07/03/15 – Adam Johnson – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show, here live Monday through Friday from noon to 2 p.m.
Eastern Time on the Liberty Radio Network.
Our first guest today is Adam Johnson, and he's with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
Yeah, right, someday, I guess.
That's fair.org.
Welcome to the show, Adam.
How are you?
I'm well, how are you?
I'm doing really good.
Appreciate you joining us today.
So listen, great article that you got here.
Zero for 40 at predicting attacks.
Why do media still take FBI terror warnings seriously?
I'm really glad you wrote this up.
I was just telling the people on the show yesterday about, I was talking with a friend, and he was, yeah, it was a friend of a friend situation where he was kind of taking the temperature of what the general public believes kind of thing, you know?
And his friend was saying, oh my god, yeah, I mean, apparently this weekend ISIS is gonna behead a bunch of people, and, you know, there's a real danger of the Islamic State and terrorist attacks across America, and I don't know whether I want to go outside.
And he had to tell her, actually, you know, if you really look carefully, you'll see that they admit that they're just kind of making it up, and they have no real reason to believe that's true at all.
But then again, the general public doesn't really look closely.
They just go with their impression, and so, you know, that's the important point.
The impression has been gotten across successfully by the FBI that your picnic is in serious danger this weekend.
Right.
Is that pretty much what you think, Duke?
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a great study that was done two years ago that says the average American, or I think the number was, only 40% of people read past the headlines.
And so you have about 60% of the population, there's an entire world view, and this is not hyperbole, it's actually a study, it's actually based on headlines, right?
So, whereas there may be more nuance in the story itself, the headline, you know, FBI prepares for ISIS attacks is something people internalize, especially when it's constantly reinforced over and over again.
And TV is basically just headlines out loud.
They don't ever usually get anywhere nearly as in-depth as a written article would.
There's all this, like, you know, they talk over, you know, B-roll of ISIS, you know, beheading people and killing people.
Of course, this is, when we say ISIS in America, what they mean, 99 times out of 100 is something Duke, the FBI, has either entrapped or got into an elaborate sting, which is bordering on entrapment.
So, yeah, the reality versus what people perceive as reality is vastly different.
And I think more people are getting kind of hip to that, though.
I think some people have kind of gotten terror fatigued.
All right, now, it does seem to be true that, you know, if you look at the attack on the Pamela Geller thing, and I forget now off the top of my head, but it seems like there's maybe one or two examples of actual, not FBI entrapments, but actual lone wolf inspired by ISIS social media types.
More and more, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy, basically, as the terror war has gone on this long, that you have people...
Well, I mean, the Pam Geller thing is a little bit different in the sense that, you know, if I was to go around with the big sandwich board that said, I hate the N-word around Harlem long enough, somebody would beat me up.
If I was to go around, you know, Texas, you know, some sort of, you know, I guess, white enclave and say, I hate stupid rednecks, like, it would be a matter of time.
Like, Pam Geller deliberately provoked a reaction and eventually she got it.
It was just a law of averages.
This guy had been on the radar of the FBI 2011 before ISIS was even a thing.
So, to say he was ISIS, he's an ISIS sympathizer, because that's the kind of, that's the vogue Sunni radical group, but he was definitely radicalized, you know, many, many years ago.
Oh, yeah.
Well, no, I didn't really want to conflate him with the overseas actual group, but just say that, you know, there are, you know, potentially attackers who are not just FBI dupes.
It just seems like it's almost always, as you say, FBI.
And explain this, too, because in your article here at FAIR, you show a still shot from CBS this morning, where they're showing what looks to be, you know, a dozen, more than a dozen arrests around the country for people tied with the Islamic State, and they're not making any kind of distinction between a wannabe, associated, entrapped, or actually sent here from Syria or anything else, right?
Right, and that's the problem, is that those distinctions are quite meaningful.
You know, if I was to find, in 1960, if I was to find a communist flag in someone's locker, does that make them a member of the Soviet Union?
Right.
No, I mean, ideology is different than actual operational connections, and when that line gets blurred, what you effectively have is, you have us fearing an ideology, not an actual group of people.
And now, I'm really glad the way you went through here.
I love fairness and accuracy in reporting.
You guys do a great job.
I guess you're pretty new around there, right?
Peter Herxgroup?
Yeah, yeah.
What a great thing, man.
Good job for you.
Congratulations, signing up with these guys.
Yeah, they're cool.
Yeah, yeah, they're great.
And so, you have here 40 warnings, orange alerts, and, you know, scaredy-cat-isms from the top-of-the-hour radio news, all across in cars and trucks, as they commute across the country over the years, on TV, CNN headlines, and Fox News banner crawl, and the rest of it.
40 of these warnings that ended up being nothing but hot air.
Right, well, the number's actually higher now.
A gentleman from accuracy.org actually let me borrow an intern to do more research, and it actually, the number's up to like 55 now.
Oh, great.
So, yeah, the FBI is routinely predicted, I mean, maybe prediction's not the right word, but they've foreshadowed a terror attack almost 55 times, and it's never once happened.
And the inverse is also true.
Any terror attack that was a real terror attack, you know, the Boston bombings, the underwear bomber, the Garland attack, none of those were at all predicted.
So, it raises the question of what value does this have?
Even if one assumes the FBI is operating with the best intention, we have yet to answer the question of what's the utility?
What is the average person supposed to do with that information?
Am I supposed to just go around looking for brown people?
Looking for backpacks?
Yeah, no, it is.
It's clearly a bunch of hype.
My favorite one from back in 2002 when, you know, it was obvious what they were doing was just trying to scare you into letting them attack Iraq was all it was, and they would have these orange alerts all the time.
They were torturing a lot of guys in CIA bases in Poland and stuff.
And my favorite one I heard on the top of the hour, ABC Radio News, AM Radio News, a school somewhere in Texas could be attacked by al-Qaeda.
Well, there's only 500,000 schools in Texas, right?
Yeah.
It's absolutely ridiculous, you know?
Everybody be on the lookout.
They have to be somewhat specific to make it not totally stupid, but then they end up being so vague it's just like there is one that parts of California.
Bridges along the Mississippi River, like, okay.
Yeah.
I mean, it's again, it's so goofy.
Like, again, it's never been, you know, what's funny is the people make fun of the color-code system under Bush, but I make an argument on Twitter that the color-code system is actually the logical extent of what is already a fundamentally stupid idea, which is terror alert.
Right.
So, like, the color-coding thing was actually an earnest attempt to make sense of what was something that was fundamentally nonsensical.
Right.
So, when Bush got, when Obama got rid of the color-coded, you know, a bunch of smug liberals were like, oh, well, you know, we got rid of the color-code system, you know, aren't we so much more sophisticated?
It's like, well, actually, at least the color-code system had some, like, criteria of what you're supposed to do, even though it was all stupid.
But, like, right now, it's just terror alert.
Great.
Now what?
And in 2009, Tom Ridge wrote a, wrote his memoir, and he basically said that he was pressured by the Bush administration when he was, when he was Secretary of Homeland Security to raise the alert level before the, before the election.
Right.
Yeah, no, it was all such obvious hype back then.
Right.
And then, as you say, too, and look, a lot of this is just, you know, internal FBI PR imposturing, too.
There's nothing the FBI cares about more than the FBI, and looking like they're necessary.
Yeah, you gotta keep, you gotta keep your fear alive.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you mentioned, you mentioned how they completely failed to predict the actual attacks that are coming, and you mentioned Boston there, and I had gone back, I'd missed this at the time, but should have known.
I went back and found a Trevor Aronson piece where it was at the time that the, that the brothers were, you know, planning and organizing the attack in Boston, was right when the Boston branch of the FBI was in the middle of chasing their tail, paying no attention, and trapping the idiot into the remote control plane plot against the Capitol and the Pentagon that they made up.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
So it was on their watch.
They were, just like in all my predictions for ten years, this is how I'd always say it.
While they're busy chasing their tail, the next real attack is gonna happen right there on their watch, and that's exactly what happened in Boston.
Yeah, and you know what the FBI doesn't want to tell you, is that there actually is not much they can really do, and, and the problem is that we have to live in a world of uncertainty.
We have to live in a world where people are gonna die occasionally, and we need to accept that, and the problem is that that's not, that's not a politically convenient thing to say, so we have to run through all this theater where the FBI is looking busy, and we sort of feel kind of safe, but we're not actually any safer, and I think, I think it's all, again, I think after 14 years, people are starting to get really fatigued by it.
It's kind of losing its credibility.
Right.
Well, and of course, we could just stop intervening in the Middle East, and then we wouldn't have this problem to deal with.
That sure, that would certainly help, yes.
All right, I'm over time.
That would be the most elegant solution.
Yeah, yeah.
I gotta run.
Thanks so much for your time.
Good talk to you, Adam.
You got it, man.
That's Adam Johnson.
He's at FAIR.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
FAIR.org.
We'll be right back.
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