Signal to Noise ratios The hardest part of intelligence work is to filter out the random noise while leaving the true intelligence intact. We are finding out now that all the signs for Sept. 11 were known ahead of time. Unfortunately, nobody put the pieces together in time to avert the attack. While some are savaging the Bush administration for failing to recognize the imminent threat, we have to realize that, without the knowledge we have now, those random bits of information meant almost nothing. Once you've seen the picture, it's easy to connect the dots. The real trick is to connect the dots when there is no picture, and hundreds of false dots for every real one.
Looks like we may get a second chance.
Government sources told Fox News Saturday that an increase in Al Qaeda activity had been detected and that there are indications that an attack of "equivalent magnitude" to the Sept. 11 attacks is a possibility.Those officials said the information was overheard by government agencies listening to phone calls between members of Al Qaeda and obtained through interrogations and informants.
A similar increase in 'chatter' occurred prior to Sept. 11.
The New York Times reported Saturday that the increased chatter was so general that the government could only take "broad defensive measures."
Our intelligence agencies are still crippled by the reliance on signal intelligence instead of human intelligence. We can thank President Carter for that one. We don't have operatives within Al Qaida, but we do have something almost as good. We have ourselves.
We don't gather intelligence professionally, but all of us, particularly us bloggers, are used to researching and investigating things that catch our attention. The pieces to the puzzle are out there, just like last time. Can we recognize them and put them together in time?
A couple of months after the attack, my sister, who works for a safety supply company, got a call from a man with an Arabic accent. He was looking for respirators, but wouldn't say what he needed them for. Most respirators come without cartridges, and you order different cartridges based on what type of work you will be doing in them. He wouldn't tell her what work they would be doing, but did specify the cartridge type, one which would be appropriate for filtering out airborne radioactive contamination. He wanted the respirators shipped to his location in Washington DC.
She was suspicous for a couple of reasons.
She reported the call to her manager, who told her to report it to the FBI tip line. She did so, and was later contacted by an agent, who took her story in detail. She gave them the contact information, and they hung up. She got another call from the FBI a few days later, telling her that they were investigating, and to take the guys order if he called back.
About a week later, she got a call from the company president, commending her on taking action. Apparently the FBI had called him, to compliment him on his employee.
We haven't heard anything since then. It could have been nothing, or she may have given them a lead which is providing some of the 'chatter.' This is the key difference between pre and post 9/11. We are all awake and paying attention now. We know in our gut that there are people out there who want to kill us. We won't let it happen again.
I want to remind you of this piece, written days after the attack on the WTC.
Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism -- the most deadly yet invented -- came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.
And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn't a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.
United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world's most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who'd had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.