[syndicate] Re: Total Poindexter Awareness! It's (been) good to be Pointdexter)

[Ricardo MadGello]

the part i must laugh at is the same problem that exists at NASA and others
that must somehow find ways to hoard massive amounts of data.

How in the <bleep> do we keep this stuff backed-up for safe storage?


Imagine, if you will, the tremendous amount of data that must be stored and
combine that with real-world aspects of data storage.

form you own perceptions on the viability of ideas such as TIA.

all I can say is this...

Thanks In Advance for warning me about such an imponderable task such as
this.


not saying there's no cause for alarm, just simple fact that they don't have
any way in hell of achieving this goal.


as evidenced by 'citizen involvement'...

----

MEDIA WATCH
Airwaves filled with inaccuracies over Florida terror scare
By Glenn Garvin

Sept. 14- "It seems like everyone connected the dots here," WSVN-Fox 7
anchor Christine Cruz said during the sixth hour of the marathon coverage of
Friday's bomb scare on Florida's Alligator Alley. "It seems like everyone
did what they were supposed to be doing."

Like a lot of what was said during the coverage, that was about half right.
Television reporters were certainly connecting dots - lots of dots, some of
them seemingly from another planet - but if journalism is about facts and
not hype, then they definitely weren't doing what they were supposed to do.

Friday's coverage was the source of a staggering amount of misinformation.
Among the inaccurate reports:

Several stations reported that a woman in Georgia told police three Middle
Easterners were coming to Miami to blow something up. (That's not what she
said.)
Several also said cops spotted the men after they roared past a tollbooth on
I-75. (One car rolled by at a normal rate of speed; the other stopped and
paid the tolls for both.)
The cops used explosives to detonate a suspicious knapsack found in one car.
(They didn't.) Channel 7 reported that explosive "triggers" were found in
one of the cars. (There were no "triggers" or anything else to do with
explosives.)
Channel 7 also reported that cops were searching for a third car. (They
weren't.)
It was a wretched performance - worse yet, a wretched performance that
dragged on for eight hours, terrorizing South Florida and smearing the
daylights out of three medical students who can be counted on to contribute
heavily to the next edition of the travel guide What Sucks About South
Florida.

"This is what is wrong with local news," said Bill Pohovey, news director at
WPLG-ABC 10, one of the two stations that kept their perspective on the
story and stuck with regular programming. (WLTV-Univision 23 was the other.)
"This is why viewers get disgusted with local news."

My only quibble with Pohovey is the word local. The worst parody of
journalism Friday was actually on CNN, where the high-paid-low-rated anchor
Paula Zahn speculated, without a jot or tittle of evidence, that the three
men were coming to Florida to blow up the Turkey Point nuclear reactor. Now
you know why CNN promotes her sex appeal rather than her news judgment.

Local stations at least had the excuse that when you go live for six to
eight hours, you've got to fill up the airtime with something - especially
when the pictures are dull shots of cops standing around empty automobiles.
At best, that means stuff will get on the air without being as thoroughly
checked as it should be; at worst, it means your telecast devolves into
rampant speculation and hype. We had plenty of both Friday.

The most egregious offender was WSVN 7, where it sounded like the staff had
to hold anchors Christine Cruz and Tom Haynes back from storming onto the
causeway and personally administering lethal injections to the three
detained men they'd already tried and convicted.

Over and over, the cops and public officials interviewed by the station's
reporters cautioned that there was no physical evidence against the men
(WSVN's false report of explosive "triggers" notwithstanding), they hadn't
been arrested, and they weren't even being called "suspects" yet. Over and
over, Cruz and Haynes ignored them.

"This story started as Sinister Plot," Cruz warned darkly. "Now it's become
Attack on Miami."

Haynes wondered whether "these guys, apparently on their way to Miami to do
some harm to the city of Miami," were tied to al-Qaida. "This looks like
some loosely pulled together plot," he added. Later, he called them "three
men apparently on their way to Miami with some ill intentions.''

Sometimes I seriously wondered if Haynes was listening to his own station.
At one point, WSVN aired an interview with the Georgia woman who reported
the three men to the police. She described overhearing one man ask, "Do you
think we have enough to bring it down?'' and another answering, "If we don't
have enough, I have contacts. We can get enough to bring it down.''

Seconds after the interview ended, Haynes summarized like this: Three men
"talking about driving down to Miami and using some sort of explosive device
to blow it up.'' How he read all that into those two simple sentences, I'll
never know. Though I'll bet Paula Zahn can tell us.

Source: Miami Herald


----

Terror scare: Video of tollbooth shows drivers of both cars paying toll

Friday, September 20, 2002

By BRIGID O'MALLEY, bmomalley at naplesnews.com



An important part of the investigation into the Alligator Alley terrorism
scare could be finished within days, Collier County Sheriff Don Hunter said
Thursday.

"A significant element could be cleared up next week," Hunter said, saying
he couldn't disclose any details. "There are some other agencies still
running down leads."

On Thursday, a videotape of the Interstate 75 tollbooth was released,
showing the drivers of both cars carrying three medical students detained on
the Alley on Sept. 13 paying the $1.50 toll.

A tollkeeper who first told authorities that driver Kambiz Butt, 25, ran the
gate changed her account after being shown the video by Collier
investigators Wednesday. With proof they paid the toll, Hunter then voided
the ticket, which carries a $100 fine plus $26 in court costs.

Hunter explained her mistake away, saying she was nervous about spotting the
car mentioned in a police bulletin about terrorism, and she is shown in the
video trying to flag down someone to alert them to the car.

"Somehow that toll became a very small issue to her," Hunter said.

A police bulletin was issued on Sept. 12 after a Georgia woman, Eunice
Stone, reported that she had heard the three men making statements about
Sept. 13 being worse than Sept. 11, 2001, at a Shoney's restaurant in
Calhoun, Ga., that morning.

She reported the information, which authorities say involved a terrorist
threat to Miami, to Georgia police who sent a lookout bulletin to Florida.

A Collier County sheriff's deputy on special patrol because of the bulletin
spotted the men east of the tollgate and stopped them around 11:45 p.m.,
shutting down the Alley for 17 hours. The second car traveling in the group
pulled over when their companions were stopped. The three were headed to
start work at Larkin Hospital in South Miami.

When a bomb-detecting dog alerted on the car, deputies called in the
domestic security task force, shut down the interstate and the three men -
Ayman Gheith, 27, Omar Choudhary, 23 and Butt - were detained in sheriff's
jail vans and questioned while authorities searched for traces of
explosives, which were never found.

In numerous television interviews, the three have denied making any
terrorist statements and maintain that they hadn't mentioned Sept. 11 and
were discussing bringing a car down from the Midwest to Miami, one man
saying they "had connections."

Brett Newkirk, an attorney representing the men, accused Sheriff Hunter of
"trying to save face" by trying to justify the stop, despite the
tollworker's changing her statement. He traveled to Naples with law partner
David Kubiliun from Miami to pick up the tape and held an impromptu news
conference in the sheriff's headquarters in East Naples.

"I hope any further face-saving by law enforcement doesn't impinge on their
clearing their names or impinge on their freedoms," Newkirk said.

The attorneys questioned the stopping of Butt's car.

"There are some problems legally with the stop," Newkirk said. He wouldn't
provide other details and said that would only become relevant if criminal
charges were filed.

But Hunter explained that the deputy's stopping the car had nothing to do
with the tollgate. Deputies, under the law, have the authority to stop
people when law enforcement has "credible" information from a source. Had
the car been driving down any street, police had the authority to stop it
based on no other information than the bulletin.

The deputy, Hunter said, reacted to the description of the car and the tag
number, not because he believed it ran the tollgate.

"What we did was proper police practice," Hunter said.

He said his investigators told him the deputy's patrol car was equipped with
a videocamera, so the stop has been filmed. He said he hasn't seen it yet
and said it wouldn't be released to the public because of the continuing
investigation.

He said Stone's statements to police were clear - and credible, another
element to allow the stop to be made.

The deputies would have made the stop with their weapons drawn, a routine
felony stop, Hunter said. Once the dog alerted to its handler that it found
some evidence of bomb-making material or explosives, deputies had the
authority to search the cars.

"With that sniff search, we had probable cause to search without a warrant,"
he said.

For safety reasons, the attorneys wouldn't disclose where the three men are
or what they're doing. Larkin Hospital officials earlier this week were
trying to find another place for them to intern.

While the attorneys didn't mention specific threats, they said the men may
consider availing themselves of federal protection for potential victims of
hate crimes. They're also awaiting a formal closing of the case that will
exonerate them. The attorneys say the men won't consider filing a civil
lawsuit against the authorities, Stone or anyone else.

They say the tapes prove the "veracity of the statements" the men made all
along."

"All these men want is to be made whole, to be restored to where they were
before this happened," Newkirk said.

The sheriff said he thinks more investigation has to be done. He said the
attorneys had offered up their clients for more questioning and he said law
enforcement is not suggesting the three were "necessarily involved in" or
had any knowledge of anything criminal.

"We certainly don't have all of the answers," Hunter said.

Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday that Collier County and other participating law
enforcement officers did what they were supposed to do.

"They did a good job, all of them," Bush said, following a speech at Edison
Community College's main campus in Fort Myers.

Bush praised Stone, the Georgia nurse who reported the students'
conversation, whom he phoned to commend and thank.

"She was a credible witness, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation did its
part," Bush said. "Eunice Stone should not be chastised. She was doing what
the president (George W. Bush, his brother) asked all citizens to do: be
vigilant."

Staff Writers Chris W. Colby and Marci Elliott contributed to this report.

--------------------------------------------------

So, It looks like the solution is.

Turn everybody you don't like or understand in for terrorist activity -




maybe...

I'm going to go turn myself in at this site:

http://www.darpa.mil/iao/index.htm

Be sure to browse this site through an anonymizer.
You might be next.

http://www.hereinreality.com/bigbrother.html

Who's John Poindexter?
A retired Navy Admiral, John Poindexter lost his job as National Security
Adviser under Ronald Reagan, and was convicted of conspiracy, lying to
Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran
Contra scandal.