July 8, 2005

It had been quiet–too quiet–for a while. As anyone who has spent many years in the military, special operations and counterterrorism field will tell you, when you get the feeling that it has been just too quiet for just too long, it means something bad is in the works. Thing is, with so target-rich an environment and with our decentralized enemy being in 90 countries or so, when your instinct is telling you something bad is afoot, sometimes you just can’t tell where an attack is about to take place. What good would it have done for me to state publicly that alarm bells were going off in my brain-housing group? Without specifics, had I done so it would have accomplished nothing except scare some people; frustrating but true.

Nevertheless, when my phone went off at 0430 on 7 July 2005 and someone told me that London had been hit, I wasn’t surprised. London had long been the target of terrorists, at least 600 British subjects had been trained at al Qaeda camps in a minimum of three countries, the G8 Summit was underway in Scotland, London had been awarded the 2012 Olympics the day prior (although it is unlikely that fact played a direct role in the attacks of the following day), Europe has an open-border policy cherished by terrorists, London’s leftist mayor (among other things, Ken Livingstone called one of London’s most fanatical Muslim clerics a man of "moderation and tolerance") is an unrepentant and open terrorist sympathizer, the British had long been coddling Muslim cleric extremists and the radical Muslim community there in general, and Great Britain’s out-of-control immigration policies have led to a massive influx of immigrants from countries infested with terrorists.

If ever there were a city that had set itself up for an attack, London was it.

My emails and phones instantly heat up when terrorist attacks occur. One of the first things people (media, various government officials, etc.) wanted to know was where these attacks were likely to have originated, i.e., where the leaders and organizers were likely based.

There was no need to query any of my sources for the answer. About three hours after the attacks, I said the investigation would probably lead to North Africa, specifically Morocco. By the end of the day, other terrorism analysts and the mainstream media had begun reporting the same thing in that investigators had already begun looking at a Moroccan connection.

Some people wanted to know how I knew this so soon after the attacks and why it took several hours for others to state they had similar intelligence. I’d like to be able to say that some high-level CIA, Mossad, MI 5 or MI6 source told me via encrypted communications, but the truth is that my gut told me. My gut is fed by 28 years of experience, which is a substantial meal at this table. Cops get hunches. So do terrorism analysts.

Naturally, within minutes of the attacks, self-proclaimed "terrorism experts" began coming out of the woodwork. Two of these people making the media rounds have bios that say they are certified in homeland security. A check of this "certification" revealed they had paid $350 to a security company to certify them. A check of that company revealed that the organization the company relied upon to certify it in selling such "credentials" is an association of people in the forensics field. One can pay as little as $45 to join said association. The "credentials" aren’t backed up by any government agency or reliable counterterrorism organization.

One "terrorism expert" has on his bio that he is certified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in "Emergency Response to Terrorism." The Emergency Response to Terrorism Course is a 10-hour, self-paced, home-correspondence course anyone can take and pass provided their IQ is above that of your average cactus. There are no prerequisites and there are no post-course requirements. There is no practical application. It rates no credits under the American Council on Education (ACE). This same man touts his being the author of a CD-ROM on bomb countermeasures, yet his bio reflects absolutely no genuine experience or education that would qualify him to author such a thing. He also says he specialized in "force protection" with the United States Army, which means he once stood guard duty while a soldier, perhaps guarding something crucial like a mess hall or obstacle course. I sent this man an email asking about his qualifications. He no doubt figured out who I was and what I was up to and failed to reply.

The ability of such charlatans to get in front of a television camera or on the radio is as annoying as it is remarkable. Why the media chooses not to vet these bozos is indicative of ratings desperation overriding any sense of duty, with the latter being the media’s duty to verify one’s qualifications.

How can the media tell its audience that someone who took a correspondence is an expert in that course’s subject? Sadly, there are a host of specialized diploma mills on the Internet that service the security industry with the specific mission of helping frauds pad their bios. In the race to beat their competition to the prize, few media outlets bother to ask to see a self-proclaimed terrorism expert’s list of accurate assessments and predictions in the war on terror, which if substantial would partially authenticate his qualifications.

Oh, wait. The television is telling me via a "Fox News Alert" that Bono is about to give his opinion on the G8 Summit and attacks on London.

The tension is palpable.

Bob Newman