This whole SWIFT program revelation has me really frosted. I am as frustrated by the lack of prosecution of both newspaper writers and publishers as I am about the leakers. It makes it look as though the rules regarding protection of government secrets have changed for the worse.

I disagree with Jacob Weisberg's article in Slate on the reasons why the NY Times was wrong to print information about the SWIFT program. He trots out Keller's weak arguement that, "They struggle mightily with such decisions," and attempts to cloak that in the protective barrier of the First Amendment. As one of the commenters on Just One Minute says, "The First Amendment is not a Get Out of Jail Free Card."

The more I read the Mr. Weisberg's article, the more I see it as an apologia cloaked in a mild wrist slapping "punishment." To stand a phrase on it's head, Weisberg's article is praising with faint damnation. His instructions to the NY Times on what questions they should ask before printing an article on a to-that-point secret program must have been lifted from an introduction to journalism text.

The real problem with these decisions is that half the equation for making the decision is unknown, and maybe unknowable a priori. The only time you're sure about an intelligence failure is when a calamity strikes that can be directly linked to prevous revelations.

"You never know until it's too late," might need to go on a memorial plaque at Ground Zero.

Geez! Joe Wilson and his wall flower wife, Valerie Plame, just can't get enough publicity. It reminds me of the Brendan Behan quote, "There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." I agree with the Instapundit about this - "This seems quite unwise to me, as I think all sorts of things will come out in discovery." The second part of Brendan's quote may haunt Clueless Joe and the Vamp of Langley.

In my previous post, I talked about the super-empowered individuals described in Glen Reynolds' book, "An Army of Davids." Some of the characteristics of these individuals is that they can cause great damage in proportion to their size and effort. Just think about the effects of the 19 terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Or consider any of the terror bombings over the past five years.

One feature about these individuals is that they lack a strong defensive system. Their success in operations depends on stealth, speed, coordination, camouflage, dispersion, and adaptability, not in their ability to defend against counter attack. Just look at what happened to the fourth plane in the 9/11 attack. As Glenn Reynolds points out, the attackers were thwarted by a handfull of unarmed and untrained civilians.

Consider the swarming bloggers on an individual basis as super-empowered individuals. Could any one or two of the bloggers mentioned in Hugh Hewitt's book, "Blog," have "survived" a counter attack from major media or a powerful politician? I doubt it.What halts the counter attack is the presence of other super-empowered individuals - in this case other bloggers -  to either refocus the attention on the objective, or take up the banner and attack (see Paterico's Pontifications posts among others on the Jeff Goldstein DoS attack).

Some of the tools available to a swarmer, for example quick communications and the ability to organize a swarm on an issue, have some defensive capability, but only if they bring other swarmers to the fight.

I've just finished reading "Blog," by Hugh Hewitt. I found the book very intriguing and thought provoking. Prior to that, I'd read "An Army of Davids," by Glenn Reynolds. These two books got me to thinking about the "super-empowered individual" referred to in Mr. Reynolds' book and the "blog swarms" mentioned in Mr. Hewitt's book.

I was going to write about how these two descriptions of recent phenomena parallel parts of the war on terror. I had considered the characteristics of these individuals as similar - small, fast, communicative (or networked if you will), frequently with shared goals and similar methods for achieving the goals, but also individually no match for the defensive units of the "mainstream" or institutional elements opposed to these swarms.

I want to explore several features of the super-empowered individual, both strenghts and weaknesses over several posts. I see a lot of debate on other weblogs about whether this is a successful way to achieve an objective (not necessarily wage a war) or not.

Why did I choose the web address, www.response39.TownHall.com and the blog title? For those who are curious or can't stand not knowing, here's the background on the web title.

 Several years ago, I was involved in a large study of one part of US Defense community programs. This study, scheduled to take no more than 6 months, of course took a full year to complete. The team was 25-30 mid-level and senior-level government personnel, military officers and a couple of contractors. We worked 12 to 14-hour days for the entire time. Needless to say, we became a family. We also got tired of saying the same words over and over again - to the point that we finally started using numbers for our standard resonses. My contribution was, "What the heck were we thinking!?" It was response number 39, of course! I've adapted that phrase to the title of this blog.

And now you know!

I hope you enjoy this as much as I will.