Why Haven't We Been Attacked?

Perhaps even more to the point, however, as Paisley Dodds reported last month for the Associated Press: "Joseph Billy, the FBI's assistant director of counterterrorism . . . said that U.S. officials would have been caught unaware without British investigators who discovered the plan."

An Alternative View

So why have we been free from a terror attack?

John Mueller, an Ohio State University political scientist and noted contrarian, argued in a 2006 Foreign Affairs article that "One reasonable explanation is that almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad. . . .

"Americans are told -- often by the same people who had once predicted imminent attacks -- that the absence of international terrorist strikes in the United States is owed to the protective measures so hastily and expensively put in place after 9/11. But there is a problem with this argument. True, there have been no terrorist incidents in the United States in the last five years. But nor were there any in the five years before the 9/11 attacks, at a time when the United States was doing much less to protect itself. It would take only one or two guys with a gun or an explosive to terrorize vast numbers of people, as the sniper attacks around Washington, D.C., demonstrated in 2002. Accordingly, the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched. . . .

"A fully credible explanation for the fact that the United States has suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11 is that the threat posed by homegrown or imported terrorists -- like that presented by Japanese Americans during World War II or by American Communists after it -- has been massively exaggerated."

Mueller offers several anecdotes to support his view, including this one: "In addition to massive eavesdropping and detention programs, every year some 30,000 'national security letters' are issued without judicial review, forcing businesses and other institutions to disclose confidential information about their customers without telling anyone they have done so. That process has generated thousands of leads that, when pursued, have led nowhere. Some 80,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants have been subjected to fingerprinting and registration, another 8,000 have been called in for interviews with the FBI, and over 5,000 foreign nationals have been imprisoned in initiatives designed to prevent terrorism. This activity, notes the Georgetown University law professor David Cole, has not resulted in a single conviction for a terrorist crime. In fact, only a small number of people picked up on terrorism charges -- always to great official fanfare -- have been convicted at all, and almost all of these convictions have been for other infractions, particularly immigration violations. Some of those convicted have clearly been mental cases or simply flaunting jihadist bravado -- rattling on about taking down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, blowing up the Sears Tower if only they could get to Chicago, beheading the prime minister of Canada, or flooding lower Manhattan by somehow doing something terrible to one of those tunnels."

He concludes: "The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists."

Is Mueller right? Is Bush? As I've written over at NiemanWatchdog.org, there is plenty of reason for skepticism in the face of assertions Bush makes about the success of his counter-terrorism programs.

It obviously makes sense to take precautions against future terrorist attacks. And reasonable precautions include surveillance of legitimate suspects, elaborate detection devices and an increased focus on non-proliferation. But if anyone, including the president, tries to make the case that warrantless surveillance, torture and massive spending on a bloated bureaucracy have prevented terrorism plots, they should be asked to prove it.

FISA Watch

In his speech, Bush also continued his nearly-daily drumbeat for retroactive immunity for the telephone and Internet companies that let the government spy on their customers without a warrant. (See Monday's column about why this matters.)

Paul Kiel writes for TPM Muckraker: "Despite recent signs that House Democrats will likely ultimately vote on a bill that contains retroactive immunity for the telecoms, negotiations on a final version of the surveillance bill remain ongoing. Dems, after saying that a vote might come as early as this week, now seem unclear when it might happen."

David Rogers and Daniel W. Reilly write for Politico: "House Democrats are preparing to send back to the Senate a modified FISA bill that reflects their best hope of a compromise on President Bush's terrorist surveillance program.