Iraq and Afghanistan

A recent Op-Ed offered a serious analysis of the danger of a biological attack by terrorists on the nation's milk supply and offered useful suggestions for reducing this danger. It pointed out the many places in the milk delivery system in which there are obvious and easily exploited vulnerabilities. A recent discussion on television of the availability of high-powered rifles detailed how a sniper at a great distance might bring down airliners at the Los Angeles terminal. Other programs have pointed to the extreme difficulty of checking on the contents of the many containers that are brought into American ports every day. Unfortunately, warnings of this kind, however well-thought out and well-meaning, also increase the danger to the country by educating terrorists, both foreign and home-grown, in the vulnerabilities of our society and how they might be exploited. Yes, some terrorists may have already thought of these vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. But we cannot assume that they all have, or that they understand their potential opportunities as well as our many aggressive and competing antiterrorism experts can explain them.

A way to get around this dilemma would be for Congress to establish a well-publicized office to receive ideas and analyses of terrorist threats. (This office may already exist, but it is apparently not well known to the public, perhaps not even to the experts who are dreaming up and analyzing possible attacks.) Once received, the ideas would be dealt with on a "need-to-know" basis. The bipartisan staff of the suggested office should be organized in such a way that it is beholden to neither corporate nor bureaucratic (including Homeland Security) interests. Its job would be to analyze and winnow the information it receives and transmit what appears most important to those likely to make good use of it. Congress should be involved, because Congressional involvement in the background should make it less likely that the transmissions of this office would be ignored.