I was reading this Wired article from last year, well before Edward Snowden’s leak that revealed to the world the massive overreach of the NSA. Kevin Paulson pointed out these terrorist incidents the NSA failed to uncover:
And while there is little indication that [NSA’s] actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010.
You can also add the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood mass shooting to this list, too. News came out earlier this week that the FBI monitored Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s communications a full year in advance. The mass murderer even sent emails discussing jihad to a cleric in Yemen, which would be a kosher intercept in anyone’s book (even mine). Yet, he still committed his crime.
Two U.S. intelligence officials Thursday night confirmed to Declassified key details of a just-breaking ABC News report–that in emails sent to a radical Yemeni cleric, accused shooter Nidal Hasan asked when jihad is appropriate, and said “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife.
The Boston bombing is particularly egregious since fricking Russian Intelligence begged the Feds to investigate the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI did get around to interviewing them but apparently did jack shit about it. How clueless does the NSA and FBI have to be when two suspects prompt a tip from a foreign intelligence service, get investigated by the FBI, and still manage to kill three people, injure hundreds more, and shut down the tenth largest metropolitan area in the country for an entire day during their manhunt?
So, millions of innocent, law abiding Americans with no probable cause get spied upon daily by the NSA yet when actual radicals are discovered that are practically begging to be investigated, no red flags go up. Why? What the hell is NSA doing if it’s not paying attention to the real bad guys? What is our $11 billion annual NSA budget getting us?
Could this be a good time to refocus our efforts on actual threats?