There Are No Critical Infrastructure Cable Landings in the Middle East

/12 Comments/in , /by

Yeah right.

A number of commentators have said this leaked Wikileaks cable — listing what facilities internationally were considered “critical infrastructure and key resources” under the Homeland Security National Infrastructure Protection Plan and therefore worthy of additional surveillance and protection — is the most damaging yet to our national security.

Insofar as it gives our enemies a handy-dandy list of what we consider the most important resources to keep the empire running, I agree.

Then again, seeing as how our government(s) target their illegal domestic surveillance based on their definition of NIPP, even while ignoring corporate damage to the same kinds of infrastructure, I think it’s the kind of information citizens ought to have access to, at least in generalized form. We ought to know that if you mobilize against a new pipeline, for example, the government will illegally surveil you.

Furthermore, it says a lot about who we are and how the empire perceives itself. We are, it seems, about our trade (Chinese ports and NAFTA border entries figure prominently), our diseases (a number of drug factories are listed), certain raw materials (like the rare earth China recently throttled to prove a point), and certain defense factories in partner nations.

The vegetarians in the crowd may be intrigued to learn that our government considers foot and mouth disease a critical threat, as the list includes three foot and mouth disease vaccine plants.

Most of all, this list of critical infrastructure reveals what we already knew: the telecommunications network has become as crucial to our empire as the telegram was to the British empire. By my rough count, the list includes 71 cable landing spots around the world (though I think at least one is listed twice), from around 15 going into Japan to the one each going into the Netherland Antilles and Trinidad and Tobago. This list confirms these points where submarine telecommunications cables come on shore to connect the InterToobz and other telecommunication traffic are critical to the viability of our empire.

And oddly, there’s not a single cable landing listed for the Middle East (or Africa). And it’s not so much that this list doesn’t include cable landings in somewhat hostile countries, because it lists 4 in Venezuela. But it lists no cable landings in the Middle East.

Read more →

Joe Lieberman Threatens to Put Dexter Filkins, Judy Miller in Jail to Fearmonger over Wikileaks

/in , /by

Joe Lieberman has introduced what he claims to be a law targeted at Wikileaks.

“The recent dissemination by Wikileaks of thousands of State Department cables and other documents is just the latest example of how our national security interests, the interests of our allies, and the safety of government employees and countless other individuals are jeopardized by the illegal release of classified and sensitive information,” said Lieberman in a written statement.

“This legislation will help hold people criminally accountable who endanger these sources of information that are vital to protecting our national security interests,” he continued.

The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would amend a section of the Espionage Act that already forbids publishing classified information on U.S. cryptographic secrets or overseas communications intelligence — i.e., wiretapping. The bill would extend that prohibition to information on HUMINT, human intelligence, making it a crime to publish information “concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States,” or “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” if such publication is prejudicial to U.S. interests.

Problem is, not only would it not endanger Wikileaks (as far as we know). But it would put both good journalists–like Dexter Filkins–and bad ones–like Judy Miller and Bob Novak–in jail.

As far as we know, Wikileaks has been successful in its dumps at hiding the identities of any intelligence sources. (It has exposed one of State Department’s moles in Germany, who has been fired. But a diplomatic source is not an intelligence source, is it?)

But other journalists do expose sources. Such as when Dexter Filkins reported on how much the CIA has been shoveling at Ahmed Wali Karzai. Or when Judy Judy Judy exposed the CIA ties of a Ahmed Chalabi rival. And then, of course, there’s that little matter of Bob Novak and Valerie Plame.

This is all getting really, really stupid. Doesn’t Joe Lieberman have anything better to do with his time? Like funnelling money to the TSA for some other invasive search machine? Or giving the uber-rich big tax breaks?

The Leaked Cables I Want to See

/in /by

As you’ve no doubt heard, on Wednesday, both Amazon.com and Ecuador decided they didn’t want to be associated with Wikileaks.

In Amazon.com’s case, it’s not entirely clear they would have known Wikileaks had switched to their servers on Sunday. But on Tuesday, some of Joe Lieberman’s flunkies contacted the company to let them know that Holy Joe disapproved of the book store-and-server helping Wikileaks facilitate its leaks.

The company announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s committee on homeland security.

[snip]

Lieberman said: “[Amazon’s] decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organisation that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them.”

The department of homeland security confirmed Amazon’s move, referring journalists to Lieberman’s statement.

Now, given DHS’ confirmation referencing Lieberman, it’s not clear whether the government officially contacted Amazon.com, or only Holy Joe. But it is worth noting that Amazon.com presumably gets requests for “tangible things” from the government under the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215. And while the Obama Administration has not branded Julian Assange as a terrorist the way Peter “Material Support for Irish Terrorists” King has, they could presumably claim a counter-intelligence interest in obtaining records about Wikileaks under Section 215. So the government could make legitimate requests for information on Wikileaks’ hosting use, if not request it be closed down.

Then there’s Ecuador, which I find even more interesting. On Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas had said Ecuador was prepared to offer Assange asylum. But then yesterday, President Rafael Correa stated that Lucas had no authority to make the offer. As Al-Jazeera’s article on the Correa comment makes clear, Ecuador has shown as much resistance as just about anyone to US demands, particularly since the US backed a Colombian raid on FARC in Ecuadoran territory.

Nevertheless, presumably the US said something to Ecuador to make it rethink Lucas’ offer of asylum to Assange. What carrots or sticks, I wonder, would be revealed if the diplomatic cables between the US and Ecuador regarding this matter were leaked?

The point being, of course, that if Correa’s retraction of the asylum order was a response to US pressure, it means that even as the US’ heavy-handed ways are exposed in the Wikileaks dump, they continue to use those same ways to combat Assange.

FBI Entrapment Leads to TSA Pat-Downs

/in /by

A couple of weeks back, I pointed to John Pistole’s testimony that directly justified the expansion of VIPR checkpoints to mass transport locations by pointing to a recent FBI-entrapment facilitated arrest.

Another recent case highlights the importance of mass transit security. On October 27, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a Pakistan-born naturalized U.S. citizen for attempting to assist others whom he believed to be members of al Qaida in planning multiple bombings at Metrorail stations in the Washington, D.C., area. During a sting operation, Farooque Ahmed allegedly conducted surveillance of the Arlington National Cemetery, Courthouse, and Pentagon City Metro stations, indicated that he would travel overseas for jihad, and agreed to donate $10,000 to terrorist causes. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, returned a three-count indictment against Ahmed, charging him with attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, and attempting to provide material support to help carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties at D.C.-area Metrorail stations.

While the public was never in danger, Ahmed’s intentions provide a reminder of the terrorist attacks on other mass transit systems: Madrid in March 2004, London in July 2005, and Moscow earlier this year. Our ability to protect mass transit and other surface transportation venues from evolving threats of terrorism requires us to explore ways to improve the partnerships between TSA and state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement, and other mass transit stakeholders. These partnerships include measures such as Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams we have put in place with the support of the Congress. [my emphasis]

Now to be clear, as with Mohamed Mohamud’s alleged plot, Ahmed’s plot never existed except as it was performed by FBI undercover employees. In fact, at the time the FBI invented this plot, now TSA-head Pistole was the Deputy Director of FBI, so in some ways, Ahmed’s plot is Pistole’s plot. Nevertheless, Pistole had no problem pointing to a plot invented by his then-subordinates at the FBI to justify increased VIPR surveillance on “mass transit and other surface transportation venues.” As if the fake FBI plot represented a real threat.

And according to Gary Milano (who appears to be TSA’s Federal Security Director for Tampa), that’s what they’re now doing–telling the bad guys (among whom they include “immigration law violators” and “bulk cash” smugglers) they’re going to be searching Greyhound for them. (Randy Balko posted the YouTube here.)

Now, to be sure, these no-warning searches are more effective than the security theater Pistole has ramped up at airports.

But that doesn’t excuse the logic: John Pistole points to a plot the FBI–under his management–cooked up, as if it represents a “real” threat. He uses it to justify expanding VIPR to mass and surface transit venues. And then when TSA does set up one of those VIPR checkpoints, we learn they’re not looking for TATP (which is what Pistole implied in his testimony to Congress), but instead illegal aliens and cash smugglers.

I guess that all makes it okay, right? The plot justifying this checkpoint never existed, but then, they’re not really looking for the things they suggested they were looking for as defined by that plot. So it doesn’t matter that it was a fake terrorist plot, since the whole point of it seems to be to justify immigration and smuggling raids.

WikiLeaks Cable Dump Goes Live

/in /by

Here’s the NYT overview. Here’s one interesting detail:

Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”

Here’s that cable.

And here’s the Guardian’s overview. The Guardian makes clear that we peons won’t get the full dump.

The electronic archive of embassy dispatches from around the world was allegedly downloaded by a US soldier earlier this year and passed to WikiLeaks. Assange made them available to the Guardian and four other newspapers: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to “dump” the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department’s fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities.

Consider this an open thread.

Correlation Does Not Equal KochNation

/in /by

I wasn’t going to write a post debunking this Nation article on the opposition to gate grope. Sure, it was a specious hit on John Tyner, the “Don’t touch my junk” dude. But I figured as soon as anyone read this passage:

Tyner attended private Christian schools in Southern California and lives in Oceanside, a Republican stronghold next to Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine Corps base on the West Coast.

Readers would just dismiss the entire article as so sloppy to be embarrassing. I mean, did the Nation really insinuate that everyone who goes to a private Christian school and everyone who lives in Oceanside, CA, including the thousands of Marines stationed at Pendleton, have suspect political opinions? Hey, I live in an even stronger Republican stronghold next to these guys, who just got listed as a hate group. I guess that means all my political beliefs should be assumed to be hateful, huh? Serves me right for living close to my husband’s job.

But after reading the authors’ response to Glenn Greenwald’s critique of the article, I thought a more detailed response was worth doing.

You see, Mark Ames and Yasha Levine claim their only mistake in the first article–one they don’t find all that egregious–was in insinuating certain things about Tyner. But they suggest their underlying point–that we should question “the official narrative” about the opposition to gate grope–is still valid.

Greenwald’s column raises one potentially valid criticism of our article—our treatment of John Tyner, the self-described libertarian and “don’t touch my junk” hero of the anti-TSA protests. Based on reporting from the San Diego Union-Tribune, we speculated that Tyner may have set up his taped encounter with TSA agents—a claim that we also quote Tyner denying. We did not, however, claim that Tyner was affiliated with the Astroturf and/or Koch-funded groups mentioned later in the piece, and indeed we noted directly that Tyner denied any such associations in an interview with The Nation. In retrospect, our article was less than clear about Tyner’s lack of Astroturf affiliations, and we regret in particular including extraneous details from the Union-Tribune article about Tyner’s past—that he went to a private Christian school and lived in a Republican community near a Marine base—because it distracted readers like Greenwald from the article’s main findings.

We believe that Tyner is in all likelihood innocent in his motives, but our larger point is that his discourse and the movement that has embraced it is far from innocent. In focusing entirely on our characterization of Tyner, Greenwald ignores the larger thrust of our argument and the vast majority of the evidence assembled in the piece, leaving a distorted impression of it.

Here is what the article really said: Like many Americans, we found the TSA’s intrusive procedures offensive and we are against the invasive pat-downs and attack on our civil liberties. This was a given in our article, and we stated as much. What our article did was look beyond the obvious surface, into possible reasons why this particular issue suddenly rose to forefront of the national debate, when dozens of other, more pressing issues are getting so little attention–people being kicked out of their homes and living on the street because of fraudulent foreclosures, a massive wealth transfer from struggling Americans to the financial sector, ongoing wars that are bankrupting the country and killing thousands, the attack on public education and so on.

Our investigation called into question the official version of events as a “spontaneous” grassroots anti-TSA outbreak.

Which means it’s probably worthwhile to go back and point out how bizarrely bad the logic of their first article (and their response to Glenn) is.

Start with their basic project:

What our article did was look beyond the obvious surface, into possible reasons why this particular issue suddenly rose to forefront of the national debate,

[snip]

Our investigation called into question the official version of events as a “spontaneous” grassroots anti-TSA outbreak.

They want to question “the official version” of why this particular issue “suddenly rose to forefront.”

At a threshold level, to prove their argument that something nefarious is afoot, they would need to start by dismissing other logical explanations for why this particular issue “suddenly rose to forefront.” Most obviously, they would need to dismiss the possibility that the opposition to gate grope rose so suddenly because the procedure at airport gates–the introduction of more RapeAScan machines and the related introduction of “enhanced pat-downs”–changed so suddenly. Unfortunately for them, that’s a pretty tough explanation to disprove. So they don’t even try. Their entire effort ignores the most obvious explanation, that the timing is explained by changes in TSA procedure, and the response to it grew immediately after the changes were introduced.

But their project also relies on something else: the purported existence of “an official narrative.”

Now, to be fair, I agree that the media in this country often develop “a narrative.” I just wasn’t aware someone had started certifying certain narratives as “official” or not. I certainly wasn’t aware that someone had certified a narrative about this issue yet. But that brings us to the second problem with Ames and Levine’s argument. They don’t prove the existence of or even point to examples of the narrative they’re trying to debunk. That makes their job a lot easier, mind you, because they can just claim a narrative exists that says this was all a grassroots movement, without having to deal with the nuances or sources of any actual narrative itself. Heck, I might even agree that some entities are making claims about the opposition to gate grope that aren’t true. But then wouldn’t the more sound response be to point to actual examples of press coverage that made inaccurate statements, rather than just argue against a straw man narrative that it’s not entirely clear exists?

This problem with their argument is particularly important, because it brings us back to the centrality of Tyner in it. Their entire article is based on the media’s purported designation of Tyner as the hero of the movement.

Does anyone else sense something strange is going on with the apparently spontaneous revolt against the TSA? This past week, the media turned an “ordinary guy,” 31-year-old Californian John Tyner, who blogs under the pseudonym “Johnny Edge,” into a national hero after he posted a cell phone video of himself defending his liberty against the evil government oppressors in charge of airport security.

Tyner is the only opponent to gate grope whom Ames and Levine suggest has been widely treated as the hero of opposition to gate grope. In fact, they seem to admit that Meg McLain pointedly wasn’t because her claims were debunked.

Meg McLain almost became a national celebrity as the first victim of the body scanner/TSA molesters.

And they seem to admit that the other false heroes of opposition to gate grope were primarily promoted through Drudge.

McLain wasn’t the only questionable libertarian “victim” of the TSA turned into a freedom-hero on the Drudge Report. In fact, according to the TSA’s account, the 6-year-old who was allegedly “strip-searched” by evil TSA agents had his shirt removed by his own father—and not at the TSA’s request. And the latest “hero” of the Drudge Report, Samuel Wolanyk—who stripped down to his underwear in alleged anger at TSA agents in San Diego, earning himself top billing on Drudge—is also a libertarian activist in the San Diego area, home of the self-described “libertarian” hero John Tyner, III.

The discrepancy in the media’s treatment–with Tyner being widely treated as one symbol of this movement, but with others being promoted by Drudge but then debunked and largely ignored by the national media–undermines Ames and Levine’s claim that there is an “official narrative.” Rather, there is Drudge’s narrative, and then there is the narrative that has survived media scrutiny.

Just as importantly, though, if Tyner is the only one sustainably picked up by the national media, and the authors now admit he “is in all likelihood innocent in his motives,” then their entire argument falls apart, because the person they claim to be most central in the national media is–according to Ames and Levine–just what their purported official narrative says he is, a citizen legitimately objecting to this treatment.

Read more →

Did Just 170,000 Passengers Get Groped by Strangers Last Week? Or a Million?

/in /by

You know how I mocked the White House for dismissing the problem of gate rape by saying only 170,000 passengers had had their genitalia groped by a stranger working for the government?

I noted that their pushback was potentially inconsistent. According to “administration officials,” just half of one percent of all passengers–or about 170,000–get their junk touched.

For instance, the administration noted that fewer than one half of one percent of the 34 million passengers who traveled on airplanes in or to the U.S. last week were subjected to crotch-area pat-downs.

But that same article quoted the DHS spokesperson saying that one out of a hundred would get groped.

In airports where body screening technology is available, about one in every 100 passengers are given pat-downs, according to another official, Sean Smith, the DHS spokesperson.

Meanwhile, other sources say closer to 3% of passengers get groped.

A Department of Homeland Security official writes that less than 3% of travelers get the controversial aggressive patdowns.

According to one Atlanta Journal Constitution report this week, there are some 24 million people expected to fly in American airports over Thanksgiving week. So 3% of 24 million is 720,000 aggressive patdowns in the U.S. this week, if my math is holding up.

Note, several things may be going on here. First, there’s the question of how many people are flying. The White House says 34 million passengers have passed through security; Rozen is using AJC’s number of 24 million. And there are several ways a person might get groped: if they opt-out of the RapeAScan machine, but also if they set off either the RapeAScan machine or a conventional metal detector. So the lower half percent may be just one of those subsets of the entire group that has been groped. Also, it may be that the numbers of gropes have increased (or decreased) as the procedure has been introduced across the country.

Frankly, I think expecting 170,000 people a week to have their genitalia groped each week by government workers to be unreasonable. But the numbers may be far, far higher.

White House: Only 170,000 People Have Had Genitalia Groped by Complete Stranger in Last Week

/in /by

The White House has started a pushback campaign on gate rape that is reminiscent of “Recovery Summer” or “Mission Accomplished” for its credibility.

It consists of a number of things, in addition to the inevitable army of talking-point-people using the word “enhanced” the same way Cheney did.

First, there are statistics. Such as their claim that only 1% of people undergo pat-downs.

In airports where body screening technology is available, about one in every 100 passengers are given pat-downs, according to another official, Sean Smith, the DHS spokesperson.

Which may or may not contradict their other claim, that less than half of one percent of all air passengers have undergone “enhanced pat-downs.”

For instance, the administration noted that fewer than one half of one percent of the 34 million passengers who traveled on airplanes in or to the U.S. last week were subjected to crotch-area pat-downs.

So the White House’s idea of effective pushback against objections to this invasive scrutiny? “Only 170,000 people have had their genitalia groped by a complete stranger employed by the federal government in the last week. Big. Fucking. Deal.”

That sort of seems like a lot of junk-touching in just one week.

They’re also citing the polls and the numbers of complaints from before the junk-touching started in earnest so as to claim that no one much cares about being groped.

But here’s the thing I find most offensive.

The president said this weekend that while he understands the “frustrations” that the policies seem to have caused, “at this point, TSA in consultation with counterterrorism experts have indicated to me that the procedures that they have been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.” [my emphasis]

Um, no. You see, after the underwear bombing, we had a whole bunch of studies that examined what went wrong and what might have been effective against the underwear bomber. And the answer–in the face of clear fuck-ups by the NCTC and CIA (and to a much lesser degree, the FBI for which John Pistole then served as second-in-command)–the answer was to stop fucking up and start sharing information. To claim that junk-touching is the only thing that would be effective at stopping the undie bomber, when we know that the intelligence community had already identified Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab but failed to stop him, is an out and out lie.

Mind you, crotch groping might be effective if al Qaeda or another terrorist organization decided to launch the same type of attack, this time from within the United States. Or it might be effective against another sort of attack we haven’t yet thought up. Then again, it pointedly wouldn’t be effective against an attack by an organization that has proven itself capable of adjusting and exploiting new weaknesses–that is, the organization we’re fighting.

But to claim crotch-groping in the United States is the only procedure that would have been effective against an attack launched by an identified terrorist flying from another country, which is, after all “the kind of threat we saw in the Christmas Day bombing,” when we know the procedure that would have been effective is in fact simply sharing the information we had already collected?

That’s a pretty brutal pinch of the ‘nads.

John Pistole Ignored DHS Advice to Warn about Gate Rape

/in /by

Apparently, John Pistole not only promised to Congress–but failed to deliver–public education about why gate rape was necessary. But he ignored advice from DHS to provide a public explanation in advance, too.

In an hour-long discussion with reporters, Pistole said media officials at the Department of Homeland Security had urged him to “get out ahead” of the potential controversy by formally announcing plans for enhanced body searches and the use of new x-ray and radio-wave imaging devices at 70 airports beginning in November.

But doing so would have provided a “roadmap or blueprint for terrorists” to avoid detection by using other airports where the new technology wasn’t in place, Pistole said.

As you can see, he’s belatedly trying to do that education now.

Aside from being too little too late, consider what this says about Pistole’s relationship with the citizens who employ him. Regardless of his “risk based” assessment that he had to keep secrets from the terrorists, don’t Americans have the right to know what will happen to them at the airport?

John Pistole Wants Us to Be Afraid of His Shadow

/in /by

I’m working on a longer post on John Pistole, the head of Transportation Security Administration who ordered the TSA to touch your junk.

But in the meantime I wanted to point out something appalling about his recent testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee. In it, he says the following to justify expanding the use of air marshal patrols at mass transit locations.

Another recent case highlights the importance of mass transit security. On October 27, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a Pakistan-born naturalized U.S. citizen for attempting to assist others whom he believed to be members of al Qaida in planning multiple bombings at Metrorail stations in the Washington, D.C., area. During a sting operation, Farooque Ahmed allegedly conducted surveillance of the Arlington National Cemetery, Courthouse, and Pentagon City Metro stations, indicated that he would travel overseas for jihad, and agreed to donate $10,000 to terrorist causes. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, returned a three-count indictment against Ahmed, charging him with attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, and attempting to provide material support to help carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties at D.C.-area Metrorail stations.

While the public was never in danger, Ahmed’s intentions provide a reminder of the terrorist attacks on other mass transit systems: Madrid in March 2004, London in July 2005, and Moscow earlier this year. Our ability to protect mass transit and other surface transportation venues from evolving threats of terrorism requires us to explore ways to improve the partnerships between TSA and state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement, and other mass transit stakeholders. These partnerships include measures such as Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams we have put in place with the support of the Congress.

Pistole suggests we need to be worried about mass transit attacks because Ahmed Farooque was arrested for planning what he thought was an al Qaeda attack on the DC area Metro.

But of course–as Pistole concedes–there was never an attack. Instead, there was an FBI sting, set up back when Pistole was still at the FBI. We have zero indication that Farooque would have targeted the Metro on his own, and even less that that’s what al Qaeda is currently targeting. Nevertheless, Pistole chooses to point to it–a planned attack entirely of the FBI’s own making–as a reminder of the threat to mass transit.

Now I’m not suggesting that our subway and rail systems aren’t exposed to attack. Indeed, that’s part of the reason why the “gate rape” to get on airplanes is so absurd, given how unprotected rail transport is by comparison. (Though a smart terrorist would probably choose another kind of venue entirely–like a football game or Wal-Mart on Black Friday–for an attack.)

But I am suggesting it is absolutely inappropriate for Pistole to point to the FBI’s own–his own–sting as evidence that we need to increase domestic surveillance. Next thing you know, the FBI will stage a sting involving Disney World so it can justify strip-searching children before they see Mickey.

Update: Pistole is out with a new statement suggesting he may back down.

We welcome feedback and comments on the screening procedures from the traveling public, and we will work to make them as minimally invasive as possible while still providing the security that the American people want and deserve. We are constantly evaluating and adapting our security measures, and as we have said from the beginning, we are seeking to strike the right balance between privacy and security.   In all such security programs, especially those that are applied nation-wide, there is a continual process of refinement and adjustment to ensure that best practices are applied and that feedback and comment from the traveling public is taken into account. This has always been viewed as an evolving program that will be adapted as conditions warrant, and we greatly appreciate the cooperation and understanding of the American people.

We cannot forget that less than one year ago a suicide bomber with explosives in his underwear tried to bring down a plane over Detroit. The terrorists allegedly behind the thwarted cargo attempt last month are out there bragging about how they will strike again.

We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren’t necessary but that just isn’t the case. [my emphasis]

But his logic still amounts to “we need to feel up granny to try to find explosives worn by a terrorist entering the US from a place where they don’t feel up granny and because terrorists threaten to use the still-unsecured package shipping system.” That is, “because we’re not prepared to get the real terrorists’ flying or sending packages, we have to feel up granny.”