Brooding Cynyc

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

TRY ALL TERRORISTS IN NYC

FOR POST 9-11-2001 NYC

JUSTICE HAS BEEN DELAYED,

AND THEREFORE DENIED

CLERIC WHO PREACHES TERRORISM & INCITED TERRORIST ACTS,

ABU HAMZA aL-MARSI,

TRIAL SCHEDULED TO BEGIN BY END OF APRIL,

TRIALS AT NUREMBERG - PRE-GENEVA CONVENTIONS

TAGS: TERRORISTS SHOULD FACE TRIAL IN NYC, GITMO

MILITARY TRIBUNALS A FAILURE, U.S. JURISPRUDENCE

CAN HANDLE THESE CASES, NYPD DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE

ANALYSIS REBECCA WEINER, NYPD COMMISSIONER BILL BRATTON,

NYPD INTEL UNIT

(Wednesday, April2, 2014 NY,NY) The NYPD Director of Intelligence Analysis Rebecca Weiner yesterday issued a warning of a sort, regarding the possible increased threat to the City as the trial of the extremely radical terrorist Abu Hamza al-Masri opens here in Manhattan Federal Court later this month. NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton addressed a large gathering of Jewish leaders also making the point that the upcoming terrorist trial will coincide with the beginning of Passover and that might prompt terrorists to lash out. While no one in NYPD can identify any known plans or any “actionable” intelligence to work with, Bratton perhaps felt it was a good time to remind all New Yorkers that our City remains target number one for terrorists. Commissioner Bratton has been away from New York City for the last 20 years and he does not need to remind any of us about our perpetually looming threat. His predecessor, Ray Kelly, took the initiative after September 11, 2001 to make certain that our City would never again be as vulnerable as it was on that sunny Tuesday morning in September 13 years ago. He formed a robust Intelligence Unit with world-wide connects, revamped the Counter Terrorism and Emergency Services Units and did everything he could to provide the City of New York with our own functional Intelligence Service; a smaller, more effective, efficient, and productive CIA of our own. Though there have been close calls and other attempts made to deliver destruction and death in our City since 9-11-01 each was either thwarted by timely interdiction or uncovered well in advance by NYPD.

CHEATED, DENIED, INSULTED

It has been said for hundreds of years of western jurisprudence that “justice delayed is justice denied”. This legal maxim applies to the aggrieved, the plaintive, or victim of a crime. Our criminal justice system with our Courts as the ultimate arbiters of “justice” has been severely flawed, in many ways broken, for far too long. Despite its inherent deficiencies it does, often at a glacial pace, manage – barely – sufficiently enough to fill our jails and prisons, to suck up billions of dollars for federal, state and municipal Courts. Our system of jurisprudence is rooted firmly in the old English document, The Magna Carta, wherein the basic machinations and conceptual fundamentals are delineated. As times have changed so too have some of our judicial policies and procedures. From local Courts up to decisions rendered by our Supreme Court, we have acquired a body of precedent based on the application of our Constitutionally derived laws. Still, one can argue that for better or worse our system works as it should more often than not. One of its obvious flaws is the matter of timely justice.

A week ago today just a few blocks from here Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, was successfully tried and convicted on all counts stemming from his conspiracy to commit mass murder, of being a prominent al Qaeda figure before and after the attack on American icons on September 11, 2001. In an uncharacteristically rapid fashion from the time Abu Ghaith was handed over to US authorities from the Jordanian officials, just a little over 13 months elapsed. That is as close to a record breaking trial in such a complex arena as we've yet witnessed.

Meanwhile, we continue to hold “detainees”, “enemy combatants”: men who planned, plotted and fought Americans via terrorist attacks on object of US interest as they did on the ill-defined battle fields of Afghanistan after 9-11-01. Many were tribal “warriors” fighting their own internecine battles that far and away predated anything related to deeming the United States an enemy. Some were members of the firebrand extremist Muslim sect the Taliban who had essentially served as a “central government” in Afghanistan since they helped defeat the forces of the invading USSR; an almost decade long war where we helped arm and equip the mujahedeen. They would come to use some of the remaining arms that we put in their possession as we supported them as our proxy against the USSR in what our government at the time considered to be aggressive Soviet expansion.

So much for history; it has all been well documented, studied and analyzed. Though the threat from terrorists of every denomination, inclination, motivation and ideology remains very real to this day, we have kept men in prison, some for up to 13 years at the American Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo). Many had spent months or years incarcerated at CIA “black site” while others spent years of torture at the hands of some of our “allies” in our “War on Terror.” Yes, it is common knowledge that harsh interrogation tactics were used on some of those captured from October 2001 until sometime in 2004. What type of intelligence these tactics produced is also widely accepted as having been basically useless. In a practical sense since many of these “detainees” had been held captive for years whatever intelligence they might once have had knowledge of had no value since so much time had elapsed. Intelligence, particularly “actionable” intelligence has a shelf life just like milk; it is only good for so long.

DELAYING JUSTICE, PROLOGING SORROW, GRIEF, AND FRUSTRATION

After all the hand-wringing in the Cheney/Bush Administration regarding the legal status of the men our Military was capturing and incarcerating around the world, the Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, a few of his closest cohorts and the Office of the Vice President, it was determined that those held at Gitmo would face “military tribunals” at that prison base to keep them out of Courtrooms on American soil and thus deprive them of all the rights that come with it. They also presented the argument that these dangerous men could not stand trial in an open criminal court because some of the Prosecution’s witness’s testimony would likely reveal “intelligence methods and sources” that would compromise our intelligence networks overseas in on-going operations and between our Allies.

Lost in all the years of trying to fit the square pegs that were our captured “enemy combatants” into the round holes of our Federal Court system, were the thousands of relatives of all those lost on September 11, 2001. For them, right up until last week, there had been no one ever tried for being directly associated to "beyond reasonable doubt" the 9-11-01 al Qaeda operation. The successful conviction of Suleiman Abu Ghaith set a precedent in that it has been proven to prosecute others among those housed at Gitmo in our Federal Courts. There have been other convictions of terrorists in Federal Courts over the last 12 years but they had dubious links to al Qaeda, seemed to be “homegrown” small cells of individuals or radicalized “lone wolf” players.

That all the men still held at Gitmo remain in some military/legal limbo is indeed justice delayed and justice denied; neither of which should all the families of the deceased, survivors, friends and all those other wise affected by the September 11, 2001 attacks be haunted by. The Cheney/Bush aversion to trying these men on US soil in Federal Court was insulting to our Criminal Justice system. If our President and Vice President express reluctance and trepidation regarding the ability of our Courts that is a sad statement that essentially expresses a lack of confidence in the very Constitution they’d been sworn to defend.

JUSTICE ON THE HOME FIELD

Trials are virtually always held in the jurisdiction where they the crime was committed. Exceptions are made, at times, when a particularly high profile case and subsequent media coverage might pollute the jury pool but they remain rare exceptions. The notion that a defendant or defendants would not get a fair trial in the same jurisdiction where they perpetrated their criminal acts implies that those citizens called for jury duty are incapable of performing their tasks based on the evidence presented to them as well as the arguments from the defense. While it is impossible to find a crime in American history of the magnitude of September 11, 2001, it has now been proven that a jury comprised of New Yorkers can deliberate with due diligence and act accordingly.

Since New Yorkers and all those in the NYC Metropolitan Area lost so much on September 11, 2001 and continue to watch family, friends, neighbors and coworkers die from 9-11-01 related malignant diseases it should be paramount that every trial of a defendant directly linked to the planning, plotting and support of the diabolical plan stand and face a Federal Court just a few blocks from the site that once was the home of our Twin Towers. Obviously, the military tribunal process is broken, flawed, and not up to the challenge regarding the few remaining “high value” prisoners. The United States government has spent untold hundreds of millions not just on the facilities at GITMO but for the use of other “off shore black sites.”

ON DECK AND ON THE DOCKET

The next al Qaeda terrorist to be tried here in New York City will be the one-eyed, armless radical Abu Hamza al-Masri. He has been a high profile ultra-extreme cleric and terrorist largely responsible for the al Qaeda attack on tourists in Yemen in 1998. While al-Marsi may not have as much blood on his hands, or, more accurately his hooks, as some of those still in Gitmo and among those already tried and convicted, he once wielded a great deal of influence within the communities of young Muslim men via his vitriolic preaching and constant appeal for as many of them as possible to wage “holy jihad” against Americans, and other westerners, where ever they could. His sermons, available on CD and on-line, were testaments of the duties that young men should embark upon and to step up to defend Islam from all outside threats. He ceaselessly encouraged throngs of young Arab and Muslim men to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan for terrorist training at various al Qaeda camps.

Now that the Federal Court in New York City appears to be gaining some experience and traction in their efforts to try all those held on charges of either being or already engaged in some military/legal process waiting to have a “military tribunal” begin, those incarcerated should be systematically prosecuted. The thought that they are in some mystical way imbued with magical powers that will usher unprecedented chaos into our Federal Court is beyond patently false, it is ludicrous.

All legal issues aside the only place that any form of “justice” can be meted out for these men is right here on the Island of Manhattan a few short blocks away from the newly constructed One World Trade Center Tower. Our Courts cannot fear that these men will hide behind the defense that they were captured, tortured and often exposed to “enhanced interrogation tactics”. Some of them probably were. In the days and weeks immediately following September 11, 2001 as our initial wave of CIA paramilitary operatives and elite military Special Forces Units were inserted into Afghanistan, the greatest concern was that there were already similar terrorists strikes already “in the pipe line” and it would only be through the gathering of intelligence, both signal and vocal, that we could avoid another attack on our homeland. The United States has perpetrated far more egregious allegations under the auspices of "National Security" in the past. This should have been a no-brainer.

The military justice system, for what it is, has failed miserably regarding the adjudication of the detainees. Many had been held for years, without any formal charges only to be released and repatriated to their native land or another country willing to allow them entry. It is well beyond time to get these cases to Court. This is not a statement in support of our prisoners; this is a call to arms in that they need to face an American Court of law soon; as soon as possible.

It is improbable to think that these men possess such incriminating information about our intelligence gathering and interrogation tactics that they are “too dangerous” to enter a Federal Court in New York City. The “Super Max” Federal Prison in Florence, Colorado presently houses other convicted terrorists as well as some of the most high profile – as in the most “dangerous” criminals – in the country. Super Max has their neon red ‘Vacancy’ light flashing. They have plenty of room, our Constitution and Courts are well equipped to prosecute and by virtually every New Yorker’s interpretation this is the ONLY place in the world where we will, after all these years of fits and starts, motions and counter-motions, let the system play out and convict the guilty and impose a sentence. That is the best justice we can hope for. If we lived in a more “just” country those terrorists who are convicted would be sentenced to death and that sentence would be carried out swiftly.

LEGAL PRECEDENT

The challenges the Nuremberg Trials faced prosecuting Nazi war criminals after World War II should serve as a template, in a way, for prosecuting these men. The Trials at Nuremberg predated some of the fundamentals of the Geneva Conventions so; there is legal precedence at least in an international criminal court setting.

That 13 years after that lethal attack on our country we still have detainees in Gitmo is not only an embarrassing statement about our military/justice process but also tarnishes, belittles the idea of American Justice.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/abu-hamza-al-mastra-trial-spark-city-attack-official-article-1.1742609

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2013/03/latest-al-qaeda-capture-should-be-tried.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/26/eric-holder-terror-trial_n_5036190.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/nyregion/bin-ladens-son-in-law-is-convicted-in-terror-trial.html?hp

http://www.ny1.com/content/news/205878/guilty-verdict-returned-in-trial-of-bin-laden-s-son-in-law

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/secrecy-around-ksm-guantanamo-hearings.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/26/osama-bin-laden-son-in-law_n_5036249.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/26/holder-cites-terrorism-conviction-vindication-us-t/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/nyregion/jurors-begin-deliberations-in-osama-bin-laden-relatives-case.html?src=rechp

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/25/us-nuclear-security-summit-idUSBREA2O12820140325

Monday, March 31, 2014

HELLO GENERAL. WELCOME TO NYC

NYPD MOS WOULD LIKE TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT EXACTLY THAT YOU ARE GOING TO BE DOING?

PHILIP EURE THE FIRST INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR THE NYPD.

DOES NYPD REALLY NEED AN IG?

TAGS: NYPD COMMISSIONER BILL BRATTON, NYPD EURE,

NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL CREATED THIS POSITION,

REDUNDANT AND UNWANTED BY MANY IN NYPD,

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO CAMPAIGN PROMISE,

WHAT EXACTLY IS HIS JOB?

(Monday March 31, 2014 19^th Precinct,UES, NYC) It is one thing to have a new Mayor struggling to get his Administration off the ground to be booed and jeered as he threw out the ceremonial “First Pitch” at Citi Field in Flushing Meadows earlier today, the home of the New York Mets. The boisterous reception Mayor de Blasio received was more a demonstration of New Yorker’s tradition and a mighty touch of Spring Fever; after a record breaking brutal winter that landed punch after punch on our City, it is finally Spring.

As the spectators at Citi Field made their thoughts known there was an equal amount, perhaps a much greater amount of jeering and booing in the locker rooms of NYPD’s 77 Precincts, 12 Transit Districts, 9 housing Police Serving Areas as well as in every special Unit throughout the Department. Their expressions of dissatisfaction and frustration could not have been any further removed from the new Mayor’s growing unpopularity. The hue and cry within NYPD is in the creation of a new post, the position of NYPD Inspector General (IG). There are so many important questions surrounding this newly created IG Position that most of the upper echelon in One Police Plaza, including the new NYPD Commissioner himself, Bill Bratton, are unable to provide any specifics as to the role this IG is expected to play in an organization that is tightly knit, steeped in tradition and already the most scrutinized Police Department in the United States, if not the free world.

The creation of the Inspector General position was passed by the NYC Council in 2012 and rapidly vetoed by then Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The City Council was able to override the Mayor’s veto and the position was created. Actually the current Mayor, Bill de Blasio had made the appointment of an Inspector General for the NYPD a central plank in his campaign platform. The argument in those days surrounded allegations that a popular, highly-effective Police patrol tactic, “Stop, Question and Frisk” (SQF), condensed by its most vehement adversaries to simply “Stop and Frisk” was an abuse of power and inherently biased. That shorter phrase became a rallying cry for activists in various communities who contended that the entire practice of SQF was akin to “racial profiling” and that “young African American and Latino men” were disproportionally at risk for SQF. Despite the fact that the crime rates in all categories continued to decrease in the last years when Ray Kelly was the NYPD Commissioner there was no absence of critics; then candidate de Blasio being one of the most vocal. The self-appointed “activists” as well as several prominent clergymen serving minority communities convoluted the policy and practice of SQF as obviously discriminatory and their incendiary rhetoric only served to intensify increasing their constituents’ hostility towards NYPD.

POLICING, POLITICKING, PLACATING

Some forty or so years go the Rolling Stones famously sang, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try some time you just might get what you need...” It remains one of the classics from the rock and roll days and it is as true an axiom as one might find in a philosophy text. Standing on Park Row with the imposing edifice of One Police Plaza in front of you, you should have no doubt that as much politicking as policing is orchestrated way up on the 14^th floor. It is often a toxic brew and a dangerous combination of ingredients that are unnatural partners. Every aspect of policing and securing the City of New York is analyzed, assessed, discussed, reviewed and approved and, there are times, some members of the brass are not pleased with the results. Often they do not get what they want. That alone is a good reason to keep politics as far away from actual day to day Law Enforcement. Can you imagine if the NYPD Commissioner had to run for Office like thousands of County Sheriffs across the country do? The NYPD Commissioner is chosen by the Mayor of New York City and serves “at the pleasure of the Mayor”. That’s about as political as one might want that position to be. However, this being New York City, the most famous City in America, if not the world, NYPD and whoever leads it is constantly subject to a level of scrutiny a lab rat couldn’t withstand.

Another old axiom that could have been posed to all those hundreds of thousands of NYC voters, a “broad coalition” was, “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it”, and thus far they are now seeing what they wanted, what they expected may indeed not be anything close to what they’ve gotten, at least up to this point. As bitter at Mayor Bloomberg as they were and dissatisfied with Ray Kelly’s NYPD, they viewed the tall candidate with a supportive, assertive African American wife, as the man who really would “be Mayor for the entire City”. As de Blasio faces every day all day the reality of the duties of his office and just how challenging a job it is, his supporters are already growing restive and feel disillusioned. So, obviously, this is a good time to lift all their spirits and appoint an Inspector General to…what,…oversee the Commissioner?...Oversee the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB)?...or is he the first inhabitant of an office that is not only redundantly redundant but also completely baffling to many of the “old hands” in the Department? Despite several phone conversations with well-placed sources ensconced in 1PP earlier today, not one could provide a legitimate answer for that question: what the hell is an IG going to do?. What each of them did express were opinions ranging from “Let’s wait and see” to “I’m putting my papers in tomorrow. Fuck it.” The last thing NYPD needs at this time is a “brain drain”, a mass exodus of Cops who worked their way up through the ranks, Cops who earned promotions and Gold Shields based on their dedication, sacrifice, service and valor not quotas or appeasement.

LET’S MEET THE MAN

Last Friday New York City appointed its first-ever Inspector General for the NYPD — Philip Eure. Eure, a lawyer by training is currently the Head of the District of Columbia Office of Police Complaints. He has held that post for many years and has functioned as more of a placater between the Washington, DC inner city community and the Washington DC Metro Police. His position in DC appears to be just as nebulous as it has been eluded to be here. In the weekly game of musical chairs that is the accountability session, IG Eure might be the one left standing when the music stops. The NYPD already do and have answered to a Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), has a more “proactive” Internal Affairs Division (IAD) and has as many lawyers on staff as does any entity with 35,000 plus employees. Will Commissioner Bratton be held accountable to IG Eure or will he focus his attentions elsewhere? These are the pressing questions that no one can answer with any specificity.

WHO IS THIS GUY?

Anyone old enough to recall the days of Dr. Downtown Lee Brown, an outsider that then Mayor David Dinkins installed as his second Police Commissioner, NYPD can be a very difficult organization to be accepted by. Philip Eure is another “outsider” and has many “hearts and minds” to win over in the rank and file, the heads of the various unions, and the top brass Bratton has implanted on the floors below him at 1PP.

Mr. Eure did serve a stint as a Federal Prosecutor before drifting towards positions more closely affiliated with actual Law Enforcement. Still, many Members of Service (MOS) of the NYPD have expressed grave doubts about his capabilities and his jurisdiction. Speaking with an MOS earlier this evening working a foot post near the Russian Mission on 68t Street, who spoke only under an agreement of anonymity noted, “I don’t know what to make of it. None of us do. It seems that the Job is always trying to make the Job harder. We’ve already got enough scumbag IAD guys, guys who were chosen right out of the Academy so they wouldn’t have any relationships with other Cops, wasting time and money on bogus “sting” operations on Cops? It’s like every night you go to work and it’s like what the fuck”.

We will all have to wait and see.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/meet-cops-article-1.1738486

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/philip-eure-picked-nyc-inspector-general-nypd-article-1.1737785

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/grip-bill-article-1.1728752

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-moving-city-wrong-direction-giuliani-article-1.1731121

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/nyregion/at-citi-field-mayors-first-pitch-is-a-winner-even-if-his-team-allegiance-is-not.html?ref=nyregion

http://www.complex.com/city-guide/2014/03/bill-bratton-criticizes-ray-kelly-michael-bloomberg

http://www.lawyerherald.com/articles/5152/20140331/series-setbacks-bill-de-blasio-few-months-new-york-city.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/nyregion/inspector-general-for-new-york-police-department-is-named.html?_r=0

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

OMINOUS SIGNS OF SHORT MEMORIES: PRE – 9-11-2001 MINDSET EVIDENT

SECURITY MUST BE TOP PRIORITY

'2013 Security Officer of the Year': One World Trade Center guard Abdul Basher

'exercises' his eyes while on duty at the nation's tallest skyscraper

and site of the 9/11 terror atrocity

Updated Sunday March 30, 2014

TAGS: 1 WORLD TRADE CENTER SECURITY BREECHES, DRUNKEN SECRET SERVICE AGENTS,

COMMANDERS AND SERVICE MEN MANNING NUCLEAR ARSENAL INCOMPETENT,

AMERICAN MILITARY STILL LEARNING HOW TO CONDUCT

ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE, THE FALSE ILLUSION OF SECURITY,

1WTC SECURITY OUTSOURCED TO LOWEST BIDDER,

OSAMA BIN LADEN’S SON IN LAW CONVICTED IN NY SUPERIOR COURT

(Wednesday March 26, 2014 Reade & Church St., NYC) From this corner in Lower Manhattan almost equidistant from the New York State Supreme Courthouse and One World Trade Center, two stories were playing out each oddly linked to the other. It was, however, a case of good news and bad news; very bad news indeed. In the Courthouse Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the highest ranking al-Qaeda member to be tried in an American court, was convicted on all counts related to the conspiracy to kill Americans and the actual attack of September 11, 2001 itself.

A few blocks to the south at the site of 1 World Trade Center, just a week after a 16 year old high school student from New Jersey managed to gain access to the spire atop this new imposing structure, the lack of vigilant security and ineptitude was again illustrated in a cell phone camera captured picture of a security guard, a “half-blind” security guard at that, was photographed while asleep at the main entrance to the site. Apparently security at the site is not a high priority but rather a matter of contracting the lowest bidder.

The bad news side of the equation really began to tip the scale downward as it was revealed that three members of the Secret Service contingent assigned to, the once thought to be elite, Counter Assault Team (CAT) who had been sent to The Netherlands prior to President Obama’s visit to The Hague, had been on a drinking binge that ended with one Agent passed out in a hotel hallway a mere six hours before they were to report for duty. This is the third such incident of blatantly indiscriminate behavior by those tasked with providing security from the President of the United States; a task that has been exponentially more challenging from the earliest days of Obama’s presidential campaign in 2007. No other candidate or president has ever received more death threats and required more proactive measures from the Secret Service than the first African American to run for the highest Office in our land and become President.

While in The Hague President Obama participated in the Nuclear Security Summit along with 24 other heads of state. It was after one of these sessions that President Obama dismissed the recent incursion of Russian troops into Crimea stating that his most immediate threat was a “nuclear bomb going off in Manhattan”, not the Russia/Ukraine/Crimea situation.

Concerning nuclear weapons we learned this week that the men and women serving in isolated bunkers deep beneath the topsoil of military bases in Montana and North Dakota and elsewhere, had regularly cheated on monthly proficiency exams, that one top Commander, while on a visit to Russia last year was seen in the company of young Russian women while he was obviously extremely intoxicated and speaking about the physics of our nuclear arsenal. By the end of the week he, along with nine other Commanders and 34 junior Officers were dismissed, resigned or reassigned. The moral and competency of the men and women who literally have access to our over 19,000 ICBM nuclear tipped missiles has now become of great concern. Endemic among those who serve in these highly technical and dreadfully monotonous posts is a sense that their “mission” is “useless”; that they are kept on a constant state of high alert while no threat is present. As one Air Force Colonel who asked to speak anonymously stated, “We are fairly certain that there will not ever come a time when we will be called upon to carry out the specifics of our well-defined mission. Year after year we train and train and have come to recognize that we perform a function, that we represent a segment of our Military arsenal that is highly unlikely ever going to be called upon. This fact alone saps the morale from all of us living underground.”

ENDEMIC INEPTITUDE

If there is one common thread linking the last five paragraphs it is systemic failures of an egregious nature. As our troops continue to die in remote corners of Afghanistan, the threat of “home grown” terrorists increases, and we work with other governments to secure the various stockpiles of nuclear material around the world, we are confronted with an alarming reality to say the least. Anyone of the episodes above is cause for serious concern; collectively they represent a complete lack of respect for the perils in the real world, in real time, affecting real people. Just as Americans awoke to a new reality on September 12, 2001 with stunned disbelief that a small band of terrorists were able to pull such a diabolically calculated attack, we would learn in the weeks, months and years after that, essentially, no one was “minding the store”. For all the untold trillions of dollars the federal government has invested in the bottomless pits of the Intelligence and Law Enforcement Community from the CIA. DIA, NSA, NRO, and all the other “alphabet agencies”, the post 9-11 era revealed ineptitude of such a profound nature in the all the federal Agencies and Departments including those mentioned above, that the entire apparatus of securing our country was fatally flawed.

Once the raging stallions of non-state sponsored terrorism, asymmetrical warfare and the complexities of waging a guerrilla war with radical insurgents were already out of the proverbial barnyard there was no coaxing them back. We were in a new age indeed. As is typical of modern day Congress, they exercised their knee-jerk reactions and passed with staggering haste bills and legislation that created new Agencies and rounded up an array of 22 existing diverse Agencies and created the Department of Homeland Security, a Cabinet level post as well as the Director of National Intelligence. This Hodge-podge shotgun marriage among Agencies so institutionally ossified and vehemently territorial proved to be an awkward, cumbersome beast. But as the years have come and gone since that immediate post 9-11-01 period when all of America was attuned to the sense of hyper-awareness and appeared ready to do whatever was asked of them, soon the security measures became nuisances; time consuming wastes of time. Once the threat of another strike on our own soil by some terrorist group began to seem less plausible, slowly but surely we let our guard down, we dropped our hands as quickly as a winded boxer in the last round.

THOSE WHO FORGET TO REMEMBER…

As has become glaringly evident since 9-11-01 is that we, our government, military, diplomatic corps and intelligence machinery, for all its hi-tech sophistication and capabilities never did and continues to not have any practical knowledge of those with whom we are engaged in this “war on terror”. We have scant understanding of the vast societal, cultural and historical differences between us and, when it comes to a theater of combat such as the notoriously ungovernable land of Afghanistan were tribal and familiar alliances are centuries old, we are at a loss. When we finally remove the last of our troops from Afghanistan after a13 years of military engagement, in short order there will be no evidence that we had ever been there aside from the billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware and infrastructure that is too costly for us to remove.

Even in the much more familiarly comfortable conventional methods of combat and defense we have over six decades of experience with, the failures of those charged with overseeing our huge stockpile of nuclear tipped bombs, was another stunner of epic proportions. Beginning with the creation of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) we have maintained underground silos, subterranean military bases carved into the deep bedrock of the west and Midwest of the United States tasked with being able to deliver nuclear Armageddon within minutes of a Presidential directive. Learning of the systemic corruption employed in these still active but, in reality, more relics of our Cold War past, in light of global instability and the Russian annexation of Crimea, was chilling.

As Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, an organization committed to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation said last week on MSNBC, “The men and women in those bunkers have a thankless job. Their commanders know and they know they are preparing for a mission they will never be called upon to fulfill. Morale is poor all the way down the line. The entire nuclear stockpile should be decommissioned and significantly reduced. Nuclear war is so unlikely to happen.” While it is true that the United States may never engage an enemy in conventional warfare such as in World War II, there is no imperative at any level of the federal government, the Department of Defense and other vested interests to relinquish our nuclear superiority as part of a pact or treaty. We’ll keep our nukes, thank you.

SACRED GROUND UNGUARDED

From the day in 1966 that the first demolitions of existing structures began to clear a 16 acre of Lowe Manhattan for the World Trade Center, that plot of NYC has been high value real estate. As the Twin Towers climbed ever higher for years many said no one will be willing to work in an office so high in the sky. The architect, Minoru Yamasaki, himself uncomfortable with height, designed two building with exterior cladding interspersed by window no larger than 22 inches. This was an ingenious solution in that the very narrow windows enabled workers to be more comfortable and less distracted in the highest stories of those Towers than other architectural proposals had specified. Yamasaki found a kindred spirit and an intellectual peer in the young structural engineer from Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jackson (WSHJ), Leslie Robertson who brought Yamasaki’s grand vision to fruition while advancing constructing and engineering techniques that revolutionized how engineers thought about building big. Within 14 months of the Twin Towers opening over 78% of its office space was leased.

In a wrenchingly sad twist of fate Leslie Robertson observed the fully fueled passenger jets deliberately smash into the towers he had built. As the steel warped from the lack of protective fire resistant foam, thousands of gallons of highly flammable aviation fuel, the fire stressed infrastructure succumbed to the elements and with an almost diabolically directed “pancaking effect” both of the Towers were reduced to 16 acres of smoldering rubble and the 7 subterranean levels had turned into a hell on earth for those trapped there when the Towers above them collapsed and sealed their fates.

One would think that almost a full 13 years later, after 11 years of constructing a new soaring structure, this time a single sublimely angular tower, that this 16 acre construction site would be among the most vigilantly guarded and secure as any of the other numerous and symbolic structures in our City. But, incomprehensively, one would be mistaken; astonishingly mistaken.

A photograph appeared in our NYC local newspapers and on the TV news late last week of a security guard, Abdul Basher, 65, an employee of the subcontractor, Durst Organization Property Management, who is tasked with providing security for this hallowed site. Basher, leaning back wearing sunglasses was apparently sound asleep at his post; a post that was in fact the primary entry to the building itself. By his own admission he is “half blind” and has difficulties seeing “people and sometimes stairs.” So this is what it has all devolved to? As much as 1 World Trade Center is a 1776 foot testament to our New Yorker Pride, our strength and defiance in the faces of the cowards who brought our old Giant 11 down, it is for many holy, blood soaked ground. To learn that the security of this site had been outsourced by billionaires to the lowest bidder was just another worm in the apple.

A NATURAL TARGET

On a cold overcast February 26, 1993, the first attack on our Twin Towers was perpetrated. Fortunately the terrorists responsible for this act were not as ambitious in their plot nor as astute in their planning as the attackers of September 11, 2001. However, what they were, what their crime was did little to rattled the cages of those in the federal government to pay attention to an increasingly looming threat. That ragtag band of terrorists lead by a master bomb maker, Ramzi Yousef, whose uncle is the admitted mastermind behind the 9-11-01 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), were unable to bring our Towers down but eight years later they witnessed success beyond their wildest dreams.

As any domestic security expert or analysts will say for the public record, 1 World Trade Center will be a choice target for this new generation of terrorists. Given the dynamics within unstable nations and simmering anti-American tension across the globe, it is safe to say that someone, at this very minute, in a city or rural enclave is already plotting the next attack on NYC and certainly, the defiant middle finger to the rest of the world that is 1 World Trade Center, as their primary target.

As has been reported in the local media recently there was a contentious turf battle for jurisdiction over the task of providing security for 1 WTC between the Port Authority Police (PAPD) and the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The Port Authority eventually won that territorial dispute and now, in light of recent gross lapses in securing the site, there may in fact be a jurisdictional review to access what Agency or Agencies will be the primary Law Enforcement Agency at the site, the memorial plaza and surrounding surface streets. Since the PATH trains that connect New York City to New Jersey have historically been the sole domain of the PAPD, that mission will be continued.

The PAPD currently are the lone providers to much of the infrastructure of the NYC – North Jersey metropolitan area including, side from the PATH trains, all three major airports, two huge bus terminals and the tunnels and bridges that link NYC to NJ over or under the Hudson River. It seems obvious that the PAPD should retain the jurisdictional imperative at all the sites they have historically presided including the new 1 WTC. How they had somehow ceded security control from the site to some half-assed rent-a-cop outfit is beyond comprehension.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

So, in the time elapsed in one seven day period we have learned about extremely distressing realities; we now know our President is in danger due to drunken Secret Service Agents, that our nuclear stockpile is staffed by unqualified, disillusioned, over stressed airmen and women, that a partially blind security guard was the first line of defense at the most sacred ground in NYC if not all of the USA and, by the way, our CIA had completely once again failed to connect the dots as Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a sham referendum in Crimea wresting that peninsular on the southern border of the sovereign state of Ukraine back to Russian control.

Iraq remains a dystopian state with warring religious and ethnic factions hell-bent on the annihilation of each other. On another front our puppet drug lord, corrupt, anti-American so called “leader” of Afghanistan continues to poke his wicked fingers into the eyes of the American Military and other Agencies that sacrificed so much to bring some sense of order to his land. There is not a hot spot in the world where the USA has any leverage or clout and that is the direct result of the war-mongering, imperialist, neo-conservatives of the Cheney/Bush administration. Despite the armed conflicts we’ve engaged in over all these years, none of them have served to make us any safer than we were on September 11, 2001.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK IS A HELL OF A TOWN

Without any doubt or hint of exaggeration, one solid fact of Americana is that New York City is the premier City on the planet. The number one destination of worldwide tourists, and, as Howard Cosell once said, “The City whose landmarks are known all over the world. The center of shipping, transportation, communications, finance, fashion and, of course entertainment”, will always be the preeminent target in the evil eyes of those seeking to bring us death and destruction. It is for this reason and this reason alone that the entire spectrum of homeland security, intelligence gathering and analysis, signal intelligence and constant vigilance must be maintained.

Ask any terrorism expert, any talking head from a think tank or, for that matter, any NYPD member, and they will to a person tell you their most earnest and frightful belief is that al Qaeda or some derivative thereof is patiently biding their time; watching and waiting for their next opportunity to bring their jihad to American soil.

Until we shore up our security efforts at every level of government we will remain an open target. Having lived through the hours, days and weeks after our Twin Towers where toppled, it is an ominous reality that so many Agencies and their personnel can be asleep at the wheel at the same time.

The stakes are very high; the threat level while difficult to assess day to day is omnipresent and the consequences could be far worse than all we lived through on September 11, 2001 and since.

Lest we forget; lest our government forget.