Peter T. King Quotes
Now, we don't get that many specific threats against sporting events, per se. But we know from listening to the chatter how terrorists want to attack iconic events. So whether it's a major Fourth of July celebration or the Super Bowl or the World Series, we assume that that is what they're targeting.
King, Peter T. Interview. Fox News, FOX News Network, 30 Jan. 2014.
The Bush administration were busy making their appointments and setting some domestic priorities. In 4 months 9-11 would make them wish that they had taken these warnings more seriously. See {637530}.
After September 11, the Department of Homeland Security was formed. The new department combined a host of other disparate departments and organizations and one result was that threats and terrorist targets were so broadly defined with a paucity of specific intelligence that almost everything was a target so that nothing could receive more security and protection than anything else.
He was not advocating this level of military presence. He was explaining that there is a trade-off between safety and civil rights and quality of life.
The “Principals Committee” is the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security. It includes the National Security Director (Chair), the CIA Director, the Secretary of Defense and his Deputy, the Secretary of State and his Deputy, the Chairman of the Jount Chief’s of Staff, The Special Representative to the United Nations and other staff as invited. Clarke was almost always invited to these meeting when terrorism was discussed but he did not have a vote. This is a very important quotation for several reasons. First, it shows the influence that the Defense Department and CIA leaders had with President Bush before the 9-11 attack. It also illustrates dramatically how reluctant our military and CIA were to use drones. It was President Obama who overruled them and changed America policy to use Drones to protect American interests. It also indicates how there was a split regarding the perception of the danger of Al Qaeda and bin Laden with Clark and some of the other Principals placing more value on a military strike than the military and covert action leaders. This is not uncommon despite the fact that public perception is that it is always the military leaders who are the hawks. Also, it illustrates the problem of allowing the military point of view to always prevail in national policy making involving use of force. See {639322}.
This quotation is one of the few honest answers that government politicians give to questions about the effectiveness of prevention. All prevention whether it is to reduce terrorist attacks, fatal crashes on out highways, illicit drug usage or anything else, have two major problems in terms of communicating effectiveness. First, it is impossible to accurately measure what did not happen. Second, whereas prevention failures have real people and faces of the victims can be identified, it is impossible to identify the specific benefits of prevention. We know who died in the Boston Marathon bombing, but we do not know exactly who was saved by the prevention of a planned terrorist attack that was thwarted in New York. Even when the government does know that a terrorist attack was thwarted, it is rarely a good idea to make that information public as then the tourists will learn details of how a particular planned attack went awry, whereas if the government is silent, they have much less information and cannot easily adjust their strategy and tactics.
Peter Thomas King is a former American politician who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2021. He represented a South Shore Long Island district that includes parts of Nassau County and Suffolk County and was numbered as the 3rd and later the 2nd district.
