Questions

Last week over lunch a colleague asked what people get out of mass murder. What are they thinking? Do they sit around with their friends and relatives, discussing the extent of harm they intend to inflict, the target body count, the expected range of an explosion?

This was shortly after the bombing of the Boston Marathon, when lawmen were still scrambling for clues to the homicidal maniacs who staged the attack.

At the time the brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had not yet been identified, although a survivor, Jeff Bauman, had given the FBI the first solid lead on the bombers’ identities.

Initial reports said there was no intel chatter about the threat in Boston. But emerging news reports indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had dropped the ball in the case of Tamerlan, the elder of the brothers, when Russia wanted to question him for possible links to Chechen militants a few years ago.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Washington is no fan of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his regime’s brutal response to Chechen armed attacks. Since the Chechens are fighting Russia and not the US, the Americans left Tamerlan in peace.

Intel analysts especially in the US, the top terrorist target, can be overwhelmed by reports of possible threats and can overlook many clues, especially those that might be posed by individuals with no record of troublemaking. Dzhokhar seemed to be a promising college student.

The FBI had also ignored an intel report from the Philippines, obtained from the computer left behind by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef as he fled following a premature explosion in his rented apartment in Malate, Manila. Yousef was later arrested and convicted of the first bombing of the World Trade Center. His computer contained plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II, bomb US-bound planes and crash a plane into CIA headquarters. Again, the scenarios probably seemed too bizarre to be taken seriously by US intel analysts.

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After 9/11, no threat scenario seemed too bizarre. Wounded America launched preemptive strikes overseas while tightening domestic security.

I was in the US three weeks after 9/11, at the start of the American attack on Afghanistan and amid the anthrax-in-the-mail scare. Security lines at airports were horrid. New Yorkers were “cocooning,” as an American friend described it to me. There was a lot of profiling, especially on planes, and Middle Eastern, South and Central Asian dining places were empty.

The profiling gradually subsided but did not disappear, as terror plots linked to al-Qaeda were uncovered over the years and foiled. I saw it when I traveled to Hawaii and the continental US two years ago with a group that included an Indonesian woman who always wore a veil, two Pakistanis, an Iranian and an Indian.

Islamic groups in New York, Washington and Colorado told us during our trip that while some progress had been made in promoting interfaith understanding in America, every Muslim immigrant arrested for a terror plot reinforced 9/11 stereotypes.

At the same time, a conscious effort to avoid being accused of profiling can also make security analysts ignore red flags, such as in the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

With the bombing in Boston by the Chechen brothers, negative stereotypes will be further reinforced in the minds of certain people, and not just Americans.

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Even if the FBI had ignored the tip from Russia, we are still impressed by the swift neutralization of the bombers. The involvement of a vigilant public in the manhunt plus massive media coverage were key factors. How many manhunts are covered live around the clock by all the major TV networks and digital media? And how many bombing victims are like Jeff Bauman, whose first thought after both his legs were amputated was to provide the first solid lead on the bomber?

But Boston’s lawmen were also relentless and lethally efficient in following the leads and pursuing the brothers. The successful manhunt reinforced perceptions, formed by the killing of Osama bin Laden, that sooner or later, America tends to get mass murderers.

In our country, the Boston manhunt inevitably raised questions about Philippine lawmen’s preparedness for terrorist attacks. But Philippine cops did capture those responsible for the bombing of the Light Rail Transit coach in 2000, the SuperFerry in Manila Bay and the bus in Makati on Valentine’s Day, although the arrests were not made within a day or two of the attacks. What our cops need are more modern technology and other resources for pursuing suspects.

Now the focus in Boston is shifting to the motive for the bombing. But even if the surviving brother’s throat heals and he regains his voice, we may never understand whatever reason he gives for killing and maiming, with children among the victims.

This is the world we live in; my colleague will never see his questions answered.