The matador is beside us
Posted on November 22, 2007
Filed Under Risk Management, Security |
The matador is beside us, and we charge forward.
There is a crop of bad security news. The British police who tasered a man in a coma (twice, while aiming a pistol at his head), the Oregon airport that shut down its baggage claim for 6 hours to investigate sugar and flour; images of the bright red cape, burned on our retinas.
There are the stories of complete ignorance to foreign intelligence operations; Nada Nadim Prouty has plead guilty to conspiracy and naturalization fraud. She stayed in the US illegally, but still managed to land high-security jobs with the FBI (as a special agent) and CIA. Once there, she stole at least one file on Hezbollah. I do not think the public knows yet what she did with the stolen information, or if there is even more to the story. The matador evades the eye.
The story behind the stories is that police authorities worldwide are acting without intelligence. They overreact to any sign of white powder, but when do they produce a terrorist or show that they have stopped an actual threat. People who were not security threats have been shot, strangled in their attempts to escape (the mentally unstable woman in the airport… remember her? Strangled herself with handcuffs?), detained, abused. But we charge forward.
At the same time, real threats like Prouty go undetected. At best, you might assume that Prouty was used as a double agent by the FBI and CIA, or given a contained position in order to observe her actions. At worst the stories are exactly what they look like: a Lebanese woman who fraudulently naturalized was given high level positions in both agencies, and nobody knew.
Our security problem can not be solved by hyperactive enforcement. It will only be solved by intelligence. We need a calm, intelligent police force. We need intelligence services that are superior to Hezbollah and others. A bull is no match.
Worldwide, the US and allies are 'fighting the war on terror.' Ever more, the war on terror smells of the real trap, a diversion set up by our enemies. The real war is the war of intelligence, and we are losing.
Stop chasing the red cape. The matador is beside us.
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You have entered 'start your head on fire,' housed at www.robertbeverly.com. 'start your head on fire' is the blog of Robert Beverly. It is not a very serious blog. Mr. Beverly writes most of the news items, but you will also see us (Debbie and Secretia) posting from time to time to clarify things. We are his "blog secretaries."
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Rather than publish a biography or ask Mr. Beverly to record his memoirs (which would be dull), we thought we would post a summary for anyone who was wondering. He said we should do something like this because that's what other people's blogs have on them. Mr. Beverly goes by Rab, which is a common name for Scotsmen and their dogs. We call him Mr. Beverly in person because we're trying to talk him into a raise, but you can really call him Rab. Rab drinks gallons of coffee daily and makes jokes that we usually don't understand. We laugh politely because he writes the paychecks for Debbie and I (he hired us both as blog secretaries back in October 2006... we didn't even know what a blog was before this). Mr Beverly goes to the gym a lot, which is why he doesn't have time to type in his blog entries, and he does all kinds of weird exercises like Kung Fu and Yoga (NEVER ask him about this unless you want to hear all about martial arts). He enjoys literary analysis and esoteric reading and games like "Go" (the ancient Japanese strategy game) and chess, not to mention those weird "role playing" and "strategy" games he designs himself, all of which account for why we do not to start conversations with him. (Secretia here... what the hell was wrong with Yahtzee, I ask you?!) We like talking about peekapoos and the best grocery store sales, but we don't get to talk about that here.
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