FBI Finds Most Terrorism Threat Reports Baseless
November 8th, 2008Captain Obvious strikes yet again.
Via: Reuters:
The FBI tracked about 108,000 potential terrorism threats or suspicious incidents from mid-2004 to November 2007, but most were found groundless, a Justice Department review found on Friday.
The department’s office of inspector general gave the figure in an audit of the FBI’s terrorism case-tracking system, called Guardian, launched in 2002 after the September 11 attacks.
“The FBI determined that the overwhelming majority of the threat information documented in Guardian had no nexus to terrorism. However, as a result of information reported in Guardian the FBI initiated over 600 criminal and terrorism-related investigations from October 2006 to December 2007,” the inspector general’s report said.
The report did not discuss the result of the investigations.
FBI policy requires that each threat or suspicious incident reported by the public or other government agencies and law enforcement officers be reviewed to determine whether there is a link to terrorism.
The report expressed concern over delays in the development of a related system, called E-Guardian, for sharing terrorism-related information with local law enforcement. It said the automated Guardian system had improved since it was first implemented, and the number of incidents tracked had grown dramatically.
FBI spokesman John Miller said the agency had implemented steps to resolve concerns and it accepted recommendations made by the inspector general.
The only thing THEY like more
than no nexus is no media.
“Most” reports are baseless.
I’m guessing most = 99.99999999%…which is to be expected. A tsunami of neurotic crybabies calling the FBI every time they see a Sikh taxi driver – not exactly a good source of intel.
I’ve said it many times: the worst thing that happened to the US was the TV show “24” – which “most” of the American people think is a documentary, not a piece of crude neoCon propaganda.
Having grown up in a country with real terrorism, I can vouch that it bears no resemblance to the Hollywood shlock we see on our screens. Note the harassment of street photographers post-911, as though they were terrorists. The IRA was not known for their use of photograpy. No need. Scoping out a target with telephoto lenses FROM STREET LEVEL only happens in shitty movies.
A friend of my sister had a neighbour who called the cops (in 2002) because someone was hiding in the bushes. When a couple of teenagers were flushed out, the woman’s comment was: “Well, these days, with terrorists, you can’t be too careful”.
Yeah, lady, that’s what I’d do if I was a terrorist – I’d hide in a bush outside a MacMansion and rustle some leaves.
There’s at least one of the bogus terror alerts!
Hooray for freedumb!
@dermot: whatever their doing, it’s working. 57,000,000 people voted for McCain, and I think it’s safe to say a big part of that was because they thought he’d be “tough on terrorism”. The sad thing is, those same people won’t/don’t have a problem living in a police state — it would never occur to them to step out of line.
oh – regarding the harrassment of street photographers – this editorial by Peggy Noonan in 2001 reflects the mentality of the time. One can find similar discussion in archived forums such as Free Republic. There still hasn’t been an actual incident since 2001, has there? Despite how easy it would be to cross the border etc.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=95001349