The Night Before Christmas
On 20 December, New Mexico authorities reported the theft from a storage facility of 150 pounds of C-4, 250 pounds of sheet explosives, 20,000 feet of detonator cord and 2,500 blasting caps; enough to flatten at least a large building. On the 24th, four men were taken into custody – two apparently average drug-using criminal brothers, plus one apparently average felon, all with average American names. The fourth was not identified, nor was a fifth person who was interrogated. According to ATF officials, none had experience with explosives and none of the explosive material was tampered with.
On 20 December, New Mexico authorities reported the theft from a storage facility of 150 pounds of C-4, 250 pounds of sheet explosives, 20,000 feet of detonator cord and 2,500 blasting caps; enough to flatten at least a large building. On the 24th, four men were taken into custody – two apparently average drug-using criminal brothers, plus one apparently average felon, all with average American names. The fourth was not identified, nor was a fifth person who was interrogated. According to ATF officials, none had experience with explosives and none of the explosive material was tampered with. Nor, they said, was there any link to terrorism. All’s well…
There are questions begging to be asked here and if you don’t know what they are, you haven’t been paying attention.
There are people in this country determined to do damage to the rest of us and blowing up buildings is in their plans. Using Americans as dupes or co-conspirators is in their plans as well and “all-American” felons and drug users could easily be fronts for people with an internationalist, supremacist or criminal agenda. Jose Padilla comes to mind. A plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was advanced by a naturalized American citizen. The “Portland Seven,” who plotted to blow up synagogues among other buildings, included six U.S.-born Americans. Two men in San Diego admitted to U.S. law enforcement officers that they were distributing drugs from Pakistan. As partial payment, they sought four Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which they intended to sell to the Taliban. The Virginia Jihad conspirators, sentenced to lengthy terms, including one sentenced for conspiring to wage war against America, were all Americans.
And all were in contact with patrons overseas. Three points:
1. We are enormously relieved to discover that the American government appears well aware of the nature of threats to our national security and determined to “connect the dots” to prevent the next terrorist attack, including surveillance of people in this country who are in contact with terrorists and terror-related organizations abroad. The USA Patriot Act – providing surveillance and investigative tools to counter-terror investigators that were previously available only to counter-criminal investigators is a good thing, an important thing and something that the Senate should re-ratify as quickly as possible.
2. The fact that there remain unidentified parties intimately involved with the theft in New Mexico and its larger story suggests that journalists normally inclined to investigate the hell out of government are strangely uninterested in this case of why the government doesn’t want us to know who these people are. Is it possible the media doesn’t want to find out that the government has actually been protecting us with its surveillance and investigative tools?
3. Yet again, the government has announced immediately upon apprehending people possessing the tools for terrorism, that terrorism wasn’t the agenda. We’d like a better explanation than we have for what they were doing with 400 lb. of explosives.