Lessons not learned in bombing

Airport gift shops throughout New England are piling 'Boston Strong” T-shirts in vivid colors. 'Boston Strong” became a rallying cry of solidarity after the terrorist bombing last year at the Boston Marathon.

With this week's anniversary of the attack - and the next race Monday - emotional coverage of the event and aftermath is reaching feverish levels. A multipage spread in the Washington Post, 'How Boston Stayed Strong,” heaves with charged language: 'harrowing,” 'carnage,” 'horrific.”

So it's really odd to see these pained reminiscences alternating with rebukes of a National Security Agency surveillance program designed to prevent such assaults. The disconnect is something to behold.

One hears Rep. William R. Keating, D-Mass., complaining that federal agencies could have prevented the bombing. They did not heed warnings from Russian intelligence that one of the suspected bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was becoming radicalized.

But nine months earlier, Keating voted for the Amash amendment, which would have closed down the NSA's collection of phone and other records. (It bears repeating that the agency may not listen in on the actual content of such communications without a court order.)

Fortunately, it was defeated by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats ready to brave the hysteria - unleashed by ambitious populists and conformist media too lazy to examine the realities of national security in the age of widespread spy technology and terrorists armed with explosive devices far scarier than weaponized pressure cookers.

So what will it be? Are Americans to rely on Russian spies, with their agendas, to keep them safe? By the way, the Russian security apparatus is famously insensitive about people's privacy.

OK, but what good is the NSA program if it didn't catch the Tsarnaevs before they acted? Bad question. The agency doesn't 'see” everything.

'No, NSA ops should not have been expected to ‘catch' Tsarnaev online, because that's just not how NSA does its job,” John Schindler, intelligence expert at the U.S. Naval War College and former analyst at the NSA, told me.

'(The) FBI would have had to have tipped NSA off first, as seems not to have happened.”

The NSA said it did use the program to rule out the likelihood of a second strike in New York City.

Meanwhile, Americans must better steel themselves against terrorism. Three people died in the marathon bombing and dozens of others were wounded grievously.

But during this month's Afghan elections, at least 47 people were killed. And terrorists across the globe are massacring innocents by the dozens on a daily basis.

But that Americans are shuffling aside the memory of Sept. 11, 2001 - the outrage that launched the NSA program - is a wonder. The idea that we magically are protected seems a weird offshoot of 'American exceptionalism.”

Deep thinking on how we can confront the threat of terrorism is in order for the bombing anniversary. Grown-ups can work with nuance.

l Comments: fharrop@gmail.com