Month: December 2003

(I started thinking about terrorism, then the Farmers Almanac, then flashed on an old Gilligan’s Island episode. Sorry.)

From all quarters, Left, Right, and Center, comes general ridicule for the bulletin sent from the FBI to various local law enforcement agencies suggesting that people carrying almanacs might be terrorists.

Well, no, that’s not really what it suggested. What it suggested was that almanacs (the Farmers Almanac is the one generally thought of here, though it’s not specifically named in the warning) could be used as a convenient reference source by terrorists, and that unusual use of one was something that cops should watch for. It did not specifically say, for example, that all almanac owners or carriers be dumped in underground prison camps, though you might think that by some reactions.

In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs “to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.”
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
“The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning,” the FBI wrote.
[…] The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps.

The general ridicule seems to come from plenty of counter-examples of folks who legitimately have almanacs. Oddly enough, two different people cited old Italian gardeners in their neighborhood as potential victims of the Police State crackdown on almanackists.

I don’t get it.

Nobody is suggesting that almanacs are proof of intent to blow up buildings, and thus their bearers should be hauled off and beaten with hoses. They are being cited in the FBI (not DHS, btw) bulletin as simply a warning sign, an added indicator that law enforcement can watch out for, that, in conjunction with other activities, might be an additional signifier of something funny going on.

The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, “the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities.” But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior — such as apparent surveillance — a person with an almanac “may point to possible terrorist planning.”

Well, yeah. I would suppose the same might be true of, say, topographic maps. A pair of hikers on a Forest Service trail, walking their dog and carrying a picnic lunch, a topo map in their packs with their trail highlighted? Probably not a problem. A couple of guys driving through the forest in a rented truck carrying a topo map on which reservoirs and bridges have been circled and numbers scribbled next to them? Hey, that’s kind of an interesting thing to check into …

So, too, with almanacs and similar compendia of geographic, civic, and governmental information. Addresses of government offices, lists of tallest buildings, locations of scenic and famous bridges, statistics about dams — good clean fun for tourists and kids writing reports for high school, reference material for potential terrorists.

That doesn’t mean that everyone should thus be assumed to be the latter, or that such books should be pulled from the market, or redacted by government censors. It’s just something that makes sense to bear in mind. There are people who want to do these sorts of thing evil things — and, yes, I have no problem calling them “bad guys.” Providing an additional concrete item for law enforcement to keep an eye out for in conjunction with other behavior seems to me to be a good thing; arguing to the contrary is like saying that gang units should not be told that the local Crips are wearing blue colors because, well, lots of folks wear blue, and we don’t want the elderly Italian gardener next door to be arrested as a gang-banger because she’s wearing blue jeans.

See, it seems to me that (their numerous other problems, some of them self-inflicted aside), the folks who are responsible for anti-terror efforts within the US (and note that this came from the FBI, not DHS) are faced with a no-win situation. When they offer vague warnings — “threat level Orange” — they are criticized for being too vague, for not offering anything helpful or concrete, for fear-mongering. When they do offer specific suggestions, they are lambasted for not being specific enough, that, well, there are plenty of innocent people who appear/do/act like X, and thus the whole suggestion is worthless.

If, on the other hand, someone blew Hoover Dam, and the perp was arrested and found to have an almanac listing it and circled with little notes next to it, and it came out that some DHS field operative had thought of this as a possible indicator for potential terrorists, and sent a memo to the head office, but nobody ever did anything about it, there would be loud and fierce wailings from the punditry demanding the resignations of those who “dropped the ball” or who “didn’t connect the dots,” and there would be congressional hearings as to whether the president knew about the almanac threat, but didn’t act on it because of the large almanac donations he got during the 2004 election season …

It seems that what everyone wants is to be (a) fully informed, but only of (b) the air-tight absolute ways of flagging any potential terrorist, and anything from the FBI or DHS short of that is buffoonery and/or scare tactics. Here’s a clue, folks: if anyone knew how to do that, there wouldn’t be a problem.

As for me, I’m not going to particularly worry if I see an almanac sitting on my mom’s book shelf. There are more important things to worry about these days.