John McLaughlin Dazed and Confused

by Larry C. Johnson (bio below)

After listening to this confused little man on Jim Lehrer and Wolf’s The Situation Room, I had to say something.

Having watched former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin spend the day trying to back and fill for President Bush’s decision to circumvent the FISA Court procedure (which occurred during McLaughlin’s tenure), we begin to understand why the CIA declined so badly under his watch.

McLaughlin argues, as always, in a calm, polite voice–the quintessential bureaucrat–that the threat is new and terrorists move too quick. Now, either he’s lying, which I don’t think, or he spent too much time cloistered at the Headquarters in McLean and is sadly misinformed. The so-called “new practice,” where terrorists call on one phone, dump it, pick up a new phone, dump it, and so on, was pioneered by the Colombian drug cartels, among others, more than ten years ago. DEA, while facing some challenges, has actually become quite adept at chasing these guys while working within the constraints of FISA. Surely McLaughlin is not asking us to believe that the intelligence community is too stupid to learn lessons from DEA?

But, let’s assume for a moment that McLaughlin is right. That the terrorists really started doing something new after 9-11. If the intelligence community and President Bush realized that FISA was inadequate to meet the challenge, why didn’t they seek authority from the Congress to deal with the new threat? That, my friends, is the crux of the issue. Bush and Cheney and McLaughlin want to argue after the fact that they had to act to “save” the nation, while sacrificing the law and Constitution without seeking a change to either. This stinks and this is wrong.

That McLaughlin is allowed on television without tough questioning by media is a whole other issue.
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Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.