Oops, they did it again

False Alarm?

Terror Alert Partly Based on Fabricated Information

By Brian Ross, Len Tepper and Jill Rackmill
ABCNews.com

Feb. 13 — A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

 

[...] The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

The informant described a detailed plan that an al Qaeda cell operating in either Virginia or Detroit had developed a way to slip past airport scanners with dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops, sources told ABCNEWS. The informant reportedly cited specific targets of government buildings and Christian or clerical centers.

[...] It was only after the threat level was elevated to orange — meaning high — last week, that the informant was subjected to a polygraph test by the FBI, officials told ABCNEWS.

"This person did not pass," said Cannistraro.

[...] Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted.

Well, I wouldn't say it's time to put the duct tape back into storage, but once again, it looks like there's not quite as much to worry about as the government would have had us believe. 

This isn't the first time, of course, that an informant has lied to The Powers That Be, nor is the first time they've been caught with their pants down.  How long did the news broadcasts remind us to be on the lookout for five suspicious men who'd snuck into the country before someone figured out that they didn't actually exist?  And, of course, several of the alerts from last summer - possible attacks by scuba divers, attacks on apartment buildings, attacks on banks, and others - eventually turned out to be questionable as well.

Personally, I think it's beyond inexcusable for them to raise the threat level and release information on "potential" actions without having first done a reasonably thorough verification that the information - and informant - are reliable.  True, lie detector tests aren't 100% accurate.  Very little is in intelligence gathering; but any informant reporting a potential threat of such significance that they're contemplating putting the entire country on alert should be subjected to a lie detector at the very least.  Doing the test after the alert has been sounded is not only pointless, it's also dangerous - and not just because of the contribution it makes to alert fatigue.

Think about it.  We have someone in custody whose best interests are served by giving us "information" on possible threats - if TPTB think he's telling the truth, he's likely to get a better deal out of them, and they'll put the country on alert and, even if the informant's group doesn't get to actually kill a bunch of us, they still get to have put us all in fear (which, of course, is a form of non-lethal terrorism).  But it goes beyond even that.  If he's lying, but convinces TPTB that there is a threat and they put out an alert, once the truth comes out that it was a false alarm, we all get just that much more skeptical about the alerts, and maybe pay that much less attention to them

There's one other danger, though, that comes with not giving a lie detector test until after the cats out of the bag.  What if he was telling the truth.  What if the threat this terrorist reported to TPTB is real.  TPTB issue the alert, we all get nervous, blah, blah blah.  Then someone gets the bright idea that maybe they should give this guy a lie detector test, just in case they've worried us all for nothing. Presuming that the terrorist isn't stupid, and that he still has some loyalties to the people he was working with before he was captured,  all of a sudden he's got a way to help them out - courtesy of our own law enforcement officials.  We all know that someone can fool a lie detector test into thinking that they're telling the truth.  Why couldn't they fool it into thinking they're telling a lie?  The benefit to our terrorist and his friends would be that now we're all thinking that we're safe, we'll let our guard down that much more, and we become that much more resistant to future warnings, and law enforcement is going to focus their energy on other possible threats.  It just became that much easier for the plan to go forward - and to make TPTB look even more like fools than just falling for a liar does. 

It's paranoia fun?