3.  Professional Paranoid
    by William Stone, III
    wrs{at}0ap.org

Exclusive to TLE

There are no terrorists in the United States.  There never have been, there
aren't any now, and there aren't likely to be any in the future.

And I can prove it.

In my "day job" I am an information systems security specialist. 
My job is to be a professional paranoid.  My clients pay me to think up
ways that an individual might compromise sensitive data, and then to
mitigate against that risk.  This ranges from physical security to network
security to procedural security.  I've been doing this kind of work for
something like ten years, now, and I don't mind saying that I'm good at
what I do.

In my capacity as a professional paranoid, I have occasionally turned my
mind to notions of more general physical security.  I have marveled at the
occasional stupidity of America's few terrorists. From a tactical
perspective, Timothy McVeigh was a low-grade moron. Someone with my
training would have bombed a much larger building and never been caught. 
Catch me sometime in person, and I'll explain what someone could have done
to the Sears Tower with the same material, yet by simply catching the El to
O'Hare could have been on
a plane to South America when Upper Wacker Drive collapsed onto Lower.

Since September 11, the FedGov has used the claim of terrorists insinuating
themselves into every fabric of American life to justify all manner of
draconian "security" measures.

As to the "security" of these measures, in my professional
opinion, they're worse than useless.  One cannot reliably place access
controls on public places short of putting a cordon of armed guards around
it with orders to shoot everyone who tries to breach it. Anything less --
such as "airport security" -- is a waste of time, from a security
perspective.  Similarly, "enhancing" security by violating
individual rights as the FedGov has done achieves nothing but further
accustoming individuals to the notion that they have no rights save those
granted by government.

In any case, as I've already stated, there are no terrorists in the United
States, and the proof of this is simple.

The United States -- despite all the efforts of the FedGov to enslave it --
is still the most free society in the world.  No doubt our freedoms will
continue to be curtailed, but for the moment, there is nothing to prevent
terrorists from existing.

Nor, frankly, should there be anything to prevent their existence. In a
free society, one of the accepted dangers is that it's possible for
individuals to harm one another.  The great lie about laws is that they
exist to prevent behavior that would cause harm.  In fact, laws exist to
punish or exact restitution from individuals who've already harmed others. 
The only way to PREVENT harm is a total police state in which individuals
are allowed no freedom whatsoever.

Consider the following, then:  given that the United States is reasonably
free; given that in a free society, it is possible for individuals to harm
one another.  Now, as an intellectual exercise, let's add a given:  the
FedGov's paranoid fantasies are all true, and terrorist organizations
dedicated to destroying America are hiding behind every rock, shrub, and
tree.

Here's where my training as a professional paranoid comes into play. Given
these notions, imagine with me that you are a terrorist bent on destroying
America.  How would you go about doing so?

You wouldn't do it through direct military confrontation.  The United
States military has become an enormous group of individuals carrying out
the Unconstitutional policies of those in power.  Direct confrontation
against the military is simply an involved way of committing suicide.

Similarly, because individuals are in many areas of the country still
allowed to carry deadly weapons, attempting any kind of military victory in
even a small town is suicidal.  The local residents will kill you the
moment some 12-year-old with a .22 calibre rifle lines you up in his sites.

What options have you?  Guerrilla and terrorist tactics.

Terrorist tactics seem the most likely to succeed, given the limited funds
and personnel of a secret terrorist organization.  The next problem
becomes, what sort of weapons will you use?

The options are fairly broad in today's era:  traditional explosives
(bombs, rifles, pistols, etc.), nuclear weapons, biological, and chemical
weapons.

Remember, one of the goals of a terrorist organization would be to remain
secret.  This being the case, it has a shortage of trained technical
personnel, as well as a shortage of specialized materiel. Remember, too,
that nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are expensive, difficult to
obtain and refine, and are rife with all manner of toxic side effects. 
They're additionally very difficult to transport and deliver with any
degree of accuracy and success.

Given all this, it seems likely that the average terrorist will choose
simple, cheap, easy-to-manufacture, easy-to-hide, easy-to-deliver
explosive-based weapons.  In fact, this is what we find worldwide: 
terrorists use explosives rather than nuclear or biological weapons.

Now, I realize that there are some among my readership who will object to
what I'm about to do.  I'm going to give a very specific example of
something a terrorist COULD do with explosives if they were inclined to. 
The objection raised will be that this example is "giving information
to the enemy."

Trust me:  if there were an enemy, they'd've done this -- or something very
like it -- already.  I may be a professional paranoid, but I don't spend
the majority of my time looking for terrorist targets.  They do.

I'm a South Dakotan, so when I turn loose the professional paranoid inside
me, I look to South Dakota's beautiful Black Hills.  Hundreds of thousands
of tourists visit every year, concentrated around Mount Rushmore.  This
makes it a perfect target for terrorists.

As a major tourist attraction, Mount Rushmore has no access controls.
Access is granted to anyone who has the trivial amount of money to pay the
parking fee.  Access is then entirely open, and anyone is free to wander
the visitor's center, the huge amphitheater used for the evening lighting
ceremony, and the hiking trail to the base of the mountain's debris field. 
There are no real access controls to prevent individuals from leaving the
hiking trail, though in short order they'd probably be noticed.

The highest concentration of people at Mount Rushmore occurs during the
evening lighting ceremony.  During this ceremony, the area is dark to
facilitate a DVD display in the amphitheater.  During tourist season, the
ceremony plays to packed crowds.  There aren't even enough seats, and
individuals sit, stand, and watch shoulder-to-shoulder in some cases.

It is the PERFECT terrorist target -- like hundreds of thousands of other
all over the United States.

There would be nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to prevent a terrorist from
filling a small knapsack (of the kind worn by hundreds of tourists) full of
pipe bombs.  Such explosives are identical to those used at the Olympic
Park bombing and are simplicity itself to make.  For a few hundred dollars,
one could fill one's garage to bursting with them, and it requires only a
trip to
the local hardware and sporting goods stores to obtain the materials for them.

If there were hundreds of thousands of terrorists in this country, there
would necessarily be thousands of basements filled with cheap, easy-to-make
pipe bombs to choose from for the job of terrorizing Mount Rushmore's
tourists.  They would throw a few into a knapsack, spend a few extra
dollars for a timed detonator, and rent a car in Rapid City.  They'd then
arrive at Mount Rushmore in time for the lighting ceremony, take a seat in
the center of the crowd, and
quietly slide their knapsack under the concrete bench in the amphitheater. 
They'd then leave, ostensibly to go to the bathroom (if an excuse is even
necessary), get in their car and drive back to Rapid.  With appropriate
timing, about the time their car hits the town of Keystone, the explosive
will go off, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.  They'd then return the
rental car in Rapid and disappear back into obscurity.

That's just one possible scenario.  As I mentioned, there are hundreds of
thousands of potential targets such as this throughout the United States. 
If one allows one's paranoid fantasies free reign, one realizes that if
terrorists existed in the United States, there should be a news story every
single day about how some public place was bombed somewhere in America.

There is nothing -- literally NOTHING -- preventing the devious terrorists
the FedGov claims exist from performing such acts every day.  And yet, such
acts never occur.  Not today, not yesterday, and not ever.

Terrorists aren't stupid -- the ease with which they took advantage of the
way the FedGov immorally disarms airline passengers proves this.  If they
wished to plant a bomb in the middle of the evening lighting ceremony at
Mount Rushmore, they'd have done it long ago.

How can we account for this discrepancy?  How can there exist terrorist in
the United States -- each capable of coming up with schemes far more
nefarious than my paranoid musings -- and yet, no terrorist acts of this
type have ever been committed?

The answer is simple:  there are no terrorists.  If there were, we'd see
their acts every day.  Terrorism wouldn't be confined to US-occupied
countries like Iraq, they would literally occur every day somewhere in the
United States, in a manner similar to -- or worse than -- that which I
outlined.

They don't exist.  Terrorists in the United States are a stark, raving,
paranoid fantasy -- at best.  More likely, it's a cold, calculated attempt
on the part of those in power to terrify Americans into rash actions that
they otherwise would never take.

There is no war on terrorism because there are no terrorists in the United
States.  There is a war on your freedom, being waged from the office of the
President, his cronies and accomplices all through Washington, DC, and in
every Federal building in every town and city in America.

You have nothing to fear from terrorists:  they're a figment of the
imagination of those in power.  The real enemy is those who would
manufacture nonexistent terrorists in order to further their own ends.

--
William Stone, III is a computer nerd (RHCE, CCNP, CISSP) and Executive
Director of the Zero Aggression Institute (http://www.0ap.org).  He seeks
the Libertarian Party's nomination for the 2004 Senate race in South
Dakota.

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