Secret Intelligence vs. Common Sense

by Bruce Schimmel

In the game of hijinks gotcha being played this week over the events of Sept. 11, we heard far too much about the failures of secret governmental intelligence and much too little about the virtues of ordinary common sense.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice defended the president's lack of action by saying (in the Los Angeles Times) that "[t]here was nothing specific to which to react. Had this president known of something more specific, or that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted."

There may have been no specific intelligence "to which to react," but clearly everyone, including the reading public and maybe even the president, knew of specific attempts to topple the Eiffel Tower and destroy targets in the Philippines by using a plane as a missile.

One didn't need specific intelligence, just the common sense to factor in the well-known fact that al-Qaeda has a habit of returning to its targets, and that the World Trade Center was still on its hit list.

Nor was it a failure of secret intelligence, but a failure to think straight that the FAA continued to direct pilots to cooperate with hijackers, even after everyone understood that a plane could be used as a weapon.

All it took was common sense, not secret info, for the passengers of the one flight that didn't become a flying bomb to ignore the FAA directive to cooperate, when they wrested control of the plane from the hijackers.

It was their common sense, and their heroism, that may have saved the Capitol or the White House.

Still, it is secret intelligence, the when-did-you-know-it, with which the mainstream media is obsessed. That may make for high drama, but it serves the public badly.

Instead of tales about the rich, powerful and apparently unthinking, more coverage ought to go to ordinary people, such as those who foiled the hijackers by questioning foolish official directives.

Like private citizen Dave Reinhart, who's recently launched an online petition to quash a series of security directives recently issued by the Massachusetts Aeronautics Commission. (A copy of that petition is available by e-mailing him at wa6ilt@amsat.org.)

Reinhart, as reported by AvWeb.com, says that the new procedures are not only a violation of civil rights, but also a blatant waste of taxpayers' money.

"They're spending millions," says Reinhart. "It's just so overboard."

The same could be said about many new security schemes, and would be, if the media gave voice to the common sense that ordinary folks are muttering under their breath.

Browse The
June 12, 2003
Issue

Join the
City Paper
Mailing List

24th Annual Writing Contest