Stupidity, Fraud, and National Security

Not only don't we know how much money our security overlords spend To Keep Us Safe -- and neither do they -- and not only are they wasting billions of dollars (while we're being told that we have to "Cut the Budget!" and "Bring Down the Deficit!" and "Blame the Unions!" but I digress), and not only are we allowing ourselves to be stripped, scanned, irradiated, and groped So The Terrorists Won't Win, and not only do we have legislation that proves they already have, but now we discover that Our Protectors also believe in counter-terrorism weapons on a par with secret decoder rings and tin-foil hats.

A con man extraordinaire named Dennis Montgomery has bamboozled our brilliant security know-it-alls, not once, but over and over again.

As this article in the New York Times details, Montgomery sold the U.S. on more than 20 million dollars' worth of bogus Catch A Terrorist technology.  Even after they realized he was full of shit, the CIA and Air Force continued to give him contracts.  (No surprise that Dick Cheney and friends had their dirty fingers in the pie, by seeing to it that Montgomery got a slice.)

What did Montgomery claim?  That he could detect secret coded messages in . . .

wait for it . . .

Al Jazeera broadcasts!  Of course!  Those sneaky Arabs!  Always trying to put one over on us!  They must've studied subliminal seduction.

And not only decode secret messages, Montgomery said, but he could also:

identify terrorists from Predator drone videos; and detect noise from hostile submarines — prompting an international false alarm that led President George W. Bush to order airliners to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003.

Our overlords suspected they were being had as early as 2003 -- thanks in part to the hated French, who figured it out first -- but they still continued to work with Montgomery as late as 2009.  Six years of fraud, waste, and bullshit.  And now the government is trying to keep it secret.

Too late.  It's on the front page of the NYT, with more coverage sure to follow.  But hey, look at it this way -- there's that great American ingenuity in action.  Try hard enough, and who knows -- maybe you, too, can market your own special brand of security technology, and make millions doing it!

UPDATE:  Speaking of waste, fraud, and abuse . . . Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the TSA’s proposed budget for fiscal 2012, which raises spending 5.7 percent, to $8.1 billion. Much of the $459 million increase would go to hiring another 3,270 employees, for a total TSA work force of 58,401, most of them screeners.  As I keep saying, employment in a down economy -- TSA molester, DHS spy, or soldier of fortune -- jobs, jobs, jobs -- the benefits of a permanent state of war!

Comments

[Sir Charles]

It's amazing the degree to which our alleged fiscal conservatives don't care to actually scrutinize spending on either security or defense. Nor is there any semblance of cost-benefit analysis permitted.

[minstrel hussain boy]

one thing i have never been able to shake since around lunch time on 9/11/2001 has been the funeral speech of pericles from thucydides "the peloponnesian wars."

not only is it one of the most superb examples of a wartime leader explaining to the people "this is who they are - this is who we are - that is why we must fight them" in all of history.

at the end of that magnificent speech pericles warned the athenians that if they allow the war with sparta to cause them to cease being athenians. if they began, in the name of wartime expediency, to limit their democracy, if they allowed the expense to cause them to stop building their monuments and temples, if they quit holding their theatre festivals and quit writing great literature and poetry then "the spartans will have won this war, no matter what outcomes may happen on all the battlefields."

from the first responses, all through the tortured, fractured outright lies and halftruths that sent our young people into the senseless meatgrinder of iraq. the worldwide network of torture dungeons. the abandoning of all pretenses to the rule of law. the shredding of the constitution. through it all, through our inability to even fill in that goddamned hole in the ground in manhatten, we have ceased to be, or even aspire to the things that made us great.

the ideals of our nation, outlined so beautifully by jefferson, adams, paine, henry, hamilton, madison and countless others, are so powerful that the mere attempt to live up to them is ennobling.

now. we don't even try.

[oddjob]

It is to weep.........

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

It always struck me as somewhat odd that no one proposed (at least so far as I have heard) that the few acres of land in lower Manhattan that were the world trade center should be turned into a park, a cemetary and a memorial to those who died there. Instead we have grandiose aims to erect yet another symbol of butch bellicosity. It is even more ironic when you realize that the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc. would soil themselves in a heartbeat at the unexpected sound of a loud firecracker. Cowards every one.

Now we must choose. It is certainly not our last chance but to choose to resist now is far wiser than to be forced to resist later. All the issues that are before us have two sides, the reality and the absurdity of mythmakers lies.

I saw an apt line somewhere earlier today where some rethuglican said, paraphrasing, - so we have to choose who makes the laws, the voters or the unions! - It is so simple to correct and bring in line with actuality that it is almost trivial, but not... unions/corporations.

In my opinion the outrage has not yet reached a sufficiently high pitch to be heard. The fascists will brazen it out, they really have no choice, if they fold even a little bit their rabid supporters will lynch them. And there is always that lure of becoming independently rich.

[oddjob]

Speaking of stupidity and fraud, the Dick spews the santorum.

[nancy]

Hope you are all OK--this is the longest I've ever seen silence here.

[Sir Charles]

Nancy,

We are -- I was just actually socializing a lot this weekend. Probably a healthy sign for me.

I will post something shortly.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

KN: Such a 'quiet place' as a memorial has been suggested, several times, I believe. However, while it is a tempting idea, it runs into some important practical facts.

If you look at the 'base' of the project, it's only taking a little land out of circulation, but for New Yorkers, land is measured vertically. People who are not New Yorkers don't really appreciate that the original WTC was almost a small city in itself, with 13 million square feet (over a million square meters) of office space. The basement parking garage area alone had as many stores as a large town business district.

That's a lot of people working -- secretaries, office managers, light bulb changers and old women in babushkas wielding mops as well as day traders and 'high rollers' -- who have to be fed, who buy clothes, CDs, books, and furniture during lunch breaks. The buisinesses that cater to them probably employ as many people as the offies. (And don't forget that building the building alone will employ -- Sir C, can you give us an idea, anything I'd put down would be a wild guess. Anyway, that's a LOT of jobs to forgo as much as we might want the calm and restful place.)

[oddjob]

There used to be a restaurant in one of the towers named "Windows on the World" that was famous for its wine collection.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

I am not sure how many man hours would be involved in the building, but it will be huge. And definitely an enormous boost to the local economy. As you say, the WTC complex was incredibly large. It also had an enormous transportation hub under it, where the New York subway, the Long Island Railroad, and the PATH trains from New Jersey all met. I have clients who worked on the originial WTC traveling from many places in the country to grab the chance to do work at NYC wages.

oddjob,

I was in Windows on the World a few weeks before 9/11. It kind of freaked me out because the windows were floor to ceiling and you felt very vulnerable standing next to them 110 stories or so up. I couldn't really imagine being, like some of my clients, an iron worker on that job. There's not enough money in the world to get me to do that.

[Gene O'Grady]

Speaking of windows and jobs I'd never do, when I worked in downtown San Francisco (140 New Montgomery, really solid building structurally, Aztec art deco on the outside, fabulous decorations in the old meeting halls) we had an earthquake. Not the big Loma Prieta one, but big enough so that people in the Central Valley told us over the phone that they were feeling it before we did.

Anyhow, later that afternoon I was talking to one of the window washers who'd been hanging outside of the 15th floor when the quake hit. Said it didn't faze him.