<p>cangel:</p>
<p>Richard Suskind’s book, The One-Percent Solution, provides a pretty compelling look into the successes post 9/11. Bill Clinton also talked about the same issues at some length in his Larry King interview this week.</p>
<p>Good old-fashioned police work by the FBI and similar agencies around the world is where the big wins have come. Specifically, the FBI did a superb job “following the money” and untangling many of the connections. It started the day after 9/11 when the world’s largest credit card transaction clearing house offered to help. The basic technique was to take every transaction from every known terrorist and trace it, starting with the 9/11 hijackers. Then, trace the transactions from the people those traces led to. And the traces from those people to the next level. They basically started building a big spider web and eventually patterns emerged with multiple legs pointed to the same places revealing seemingly unrelated connections, both at the sleeper cell level downstream and the whole “Islamic charity” funding sources upstream.</p>
<p>This was expanded to include phone and e-mail transactions: the NSA installed data mining computers at the major internet/phone switching centers both in Europe and here. They weren’t so much interested in the content of the communications as in trying to pinpoint who was talking to whom. Each time they nabbed a terrorist, they seized computers which generated more e-mail contact points to feed into the transaction spider web.</p>
<p>It even included CIA agents taking over one or more key Western Union offices in the Middle East that were identified as money transfer points and running sting operations, presumably recruiting some moles.</p>
<p>In many cases, the FBI intentionally left terrorists on the street, continuing to make transactions, so they could develop more legs in the financial web. In fact, the guy who masterminded the London bombings tried to board a flight to the US. The FBI considered allowing him to come and putting a massive tail on him, but ultimately decided it was too risky and put him on the no-fly list. The day he was turned away from his flight at Heathrow was the first moment he had any idea he had raised suspicions. He had been ID’d exclusively from the financial transaction spider web.</p>
<p>There are some serious constitutional issues related to this work – this is really at the heart of the whole FISA court illegal survellance issues. However, the work identified a lot of cells and put an real damper on the ability of terror networks to operate. </p>
<p>After a couple of years of excellent results, the transaction networks started to go dark. The terrorists began to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that wire transfers or credit card purchases were too often being followed by arrests. Now, they are pretty much limited to human couriers, which is why terrorism attacks have mostly come from independent homegrown franchise operations.</p>
<p>There were some lucky breaks. Sheik Kalid Mohammed arranged for an Al Jazeera reporter to visit him for a propoganda interview in Pakistan, setting up an elaborate blindfold circuitous route for the interview. But, the reporter was able to figure out what general part of what city he visited. He reported it to the head of Al Jezerra, who reported it to his cousin the Emir of Qatar, who passed the information along to the United States. The CIA was able to set up a massive electronic eavesdropping net in the neighborhood and nab KSM after a gun battle in a safe house. KSM’s computer was a gold mine as was the mid-level Al Qaeda “travel agent” they nabbed from a tip. They tortured the hell out of the guy and got a bunch of jibberish. The real find was his computer e-mail file…he had been arranging travel to and from Pakistan for Al Qaeda families, so his data helped build the spider web.</p>
But lets play with your argument a bit. Since you say that you have nothing to hide and therefore do not mind illegal searches, I suppose it would be perfectly ok to force you (and only you) to submit to a metal detector and terry frisk every time you set foot onto your kid’s school… or maybe every time you leave your house. I mean, you have nothing to hide…</p>