12/23/2010

Homeland Security, and its Secretary, Janet Napolitano, are scrambling for answers. Because they're trying to cover up for the fact that the director, James Clapper knew nothing about the arrest in Britain of 12 men allegedly involved in an Al Qaeda plot to attack targets there.

Clapper was being interviewed Tuesday on ABC News by Diane Sawyer, who asked him about the event while discussing what the U.S. is doing to prevent another attempted terror attack. She asked: "First of all, London. How serious is it? Any implication that it was coming here?"

After several silent seconds, Clapper quietly turned his head and said, "London?" At that point the adviser accompanying him, John Brennan, explained that the British had informed U.S. officials about the plot that morning. Clapper said "Oh."

What struck me when I read about the preceding interview is that I'd just been thinking about the situation regarding the WikiLeaks document dump. And it seemed to me that this was one more example of how weak and poorly administered our whole security system is at the moment. But then, I had another thought.

We've recently seen how some foreign entity was able to crack the supposedly absolutely secure Iranian nuclear project, and somehow place worms in their software. And technology and systems are now capable of all kinds of spying and infiltration never possible before. So, in that way, the whole world of intelligence and cold warfare is changing.

So, if that kind of capability now exists, and warfare is much more of a mind game, what if those aspects are being employed more readily. For example, what if every aspect of the British Al Qaeda capture was known to us, but we simply played dumb. And in that way try to lull our enemies into underestimating us, while we simply sit back, waiting for them to try something here that we'll abort and round up the perps.

Along those same lines, there's the WikiLeaks situation. And while everyone's jumping up and down because highly classified information's being exposed, what if it's all disinformation? Purposely put together and full of misdirection and disguised data hoping to send enemies down false trails and into traps. If that's the case, this guy Assange is willingly and unknowingly doing the dirty-work for our intelligence agencies, unless he's actually a part of the plot.

I guess what it all boils down to is, nobody who isn't on the inside of the game really knows very much at all, but it seems to make very good headlines. And in the meantime, there haven't been any very threatening terrorist attacks and Iran's got all kinds of nuclear problems. What that means, I suppose, is that there really are some good guys someplace that actually do know what's going on.

That's it for today folks.

Adios