When all the metaphors (not joining the dots, stove-piping data) have been exhausted in describing the failure to provide advance warning of the Christmas Day bomber we need to forget the technology and, instead, renew our study of one thing, the human mind. Agencies may be equipped with data digestive tracts that can process the equivalent of the contents of the entire Library of Congress in a few seconds but all this is useless if no mortal is engaged to spot what nuggets among the torrent are significant.
The President spoke of systemic failure. But systems are managed by people. And in the hope of instilling an uncommon sense of accountability, I have decided to institute an award, given to an individual who, responsible for keeping the nation safe, spectacularly drops the ball. This award is named for Lt. Kermit Tyler of the U.S. Army.
Just after dawn on Sunday, December 7 1941, Lt. Tyler was the sole
officer on duty at the Army’s Flight Control Center at Fort Shafter,
eight miles east of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Radar was in its infancy. A
few early model radar stations had been set up on the coast. By sheer
chance, two rookie operators were waiting to be relieved at one of
these stations, just after 7am, and instead of shutting down their
radar on the hour were still fiddling with it when suddenly they
spotted a big fuzzy blur about 130 miles out into the Pacific, heading
for Hawaii.
They called it in. Lt Tyler picked up the phone, listened to their report and said “Forget it.”
The radar had picked up the first of the two waves of Japanese bombers that would virtually wipe out the naval force at anchor in Pearl Harbor.
It has to be said that poor old Kermit has had a bum rap. It was only his second day on the job. There had been a lot of false alarms from inexperienced radar operators. None of the people involved in this early warning system had really been properly trained and most of them thought radar was an annoying box of tricks. And even had Tyler called his superior officers to suggest an impending attack they would probably have told him to get lost-there were plenty of examples, that Sunday morning, of the top brass enjoying the brain rest of the unguarded living in Nirvana.
Nonetheless, the hapless Tyler now lives in history as the guy who said “Forget it” when the Japanese were coming over the horizon and America was rudely introduced to the Second World War.
There are several things that make this tale pertinent. The first is that in order to be alert to a threat you really have to believe that there is one. The second one is that if you find yourself the guy who has the actionable information you need a command structure that will actually take action, once given the stuff. But the third factor is psychological and cultural: When are we most likely to be inattentive, to have our guard down?
The Japanese deliberately timed their attack for early Sunday morning because they knew that this would be, by custom, when many on the military bases would be stood-down, heading for church or otherwise relaxing. In 1939, Hitler timed his attack on Poland because the Nazis, who were oddly in awe of the English upper classes and their recreational tastes, thought that Britain’s ruling caste, political and military, would be shooting grouse on the Scottish moors and, therefore, that they would be slow to react-Britain had said that it would regard an attack on Poland as reason to go to war against Germany.
If Al Qaeda knew anything, it was that a similar state of unreadiness would be found in the United States on the night before Christmas, when Abdulmutallab was due to board his flight for Detroit in Amsterdam. Even though a successful attack on Christmas Day would have been portrayed as a victory against the Christian “crusaders” the timing was as much one of military opportunity as of symbolism. The whole country was either exhausted from shopping, enjoying a trance of Dickensian reverie, or just asleep.
And the terrorists were right.
We know now that Michael Leiter, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, had taken off for a six-day skiing vacation-and was, incredibly, still on the slopes days after the attempted attack. We don’t yet know what the manning levels were at key places in the monitoring of incoming flight passenger lists - for example, at the National Targeting Center whose job is to screen those lists. (Apparently Abdulmutallab’s name raised a red flag after his flight was in the air, and he was marked down for an interview on landing, which hints, to say the least, at holiday-level understaffing.)
I would not be at all surprised if a Pearl Harbor laxity had not reduced both the number of people on duty throughout all the agencies that now process intelligence and their alertness as the juices of a promised Christmas banquet shaped their mood. Al Qaeda know our habits, it’s high time we learned theirs.
So it is because he symbolizes so perfectly this mindset that I now give the first Kermit Tyler Award for America The Unready to Michael Leiter, to be shared with his boss, John Brennan, the White House security chief, who saw nothing amiss in Leiter’s relaxed performance.
The trophy does not actually yet exist, but what I have in mind is a brass bust of Tyler wearing a blindfold, with the legend engraved on a plate beneath: “Forget it.”
Footnote: Radar was developed by the British in the 1930s and a case can be made that it virtually saved western civilization. In 1940 Britain was the last, offshore outpost of freedom in Europe. That summer, a handful of RAF fighter pilots so decimated Hitler’s bombers that he called off his invasion of the United Kingdom. The RAF had designed and rehearsed an amazingly sophisticated radar-led early warning system that - in the very marginal Battle of Britain - tipped the balance in favor of the outnumbered defenders, and the British held out until Pearl Harbor guaranteed their survival by delivering their mightiest ally. After Pearl Harbor British technicians were dispatched to the U.S. to explain how to use radar effectively.
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They called it in. Lt Tyler picked up the phone, listened to their report and said “Forget it.”
The radar had picked up the first of the two waves of Japanese bombers that would virtually wipe out the naval force at anchor in Pearl Harbor.
It has to be said that poor old Kermit has had a bum rap. It was only his second day on the job. There had been a lot of false alarms from inexperienced radar operators. None of the people involved in this early warning system had really been properly trained and most of them thought radar was an annoying box of tricks. And even had Tyler called his superior officers to suggest an impending attack they would probably have told him to get lost-there were plenty of examples, that Sunday morning, of the top brass enjoying the brain rest of the unguarded living in Nirvana.
Nonetheless, the hapless Tyler now lives in history as the guy who said “Forget it” when the Japanese were coming over the horizon and America was rudely introduced to the Second World War.
There are several things that make this tale pertinent. The first is that in order to be alert to a threat you really have to believe that there is one. The second one is that if you find yourself the guy who has the actionable information you need a command structure that will actually take action, once given the stuff. But the third factor is psychological and cultural: When are we most likely to be inattentive, to have our guard down?
The Japanese deliberately timed their attack for early Sunday morning because they knew that this would be, by custom, when many on the military bases would be stood-down, heading for church or otherwise relaxing. In 1939, Hitler timed his attack on Poland because the Nazis, who were oddly in awe of the English upper classes and their recreational tastes, thought that Britain’s ruling caste, political and military, would be shooting grouse on the Scottish moors and, therefore, that they would be slow to react-Britain had said that it would regard an attack on Poland as reason to go to war against Germany.
If Al Qaeda knew anything, it was that a similar state of unreadiness would be found in the United States on the night before Christmas, when Abdulmutallab was due to board his flight for Detroit in Amsterdam. Even though a successful attack on Christmas Day would have been portrayed as a victory against the Christian “crusaders” the timing was as much one of military opportunity as of symbolism. The whole country was either exhausted from shopping, enjoying a trance of Dickensian reverie, or just asleep.
And the terrorists were right.
We know now that Michael Leiter, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, had taken off for a six-day skiing vacation-and was, incredibly, still on the slopes days after the attempted attack. We don’t yet know what the manning levels were at key places in the monitoring of incoming flight passenger lists - for example, at the National Targeting Center whose job is to screen those lists. (Apparently Abdulmutallab’s name raised a red flag after his flight was in the air, and he was marked down for an interview on landing, which hints, to say the least, at holiday-level understaffing.)
I would not be at all surprised if a Pearl Harbor laxity had not reduced both the number of people on duty throughout all the agencies that now process intelligence and their alertness as the juices of a promised Christmas banquet shaped their mood. Al Qaeda know our habits, it’s high time we learned theirs.
So it is because he symbolizes so perfectly this mindset that I now give the first Kermit Tyler Award for America The Unready to Michael Leiter, to be shared with his boss, John Brennan, the White House security chief, who saw nothing amiss in Leiter’s relaxed performance.
The trophy does not actually yet exist, but what I have in mind is a brass bust of Tyler wearing a blindfold, with the legend engraved on a plate beneath: “Forget it.”
Footnote: Radar was developed by the British in the 1930s and a case can be made that it virtually saved western civilization. In 1940 Britain was the last, offshore outpost of freedom in Europe. That summer, a handful of RAF fighter pilots so decimated Hitler’s bombers that he called off his invasion of the United Kingdom. The RAF had designed and rehearsed an amazingly sophisticated radar-led early warning system that - in the very marginal Battle of Britain - tipped the balance in favor of the outnumbered defenders, and the British held out until Pearl Harbor guaranteed their survival by delivering their mightiest ally. After Pearl Harbor British technicians were dispatched to the U.S. to explain how to use radar effectively.
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Fearing the Fear Related to the Dec. 25 Terrorist Attempt
What About the Baggage Below?
New TSA rules: Déjà Vu All Over Again
Kermit Tyler passed away about 10 days ago. I appreciate your "bum rap" paragraph. Indeed, the Navy had the midget submarine sinking more than hour before the attack started and Admiral Kimmel was notified until after the first bombs. The Army fighters had been in training and on alerts for some time and would have need nearly 2 hours notice to get fueled, armed, and aloft. So I agree even if Mr Tyler had notified his supervisor, it was too late. I just feel like Mr. Tyler served in the Air Force I believe into the Vietname era and using his name to make your point is a little of a cheap shot. I know his extended family was close and his passing at I think 98 years is challenging.