Terrorist Dry Hump

I tried last night and again this morning to open the Moonie Times' .pdf of the Department of Homeland Security report on its investigation into the Treehouse of Terror that was Northwest Flight 327. It didn't work either time, but I'll try again later. So we'll just have to look at the Moonie Times article touting the report for now.

Interestingly, the paper's URL for the .pdf is "www.washingtontimes/elections/DHS-IG-Northwest-327...." Not too subtle there.

As I suspected, the air marshals quoted by the Moonie Times as claiming a "terrorist dry run" had no personal involvement in the flight or the investigation, and (apparently) are not quoted in the report. They were called upon to opine by the Moonie rag itself.

The first marshal quoted is P. Jeffrey Black, a current federal air marshal. Interestingly, Pee is reportedly a member of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, whose other members include Siebel Edmonds, Daniel Ellsberg, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, the guy who wrote "Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk" and a guy who blew the whistle on a covert operation "by Edwin Meece the then US Attorney General." Pee also co-authored an op-ed piece on whistleblowers with Colleen Rowley and others which can be seen on Dennis Kucinich's website.

According to the NSWC website, Pee claims that he "is currently receiving severe and continual retaliation from his agency in response to his whistleblowing disclosures ––retaliation that has caused detrimental changes in his official duties, responsibilities, and working conditions." Think that information might be relevant to the determination of Pee's credibility and potential bias? The Moonie Times sure doesn't. Instead, the paper identifies Pee as someone "who told The Times that he has been involved personally in terror probes that were ignored by federal security managers."

Doesn't Pee's claim that the probes were ignored by federal security managers seem inconsistent with the claim that Pee's been subject to retaliation by his superiors? Never mind.

The second marshal, Robert McLean, is, as the Moonie Times suggests, an individual fired by the TSA who claims whistleblower status and is suing (or sued) to get his job back. He even has his own glowing but scrupuously objective entry on Wikipedia. The Times says the third marshal, Jeffrey Denning, quit the TSA last month. I can't find anything on him through Google; therefore he probably doesn't exist.

The article does note that the actual report states the marshals assigned to the flight observed that "the men were sweaty, appeared nervous and arrived after the boarding announcement." People appearing sweaty and nervous after running to catch a airplane. If that's not terrorist behavior, I don't know what is. All such passengers should be detained, cavity-searched and, of course, shot if they try anything else funny.

Some nitwits (namely, Patterico) are astoundingly impressed by the fact that the Moonie rag found "both current and former air marshals (that's marshals, plural)" to rubberstamp the paper's two-year old conclusions. Let's hope that, in real life, Patterico shows a little more skepticism before he puts witnesses on the stand.

By the way, Fox News is all over the story as well. The mentally-challenged weatherman on Fox and Friends was interviewing Nutbag Annie Jacobson this morning. It was like watching a thumb-wrestling match that was fixed.