Jan 14, 2006 
Treasonous FBI officials leaked to the even more treasonous ABC News that it was investigating purchases of disposable cell phones by Middle Eastern terrorists in Texas and California.
The leak will no doubt hinder the FBI’s investigation into terrorist disposable-cell-phone-buying rings and allow members of terrorist cells to slip away.
Carelessly, and probably treasonously, numerous rightie bloggers have repeated this story all over the Internets. If the terrorists missed the broadcast of the original ABC News story, they no doubt have heard about it now. This guy even let it be known that the disposable phone sales “led the FBI to known terror cells in Texas and California.” Way to go, genius. Now the terrorists are safe until somebody reports a spike in the purchase of carrier pigeons.
Mysteriously, some treasonous Fifth Columnist (a liberal?) in the Midland, Texas, police department leaked an internal memo revealing that one cell-phone-purchase ring is connected to a terrorist cell. Bill Vanderland, head of the Midland, Texas, FBI office (and who knew podunk Midland has its own FBI office?), in an obvious attempt at damage control, put out a statement that the cell phone purchasers were not, in fact, linked to any known terrorist cell. But the toothpaste was out of the tube.
Just to show how diabolically clever the cell phone-purchasing terrorists were, they made their large quantity purchases in a California Target and a Texas Wal Mart. As alert readers of Tbogg pointed out, they could have purchased these phones without drawing attention to themselves by going through “foreign”-owned bodegas in any large city and/or making several smaller purchases instead of trying to buy as many as 150 phones at once. But no doubt the FBI monitors bodegas for cell phone purchases by Middle Eastern men; the terrorists must’ve decided they’d better take care of all their cell phone purchases in one transaction and then get out of Dodge. Or Midland, as it were.
ABC News reported that disposable phones “are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists” because they are difficult to track. Oh, great, ABC News. Now all the criminal gangs and terrorists who hadn’t already learned to use disposable phones from watching Law & Order will be using disposable phones. Jebus.
On last night’s Countdown, known terrorist sympathizer Keith Olbermann called the timing of the FBI leak suspicious:
Meantime, late in the same week that an NSA whistleblower suggests the illicit tapping of American phones is thousands of times larger and thousands of times less focused than the President claims, suddenly we have FBI sources linking stories about Middle Easterners trying to buy vast quantities of untraceable, disposable American cell phones from K-Marts and Target stores. Which, if true, makes the wiretapping look like a good idea and its leakers look like they’ve already helped terrorists outsmart the eavesdropping. Boy, you can’t buy timing like that. I mean it. I’m asking seriously, you can’t buy timing like that, right? Reassure me it only looks too convenient to be believed….
…Federal officials telling ABC News that they have launched an investigation because of two shopping sprees in the past month. In one of them, six would-be cell phone shoppers at a Wal-Mart store in Midland, Texas, last month arrested after store employees became suspicious. The men were said to be of Middle East origin. The police report in the arrest identifying the six individuals as linked to a terror cell, but several independent counterterrorism experts think any terror connection is only in the imagination of those officials….
…Last point, the timing of that FBI cell phone investigation story, we’ll never know for sure if that is or is not just an amazing coincidence that it falls right after the whole NSA whistleblower issue comes up, but, as we had pointed out here before, the administration sure gets a lot of these breaks. Their position is challenged, and then suddenly there is a hazy story about something that seems to at least tangentially justify that position.
(BTW, the transcript above comes from Newsbusters, a blog dedicated to the proposition that all news that puts George Bush or other Republicans in a bad light, true or not, is evidence of liberal media bias. Newsbusters will not rest until liberals like Olbermann are driven from mass media, so that only the true light of Bill O’Reilly can shine forth undimmed. I guess sometimes speech can get a little too free, if you know what I mean.)
Olbermann’s implication that the FBI leaked news of an ongoing terrorist investigation in order to justify President Bush’s NSA warrantless wiretap activities is, of course, unpatriotic. Imagine our government leaking sensitive information just to manipulate public opinion. Oh, wait …
Update: Somebody’s a tad twitchy. But do not ask on whom the hammer falls …
Update update: Glenn Greenwald: “We’re all (Paranoid, Imbalanced) Homeland Security Agents now!”
Update update update: Terrorists targeting Hemet, California? Speaking as one who was in lower Manhattan on 9/11 – this cracks me up.
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