The FBI and tips

In Trail of Red Flags, an Ex-Friend's Warning to the Authorities Stands Out. A former friend of John Allen Muhammad said on Sunday that she drove him to a backyard gunsmith last fall to have a semiautomatic rifle made shorter and silent. By Charlie Leduffand Dean E. Murphy. [New York Times: National]

Between all of the missed clues before 9/11 and the missed clues we're learning about now regarding the sniper, I'm beginning to think that maybe the TIPS program that John Ashcroft wants so badly isn't such a threat after all. 

According to the New York Times, there are now at least three separate occasions on which the federal authorities were warned about John Allen Muhammad and concerns that he may be planning something dangerous.  As one FBI spokesperson commented, they do get a lot of tips all the time.  When you get three tips, however, on the same person, it might it not be prudent to check them out?

Two of the calls were made post-9/11, one from the operator of a homeless shelter who was concerned that Muhammad might have ties to a terrorist group, and one from a former friend who provided details to the FBI about modifications he wanted made to a gun.  Also during this time, which was roughly December of last year,  Muhammad was involved in a domestic disturbance at the homeless shelter involving Malvo and Malvo's mother.  Malvo and his mother were turned over to the INS, and a hearing was set up for Malvo that was scheduled to take place in November of this year.

Sadly, it seems that too often after a major crime, it turns out that law enforcement had been warned - generally more than once or even twice - that the eventual perpetrator is someone who should be looked at as a possible source of concern.  Given how often it seems that a truly dangerous person slips through the cracks, and given that the reason usually given is that they receive so many tips, I have to wonder if the problem is that they're too incompetent to tell the difference between the ones they should be worrying about and the ones they apparently are worrying about - or maybe if they actually are preventing a lot more crimes than we know about by following up on the tips that they do.

The bad thing is, I'm not sure which of those possiblities is more frightening