Laughing All the Way

It is hard to decide whether the story that the NSA was spying on the anti-war group, Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, is funny or pathetic. Surely it is both, but is it more one than the other? The pathos and the humour are certainly intertwined.

It is now reported and documents have been revealed that the NSA was conducting surveillance on an anti-war group, Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, and their balloon-inflation activities on the 4800 block of York Rd. in October of 2004. And, given this nefarious helium-based activity, the NSA saw fit to deploy "units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction." Now the group hardly makes a secret of its activities. In fact, Pledge of Resistance goes out of its way to make its activitites known and the more who know about them, the better.

Just what the NSA is "spying" on is anyone's guess, but it hardly seems like a well-worn terrorist strategy to pose as a vocal anti-war group that would insist on inflating protest balloons in broad daylight on a busy city street all in an effort to launch a "dirty bomb" or carry out some other devilish act. But as one reads through the seven pages of NSA documents, which describe an NSA "action plan" for dealing with the "protest threat," one can't help but get a sense of ho-hum from the secret documents. And as you read them you will discover the real reason they have been kept secret: they're bloody embarrassing.

For instance, the NSA is particularly concerned that the Pledge of Resistance is going to march on the NSA headquarters south of Baltimore on October 4, 2004. There are descriptions of the vehicles en route, the number of protesters who comprise the threat, and that they have an "ETA of 25 minutes to NSA, S/A V" That's some wicked cool spy-talk.

But it gets better. I just love this passage:

REPORTED FIVE OR SIX PEOPLE IN A BLUE VAN WITH BLACK BALLOONS, ANTI-WAR SIGNS AND A POSSIBLE HELIUM TANK. THE SECOND VEHICLE WAS IDENTIFIED AS A BRONZE COLOR FORD MERCURY MD TAG WJP 494 OCCUPIED WITH TWO ADULTS AND A CHILD. THE THIRD VEHICLE WAS IDENTIFIED AS GREEN FORD STATION WAGON WITH FIVE FEMALES CARRYING ANTI-WAR SIGNS.

That sounds like a salty band of ruthless no-goodniks. Substitute RPG for ANTI-WAR SIGN and this would sound fucking scary. And "black balloons"! Good lord, somebody do something!

Of course, what is exactly hilarious about this is that the words are, in fact, ANTI-WAR SIGNS. That is also what is so pathetic.

But the documents go further and describe, in excruciating NSA detail, the fact that the damnable protesters decided to carry out their America-hating protest on the same day as the NSA's "Family Day" picnic. Now, that's bloody inconvenient. Those anti-war protesters really do hate America because the NSA had to up the police force guarding the super-secret NSA compound, which everyone in Maryland knows about, and those NSA police officers had to miss out on all the NSA family fun. Here is a look at the first two bullets of the "PLANNING IMPLEMENTED":

1. Have TMU obtain all current intelligence information on Pledge of Resistance -- Baltimore and other related groups involved.
2. Obtain all current planning on NSA family picnic at Burba Lake.

Now, something about this passage tells me that at least a few at the NSA don't really consider the Pledge of Resistance--Baltimore all that much of a threat, certainly not much more than the person bringing the potato salad to Burba Lake. But the pretense is there nonetheless and just to make sure America was paying attention to authority, the NSA arrested several protesters, who got all uppity about their "constitutional rights" of free speech and petition. Cleary, these were people who just never understood that 9/11 changed everything.

And Osama is laughing all the way, because in George Bush's America, it did.