By Margie Burns

Just recently, as luck would have it, the Prince George's Sentinel ran my column titled "Those Saudi Flights: Did Anyone Check the Luggage?" (Dec. 15, 2005).

Among other points, the column revisited questions raised back in 2004 and still unanswered, regarding the fact that some of the 9/11 highjackers sojourned in Las Vegas and the fact that several Saudi nationals quietly flown out of the U.S. by the Bush administration immediately after 9/11 left from Vegas. Given among other items of information the apparent spike of currency hoarding in summer 2001, the convenience of Vegas as a venue for money laundering, and the anomalous visits by rigidly devout Muslims like lead hijacker Mohamed Atta to Vegas in the first place, more investigation would seem to have been called for.

I have reason to believe, in fact, that investigation has been done, by quiet and genuinely dedicated law enforcement personnel and others. High time we got some illumination from it, if not results.

However, we are now seeing one regrettable result. On January 3, 2006, the administration dropped Las Vegas from a list of cities considered potential high-risk targets and therefore eligible for special anti-terrorism grants, according to news reports.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jan-05-Thu-2006/news/5212776.html

Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has responded by calling for the resignation of Michael Chertoff, secretary of "homeland security."

Questions could have been raised about Mr. Chertoff as an appointee at the new department, especially considering some of the parties he represented during his previous legal career. Looking at some of Bush's other appointees in the security sector, such as Bernard Kerik, and looking at the climbers and campaigners he is installing in the highest court in the land, one would think reasonable a certain skeptical scrutiny of all the presidential appointees, especially since Congress is supposed to be advising and consenting in the first place. But tabling those questions for the moment, it is only reasonable to assume that dropping Vegas from the list of likely targets will reduce resources the city gets for detective work as well as for security safeguards.

In other words, what we are seeing with regard to Las Vegas, as well as to those Saudi flights over-all, has the smell of cover-up.

How else is it possible that the White House could show so little interest in trips taken by the skyjackers to Las Vegas, cross-country trips that maximized their expenses, their physical danger, their risk of exposure and the complexity of their plans? How could even this Congress, pretty much led around by the nose by members working for Bush rather than for the public, ignore the flag raised by Vegas as an X-marks-the-spot for the nexus of finance and terrorism? Have the intelligence committees in Congress paid any attention to the untimely death of a Saudi prince who had been particularly connected to Vegas and to gambling interests in the U.S.?

Creating a new department of "homeland security," throwing goo at the problem, immediately and overtly obstructed common-sense approaches to preventing terrorism. Instead of strengthening detection and analysis, the White House and its Congress created an additional giant layer of bureaucracy, which as anyone could have foreseen has turned into a giant boondoggle. Its name is brownshirt, the names of its spawn are legion – including crony contracting, lobbying, patronage abuses, government surveillance of citizens, manipulation of the news media, the intra-agency right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, confusion over division of responsibilities, security breaches involving foreign businesses and foreign governments and maximizing potential pressure points in individuals and entities to create more opportunity for lobbying and contracting. Had the White House really wanted to go after terrorism, it would have helped the FBI. Instead, to this day the FBI lacks even the computers needed for its investigations.

Criminals flout the law and the FBI so openly that I routinely receive unsolicited offers of prescription meds, intimate relationships, advanced degrees that do not require actually going to school, surgical procedures without benefit of medical advice and bogus sweepstakes offers, all via the convenience of my personal computer. Every one of these is, as far as I know, illegal. But this White House has been sitting on the FBI since at least January 2001, using neglect and suppression so flagrant that many ordinary citizens and unfortunately many small-time crooks have caught on by now. Presumably any better-placed crooks know it even better.

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