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| "Reasonable Suspicion" and Intelligence Failures on Flight 235 |
| 2010-01-04 |
| President Obama promises to investigate what went wrong, but there's no big mystery. He should simply review testimony put in the public record in early December, before the Christmas Day incident. Sen. Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee heard an explanation of how U.S. intelligence agencies decide when to put suspected terrorists on a watch list or a no-fly list. Timothy Healy, the head of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, explained the unit's "reasonable suspicion" standard like this: "Reasonable suspicion requires 'articulable' facts which, taken together with rational inferences, yadda, yadda..." If this sounds like legalistic language, it is. The difference between law-enforcement procedures and preventing terrorism could not be clearer. If a well-respected banker takes the initiative to come to a U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he thinks his son is a terrorist, we expect intelligence officers to make "hunches," such as that this person should have his visa reviewed and be searched before getting on a plane. The result of prohibiting hunches was that Abdulmutallab was waved through. In contrast, British authorities last May denied Abdulmutallab the right to re-enter the UK. MI5 is free to focus on gathering intelligence, making hunches and preventing wrongdoing. The British ban on Abdulmutallab didn't require any FBI-like "reasonable suspicion" test. We have a choice. We can limit how information is used or we can allow smart use of information to prevent attacks. If we continue to choose to limit how information can be used in our defense, we shouldn't be surprised when our defenses fail. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #2 So that's what Napolitano meant with "The system worked". I got it now! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2010-01-04 12:06 |
| #1 So, if one is exercises the legal term "reasonable suspicion" in the affirmative and is subsequently found to be incorrect, can they then be said to have been unreasonably suspecious? Were the actions of MI-5 and MI-6 unreasonable? The lack of "reasonable suspicion" then renders the subject, unquestionable, undoubted, palpable, indubious, requiring no further examiniation, tracking, or action? Evidently the data available at the time did not provide a Ok, I get it now. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-01-04 11:10 |