This
is
another excerpt from the book I'm writing on technology, terrorism, and
my
time at DHS, tentatively titled "Skating on Stilts." (If you want to
read the excerpts in a more coherent fashion, try the categories on the
right labeled "Excerpts from the book." I'm afraid I can't fix the bug
in TypePad that prevents me from putting them in the category in
reverse-chronological order.) Comments and factual quibbles
are welcome, either in the comments section or by email:
fact.check.baker@gmail.com. If you're dying to order the book, send
mail to the same address. I'm still looking for an agent and a
publisher, so feel free to make recommendations on that score too.
--Stewart Baker
So
here I was, thinking about the people who died a few yards away – the people
whose deaths drove me back into government.
I was taking stock of what I’d actually managed to do for their memory.
The
place is nearly deserted. A handful of other people wander the paths. Two
youngsters skip up to me. They want to know where the broken limestone is.
I
look around. The place is as sterile as a French park. There’s no place for
anything broken.
“It’s
here somewhere. We have to find it for our class.”
Great,
I think. A puzzle and a scavenger hunt. I try sitting on one of the benches.
It’s sopping. My pants soak through. I stand. That’s enough. Time to go.
But
the puzzle nags at me. The dates are easy enough. They’re birth years. And the
benches arcing toward the building are for the passengers on Flight 77. The
others are for victims who died in the Pentagon.
I
look for my birth year – 1947. Eleven dead. More than any other. That seems
fitting. By 2001, we baby boomers had shaped the United States to reflect
ourselves. We were what the attackers hated. This is our fight.
***
I’d
known that from the start, from the day of the attacks. I could see smoke
rising from the Pentagon out my law office window. And I had at least some
responsibility for our failure to stop the attacks.
In
the 1990s, after a term as the National Security Agency’s top lawyer, I had
spoken out in favor of keeping a wall between spies and cops. The wall was meant to protect civil liberties
but it crippled our last, best chance to catch the hijackers before September
11. In August 2001 the wall kept the FBI from launching a full-scale criminal
search for the hijackers -- even though everyone knew that an al-Qaeda attack
was imminent and intelligence sources had provided the names of dangerous
terrorists who had entered the United States.
I’d
had doubts about the civil liberties value of the wall. But without the
separation, I thought, intelligence agencies would sooner or later face
devastating attacks from zealous privacy advocates -- in the courts, in the
papers, in privacy circles, and on the Hill. Better to save ourselves all that
pain, I thought, and keep the wall high.
It
made eminent sense inside the Beltway.
Until
the world outside the Beltway broke through, just a few yards from where I’m
standing.
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