Hmmm: Assistant Port Director of Port of San Diego Says WMD's Have Been Found By "Partner Agencies" At Other Locations

That's what he said, and seemed to want to say more before being gagged:

‘You never found one in San Diego though?’ Mr Blacher asked.

‘I would say at the port of San Diego we have not,’ Mr Hallor said.

‘Have you found one in San Diego?’ Mr Blacher asked.

The interview was then interrupted and cut short by a public relations official before Mr Hallor was able to answer the question.

San Diego's Customs and Border Protection agency was unavailable for comment today.

No comment? What?

There are two main possibilities here. First, that he is the victim of a game of Telephone, where a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend said something like this but it was garbled. In this case, it's basically not true. He thought it was, but he got it wrong.

The other main possibility is that WMDs have been discovered being smuggled into America and this information has been suppressed by government officials. But this guy let it slip.

I don't want to jump on to possibility two too hard -- it's hard to keep a secret, and also, federal agencies usually have a strong incentive to publicize their busts.

There is a third possibility that I'm sort of embarrassed to note because it involves my own ignorance. That is, I am not sure, but I think I've heard about stuff like this before -- that is, he may be talking about a story that made the news in the past but we forgot about it. I'm not sure if I'm Inventing Memories here, but I thought I could remember back in 2004 and 2005 stories about port security noting that sometimes undeclared radioactive material gets discovered. I'm trying to google to see if that's a real memory or an invented one but I'm not finding the answer.

Anyone remember?

This "no comment" stuff is atrocious. Either knock it down or offer up the details; it's insane that our government agencies, whom we, you know, pay for are keeping information from us and telling us "no comment" as if we're busybodies asking about things we have no right to ask about.

Thanks to Ben, who had this in the sidebar earlier.

posted by Ace at 01:45 PM

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