Speculating on The Manning Affair - Did Breanna Manning Kill Osama bin Laden?

End of the year blog posts often fall into two categories: the retrospective 2011 In Review, generally a safe topic in which the author spins known events, or the prospective Predictions for 2012 in which the writer speculates about possible future events.

This homage to Oliver Stone splits the tropes and speculates about possible past events, the possible-yet-untold big story of 2011. Strap in and give this one a try.

The US Government knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was hiding for months prior to his execution. Several staffed locations in the neighborhood were watching the house and receiving the electronic intelligence. Things were going well; it was a gold mine.

In the aftermath of 9/11, mega-buck computer system contracts were given to the military-industrial complex to help tear down the silos and connect the dots in real-time. No more compartments; now the right hand (Panetta's Army) would know what the left hand (Clinton's State Dept) was doing.



Somebody took videos and documents out of these newly integrated uber-systems and sent them outside the fence. Although prosecution witnesses have testified that they cannot prove that the leaked documents came from Manning's computer, the junior enlisted soldier is accused of the greatest American intelligence violation ever.

The accusation that Manning's breach is one of the biggest intelligence failures in American history brings to mind these questions:

• Why don't we see any impact?
• Why is the only person charged a 24-year old E-3?
• What will they do with/to Manning?
• How could this all happen?

      ... Where's the impact?
When Manning released the documents to WikiLeaks, the people responsible for watching Osama bin Laden were aware that somewhere in the pile of documents was a clue that could unmask their covert surveillance, warn bin Laden, and put their people on the scene in great danger. Maybe a travel voucher, a consultant's bill for equipment repair, a mercenary's invoice for security services; some sort of a reference that was inconsistent with the risks being taken.

Faced with the impending document release, the US decided to bring the ObL surveillance project to a premature and preordained conclusion; they picked a day, attacked the compound, and executed bin Laden. (and I'm good with that)
The Big Story of 2011 is: B. Manning unwittingly provoked Osama bin Laden's execution.

      ... Why is the only person charged a 24-year old E-3?
Just like in Abu Ghraib, the middle-level NCO's and senior officers will not be charged. If they had to tell the truth to defend themselves, their stories of the military-industrial complex and what we're doing over there would unacceptably rock the Establishment, so they're only charging this one kid.

It's politically impossible for the Administration to criticize Hillary Clinton's State Dept for failing to protect their documents, just as it's politically impossible for the Administration to blame the HS-MIC geeks for the rushed, unwise systems integration ordered by the 9-11 Commission.

      ... What's going to become of Manning?
Nobody has any idea of what to do with Manning, because all the options have unacceptable political consequences. Manning's gender-identify crisis, which led to dressing as female alter-ego Brianna when off-duty, are both an indication of his tremendous inner turmoil and an impossible discussion for an Establishment that has just repealed DADT.

This blogger's guess: They're hoping that B. Manning commits suicide and solves the Establishment's problem for them. If the brig can't push the buttons fast enough for a suicide, they'll delay any decision about B. Manning's fate until after the 2012 election, and then if necessary they'll park Manning in Gitmo.

      ... How could this all happen?
The military chain of command completely bungled Manning's development and supervision. At initial intelligence school, before there was any access to SIPRNet, B. Manning was reprimanded for posting YouTube messages revealing sensitive information. After Manning punched a colleague in the face, Manning was demoted and told to expect a discharge. B. Manning was still given full access and kept on duty. A disgruntled insider is a much bigger risk that a malicious outsider.

The military's complete failure to address a obviously troubled person (Manning) is quite similar to their failure to address Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan also has a history of supervisors who knew that something was wrong and took no action. In both situations, political sensitivity and career considerations prevented people from dealing with known, troubled misfits and we have suffered for that.

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None of the hypothetical questions below can be discussed, and to the extent that we leave them off-limits we remain vulnerable to their repeated exploitation:

• In the cases of both Manning and Hasan, did political sensitivity trump command responsibility?
• Should we restrict clearances for troubled youngsters, including those who experiment with off-duty alternative gender identification?
• Can the advocates of gays in the military explain the statistically unlikely event that the greatest intelligence failure in American history was perpetrated by a gay transgender soldier?
• Would the pre-9/11 info-stove-pipes have prevented this debacle?
• Can it be that twenty-something Breanna caused the execution of Osama bin Laden? Does she deserve a medal?
• In raising the tranny-twinkie defense, is B. Manning going to set the LGBTQ community back and reintroduce cisgender privilege and transphobia?

If they're only going to charge one grunt for a systemic failure of the homeland security - military industrial complex (HS-MIC), I've got to say: Free Breanna Manning.

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But Wait There's More: In case that wasn't enough, our 2012 Big Story dangles this little nugget for reporters hoping for a Pulitzer: Pakistan knew about the bin Laden compound and the surveillance, and they permitted US intelligence to work unilaterally within their country. Both governments were on very thin ice. The US decided not to trust Pakistan with knowledge of the execution within their borders and then we left a wrecked helicopter in their city.



The Pakistan government accommodated us in an unprecedented way and then the US humiliated them publicly with an untenable internal political problem. The current Pakistan-US crisis is another artifact of L'Affaire Manning.

Correct Expectations, Kick the Can, Accountability re Jordan Miles

Sometimes, evaluating an experience depends on your expectations. If your expectations are informed and realistic, you are more likely to end up with the appropriate degree of satisfaction.

Before you go downtown — for dinner, a play, a meeting, business, etc — make sure you have the correct expectations.

From the excellent Rick Lord in today's Post Gazette::

The City of Pittsburgh paid a consultant, Joseph J Stine, to write a report which "concludes that jumping out of an unmarked car, pursuing Mr. Miles and striking him until he submitted to being handcuffed were consistent with police training."

If that's not your expectation when you go into the city, perhaps you should recalibrate. Also, a minor nit: testifying for cash that something is "consistent with training" is not the same as saying it's legal, justified, or moral. The Police Academy lesson plan doesn't trump the Constitution.

Playing Kick the Can

The report is not a whitewash; it does find one instance of incorrect procedure. When the policemen threw away the Mountain Dew can that they thought was a gun, they violated evidence rules. The report explains that this error is understandable in the context.

Jordan Miles insists there was no Mountain Dew. The report asserts without evidence that there was one.

The Mountain Dew is the purported basis for the police beating. No Dew, no justification.

If there ain't no Can,
Why did you Beat the Man?

If there ain't no Dew,
WTF is wrong with You?

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Hired guns deliver the desired outputs. According to AELE, Mr. Stine's rates are:

• $275 per hour for review of material and report preparation and submission
• $100 per hour for travel
• $2,000.00 per day depositon [sic]
• $2,500.00 per day for trial testimony days
• $1,200.00 per day for monitoring testimony
• All plus expenses

Traditionally, a litigant gives a consultant money to get the desired report which is biased in favor of their case. What's curious in this instance is that the litigant (the City of Pittsburgh and the Mayor of Pittsburgh) are public and elected, respectively, and so they are presumably accountable for their decisions and the way they spend the Public Treasure.

• It would be interesting to hear the Mayor support (or disavow) the expert report He paid for.
• It would be interesting to hear who decided to hire this consultant, and what process guides public spending on this sort of thing.
• It would be interesting to know, what public official supports the expense and the report that the City has introduced to the Court as authoritative and reliable?

The intriguing question is whether the City, the Pittsburgh Police, and the CopOnTheBeat actually believe this report (which they have told the Court is truthful). I kind of hope that they don't believe it, either.

@justice4jordan

We're Not All Home for Christmas

Christmas Venn Diagram

From The Flaneuse (!)



Christmas Venn Diagrams seem to be a British thing, as discussed here on Christmas 2010.

The Night of the Meek

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.
      — Rod Serling

The Night of the Meek, the December 23, 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone.

Part One, First of two Parts (14:30)



Part Two, Second of two Parts (10:21)

Zeno's Arrow, the GAP Trail and the Speed of Christmas

Once upon a time there was a Greek guy named Zeno of Elea. Some pretentious people were making ridiculous arguments wrapped in very fancy structures and speeches and he wanted to show them they were being silly, so he took their thinking to its logical conclusion and described the problem of an arrow reaching its target.

So you've got the archer at distance=0, and the target at distance=100 feet. (We'll use feet because we're Americans and we don't like the metric system.) The archer wants the arrow to hit the target so she aims, draws the bowstring, and lets loose.

An unsophisticated person might think the arrow would fly to the target, but Zeno explained that if one was to follow his colleague's arguments, before the arrow could get to the target it would have to reach the halfway point (50 feet). And so, at some intermediate point the arrow is halfway there.

But then, before the arrow can go the rest of the way, it has to go with the halfway thing again. So at another intermediate point, the arrow is at 75 feet.

Almost there, right? But no, before it can hit the target it has to reach halfway, 87.5 feet.And again and again and again: 93.75 feet, 96.975 feet, 98.4875 feet, all of a sudden these numbers look like the damned metric system. The absurdity is, Zeno explains, that at any moment there's always a halfway distance to be reached first, and so truly reaching the destination is logically impossible.

Big silence; dead air. Zeno reformatted the story in terms of walking across the room, and explained why you could move most of the way across the room but you could never really get there, if you followed their thinking. The legend says that Diogenes, who was getting tired of the exercise, then walked across the room and sat down, rolling his eyes at to Zeno to show that he understood the fallacy in a way that was lost to the others.

It seems like an esoteric paradox that might have been amusing a few centuries ago, but we have better things to consider these days (like figuring out how many wars we're in) except that it keeps popping up.


The progress of the Great Allegheny Passage also seems to follow Zeno's Paradox. Each year, half of the remaining trail between Pittsburgh and DC is completed and introduced; each year the gaps are reduced, and yet in spite of the incremental progress it seems like true completion is never achieved.



Or say you're driving to Grandma's with your kids in the back seat. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No.

It may be that Zeno just figured out quantum theory before his time. If you're comfortable with location as a probability distribution rather than a fixed certainty, you're probably good with Zeno's arrow eventually being mostly there.

Today's XKCD works the same theme:

We are grateful for the XKCD-symbiotic website, Explain XKCD.com which draws out the cleverness of the work. Today they point out the nuanced fallacy of Zeno having an Advent calendar because he lived B.C.


Merry Christmas. I hope it gets here, and/or that we get there.

No Solistice Solace: My Mother and the Hanukkah Weather

Quite often at the end of the day my life is a poorly framed vignette from a Woody Allen movie; the key themes are Me aka The Schmuck, me Not Listening, my Mother, and The Guilt. The details vary in each scenario, but that's the general theme. Today I ran headfirst into, "so... maybe you should listen to your mother?"

The local weather forecast called for unseasonably moderate temperatures (55F) and heavy rain all day. Not just a spritz of rain, mind you, but a near-Biblical deluge. As I planned the day I gave up any hope of getting on my bicycle, even though in the internal monologue in the back of my mind, I knew it was the start of Hanukkah and I dreaded the potential reminder of my Mother's weather expertise.

My Mother is a person of strongly held beliefs which may not always withstand rigorous inquiry. She is not, for instance, much of an expert on the physical world. Time and distance, directions, weather patterns - not her niche. She will call me to ask about long-range forecasts because she thinks I should know these things (but really because she wants me to have the guilt if it rains on her picnic); she asks things like: Is it going to rain on Easter? She asks me this in November.

But my Mother has one rock-solid bit of weather certainty: the weather will always be nice on Jewish holidays, she insists, because they are G^d's Chosen People and He would not rain on their holidays.

The physical implications of a Divine global nice-weather policy during Jewish Holidays would be catastrophic. Imagine, no rain anywhere for eight days. I could hear Jackie Mason asking, So, Mister Chaos Theory, you think a butterfly in Bolivia could make with the flapping wings and cause a problem in China, what about no rain anywhere for eight days? Now that would be a problem I think! It would have tremendous effects, it would be like Death Takes A Holiday on the Weather Channel.

Not withstanding the logical and physical implications, my Mother insists the weather will always be nice on Jewish holidays. In the past I'd schedule some weather-dependent activity - VFR flying, a bike trip, a visit to the beach - and I'd cancel because the weather wouldn't cooperate my Mother would say, you should have waited three days for Yom Kippur, you know how it works, they're G^d's chosen people...."

Today I went about my business in the gloomy wet rain, I blocked time and precluded any bike riding, and then in complete ignorance of the forecast the afternoon turned into this:


People are walking around in short-sleeves under blue skies, 55F on December 21, and I should have brought my bike and be out riding but no, I knew better and I listened to the computers and the forecast and ignored my Mother and in my internal audio channel I hear: You should have listened to your mother, you schmuck. You think Mister Weather.com knows better than your Mother? How's that working for you?

Aarrrggghhhhh.

And the great tragedy isn't that I have these discussions with my Mother. The great tragedy is that these discussions now take place without any interaction with my Mother, completely within my own mind. I'm screwing myself into the ground and she's not even aware of it.

She's inside my head, it's not enough that I hear my own internal voices I've got her whispering in there, too. It's like a Terminate-Stay-Resident computer program, running in the background and it's there again every morning when I wake up and reboot. She's installed; she could go Mute (hah!) and I'd still hear her voice. I leave it to others as to whether it's a bug or a feature.

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends.

Happy Birthday Ludwig!

Ides of December

Military Surplus and Profit-Taxes-Lobbying

The Homeland Security / Military Industrial Complex (HS/MIC) continues.


FY2011 sets record for military surplus transfers to police departments.



30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Than On Taxes, 2008-10 (via EBM)


Good friends sent good links and I wanted to pass these along.

Thank You Mayor Mubarak Bloomberg and the HS-MIC

We have recently suggested that in the aftermath of 9-11, police departments are losing their "protect-and-serve" civilian orientation in favor of a military/ counter-terrorism posture that is nurtured by the Homeland Security Military Industrial Complex (HSMIC) and led by civilians that defer to national military advisors.

We have received feedback that our claim is far-fetched, over-reaching, and myopic. Fortunately, New York City's Mayor Mubarak Bloomberg has weighed in to support our position.

From the NY Post:

NYC is ready to go to war.

Mayor Bloomberg boasted yesterday that "I have my own army" in the NYPD and, if that wasn't enough to establish the city as a worldwide power, added "I have my own state department" as well.

The comments came during a speech the mayor delivered at MIT describing how he was managing the city. Trying to offer some idea of the scope of New York's workforce, Bloomberg got a bit carried away with himself.

"I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh largest army in the world," he said. "I have my own state department, to Foggy Bottom's annoyance. We have the UN in New York, so we have entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have. I don't listen to Washington very much, which is something they're not thrilled about."

We look forward to learning about his army's perspective on the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners, the Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention on the use of gas/biochemical weapons such as pepper spray, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We remain intrigued about the Rules of Engagement the Mayor has established for the NYPD's claimed capability to shoot down civilian aircraft on their own authority.

What's amazing is that Bloomberg, who both promotes a domestic military presence and is himself a product of the culture of Homeland Security, manages to make Rudy Guliani seem rational, and manages to make uber-mensch Ed Koch seem a milquetoast.

Time to Go: Ensuring Separation

How to know when it is time to leave?
The Great Works offer some advice.

"To hold and fill a cup to overflowing
Is not as good as to stop in time.

Temper a sword to its hardest and it is easily broken;
Amass the greatest treasure and it is easily stolen;
Claim credit and honour and you easily fall;

When the work is done,
and one's name is becoming distinguished,
to withdraw into obscurity is the way of Heaven."
      Tao Te Ching, Chapter 9

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"Man, who is born of woman,
Is short-lived and full of turmoil.
Like a flower he comes forth and withers.
He also flees like a shadow and does not remain."
      Job 14:1-2

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"Amid a place of stone
Be secret, and exult
Because, of all things known
That is most difficult."
      W.B. Yeats Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916

A personal note: Today I retire.

This was a great gig for many, many years. It's been challenging and fulfilling.

I've been extremely fortunate to spend my time with bright, clever, engaging people who taught me so much, and I am grateful to them.

Increasingly, my little interior voice is telling me it's time to go. And you've got to listen to that quiet tiny voice.

Also, there's the Mayan 2012 end-of-the-world prophecy, and it would suck to not get at least a few months of retirement in before the denouement.



Just yesterday I read about Till Eulenspiegel, a German wit circa 1300. His métier was to find amusement by using alternative or literal interpretations of commonly used figurative language, and I think I may have something along that line.

Starting with an air traffic controller's blog post, Anticipating Separation:

Retirement is a great job but it takes a while to get it. Don't lose patience. Anticipating your own separation can be an agonizing process. Retirement, by its very nature, is a self-indulgent act. As it should be.

When my time came I was done being the team player. It was finally time to act in my own best interest, thinking only of myself and my family. As every controller knows, the sooner separation is achieved ~ the better.

When you start out, you want to get "checked out". You try to be aggressive and anticipate separation. The instructors teach you that while anticipating separation is good, what it's all about is ensuring separation.

I've been anticipating separation, today I achieved separation, and I went to the Admin Officer and checked out. Full circle in a way that Till Eulenspiegel might appreciate.