December 30, 2003

  • The FBI has warned the public to be wary of suspicious travelers carrying almanacs.  Supposedly, they have credible information that terrorists are carrying these almanacs during the planning and/or execution of terrorist activities.


     


    Is an almanac a credible threat?


    I doubt if almanacs have been transformed into James Bond-type chemical/biological/nuclear bombs.  First, an almanac is probably too small to be of use.  Secondly, there are much better surreptitious ways to disguise such devices, if one has a design to.


    Well, are the almanacs being used as informational sources?  What is the population of New York?  How many naval bases are there in San Diego?  What’s the latitude/longitude of Las Vegas?  Probably not.  There are much better sources of information available (the internet, for one) that could be micro-published from the desktop.


    So, is the almanac the choice of the terrorists for a codebook?  A low-tech, non-traceable, almost uncrackable way to translate (key) some broadcasted (internet, radio, pager) gibberish into target coordinates and mission coordination?  Well, that’s a possibility.  All branches of the military still employ such codepages (typically, reset daily) to help encrypt communications.


    One other possibility: Although the FBI memo was 'intended strictly' for law enforcement purposes and ‘leaked out’ (most predictably) through the AP, the ‘item’ to look for may just be an invented surrogate to get people to look around more warily in the first place.  Vigilance, from time to time, requires a wake-up call.  If people around the country are looking for terrorists with almanacs, what else might they notice of some intelligence value that otherwise would make no impress?  In this case, it's not so much the 'item' (almanac) to be noticed, but the heightened noticing in the first place that serves the call of alert.

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