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!