The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
More Books by James Dunnigan
|
Dirty Little Secrets
Basic Math and the Terrorist Threat
by James Dunnigan
June 14, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Since 9/11, reports of the theft of police uniforms or explosives or even
shipping containers are often linked to possible terrorist activity. But whether
the link is pointed out by the police or other domestic security organizations,
public officials, or the media, it is rarely mentioned is that there is at
present no standard for determining what constitutes "normal" levels of such
activities. Consider some examples of thefts and other incidents that have been
linked to possible terrorist activity by local police, the FBI, or other
official agencies.
--The theft of about a dozen 40-foot shipping
containers, with transporters, in Connecticut over the past three
months.
--The theft of a shipment of border patrol uniforms from a
warehouse in California.
--An "upsurge" in the use of bogus police
credentials by people seeking to gain entry to certain potentially high value
targets, such as police stations, hospitals, and so forth.
The problem is
that we don't have a good statistical baseline to use to make comparisons with
the current rate of incidents with. Take the case of the Connecticut shipping
container thefts. Is there really a surge, or merely that we've gotten better at
reporting incidents? What's been the "track record" of this sort of activity in
the past? The police report that suggested a possible link to terrorists omitted
some vital information. Container theft is not at all uncommon, and it's a lot
easier to steal one with its transporter than without it. It would be useful to
know what the "normal" level of theft in the state has been over the past few
years. And it would also be useful if the police had mentioned whether the
containers were loaded or not. The same problem holds true in the case of the
theft of border patrol uniforms. Was the warehouse known to be used to store
border patrol uniforms, or was it just a general purpose facility? Was anything
else taken? And what was the rate of warehouse theft in the area?
As for
the bogus credentials "upsurge," there's long been a very lucrative traffic in
bogus credentials in the US. All sorts of badges and identification that looks
almost like the real thing can be had for a few bucks from catalogs and
websites. In some large cities petty criminals have been known to use phony
police badges to shake down hookers and small time drug dealers, and even to set
up local "protection" rackets, all while giving the real police a bad
reputation.
And people trying to gain entry to places like hospitals,
police stations, town halls, and even schools using bogus credentials is not
exactly rare either, just ask emergency room personnel or teachers. Sometimes
it's just some dolt pretending to be important (perhaps making like a doctor in
an emergency room, with some risk to the patients, or pretending to be a school
board official on an unscheduled inspection). But mostly it's someone looking
for an opportunity to steal something that isn't nailed down.
This is not
to say that there isn't a possible terrorist link to the thefts of the shipping
containers or the uniforms, or the alleged increase in the use of bogus
credentials, but rather that no one is responsible for determining what
constitutes a "normal" rate of such incidents, and given that, it's impossible
to tell if there's been a significant change in the rate of incidents.
|
|
