Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters Monday “there may be additional terrorist attacks within the U.S. and against U.S. interests over the next week.” Ashcroft added that although the administration views the information about the threat as “credible,” they do not have any specific information about when or where such attacks might take place…
Despite reporters’ questions, Ashcroft and Mueller refused to be any more specific about the threat. They reported that only the time of the impending attack was specific.
On Oct. 12, a similar alert was announced more quietly on the FBI Web site.
Mueller said that the Oct. 12 alert may have helped avert another attack, but it is difficult to tell. The alert may have been intended to refer to the current anthrax threat. Mueller said that there is no reason to believe that the current threat is related to anthrax. The Boston Channel
Is the Attorney General toying with us? From our avowals that we had definitive proof the attacks had been masterminded by ObL, to these recurrent threat alerts by the DoJ, to (here in my ‘home port’) the Coast Guard’s assurances yesterday that they have everything under control to prevent an attack on the LNG tanker arriving in Boston Harbor but refusing to share their plans with the Boston Police or Fire Depts., the government response to the terrorist attacks and threats has been managed by assuring us they know things and refusing to share what they know — a clear attempt to reassure and take credit for one’s intel but remain blameless for the failures of one’s intel. Issue omniscient-sounding warnings every few weeks and, several weeks later, follow up by claiming to have averted a major disaster. It reminds me of the joke about the man asked why he (insert outlandish attire or behavior here) everyday. “It’s to keep the stampeding elephants away”, he explains. “But there aren’t any elephants within five thousand miles of here!” replies his questioner. His smug reply: “See how well it’s working?”
It also reminds me of the special line to divinity the leaders claim to have in a theocracy. Expect to see another time-honored theocratic strategy soon, as follows. One theory of the function of ritual in societies is to reconcile believers to awful contingencies they can’t control by prescribing impossibly precise and elaborate rituals. They understand their failure to avert calamity as a failure to execute the ceremonial prescriptions perfectly enough. This holds out the promise of control of the uncontrollable if only the believers worked harder at appeasing divine forces perfectly. Perhaps around the anthrax exposures, where the CDC is the new priesthood, with arcane knowlege, ceremonial garb and impenetrable specialized language — if our rituals of recognition of threat mail, detection of spores in a workplace, sanitization, isolation, antibiotic prophylaxis and irradiation were only done perfectly enough, the juggernaut would lose all power over us?
