Real Security Hard To Find

Jimmy Breslin

April 21, 2002

In the middle of the day on Friday, Ashcroft, the attorney general, announced that the bin Laden enemy was planning to attack financial institutions in the Northeast.

He could not say that this was a specific threat, and the banks should not close. All people had to do was be watchful. However, his agency had learned of an attack on financial institutions, but don't worry.

Immediately, I thought of the World Trade Center a few minutes after both buildings were down. I was turning the corner to someplace that is no longer and a guy in a rain jacket with "FBI" on the back said, "You can't go there.'"

"Why?"

"Because there's something bad there."

What?

"Something I know and you don't."

"You don't know anything," I told him. I wound up going around the corner and into nothing.

As long as he was in the business of knowing things, I wish he or any of his heralded agents would have known that bin Laden was planning to hijack planes.

The FBI was one of the most colossal flops of any government agency we've ever had. They don't even say they're sorry they let the country down last September.

All the FBI outrage is for this agent, Robert Hanssen who was improving his income by selling information to Russia.

One of his outrageous acts was to inform the Russians that we were building a secret tunnel under their new embassy building in Washington.

It was the same as what the Russians did to us in Moscow and our squawks were loud and long.

The CIA was protecting us with a man named Aldrich Ames sitting there stewed to the top of his hair in the front row of the sensitive desks area. He usually was on the phone demanding that the Russians give him some more money for these top secrets he was giving them. Anybody could hear this drunk talking.

Then he would get up, wobble, snatch some papers and go down to his Mercedes and drive off to see his man from Moscow.

The CIA had people all over the world who were supposed to know what others were doing. Bin Laden spent a year putting the raid together and a thousand people must have known about it, but the CIA did not.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has chased Mexicans all across the deserts of the southlands.

They want to come here and grab the first job they see. There is a Mexican in the early morning in the doorway of every coffee shop, waiting for the boss to come and open it up so he can begin a long day's work.

They had to elude hunters to get there. But the INS gave warmth and welcome to Saudi Arabians who came here to go to flying schools, but not for landings and takeoffs, only for flying into buildings.

When last noted, the INS was still sending welcome cards to the attackers.