Here & There Column 1-13-09

Klatch Hopes For Peace Under New President

As we entered this new year our Sullivan County 'Coffee Klatch' gave our best wishes for success to President Elect Obama but also reminded our new president and Congress of the fact that no terror attacks on our country in 2009 was indeed no accident.
As we ground the coffee beans, which is our first step in making our fresh coffee, and baked our home made donuts (we bake them in the oven and do not fry them) several in our klatch (made up of three Republicans, three Democrats and one Independent) threw out the topic of it's a good time to think about why we have not had a terrorist attack in 2008.
Has it been just plain luck as some politicians and the media would make us believe or has it been a strong intelligence community that has kept any terrorist group from striking us here within the United States.
One of our klatch members noted that an uncle of his who had worked for the FBI for some 29 years pointed out to him that the reason we have not been attacked in the more than seven years after 9-11 is the hard work of the FBI, CIA and our military.
It seems that this former FBI agent worked with other agencies to bring about sweeping changes in the intelligence community and that after 9-11 this agency became more "prevention-oriented."
Several others in our group noted they had friends who had members of their families working for the 'intelligence community' and that although everything was kept as closed secrets it has been revealed through the media that the FBI and CIA didn't talk to each other very much but in 2005 Washington established the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., where 200 analysts from these two organization sit side-by-side analyzing threats 24-hours a day. Here a secure video conference takes place three times a day with all member of the intelligence community to analyze threats and parcel out leads.
We talked about the fact that the USA Patriot Act most likely is a good thing because it got the FBI into sharing information with each other and with the CIA.
All seven members of the Klatch, politics aside, unanimously agreed that the Patriot Act has allowed our intelligence community to gather information that has roped in many terrorists worldwide and many plots are never hatched because terrorists have been arrested, killed or sent back to their own countries and imprisoned.
Following several cups of fresh brewed Java and oven baked donuts three in our group pointed out how critical they were of the media in this war against terrorists. They scolded the media who they said demonize those who are trying to protect us and who portray the tools that uncover clues to plots as "spying on innocent Americans."
Our klatch is not always unanimous but potential terror attacks on us here in the good old USA showed we were a pretty close knit group on this subject.
We talked about the 2008 presidential elections and agreed that al-Qaida is intent on doing as much damage as they can to us and that President Elect Obama will have to continue on the offensive and must support an organization to deal with threats before they materialize.
As we raised our coffee cups to salute a new year we emphasized strong support in the war on terror ...... because a mistake results in dead people.