The Tyler case

The Texas cyanide bomb case made today's edition of the Los Angeles Times:

Case Yields Chilling Signs of Domestic Terror Plot

You'll note that I was interviewed for this piece, though the reporter only quotes the blog. (A truncated version without my quotes appeared in the Boston Globe.)

A couple of points worth noting: Scott Gold, the reporter, largely credits bloggers with keeping the story alive, and that's probably true. Unfortunately, it still hasn't translated into a larger public awareness of the problem, which is the real goal.

Also worth noting is the predicatably defensive and entirely bureaucratic response from Justice Department officials, who manage to elide the fact that international terrorism has overwhelmingly become the focus of FBI and other investigators, largely because of the massive shift of funding and agency emphasis. They may be able to say, as I've previously noted, that philosophically speaking, the agencies recognize the dual threat; what they can't say is that the emphasis from the top has facilitated that recognition.

Finally, I should mention that I'm really not a "former" journalist; I've simply had to forgo daily reporting and article writing for the sake of pursuing book-writing, blogging, and raising a two-year-old.