The MSM Goes Wobbly on the NYPD’s Efforts to Prevent Another 9/11
First, a bit of history: Way back on September 11, 2001, 19 men commandeered four commercial airliners and turned them into guided missiles, crashing two of them into the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and the third into the Pentagon. The fourth was prevented from reaching its presumed target in Washington, D.C., when the passengers attempted to wrest control of the plane from the hijackers. That aircraft crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing all aboard but no one else. A total of 2,977 innocent lives were taken that day, more than were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Come, come, Dunphy, you say. Everyone remembers the 9/11 attacks. Why the exercise in remedial history?
Because it’s sadly but plainly apparent that not everyone does remember the 9/11 attacks, as evidenced by the fact that so many people seem queasy about taking the steps necessary to prevent another attack from occurring.
Witness the hand-wringing and caterwauling over the Associated Press’s revelations that officers from the New York Police Department have been conducting surveillance on people all the way out on Long Island and even in . . . New Jersey! Civil rights trampled on! Police state! The horror!
Predictably indignant were the editors of the New York Times, who in a March 8 editorial wrote, “New York police officers fanned out across Newark in 2007, photographing Muslim businesses and gathering data on mosque worshipers. Some are now wary of praying in public, joining faith-based groups or patronizing some restaurants and shops.”
The editorial also quotes Michael Ward, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office, who said that the NYPD’s surveillance operations in New Jersey had undermined the Bureau’s relationships with Muslims. “There’s no correlation between the location of houses of worship and minority-owned businesses and counterterrorism,” Ward said. By generating distrust, he said, the operation created “more risk.”
Rubbish.
The rivalry between local police departments and the FBI is a tired old staple of film and television, but indeed there is a fair amount of truth in it. Yes, the FBI has some very talented people, and the inclusion of FBI manpower in a local task force can bring a welcome influx of resources to a previously stymied investigation, but among seasoned detectives in most cities the initials stand for Famous But Incompetent. Perhaps that overstates it a bit, but FBI agents put their pants on one leg at a time. They sometimes botch their cases, burn their surveillances, compromise their informants, and otherwise foul things up just as badly as local cops do. And regardless of their capabilities, there simply aren’t enough of them to cover all the ground that needs to be covered in the fight against terrorism.
There are fewer than 14,000 FBI special agents scattered across the country and beyond, and considering the many and varied missions they are expected to carry out, it is ludicrous to expect them to bear sole responsibility for conducting counter-terrorism investigations. And indeed in many cities the FBI is but one component in the Joint Terrorism Task Forces that were established after the 9/11 attacks. And in New York City, which bore the brunt of the 9/11 attacks and is presumably high on any list of al-Qaeda’s future potential targets, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would be worse than fools if they left it to the feds to protect the city from another attack.
So the question for Bloomberg and Kelly then becomes: How do you deploy your resources in such a way as to maximize their effectiveness in thwarting whatever malign designs people may have? Let us suppose some undercover NYPD officers spot people they believe to be engaged in target reconnaissance in Lower Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge. For added realism, let us further suppose these suspicious figures are young men who appear to be Muslims. (Did you know that all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers happened to be Muslims? It’s true!) The NYPD officers watch as these men take photographs of the bridge, the courthouses, City Hall, and One Police Plaza. (I know, it’s not against the law to take pictures of these places. And it’s not against the law for a police officer to watch people taking such pictures.)
Now let’s say these swarthy young men traverse Lower Manhattan and head for New Jersey via the Holland Tunnel, another ripe target for the aspiring terrorist. Should our NYPD officers abandon their surveillance when they reach the mid-point of the Hudson River? And if the officers should be so unlucky as to lose the suspects in traffic after discovering they are residents of New Jersey, would it be unreasonable for them to resume their surveillance at the suspects’ homes and monitor their activity further? They would be irresponsible not to, and no one should expect to be immune from scrutiny by dint of having crossed a state line. A potential terrorist might start his day in Philadelphia and end it in Boston, passing through Newark, New York City, Hartford, and Providence on the way. If the people following him happen to be local police officers rather than federal agents, should his activities go unobserved merely because he has passed through six states?
To his great credit, Commissioner Kelly is not backing down. Speaking on radio station WOR, Kelly told listeners, “People have short memories as to what happened here in 2001.”
And it is those people with short memories who have their knickers all in a wad over what Kelly’s NYPD is doing in the fight against terror. If the NYPD is constrained from conducting surveillance or other investigations out of concern for Muslims’ delicate sensibilities, and if the Empire State Building should therefore end up as a pile of rubble scattered up and down 34th Street, will these same people console themselves in the knowledge that at least no one was profiled or had his feelings hurt?
I felt a lot, and I mean A LOT, safer during the Bush administration. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly really understands what we are up against. Unfortunately, far left liberals and the people at the New York Times (well, what’s really the difference) never seem to. It’s people like Kelly who keep this nation safe, who are willing to take risks so that Americans DO NOT get killed again. Same with Bush and Cheney. When they said that they would do anything to keep this country safe, you knew they ment it. With Obama and his liberal minions now in power, they would rather cry like little girls rather than show potential terrorists here and abroad that the United States will do anything to stop them. Just shows you the difference in administrations and the mind set of liberals in America today, a little more than ten years after 9/11.
Start at the beginning. A man is presumed to intend the natural and probable results of his actions. Leftists are doing everything they can to interfere with anti-terrorism efforts. Therefore, we can presume that they intend for terrorism to succeed. While Leftists said they were supporting measures to foil future attacks on 9/11, one could not help noticing that the went into opposition mode within a few weeks. Applying real-life experience to Leftism, it’s obvious that they do not intend for America or Americans to succeed in the world or in life. Every Leftist program since 1933 has had catastrophic results on American social and economic life. Coincidence? We are reasonably allowed to presume not. This doesn’t include the occasional Leftist lapse into the truth (“bitter clingers”, “skyrocketing energy costs”, “for the first time in my adult life, being proud of my country”). When ‘Freudian slips’ mesh perfectly with past/current/proposed actions, there isn’t any more room for doubt. That’s the truth — what’re you gonna do about it?
Don’t you think that if we had a real bomb go off, obama would act like the Savior the libs think he is, and could institute Marshall Law (along with his army of occupy) and who could vote against him? Well I guess if he declares that, it’s goodbye elections, period.
Odd that the NYT is concerned with the freedom of Muslims to join “faith-based groups”. They have no such concern for Christians.
Well said.
As bad/annoying as Bloomberg has been for the past 10-plus years as mayor, one of the main things he has not done is to cripple the crime prevention system that Giuliani and Bratton put in (and to be fair to Kelly, what he was trying to do in the final days of the Dinkins administration). You’ll notice that unlike his pandering, knee-jerk liberal responses to things like the Times Square bomber, Bloomberg’s actually backing Kelly here against the conventional liberal elites and their talking points, because he actually knows what would happen if he followed the left’s advice to the letter, as opposed to just mouthing their boilerplate talking points to make liberals in the city happy.
The problem is he’s not going to be mayor after 2013, and if you keep pretending that the biggest threat to the safety of New Yorkers is some crazed Tea Party member trying to set off a bomb in Times Square, come the 2013 mayoral election, voters will actually elect some idiot who truly believes the biggest threat to New Yorkers is some crazed Tea Party member trying to set off a bomb in Times Square.
Elect him/her, and we’re back to the attitude City Hall held towards the police during the early Dinkins and the Lindsay Administrations, where it was the excesses of your own law enforcement members that had to be constrained and neutered, not the threats from increasing crime rates or outside terror plots. New York hasn’t elected the official Democratic candidate for mayor since 1989, because enough people remembered what the city was like under an official Democratic mayor; odds are a generation down the line in 2013, that memory will be forgotten and by 2014, the NYPD’s anti-terrorist network will begin to be dismantled so the new regime can feel good about itself.
Sorry what the police did is still illegality. In the late 1970′s the New York City Police thought I was the serial killer Son of Sam. I live on Long Island over 100 miles from the city limit never drove than car. They follow me for than week then than other killing took place they have to stop following me legality an they have to destory any record of me they grather legality. Samething here muslum have right too you far rightwinger bigot forget that.
Deciphering your unique grasp of the English language, I don’t see anything they did that was wrong, let alone illegal. They identified a suspect and gathered information that exonerated that suspect.
(Your declaration that we’re “far rightwinger bigot” [sic] has more to do with your own bigotry than reality.)
I was born with than damage speech center than may-be other parts of the brain.They went by somebody saying since I look like him without cheching to see it I went to NYC at those time. You people with your idear are putting than america police state in place.I was luckly I was on good term with the local police that ask the NYCP to destory they record on me.
You murdered English.
The last thing I read written in this style was from the son of a Nigerian finance minister who needed my help to get $28 million out of his country.
Charlie Kelly, is that you?
when david dinkins was in office new yorkers could not leave the house after dark. resturaunts shuttered because so few diners showed up. one had to plan going around town to avoid walking down dark unlit side streets. the pogrom in brooklyn he allowed to go on and on, and the blacks’ harrassment of the korean grocers . blacks held sway nd as one harlem teenager yelled on camera, “it’s our city now”.
without ray kelly and the nypd, the blacks and the muslims would be yelping,it’s our city now. and they would be correct.
after bloomberg and kelly, there won’t be any surveillance and there won’t be any stop and frisk. new york, in effect will be lawless. and vulnerable.
it won’t matter, though, because there won’t be any new york. welcome to the new detroit.
Dinkins did indeed have a horrible track record on keeping the city safe but there’s no need to make it about “blacks yelling that the city is theirs”. Fact is that under Dinkins blacks as a group suffered the most, because most of the violent crime was black on black. Better to keep it taxpayers vs. criminals and leave race out of it.
I still remember how Dinkins allowed a pogrom against religious Jews in Crown Heights to continue for three days, telling the police to hold back and let the crowd vent. If the Muslims win one over on the NYPD thanks to these terrorist-loving left wing morons, you can bet the Muslims will declare open season on Jews and scuttle any preventative measures that the NYPD would take to stop terrorism. When the next attack happens, we should make these liberals work the clean-up and recovery of the bodies, just like Eisenhower made the Germans who lived near a concentration camp bury the dead.
“resturaunts shuttered because so few diners showed up.” Same now because of the bike lanes and pedestrian only areas.
Hey, that anti-terrorism business is just going to have to take a back seat to Bloomberg’s very necessary war on salt and sugar! Priorities, people.
Death has it’s own attractions, in the left a kind of necrophilia rules. Everything they do points to submission, subjugation, & the dimuntion of life and it’s respect. They call it progress.
Plain to see, and not a new story, goes back to after 9/11, the leaders, media that is, of the left is allied with the muslims. A true death wish. It’s almost boring by now.
Kudos to Ireland and Bristol Palin, Brickbats to the Corrupt MSM
Some events and people receive insufficient public plaudits for outstanding contributions to the progress of humanity or to exposing political hypocrisy. Other people receive either commendation for their degradation of American culture or scant notice of their foul commentary by the mainstream media.
Following are a few examples of under-reported events and individuals and a number that exemplify the remarkably uncivil and hate-filled atmosphere that permeates America’s left wing.
KUDOS TO:
IRELAND: In a stunning rebuke of the United Nations and evidence that The Land of Saints and Scholars hasn’t totally lost its soul, the government of the Republic of Ireland has refused to accede to U.N. pressure to violate Ireland’s constitution by legalizing the practice of murdering pre-born human babies.
According to National Right to Life News Today, “In rejecting the UN recommendations, Ireland stood by its sovereign right to make its own laws and uphold its constitutional protection for unborn children while assisting mothers during pregnancy and childbirth.”
In doing so, the Irish government has concurred with the Irish people who have repeatedly rejected legalizing abortion in various referenda, a decision never accorded the American people by our government.
BRISTOL PALIN: The eldest daughter of Sarah and Todd Palin has written a letter to President Barack Hussein Obama acquainting him with his hypocrisy and insensitivity toward women, his wife, and his daughters by not condemning Bill Maher for his repulsive comments about the Palins and women in general by not rejecting Maher’s million dollar gift to an Obama PAC.
In her respectful missive, the twenty-one year old Bristol admits her past mistakes in conceiving an out of wedlock child and attests she has found “forgiveness and redemption” in God, something Bill Maher will never find.
Ms. Palin cites Maher’s reference to her Down Syndrome brother saying, I was “f—-d so hard a baby fell out.” She fails to mention Maher’s description of her mother as a “c*nt” and his other misogynistic comments and wonders why the president hasn’t called her to express his indignation and support yet has accepted Maher’s million.
(In a related story, the FLOTUS, Lady O, appeared on Letterman Monday and Dirty Dave obsequiously groveled before his “lovely” guest. There were no references to Maher or to Dirty Dave’s calling Sarah Palin slutty nor to his hilarious comment that Bristol’s underage sister engaged in sex with Alex Rodriquez out in left field at Yankee Stadium.)
BRICKBATS TO:
THE MSM
Brickbats should be tossed in the direction of Obama’s mainstream media which has successfully concealed our president’s radical past and radical agenda as well as condoning obscene and hateful remarks by Obama aficionados.
One recently-uncovered news item concerning the source of the mysterious funding that enabled a poor, semi-black kid from Hawaii to attend prestigious and expensive Harvard University has escaped notice by the MSM.
It turns out, as per the recollections of a humble public servant, a postman who delivered mail to the home of the parents of unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers, Obama got to Harvard not on his good looks but thanks to the beneficence of Ayers’ Marxist parents, Tom and Mary Ayers, who thought Obama was a foreigner.
The parents virtually adopted the young Barry Obama and bankrolled Barry’s college expenses since the future president fit the Ayers’ hopes for a communist revolution in America.
The now-retired postman, Allen Hulton, recalls Mary Ayers enthusiastically praising Obama, whom she thought might be Kenyan, and remembers once meeting Obama outside the Ayers’ home. Out of the blue, he told Hulton he planned to become president.
To determine Mr. Hulton’s credibility, see the full story and a video of an interview with the letter carrier here.
For more than four years, the mainstream media have failed to do their job by reporting on Obama’s connections with any of the Ayers, with Bernardine Dohrn, or with any other revolutionary associates of the president.
The MSM has also fumbled the “slut ball” ever since Rush Limbaugh used the derogatory term to describe leftist activist, Sandra Fluke. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=17983.)
” Everyone remembers the 9/11 attacks.” The first effort (almost immediate)to diminish the 9/11 attack was the insistence that the day become a community service day. After all, who could refuse such a worthy idea. Now, in some places, it is difficult to ascertain just why we have a Community Service Day on 9/11.
Hey folks…like it OR not…profiling works and in most cases more likely then not smart and appropriate. Last time I checked there were no Hispanics, Asians or Blacks associated with the 911 attacks. PC is probably what allowed them on board to begin with….we cannot afford to make the same mistake again.
Dunphy is wrong.
I spent a career in police work, some of it in intelligence. NYPD’s zeal to catch the next terrorist must be buffered by the simple fact that they are the NYPD, not the national police at the beck and call of the little Napoleon at City Hall.
Bloomberg has used well intentioned detectives and officers to do his dirty work on issue like the anti-gun, anti-second amendment. If I remember correctly, didn’t NYPD show up in Arizona under some stupid guise that Bloomberg wanted to stop guns from getting to NY at the source or some other stupid politically correct agenda? Seriously? Can my department go to LAPD’s jurisdiction and set up surveillance of civilians of that jurisdiction and not tell the LAPD? How do you think that would go over in LA?
Bloomberg is the problem. HE is a little dictator and is willing to use the NYPD as his SA. Sadly, as Dunphy will admit, there will always be a small percentage of police that will follow orders blindly and love the power that the badge gives them. That small percentage will violate Constitutional laws all day long and think nothing of it because their view of law enforcement is one of “the ends justify the means”.
On the other hand, I trained all my people to remember that being in law enforcement is not a right, but a privilege, it is a responsibility and a burden. You must always remember you serve at the will of the citizens within your jurisdiction. You must always follow the rules and be respectful of the laws and the Constitution. You must carry out your duty with honor and ethics and you must recognize and respect other law enforcement.
Life is a risk. Terrorists are hitting us all the time now in low intensity attacks like we’ve seen with D.C. sniper case, the shooter in Arkansas and the attack on the Jewish Center out west. To violate someone’s Constitutional rights based on your worry that they might be terrorists or have terrorist thoughts is simply a cure worse than the disease. Good cops know that, people in the same department as the Rampart scandal should also know that.
We are the good guys until we let little tyrants like Bloomberg (the food police-really???) guide us off the path. When the people trust us less than they do the bad guys we’ve lost, and I’ll bet money you won’t find Bloomberg, or Holder or anyone like them anywhere around to pick up those pieces when it happens.