F air and B alanced I nformation

Dina Temple-Raston takes on her role of press spokesperson (e.g. 7/27/08, 7/06/08, 10/05/07, etc.) for the FBI and Renee Montagne lends a hand, too. Reporting this morning on the Fort Dix convictions, Montagne makes this astounding claim for the FBI:

"The challenge for the FBI was to decide when to move. Arrest the men too soon and the case against them could collapse. Wait too long and an attack could actually happen."

Temple-Raston, however, is not satisfied to make this claim only for the Fort Dix case, but extends it to all FBI terrorism cases:

• "Their [the FBI] attempts to make terrorism arrests preemptively before an actual attack takes place have met with mixed results."

• "In the Fort Dix case, they held back and allowed the evidence to accumulate....in earlier cases law enforcement tended to move in early."

• "Monday's guilty verdict has made the Fort Dix case Exhibit A for those who say law enforcement has found the right balance between moving too soon and losing a conviction, or waiting too long and risking an actual attack."

• "....says Europe has been trying to get the United States to strike this balance for some time."

Temple-Raston doesn't offer a single shred of evidence to back up her assertion that the FBI has moved on cases too early because of the possibility of imminent attacks. In fact in the Liberty City case, one of the most egregious examples of the FBI rolling out a weak case, even the Wall Street Journal (!) noted that the political benefit of the Bush administration seemed to be the motivating factor:

"When the seven men from the Liberty City area of Miami were arrested a few months before the 2006 elections, then-AG Alberto Gonzales said the men had been taped promising to fight a 'full ground war against the United States.'"

Temple-Raston simply claims that what the FBI learned in the Liberty City case was that "boots and crazy talk aren't enough to convince a jury." Boots and crazy talk? Now that is a professional assesment....

Instead of informing us of how sloppy, dishonest, and undemocratic the FBI has been under the Bush administration and how cases have been rushed for political advantage, Temple-Raston simply manufactures a false dichotomy between the FBI acting or facing a terrorist attack.