Sunday, February 09, 2003

Terrorism American style

I consider it indicative of how flatly blind the mainstream media have become -- and perhaps indicative of a racial bias -- that this story isn't getting play on the front pages of the national dailies. Even the Seattle Times, which carried this report, buried it midway down page B1:

Arrests display homebred side of terror threat

What's really shocking about all this is how much important information they managed to pass on to domestic terrorists:
Davila had told the FBI that he took home boxes of secret documents to study. Up to 15 boxes of security documents — some involving chemical, nuclear and biological-warfare strategies — are missing, federal agents say.

Deborah Davila, a teacher, is believed to have collected at least $2,000 for mailing more than 300 documents to addresses in North Carolina, Texas and Georgia, according to court documents.

Deborah Davila told agents she was told by "a mysterious man" in a phone conversation that one thick envelope of secret papers would reach Kirk Lyons, a North Carolina lawyer who has represented such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Patriot Movement and the Posse Comitatus.

... The FBI has said that the missing documents pose a "huge threat" to the security of the United States and that they would be worth millions of dollars on the black market.

Not knowing where the documents are now, acknowledged FBI Special Agent in Charge Charlie Mandigo, makes the threat even more disconcerting.

Weighing on investigators' minds is a disturbing — if not bizarre — commingling of the radical right and Islamic extremists, with the hatred of Jews binding them together.

I would probably be remiss not to point out that all this corroborates my earlier post on this subject -- though it misses one of my main points, which is that these kinds of terrorists don't hope so much to link up with Al Qaeda as to piggyback on their terrorist acts (a la the anthrax attacks after 9/11).

Moreover, I think this story is a stark reminder that the people in our midst "who hate us" (as North Carolina Republican Sue Myrick put it the other day) aren't always brown-skinned Arabs. Sometimes they're conservative white Christians. The fifth column among us, as I've noted, doesn't necessarily wear a turban.

The next time someone advocates racial profiling to deal with terrorists, remind them of this story.

No comments: