Zero for 40 at Predicting Attacks
Why Do Media Still Take FBI Terror Warnings Seriously?
By Adam Johnson
July 04, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"FAIR"
- On Monday, several mainstream media outlets repeated the
latest press release by the FBI that country was under a new
“heightened terror alert” from “ISIL-inspired attacks” “leading up
to the July 4th weekend.” One of the more sensational outlets,
CNN, led with the breathless warning on several of
its cable programs, complete with a
special report by The Lead’s Jim Sciutto in
primetime:
The threat was given extra credence when former
CIA director—and consultant at DC PR firm Beacon Global
Strategies—Michael Morell went on CBS This Morning (6/29/15)
and scared the ever-living bejesus out of everyone by saying he
“wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting [in the studio] next week
discussing an attack on the US.” The first piece of evidence Morell
used to justify his apocalyptic posture, the “50 ISIS arrests,” was
accompanied by a scary map on the CBS jumbotron
showing “ISIS arrests” all throughout the US:
But one key detail is missing from this graphic:
None of these “ISIS arrests” involved any actual members of ISIS,
only members of the FBI—and their network of informants—posing as
such. (The one exception being the man
arrested in Arizona, who, while having no contact with ISIS, was
also not prompted by the FBI.) So even if one thinks the threat of
“lone wolf” attacks is a serious one, it cannot be said these are
really “ISIS arrests.” Perhaps on some meta-level, it shows an
increase of “radicalization,” but it’s impossible to distinguish
between this and simply more aggressive sting operations by the FBI.
In any event, this nuance gets left out entirely.
As I’ve previously
shown, in the media’s rush to hype the threat, the fact of
FBI-manufactured—or at least “assisted”—terror plots is left out as
a complicating factor altogether, and the viewer is left thinking
the FBI arrested 50 actual ISIS sleeper cells.
Nevertheless, the ominous FBI (or Department of
Homeland Security) “terror warning” has become such a staple of
the on-going, seemingly endless “war on terror” (d/b/a war on ISIS),
we hardly even notice it anymore. Marked by a
feedback loop of extremist propaganda, unverifiable claims about
“online chatter” and fuzzy pronouncements issued by a neverending
string of faceless Muslim bad guys, and given PR cover by
FBI-contrived “terror plots,” the specter of the impending “attack”
is part of a broader white noise of fear that never went away after
9/11. Indeed, the verbiage employed by the FBI in this latest
warning —“we’re asking people to remain vigilant”—implies no
actual change of the status quo, just an hysterical nudge to not let
down our collective guard.
There’s only one problem: These warnings never
actually come to fruition. Not rarely, or almost never, but—by all
accounts—never. No attacks, no arrests, no suspects at large.
Here’s a selection of previous FBI and DHS “terror
warnings” over the past 14 years, not a single one of which actually
predicted or foiled a terror attack:
A casual search reveals the FBI and DHS are a
pitiful 0 for 40 warning of terror attacks—some of which were
specifically about 4th of July threats, none of which materialized
in any way. This should not be considered a comprehensive list of
all threat warnings transmitted by media; I tried to narrow the
scope to warnings that were at least in some way specific.
The actual terror attacks carried out on US
soil—the Times Square bomber, “Underwear bomber,” Boston bombing and
Garland attacks—were accompanied by no such warnings. (Nor were the
often deadlier terrorist attacks by right-wing white
terrorists–but terrorism in this category is rarely if ever the
subject of FBI warnings.)
So why, a rational person may ask, does the media
keeps repeating them if they’re wrong 100 percent of the time?
The problem is three fold:
The FBI has all the incentive in the world to
issue warnings and no incentive whatsoever to not issue
warnings. Issuing warnings has no downside, while not doing so
is all downside.
The FBI, like all agencies of the government,
does not operate in a political vacuum. Emphasizing the “ISIS
threat” at home necessarily helps prop up the broader war effort
the FBI’s boss, the president of the United States, must sell to
a war-weary public. The incentive is to therefore highlight the
smallest threats. This was a feature that
did not go unnoticed during the Bush years, but has since
fallen out of fashion.
It has no actual utility. What does it mean
to be “more vigilant”? It’s a vague call to alertness that
officials, aside from “beefing up security” by local police,
never quite explain what it means. If the FBI wanted to tell
local police departments to up their security of the 4th of July
weekend, surely they could do so quietly, without the chair of
the House Committee on Homeland Security having to go on all
major networks talking over b-roll of ISIS in apocalyptic terms.
When I brought up these objections up to
CNN’s Sciutto, his response was less than satisfying:
@adamjohnsonNYC fair
question, the point is about the wider threat, FBI encourages
people to attend events but be vigilant
@adamjohnsonNYC I hear
your point. C-T is by nature general. Question is, would you
prefer no warnings? Warnings only when attacks imminent? — Jim
Sciutto (@jimsciutto)
June 29, 2015
Yes, I would prefer warnings only when
attacks were imminent. Which, of course, they never are. Because if
they were, the government would actually attempt to stop them,
rather than running a three-day PR tour. CNN‘s Jake
Tapper, to his credit, would
raise my concerns to Michael Chertoff later that day:
While the attempt to introduce some skepticism is
very much appreciated, Tapper missed the fundamental problem
altogether. Next time he has on a Chertoff or a McCaul discussing a
vague government terror warning, I’d like him to ask this simple
question: “Has the FBI ever successfully warned, or foreshadowed in
anyway, a terror attack in the United States? Because so far the
count is 0 for 40+, and I’m curious what makes this time different.”
Put the burden of proof on those who are
attempting to scare us, march our men and women off to war, and line
their private security firm’s pockets. Don’t demand “FBI warning
skeptics” disprove those in power; make those in power justify their
own consistently discredited “warnings.”
If journalists still insist on disseminating these
vague “threats,” I ask this question: How many false positives would
be required for you to eventually stop doing so? Seventy? Two
hundred?
Because 14 years on, I’m curious when, if ever,
this media trope will ever end.
h/t Kevin Gosztola, who caught a 4th of July
warning from 2004 I missed.
UPDATE:
The CNN video with Chertoff is now embedded.
Adam Johnson is an associate editor at
AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org.
You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.
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