and the divorce records were in another building. I guess they didn’t want the records commingling. We did battle with ancient microfilm readers and ancient microfilm and microfiche. The film and fiche were damaged and tattered, and the faint entries from the divorce decree ledger of 1971 were almost unreadable. Without the decree number, the clerk could not retrieve the certified copy of the decree that we needed. I had to use a large magnifying glass to read the retrieval number of the divorce decree.

Around us were other sick old veterans, nearly crying tears of frustration as they tried to deal with the decrepit machines and the ruined microfilm. It was a struggle for me, too, and I had the advantage that I’d spent my thirty year career as a reference librarian working with old microfilm readers and with ancient microfilm. These old guys had never seen a microfilm reader or microfilm before today, and they weren’t doing well. They didn’t know which end was up on the microfiche.

We got our retrieval number, gave it to the clerk, and received our copy of the decrees and paid and were on our way. The other sick old vets were still struggling. Good luck to them. I saw the clerk come out from behind his counter and go over to them. It looked as though they would get professional help. Good.

Michele and I then drove down I-5 south to the Tacoma Group Health Building in rush hour traffic. We checked in with Dr. Norman’s office and completed the process of qualifying for the thalidomide.

It’s part of the Thal-Dex treatment. We went down to the pharmacy and learned that the thalidomide cost $9600.00 of which we had to pay $4,000.00 out of our pockets, due to something called “the donut hole.” This was the first I heard that Medicare had anything called a donut hole. What is it? I’d have to look into that. But for now we chanced maxing out our Visa card to pay for the needed medication. I wanted to start taking the stuff right now as my life depended on it.

We left Group Health feeling poor and bereft. Shouldn’t the VA be paying for this? Dr. Norman had informed us that some of his cancer patients did get their medication paid for by the VA. He didn’t know what process they went through to get the VA to pay for the medication. Neither did I, but I would try to find out. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. The book on Federal benefits for Veterans and Dependents says that I met the presumptive conditions for disability compensation. But when? In the fullness of time? When I got them every marriage and divorce document that they required?

Time passed. I took the thalidomide and the steroids as prescribed. Michele and I drove to American Lake and I registered for a VA medical card and got put into the VA system for medical care. That involved filling out a three page form that required detailed information about our income last year when Michele was still working fulltime as a principal, well before she quit her job to spend more time with me. Now she’s working part time, just enough to pay for our medical coverage.

Everyone I dealt with at the American Lake VA Hospital was kind and helpful. Michele and I watched the sick old vets (many of them Vietnam vets younger than I) stumble past us. Some of the veterans around us couldn’t even walk at all. The passing scene made me feel lucky. I looked good and felt good, except for the pain in my ribs, the pain in my back and the pain in my right leg. We waited about an hour while our paperwork was examined and entered into the system. Then we were called to Room B for our interview. We were informed of what was available for us and that I’d get my ID card in 7 to 10 days. We were informed that free valet parking would be available for us when we went to the VA Hospital in Seattle for the next step in this process, which would be the Agent Orange Registry. Then I was sent to Room A where my picture was taken for the ID card.

When I got home I called the Agent Orange Registry Office at the Seattle VA Hospital and was given an appointment for 10:30 Monday morning. This was on Friday. Things were moving along a bit faster. Good. I felt that I was making progress.

Saturday we got our mail. There was an 81/2 inch manila envelope from the Department of Veterans Affairs. I checked my name and address. Both were wrong, again. This is not an agency that will be easy to deal with. Why can’t they get my name and address right? How is their mail even reaching me with the address so wrong? They want service treatment records from the service department. Those records will help them determine how my claimed disabilities are connected to my military service. How? They have my name wrong, my address wrong, and they think my service treatment records will have something to do with my recently diagnosed multiple myeloma? They are incompetent or fools.

I am in a world of hurt. They prefer original records to copies. How would I have originals? The Army keeps the originals. I was a stenographer in the U.S. Army. I know how Army records keeping works. Soldiers never get the originals. The Army keeps them. That’s how it works. Included in the envelope was VA form 21-526. Many pages of mind boggling questions, questions that I’d struggled to answer with Roosevelt Ward’s help in the VVA Office. I need to call him and see if he’s got enough information now to submit the forms to the VA to move this attempt on my part to get disability for my multiple myeloma, and my medication paid for. I will also ask him for advice on how to correct my name and address with the VA. Writing them a letter didn’t work out.

Continue reading, REMF Diary of Dying and Bureaucratic Complexity Part One.  Read all the chapters here.

Book burning craze goes weirder, 9,500 copies of "Operation Dark Heart" up in flames

Image via WikipediaVia CNN:

The Department of Defense recently purchased and destroyed thousands of copies of an Army Reserve officer's memoir in an effort to safeguard state secrets, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

"DoD decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham said.

In a statement to CNN, Cunningham said defense officials observed the September 20 destruction of about 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's new memoir "Operation Dark Heart."

Shaffer says he was notified Friday about the Pentagon's purchase.

"The whole premise smacks of retaliation," Shaffer told CNN on Saturday. "Someone buying 10,000 books to suppress a story in this digital age is ludicrous."

Read the whole thing here.

Active links added above. If a copy or two of the original edition escaped the flames, we should see it soon over at eBay in four figures. That is, unless DOD buys it first in five figures.

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Bob Sutton: 12 Things Good Bosses Believe

Image by Kumar Appaiah via FlickrRobert Sutton is a Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He studies and writes about management, innovation, and the nitty-gritty of organizational life. He is the author of Weird Ideas That Work and The No Asshole Rule.  His new book is Good Boss, Bad Boss, forthcoming from Business Plus. He also blogs at Work Matters. 

Below is an excerpt from his post in the Harvard Business Review on  the 12 Things Good Bosses Believe:

[I]'ve come to conclude that all the technique and behavior coaching in the world won't make a boss great if that boss doesn't also have a certain mindset.

My readings of peer-reviewed studies, plus my more idiosyncratic experience studying and consulting to managers in many settings, have led me identify some key beliefs that are held by the best bosses — and rejected, or more often simply never even thought about, by the worst bosses. Here they are, presented as a neat dozen:

1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me.
   
2. My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
   
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day.
   
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.
   
5. My job is to serve as a human shield, to protect my people from external intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe — and to avoid imposing my own idiocy on them as well.
   
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.

Read the whole thing here.  In late July, he also did the keynote at the Summit At Stanford talking about Good Boss, Bad Boss. Click here to see video of his talk.

A Warrior's Poem: "Murder--So Foul"

by Sgt. James Lenihan
World War II Veteran (1921- 2007) and Purple Heart Recipient

I shot a man yesterday
And much to my surprise,
The strangest thing happened to me
I began to cry.

He was so young, so very young
And Fear was in his eyes,
He had left his home in Germany
And came to Holland to die.

And what about his Family
were they not praying for him?
Thank God they couldn't see their son
And the man that had murdered him.

I knelt beside him
And held his hand--
I begged his forgiveness
Did he understand?

It was the War
And he was the enemy
If I hadn't shot him
He would have shot me.

I saw he was dying
And I called him "Brother"
But he gasped out one word
And that word was "Mother."

I shot a man yesterday
And much to surprise
A part of me died with Him
When Death came to close
His eyes.

The above poem was published in the Defense Centers of Excellence (DCoE) blog with the following notation:

While cleaning out their father Sgt. James Lenihan’s basement after he died, Brooklyn, N.Y. based Rob Lenihan and his sister, Joan Lenihan, found this poem that he wrote about World War II. Lenihan was assigned to the 413th Infantry in the 104th Infantry Division, U.S. Army, nicknamed "the Timberwolves." He toured Europe fighting.

With the mantra, "nothing in hell must stop the Timberwolves," the division was responsible for overrunning the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, and was later recognized as a liberating unit by the U.S. Army's Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Sgt. Lenihan was wounded in action and later received a Purple Heart. He never spoke with his family about the emotions he experienced during war, and they were very surprised to find this poem. Towards the end of Lenihan’s life, he actively sought out his old war buddies and described his time serving as one of the "worst and greatest experiences" of his life.

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An Undiplomatic Mistress Writes Book, Does Tour

I recently just saw this piece about UK's Ambassador to Yemen, Tim Torlot. The same one who survived a suicide attack last April in Sana'a.

Apparently, there's more to Ambassador Torlot than you and I may not care to know, but soon would be public knowledge because his mistress has written a book.  This whole thing went down the last couple of years when the ambassador's wife and daughter returned to England at the beginning of 2008 and the ambassador's mistress moved into the ambassador's official residence in the spring of that year. That must have been quite a scandal in a country where adultery is punishable with death by stoning.

This is not the first incident involving a British Ambassador and a mistress in recent years, of course.  Her Majesty's Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray also walked away from a 20-year marriage in favor of a bellydancer from a Tashkent nightclub. That dancer later opened a one-woman show in a London stage called The British Ambassador's Belly Dancer and wrote about it here.

Hey! I can see you rolling your eyes.

Anyway, below is Barbara Davies of Mail Online with some more bits on this story. Be warned, some parts might make you want to -- well, run to the vomitorium ... 

Six months after his affair with 41-year-old journalist Jennifer Steil threatened to cause a diplomatic crisis in the deeply Muslim country, the amorous 52-year-old's tumultuous private life has come back to haunt him once again.

And this time the drama comes straight from the pen of his raven-haired lover, who - having given birth to Torlot's daughter, Theadora Celeste - last November, has now published an extraordinary no-holds-barred account of the events leading up to their affair and their life together in Yemen's ancient walled capital.
[...]
As one source put it to the Mail: 'Torlot has behaved with a complete lack of honour. He is presumably well aware of how distasteful his behaviour was to so many people at the Embassy, and how it compromised his reputation.'
[...]
When news of her affair with Torlot became public, many assumed that the Ambassador was having some kind of mid-life crisis. Their liaison began not long after Torlot paid tribute to his loyal wife Bridie at his 50th birthday party.

'There was a lot of joking that he'd given himself a 50th birthday present to remember by sleeping with Steil,' says a source.
[...]
[H]er descriptions, often in semidiary form, also make clear that she set her sights on the Ambassador right from the moment she met him.
[...]
'My heart trips over itself. This is the man I want to marry. The thought flashes through my mind only seconds after our hands meet. I want to check his left hand but I can't look away from his eyes.'
[...]
My love for him has no expectations; it just is. But why, why must there be a wife?'

In fact, throughout her entire account of her relationship with Torlot, it is clear that Steil barely gave Bridie Torlot a second thought as she moved in to seduce her husband.
[...]
Friends say that Bridie Torlot finally 'deduced' what was going on from her husband ' s erratic behaviour. Steil says: 'By Christmas eve he'd told her everything, and by January she is gone.'
[...]
Since then, Steil has taken Bridie Torlot's place at the Ambassadorial Residence. She returned to London with Torlot last year to give birth to her daughter, and all three are now living back in Yemen.
[...]
The Foreign Office has continued to insist that it is a private matter for Torlot and Steil.

But thanks to Steil's indiscretions, it is hard to see how it can be described as that any longer.

What - you're calling this gossip? No, it's not. It's now called literature. Read the whole thing here. 

The book's title?  The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen. Below is Random House's book blurb:

Restless in her career and her life, Jennifer, a gregarious, liberal New Yorker, initially accepts a short-term opportunity in 2006 to teach a journalism class to the staff of The Yemen Observer in Sana'a, the beautiful, ancient, and very conservative capital of Yemen. Seduced by the eager reporters and the challenging prospect of teaching a free speech model of journalism there, she extends her stay to a year as the paper's editor-in-chief. But she is quickly confronted with the realities of Yemen--and their surprising advantages.  In teaching the basics of fair and balanced journalism to a staff that included plagiarists and polemicists, she falls in love with her career again. In confronting the blatant mistreatment and strict governance of women by their male counterparts, she learns to appreciate the strength of Arab women in the workplace. And in forging surprisingly deep friendships with women and men whose traditions and beliefs are in total opposition to her own, she learns a cultural appreciation she never could have predicted.  What’s more, she just so happens to meet the love of her life.

That blurb seem almost romantic, doesn't it?  The Woman Who Fell From the Sky  is on Facebook and also has its own website now. 

The last name acknowledged in the book?

"Timothy Achille Torlot, for reading this book more times than anyone should, and for loving me more than I thought anyone could."

No, she did not thank Mrs. Torlot for vacating the official residence quickly.

At the back of my mind I wonder about Mr. Torlot's career prospects after this.  I can't imagine a scandal like this would play well with the new FCO boss, traditionalist conservative, William Hague. But that remains to be seen. 

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US Embassy Algiers: Diplomatic Kerfuffle Over DCM’s “Rare Candor”

Steven Livingston of WaPo had a piece on Tuesday about the US taking issue with an author’s account of his visit at the US Embassy in Algiers. A bureau spokesman contends that the talk was off the record; the author contends that no government official ever told him directly or suggested that his conversation with the embassy’s #2 official was off the record.  I’m not sure if State took issue with mention of Mylar doors or security guards or if the issue has more to do with sensitive bilateral relations. Take a guess.  Excerpt below:

Michael Mewshaw did a dangerous and perhaps foolhardy thing for his 65th birthday: He embarked on a 4,000-mile overland journey through the terrorist-ridden lands of North Africa. But now that his firsthand account has hit the bookstores, he says his roughest experience has come at the hands of the U.S. State Department.

The department is in a snit over Mewshaw's portrayal of his visit to the U.S. Embassy in Algiers. Mewshaw, who has written 19 books -- fiction and nonfiction -- popped in on Thomas Daughton, the deputy chief of mission, after an exchange of e-mails in which Daughton welcomed the writer's visit. Their conversation was candid and jovial.

Mewshaw says that Daughton seemed a bit lonely -- stuck as he was in an inhospitable environment and grouped with a fairly small contingent at the embassy. "He doesn't leave the embassy much," Mewshaw says. "I don't think he gets a chance to talk to people very much."

In his new book, "Between Terror and Tourism: An Overland Journey Across North Africa," Mewshaw describes Daughton as being in his late 30s and as having a "wry, wisecracking style." It was a welcome change from what he experienced in his previous sit-down with a U.S. official. Pat Kabra, the U.S. public affairs officer in Tunis, was a by-the-book type. When Mewshaw asked her about the recent al-Qaeda kidnapping of two Austrians in the country, she recited what was in the newspapers. "She was like a recorded announcement, very cagey," Mewshaw says.

Not so, Daughton. He gave a frank portrait of Algeria's woes. He compared the country to Zimbabwe: "The need for regime and leadership change is similar in both," he said. He reminded Mewshaw that the men running Algeria in official positions or behind the scenes have been in power for nearly 50 years: "The government is sclerotic and self-serving." And he said these are backward and authoritarian leaders who disregard human rights: "We've been trying . . . to drag them into the 20th century," Daughton said. "Forget about the 21st."

Daughton conveyed that the country is rife with violence that goes unpublicized: "Here you have 50 to a hundred killed each month and you don't hear about it."

Read the whole thing here.

Apparently, in a Middle East publication, the U.S. Ambassador to Algeria David D. Pearce denies that Daughton ever said such things. The WaPo report also says that the State Department claims the conversation was off the record and "is attempting to cast doubt on Mewshaw's reporting."

Below is part of what UNCHR/Human Rights Watch, World Report 2010 says on  Algeria:

Under a state of emergency imposed in 1992, and with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika easily winning reelection to a third term, Algeria continued to experience widespread human rights violations. These included restrictions on freedom of the media and assembly, police abuse of terrorism suspects under interrogation, impunity afforded to members of the security forces and armed groups for past crimes, and continued failure to account for persons forcibly disappeared by state agents during the civil conflict in the 1990s. On a lesser scale than in previous years, militant groups continued their deadly attacks, mostly targeting the security forces.

The State Department’s own 2009 Human Rights Report for Algeria is here, in case you want to take a look. 

You might also want to read the Algeria 2009 Crime and Safety Report issued by the Regional Security Office in Algiers. Of course, it’s different when you read it in government reports like the Crime and Safety Report and when you hear a high ranking official actually say it.  The 2009 report did say:

• Since August 2006, security forces have taken the initiative in hunting down terrorists who continue to fight and an average of 20-30 people are still killed monthly country-wide.

• The al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group committed a number of spectacular suicide attacks, kidnappings, roadside bombs, and assassination attempts throughout the country as well as in Algiers.

• With the perceived success of the kidnapping of two Austrian tourists in Tunisia, terrorist groups increasingly appear to regard such activity as a means of obtaining revenue.  While the predominant targets remain wealthy local businessmen, the potential for a western target of opportunity exists.

The DCM at the center of the "storm" is no longer in Algiers.  Thomas F. Daughton arrived in Beirut in August 2009 as the embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission.  Below is a quick bio posted in US Embassy Beirut's website:

He joined the U. S. Foreign Service in 1989 and has served in Kingston, Jamaica (vice consul, 1989-91); Rabat, Morocco (political officer, 1991-93); and Thessaloniki, Greece (consul, 1997-2000) as well as in the Department of State in Washington, D.C. (1993-1997).  From 2000-2003, Mr. Daughton was Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. (2001-2002) in Libreville, Gabon.  That assignment was followed by a posting as Counselor for Political Affairs at the American Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Prior to arriving in Beirut, Mr. Daughton served for three years as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers, Algeria.  Mr. Daughton is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Virginia School of Law.  Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he was an associate at a law firm in New York. He speaks French and Greek.

In any case --

Had Mr. Daughton just recited the Crime and Safety Report and the HR Report for Algeria and avoided calling those folks, reportedly “backward and authoritarian leaders who disregard human rights,” perhaps this kerfuffle could have been avoided?   

And oh, please don’t call an ally "sclerotic and self-serving," that doesn’t sound nice; they might take offense if they hear the truth.

“Between Terror and Tourism: An Overland Journey Across North Africa,” was published by Counterpoint (February 16, 2010; 384 pages).  You probably can find Tom Daughton in the index.

The author, Michael Mewshaw was called “an intrepid travel writer and prolific novelist” by the Library Journal. The San Francisco Chronicle says he is “perhaps the best American writer you never heard of.” His book is also the National Geographic Traveler’s Book of the Month. The magazine calls it a riveting, good old-fashioned travel narrative that “transports you to a region you're not likely to visit.” Also this: “Mewshaw is an exemplary guide. Learned in literature, art, and history, he is adventurous, curious, and open-minded as a traveler, and daring and driven enough as a reporter to meet with fundamentalists in Egypt, venture to refugee camps in Morocco, and interview a repentant terrorist responsible for five thousand deaths in Algeria.”

See -- now I have to buy the book; wouldn’t have heard about it had the State Department not complained about it.

Consul General, Pig, Monkey Creative Writing Contest

Liam of Consular Corner is running a Creative Writing Contest over at his page in Facebook. The contest was inspired by this extraordinary photo ("Consul General, Pig, and Monkey") out of US Embassy Beijing:

“Consul General Linda Donahue shows Monkey and Pig

how easy it is to use the new DS-160 online visa application form.” 

  

Entries can take any form of written expression (short story, Haiku, limerick, etc.) but must include the words "Consul General" "Pig" and "Monkey." The winning entries (there may need to be more than one!) will be published in the monthly edition of Consular Corner. Please submit your entry by EOB next Thursday, March 11 to consularcorner.feedback@gmail.com.

More photos here from US Embassy Beijing. H/T to Consular Corner.

Books on Life in the Diplomatic Fold

Lest you think that State’s internal culture is a new subject -- you can read  A Theory of Public Bureaucracy: Politics, Personality, and Organization in the State Department by David Warwick from Harvard Press (1975).  There is also Managing Diplomacy (1984) where career diplomat, Harrison M. Holland writes about it at length (see pages 172-187). The surprising thing is how the organization has both changed and remained the same in so many ways. The most recent book about the service is Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service by former Foreign Service officer, Harry Kopp and the late Ambassador Charles Gillespie (former ambassador to Grenada, Colombia and Chile). The last one is a good read, although it does not go deep enough on the internal life of the organization:

Quote: The Diplomat’s Life: Controlled Schizophrenia

Cover of The Consul's Wife: A Novel

In the novel Mathews recounts a truism of diplomatic life which his friend McAuliffe has told him: "It's a kind of controlled schizophrenia, the diplomat's life," he (McAuliffe) said. "You wonder which side of the brain you really want to live in, the public one or the private one."

by James Thomas Snyder

from FSJ Reviews: July/August 1998 |

The Consul's Wife
W.T. Tyler, Henry Holt, 1998
hardcover, 216 pages

Gordon Adams' Book: Buying National Security

Stimson Center fellow, Gordon Adams has released a new book entitled, Buying National Security (How America Plans and Pays for Its Global Role and Safety at Home). Quick blurb: 

The tools of American statecraft—defense, diplomacy, foreign and security assistance, homeland security and intelligence—are rarely examined together. Adams and Williams fill this gap by examining how these tools work, how they are planned for, and how they are budgeted. Seeing policy through the lens of the budget can help decision makers and ordinary citizens discern the genuine priorities of national leaders from the oftentimes illusory ones portrayed in rhetoric. Simply put, policies and strategies cannot be carried out without a corresponding allocation of resources.

Buying National Security weaves a tapestry around the institutions, organizations, tools, and processes that support planning and resource allocation across the breadth of the American national security enterprise. The authors analyze the planning and resource integration activities across agencies of the Executive branch as well as examine the structure and processes the Congress uses to carry out its national security oversight and budgetary responsibilities. Finally, they review the adequacy of the current structures and process and evaluate proposals for ways both might be reformed to fit the demands of the 21st century security environment.

Quick reviews from a couple of old foreign policy hands:

Gordon Adams and Cindy Williams have accomplished a rare feat: producing the first major study of how America budgets for national security while simultaneously substantiating the eternal political truth that money is policy.
—Marc Grossman, Principal, Cohen Group; Former Director General of the Foreign Service

Gordon Adams and Cindy Williams write with deep knowledge and authority about the complex and difficult problems of funding our foreign policy and national security programs and objectives. Clear and concise, this book is a treasure trove of information on a vitally important and almost always difficult and confusing subject.
—Tom Pickering, Vice-Chairman of Hills and Company; former Under Secretary of State; former Ambassador to the United Nations

Buying National Security is published by Routledge Books at can be purchased through the publisher or at amazon.com.

Gordon Adams is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center and a professor in the US Foreign Policy field at American University. Mr. Adams was most recently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For the previous seven years, he was a Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and Director of the Schools Security Policy Studies Program. He was previously Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and served for five years as the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget as the senior White House budget official for national security.

He is a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His writings are also posted in Budget Insight, the Stimson Center blog on National Security Spending.

You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Adams_G.

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2010 War, Literature and the Arts Conference this Fall

The 2010 War, Literature, and the Arts (WLA) Conference will take place September 16th—18th, 2010, at the United States Air Force Academy.

This international conference will offer top-tier academic presentations and keynote speakers in a variety of genres to include literary and journalistic criticism, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film studies, photography, painting and music. The thematic center of the conference is the representation and reporting of America’s wars from 1990 to present. This timeframe presents a compelling opportunity to focus on the near past as well as current engagements: topics and creative output that directly affect all Americans in the present.

                                           
An international conference on War, Literature & the Arts at the United States Air Force Academy solicits both disciplinary and interdisciplinary presentations on “Representing and Reporting America’s Wars: 1990 to Present.”

The conference seeks a variety of genre submissions, both critical and creative, including literary criticism, journalism, rhetorical analysis, cultural studies, theory, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film studies, photography, painting, or music. As an international forum on recent warfare, the conference is designed to bring together a multitude of perspectives, critical approaches, and discourse communities on the topics of warfare and its representations in Kuwait, Balkans, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other conflict zones with direct, large-scale U.S. involvement.

The announcement says “we encourage submissions that illuminate, challenge, deconstruct, engage with, or create not simply the ‘official’ representations of America’s wars, but the sub-cultures that merit a more nuanced or sophisticated intellectual exploration.”

Abstracts, 250 words maximum, should include name, e-mail, mailing address, affiliation, genre, requirements for audiovisual support, computers, display space, or other technical requirements.  Send Abstracts to: 2010wla@gmail.com. Note that abstract submissions are accepted only from November 1, 2009 to March 1, 2010.

Featured Speakers:

Brian Turner is an American poet and the winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, (Alice James Books) the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. His honors since include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship.

He received his MFA from the University of Oregon. Turner is a United States Army veteran, and was an infantry team leader for a year in the Iraq War beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999 and 2000 he was with the 10th Mountain Division, deployed in Bosnia

Mark Boal is an American journalist and screenwriter. Valley of Elah, directed by Paul Haggis, was based on a 2004 article entitled “Death and Dishonor” penned by Boal. The story centered on the demise of Richard Davis, an Iraq War veteran who was murdered upon his return home in 2003. Mark Boal also wrote and produced the 2009 Iraq war thriller about an elite army EOD bomb squad, The Hurt Locker, with film director and business partner, Kathryn Bigelow. Boal has also written for The Village Voice, where he was a columnist, and Rolling Stone Magazine, where he is a contributing writer. Time magazine critic Richard Corliss described The Hurt Locker as "a near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes...this one's the tops."

Benjamin Busch was born in 1968 in Manhattan and grew up in rural central New York state. He graduated from Vassar College in 1991 with a major in Studio Art and soon thereafter accepted a commission in the United States Marine Corps. He served four years as an active duty infantry officer and then from 1996 until recently in the Selected Marine Reserve. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 as the Commanding Officer of Delta Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion and then again in 2005 with a Civil Affairs unit in Ar Ramadi.  The images in his exhibits of photographs, The Art in War (2003) and Occupation (2005), are from these two deployments. In 2004, he began playing the role of Officer Anthony Colicchio on the HBO series The Wire, and has appeared in the HBO series, Generation Kill in Africa. His first film as a writer/director, Sympathetic Details, was released in February of 2008 along with a new exhibit of photographs, Abstract Matter. His essay "Bearing Arms: A Serious Boy at War" appeared in the February issue of Harper’s.

Read more here. 

Blog Fate: Truth, Power, Authenticity and Death

War, Literature and the Arts Volume 21 (2009) had a piece by Brandon Lingle on former mil-blogger, Colby Buzzell (Colby Buzzell’s My War: An Outsider’s Voice from Inside Iraq). Excerpt below:                                  

Web logs or “blogs,” basically online journals, are now common among soldiers in war zones. Today, there are nearly 2,400 military blogs by Americans, and this virtually uncontrolled medium is allowing unheard voices into the global dialogue quicker than ever before. One of these voices is that of former Army specialist Colby Buzzell. His writing is interesting because it gets at truth in a subversive way that caught the attention of a wide audience including the military leadership.

Buzzell writes that kids from his working-class neighborhood had two choices after high school: “you either get your education on at some big-name university or you live at your parents’ and smoke pot and work a shit job, like telemarketing.” Not content with either of those choices, Buzzell was a 26-year-old punk rocker, skateboarding through “dead-end” jobs around San Francisco, California, when he decided to join the Army because he was bored. He ended up in Iraq and began anonymously documenting his experiences on a blog. Buzzell’s often cynical and satiric blog gained a significant following of readers. One reader wrote that Buzzell’s “writings about Iraq are more interesting than those of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings combined” which points to the apparent diminishing credibility of mainstream news outlets. But, the popularity of Buzzell’s blog invariably led to its temporary undoing when the website caught the eye of Army leadership who censored the online writings.

[…]

Buzzell best exhibits his Gonzo Style in a post titled Men in Black. It recounts a massive insurgent offensive downplayed by both the media and military. Buzzell intros the piece with the text from a CNN article titled “Mosul clashes leave 12 dead.” The CNN article makes no mention of US involvement in the fighting. Buzzell continues:

Now here’s what really happened…We were driving down Route Tampa when all of the sudden all hell came down around us, all these guys, wearing all black, a couple dozen on each side of the street, on rooftops, alleys […] everywhere, just came out of fucking nowhere and started unloading on us. AK fire and multiple RPGs were flying at us from every single fucking direction…[I] engaged them with a couple good ten-round bursts of some .50 cal, right at them…this gunfight had been going on for 41 hours when the ING (Iraqi National Guard) showed up to the party.(250-1)

Buzzell then posts the Army news release about the incident which claims that “Iraqi security forces repelled all of the attacks [and] multinational forces served in a supporting role,” (261) which completely contradicts Buzzell’s account of the battle. It is ironic that a figure like Buzzell provides a more accurate account of an event than the government or media. This incident exemplifies Gonzo Journalism’s adaptability to the blog format which itself is another tie to the picaresque model, that of a protean form.

Buzzell earned some media attention after his Men in Black post which thereby drew the Army’s interest. As the Army’s monitoring of Buzzell’s blog increased, he changed his writing style. The once detailed vignettes became stripped down caricatures when he began posting cynically vague statements like “the other day we went somewhere, and did something (counter-mortar mission).” Buzzell taunted the Army censors that he knew were watching: “I would like to take this time now to say a nice warm Mar-Haba (that’s ‘Welcome’ in Arabic) to all my new readers down at MI [military intelligence],” (285).

He also posted Amendment I of the US Constitution with the disclaimer “story developing…” (289). Buzzell was officially ordered to stop blogging after he posted a message from Dead Kennedy front man and first amendment activist Jello Biafra:

. . . we are the real patriots here, not the unelected gangsters and scam artists who started this war. Real patriots care enough about our country – and the world – to speak up, stand up, and fight back when the government breaks the law, lies, steals, and gets innocent people killed… As long as people in the field speak up we have a chance at preserving the truth. Otherwise it’s the bullshit gospel according to Fox News and the Bush-Croft regime. . . . (320)

Brandon Lingle is a 2000 graduate of the US Air Force Academy where he currently teaches English. His non-fiction or photography has appeared in WLA and The North American Review, The Mississippi Review online, and Juked Magazine.

Colby Buzzell’s blog My War: Killing Time in Iraq has not been updated since mid 2009.  You can read some of the press his blog had generated but the archives are almost completely offline.  His book with the same title was published in October 2005. Publisher’s Weekly called it a “relentlessly cynical volume” and said “Buzzell appears to be a sentimental misanthrope; he pours scorn on everyone from cooks to generals to President Bush. He also despises the media, the antiwar movement and everyone who thinks they understand what's happening in Iraq. That his superiors kept their hands off his blog for several months, however, shows they understood that despite its foul language, griping, insults directed at higher officers and occasional exposure of dirty linen Buzzell's work never really wavers in its portrayal of American forces as the good guys in a dirty war.”

   

Video of the Week: The Diplomatic Platypus

A reading of a cautionary poem about politics and diplomacy in which a small gaffe leads to disastrous consequences. "The Diplomatic Platypus" by Patrick Barrington.  Youtube video from SpokenVerse.

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Terror Suspect Abdulmutallab and Philip K. Dick's Minority Report

Image via Wikipedia

On December 26, FBI Detroit released a statement on the Nigerian national charged with attempting to destroy a Northwest Airlines aircraft. Excerpts from the press release: 

A 23-year-old Nigerian man was charged in a federal criminal complaint today with attempting to destroy a Northwest Airlines aircraft on its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Christmas Day and with placing a destructive device on the aircraft.

According to an affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, a Nigerian national, boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam, Netherlands on December 24, 2009 and had a device attached to his body. As the flight was approaching Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Abdulmutallab set off the device, which resulted in a fire and what appears to have been an explosion. Abdulmutallab was then subdued and restrained by the passengers and flight crew. The airplane landed shortly thereafter, and he was taken into custody by Customs and Border Patrol officers.

A preliminary FBI analysis found that the device contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a high explosive. Further analysis is ongoing. In addition, FBI agents recovered what appear to be the remnants of the syringe from the vicinity of Abdulmutallab’s seat, believed to have been part of the device.

[…]

Abdulmutallab required medical treatment and was transported to the University of Michigan Medical Center after the plane landed. He will make his initial court appearance later today.  

Interviews of all of the passengers and crew of Flight 253 revealed that prior to the incident, Abdulmutallab went to the bathroom for approximately 20 minutes, according to the affidavit.  Upon returning to his seat, Abdulmutallab stated that his stomach was upset, and he pulled a blanket over himself.  Passengers then heard popping noises similar to firecrackers, smelled an odor, and some observed Abdulmutallab’s pants leg and the wall of the airplane on fire. Passengers and crew then subdued Abdulmutallab and used blankets and fire extinguishers to put out the flames. Passengers reported that Abdulmutallab was calm and lucid throughout. One flight attendant asked him what he had had in his pocket, and he replied “explosive device.” 

Read the whole thing here.

The father of this terror suspect apparently went to warn the US Embassy in Nigeria: U.S. government officials tell The Associated Press that the Nigerian man charged with trying to destroy a jetliner came to the attention of U.S. intelligence in November when his father went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to express his concerns about his son.

The NYT reported that Mr. Abdulmutallab was issued a regular visitor’s visa by the United States Embassy in London in June 2008, the administration official said. There was no “derogatory information available” on him at the time he applied, and he was granted a two-year visa, which is still valid, the official said. He had traveled to the United States once before, to Houston in August 2008.

Via Laura Rozen of Politico: A TIDE record on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was created in November 2009; there was insufficient derogatory information available on the subject at that time to include him in the TSDB or its “no fly” or “selectee” lists. Thus, he was not “watchlisted” as of 25 December 2009.

This one from the TIDE Fact sheet:  The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) is the US Government’s (USG) central repository of information on international terrorist identities as established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. TIDE supports the USG’s various terrorist screening systems or “watchlists” and the US Intelligence Community’s overall counterterrorism mission. The Terrorist Identities Group (TIG), located in NCTC’s Information Sharing & Knowledge Development Directorate (ISKD), is responsible for building and maintaining TIDE.

The TIDE database includes, to the extent permitted by law, all information the U.S. government possesses related to the identities of individuals known or appropriately suspected to be or have been involved in activities constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, with the exception of Purely Domestic Terrorism information. A non-exclusive list of types of conduct that will warrant both entry into TIDE and terrorist screening nomination includes persons who:

• Commit international terrorist activity;

• Prepare or plan international terrorist activity;

• Gather information on potential targets for international terrorist activity;

• Solicit funds or other things of value for international terrorist activity or a terrorist organization;

• Solicit membership in an international terrorist organization;

• Provide material support, i.e. safe house, transportation, communications, funds, transfer of funds or other material financial benefit, false documentation or identification, weapons, explosives, or training;

• Are members of or represent a foreign terrorist organization.

Federal agencies nominate individuals for inclusion in TIDE based on evaluations of intelligence and law enforcement terrorism information.

But what if the individual does not fall into any of these nomination categories? 

Truth to tell this kind of reminds me of the conundrum in Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report. What do you do with a culprit that has not yet committed a crime? Do you arrest him or her before he commits a future crime thereby protecting the public from all prospective harm?  How do you stop, even arrest an individual when “there is insufficient derogatory information available?”

In Dick’s literary world, in the interest of efficiency (crime down at 99.8%) and a mega-security complex, through a prophylactic Precrime structure, “men were seized and arrested accused not of crimes they have committed, but of crimes they will commit; asserting that these men, if allowed to remain free, will at some future time commit felonies.”

The Precrime technology, as far as I know, is still in the realm of science fiction, but if a regular guy was able to convinced our government that a TV channel transmits signals to Al Qaeda -- is it too far off to imagine that some creative soul can sell some similar preterror technology before too long?  My fear is for the real world, where Philip K. Dick’s world is no longer inevitable; not in the interest of lean management and efficiency but in an emotional knee jerk reaction out of fear of the prospect of real harm and havoc in our shores. Such dark thoughts to end the year ...

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