From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv@cdc.gov> Sent: Dec 21, 2004 10:20 PM To: "cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net> Subject: Re: Israeli Airport Security Questioning Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2004

At 02:16 PM 12/20/04 -0500, John Kelsey wrote:

...

No doubt a real intelligence agent would be good at getting through this kind of screening, but that doesn't mean most of the people who want to blow up planes would be any good at it!

You really continue to understimate the freedom fighters, don't you? (The first) King George did the same.

Maybe so. It's clearly added cost to the attackers--they have to select not just the subset of volunteers willing to blow themselves up on the plane, but the subset of *those* who can also keep cool under rapid-fire questioning of their cover story. The attackers probably have to either spend a lot of time rehearsing their cover stories, or have to keep their cover stories very close to their actual lives and interests, which makes profiling easier. Both of these cut way down on the total pool of attackers available. My assumption is that national intelligence agencies can probably afford to do this--they can probably filter through a lot more possible candidates to get field agents who can handle a cover story well, for example, since they can hire openly, rather than quietly recruiting from madrassa students or something. Their training facilities can be centralized and stay in one place, rather than being a camp in the desert somewhere that has to be abandoned frequently, and they can develop a lot of expertise in training people to survive intensive questioning without fumbling their cover story. --John