Japan is suffering from a natural disaster that threatens to turn into an existential crisis. Colonel Q-ball has unleashed a blistering assault on pro-democracy rebel forces.  Large swaths of the Middle East are in turmoil. The federal government is bleeding red ink, with absolutely no end in site. The economy sucks and is getting battered by skyrocketing commodity prices and a volatile oil market. Near-record numbers of Americans are leaving the work force. If the world isn’t quite on fire…it is at least approaching a slow burn.

But, what’s all that against a little MARCH MADNESS!

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The stunning speed of events in the Middle East that brought about the fall of Tunisia’s strong-arm dictator, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, followed by the resignation of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might suggest that our intelligence services were caught napping.  While the final chapter of the ousters of Mubarak and Ben Ali have not yet been written, depending upon the outcome, political recriminations are certain to follow.  After all, some historians still are asking the question:  “Who lost China?”  While blame is invariably a by‑product of political debate in a democracy, particularly where our intelligence services seem to have been caught flat‑footed, we suspect there is less here than meets the eye.

To over simplify, we might categorize small intelligence failures into two main areas:  those that involve state secrets that could be uncovered only by traditional cloak and dagger work; and those that derive from actual political conditions on the ground that can foment potential revolutionary change.  Even though the latter can involve tens of thousands of people when they erupt, they are more apt to be missed than intelligence that is gathered through traditional sleuthing.  We will get back to the reason for this later in this essay.   Our failure to know that Saddam’s nuclear arsenal didn’t exist or that North Korea would suddenly conduct nuclear tests or that some shadowy group would attack the USS Cole and later the World Trade Center, are failures of our traditional intelligence assets.   Although those events were planned virtually under cover of strict military secrecy, which is obviously difficult to penetrate, it is not an excuse for northpoor undercover work given the billions of dollars we spend on it.

Contrast that with political explosions in Tunisia, Egypt. Libya, Bahrain or Iran, which toppled from power the likes of President Ben Ali, President Mubarak, or, 35 years ago, the Shah of Iran.  Those events, once triggered, seem to take on a life of their own often leading to chaos with participants having different goals . . . or no simple unifying objective.  Sometimes they operate like mobs without leaders.  The forces that are unleashed seem to know what they don’t want (the current despotic leadership) but typically can’t articulate a coherent set of demands.  What is even more difficult to predict is the potential ripple effect of a sea change in a despotic form of government.

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This Saturday, the Council on American Islamic Relations will hold its 15th Annual fundraiser in Arlington, Virginia.  Last year, our investigative teams went undercover to the November 23, 2008 CAIR 14th Annual Banquet fundraiser, and secretly videotaped the proceedings.  They were there to videotape the moment when Nihad Awad, Executive Director of CAIR, was served court papers for a civil suit for fraud, now on appeal.  But to their surprise, our team discovered that  six of the tables at the fundraiser were identified with signs for foreign embassies officially attending the event: the embassies of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.  Those same embassies were listed in the CAIR 14th Annual Banquet’s printed program (see below) in a section titled  “Thanks To: ” on page 20, which appears to give credit to supporters for the fundraiser.

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