Dangerous Incompetence

Twelve years ago this month, nineteen al-Qaeda members hijacked and crashed four American commercial jets in the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history. Each of the hijackers entered the country legally after being granted a U.S. visa. At least 15 of the 19 visa applications contained red flags that should have caused them to be denied. Several of the terrorists had caught the attention of law enforcement or intelligence services at some point, but in each case, incompetence, bureaucracy or both meant officials failed to follow up.

More than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, the national security state is built up like never before, with capabilities the public has only begun to discover. Law enforcement, too, has access to technology that was unimaginable a generation ago.

It is alarming that despite the unprecedented buildup of data-gathering power, the apparatus created to stop mass murder is incapable even of denying security clearance to psychotic mass murderers within its own ranks.

No one but the shooter, of course, is really to blame for the atrocities that left twelve innocents dead at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday. Like virtually all mass-shooters, this man appears to have been seriously mentally ill. As painful and senseless as these events are, we have to admit that it is exceedingly difficult to stop the worst acts of insanity even if different circumstances might have directed them toward another time or place.

The details surrounding the killer’s rampage do raise an urgent question, though: how did this man obtain and keep a security clearance?

After all, he had been arrested for shooting out the tires of his neighbor’s car.

He had been arrested for shooting through his floor into the apartment of a noisy neighbor.

He had nearly been discharged from the Navy for a “pattern of misconduct.”

He had called police in Rhode Island and told them he was hearing voices and that other men were using “‘some sort of microwave machine’ to send vibrations into his body to keep him awake.” The police had alerted the Navy of this behavior when he was serving as a contractor.

Any of these incidents might have prevented the killer from maintaining a security clearance. Put together, there is no doubt they should have.

This was not difficult information to find. CNN’s John King said yesterday that the network discovered most of it in a matter of minutes. Yet apparently it either eluded the security screeners or they ignored it. Either way points to frightening incompetence.

This lethal mistake comes at a time when the national security state is asking Americans for more trust and more power, so that it might scrutinize more of us as it was supposed to have scrutinized this killer.

It also comes at a time when lawmakers and bureaucrats are asking Americans to entrust their health to the same government that has demonstrated abuses and incompetence in so many other areas.

The failures of this last week--like the breakdown we have seen in the last few years--do not make the case for greater government power any stronger. It’s incapable of doing the activities it has already assumed.

Your Friend,
Newt