MB and I were driving through North Carolina. The kids were watching videos and the farms were streaming by, and no linear clouds etched the sky. Earlier in the morning, crossing the bridge from the Maryland shore just south of Washington City we'd seen the plume coming from the Pentagon, and late the previous afternoon the plume from lower Manhatten. The children were untroubled, we were on our way to Disneyworld for Gracie's birthday, having decided 24 hours earlier that it would be less hassle to drive from Maine to Florida than to try and move three small children, one then known to be neurologically atypical, through an air transport system responding to the events of that morning. It was the correct choice. "Dark Skies" was announced before we crossed into upstate New York.
We talked quietly.
MB thought the previous day's attacks, two planes into the towers of the World Trade Center, a third into one wing of the Pentagon, and a fourth down somewhere in Pennsylvania, was the tip of the iceberg. She felt vulnerable. They would do it again after the "dark skies" period ended, to maintain the fear and uncertainty. There was more coming.
I thought the Red Player had exhausted his inventory of attack assets, and would not risk not using any remaining assets. Having imposed battle on the Blue Player, it was use or lose any remaing forward-deployed or pre-positioned assets. MB remembers me as being pretty nonchalant, there was no more inbound.
My point in this isn't to draw attention to ourselves but to draw attention to real people, and real states of mind, and real conversations between real people about what had occured. I'm fairly certainof my facts about these people and their beliefs on September 12. My point in this is to draw attention to the actions of Michael Chertoff. He went over the top post-9/11, hoovering up "potential terrorists" as if there was no ... Constitution, and as if the Red Player still had a strategic capability, a Government or Economy or Military endangering pre-deployed collection of assets. Waiting only for the movement orders to engage Homeland targets ...
The Bush Regime is going to put someone who was wrong on September 12th, in addition to being one of the Whitewater knife carriers, in charge of "Homeland Security". Fortunately, it is all a fraud anyway, so it doesn't matter that the man is ... unimproved three plus years later.
From the haigiography running in the journals of record, it appears he's just the man to prevent any further attacks ... from Mars. I already miss Tom Ridge and the daily chair shuffle.
Posted by EBW at January 13, 2005 01:53 PM | TrackBackAs someone who was equally uncertain in the immediate aftermath of that day, I want to say this: I have met Michael Chertoff, he and my father know each other pretty well, and whilst he's a Republican, he's not a Bush-vintage one. He's the sort of person we'd have been happy to have around in the Reagan administration. He's a professional with commitments beyond Bush worship.
I had doubt right after 9/11, and since then I have been suspicious of those whose minds were made up within seconds. But Michael Chertoff is not the worst of them, and he will not be the worst of the Bush cabinet. Not by a long shot.
Posted by: Marshall at January 13, 2005 06:43 PMReally? So he's utterly clear that the regime's political response had no relation to the most credible threat model, and that what was most credible is now undisputed history, and therefore he is going to ... unscramble the HSD omlett?
Thus far, the major agent of institutional transformation (aka damage) and US military killed and wounded has been ... the regime itself.
You are correct that he will not be the worst of the regimes department-level capos, since HSD isn't competitive with DoD or the ultra-wealth for the available funding, and the regime's current focus is moving money from federal fund managers to private fund managers, which has donation consequence.
There is one problem he can solve if he isn't a clone. Have him call me.
Posted by: Eric at January 13, 2005 08:21 PM
I don't know Chertoff personally, even with a few degrees of separation, and I certainly disagree with many of the things he believes in. But he does seem to have been highly competent as a lawyer in the U.S. Attorneys' offices in New York and New Jersey, which leaves me feeling better about him than I would have expected from this administration. They're never going to appoint someone to this job with whom I agree ideologically, so I'll settle for someone competent. If the person in that job is willing to work hard and follow up on bureaucratic minions who are sitting on their asses, that's a good thing.
Sorry Tyrone, Chertoff is a piece of shit.
From the December 12th, 2002, the US DoJ announcement on the Elashi case.
The indictment announced today was part of a joint effort by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Texas, under the direction of U.S. Attorney Jane Boyle, and the Justice Department's Terrorist Financing Task Force, which is directed by Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff of the Criminal Division.
I'll post my note to Vint Cerf on the dubious nature of the only case the DoJ has gotten a conviction on against the Elashis, and the only reason the .iq namespace is dark.
Posted by: Eric at January 14, 2005 04:23 PM
I don't know anything about that case, but would suggest that you can't point to something fucked-up that the Justice Department did and then pin it on Chertoff because he was the head of the Criminal Section. There are a lot of lawyers in the Criminal Section. Which is not to categorically rule out that he did something wrong in this case, just to say that you need to bring more to the table.
He's named in the DoJ PR as director of the Terrorist Financing Task Force, and the charge made (and not tried, they went for sending a computer to Syria and a second computer Syria and "computer accessories" to Lybia, an export regulator rap that should have gotten a fine, not uninterrupted federal time) was ... Funding Terrorists (Hammas).
I was working on the story in late December and put it aside when the Asian Tsunami took place. I'll finnish it and post it.
Posted by: Eric at January 14, 2005 05:05 PM
Surely he's involved at some level. But understand that as the head of the Criminal Division, he was overseeing a large organization. I'm sure his name went on a lot of briefs he never reads.
Here's an org chart of the Criminal Division:
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/Cdorgch.htm
I can't find the number of lawyers in the Criminal Division (exclusive of the various U.S. Attorneys' offices), but I suspect it is larger than the size of most of the law firms in the country.
Posted by: Tyrone Slothrop at January 14, 2005 06:17 PMIn the piece "Sixty Seconds ... over Baghdad" earlier this month there is a link to my letter to Vint Cerf, which summarizes what I know about the BXA case, which is the only one against the Elashis that stuck, and it doesn't look as if it should have either ... unless we're all using proliferation and terrorism critical computational devices to read and write weblogs, since the export reg was specific to supercomputers.
Posted by: Eric at January 14, 2005 07:05 PM