Talk of the Town - I gave at the cave October 03 2001

(Editor’s note: In keeping with newly established journalistic guidelines, the word “terrorist” has not been used in this column. The Reuters news agency has decided — this is a true story — that the term has a, well, pejorative ring. They have a point. Mass murder can get many people in a terribly biased mood. So, in the interest of objectivity, and to sidestep that scourge of the modern era — “being judgmental” — let’s watch the rhetoric. Henceforth, if you were planning to say “terrorist,” please employ such less-prejudicial terminology as “lethal havoc specialist” or “random violence coordinator.” Your discretion is appreciated.)

It’s all over the news. Osama bin Laden has just sent the world a fax.

Our Defense Department has $30 billion in hardware, software and thousands of short-tempered people in camouflage gear, all dedicated to the proposition that this guy be reduced to an easily spread foie gras. And he can still send a fax.

How? Where? Is there a Kinko’s in Kabul where bin Laden stops off to do paperwork while sipping a double frappucino? This doesn’t square with general wisdom that he’s hiding in a cave deep beneath Afghanistan-by-the-Rubble. There are few caves where you can plug in a home office fax machine, although that natural rock background does look terrific behind an oak computer desk.

I know it won’t be easy to neutralize bin Laden, but can we at least upset his office routine a little? Maybe slow up the delivery of cartridges for his ink-jet printer? Or perhaps — and this may seem drastic — we could interdict the box of Bavarian creme donuts that he picks up for the gang at the office each morning.

Meanwhile, I can’t send a fax. I’m in the middle of the most gadget-crammed society on the face of the planet, and no dice. Because my fax machine is broken. I can’t get anybody to fix it, and my car is in the shop so I can’t get to a place where I can send one. I’ve been technologically trumped by a guy living in a hole in the ground. He can send a fax. Go figure.

It’s not just me though. America’s schizophrenic relationship with technology has split wide open in recent weeks, as we’ve seen how terror... excuse me, fatal chaos planners have turned all the shiny accoutrements of alleged progress against us. From flight simulator computer programs to conspiratorial e-mails sent courtesy of your local public library, America has been a wide open Boy’s Book of Ba-Bang for these characters, who wander the length and breadth of the Republic in search of better ways to blow us up.

It’s as if the punks I knew in junior high — the ones for whom an M-80 in the boys lavatory, with its attendant ka-thoom and satisfying geyser of l’eau de toilette and cracked porcelain, was the highest form of academic achievement — have gone into horrible, homicidal business for themselves. One factoid that sent me reeling was the notion that a truly well-connected terror... sorry, multiple-death sales associate uses a new cell phone every day to stay one step ahead of the gendarmerie. I haven’t worked up the nerve to have one cell phone, and these guys are tossing them around like empty Gatorade bottles at football practice.

Fast-paced cell phone technology, however, can be an awful — and literal — headache. A number of cloak-and-dagger operatives overseas have answered their cells only to have them blow up, making one wonder if there’s a stubborn glitch in the “Friends and Family” plan that has yet to be worked out. By and large, I oppose having cell phones explode, although I’d make an exception next time some moron in a Lincoln Navigator cuts me off because he’s busy yapping on one.

Even as we’ve marveled at mayhem-doer use of modern technology, there is a back-to-basics financial component to such operations that defies current trends. Investigators speak of the hawala system, involving unofficial storefront money marts that allow funds to flutter around the globe with virtually no paper trail.

Let it be said that most hawala-users are peacefully minded people just trying to move some hard-earned bucks with a minimum of fuss and fees. Let it also be said that most Americans are knee-deep in cancelled checks, bank statements and enough ATM receipts to supply Lucky Lindy’s ticker-tape welcome home from France — not to mention a system that tracks their every financial and retail move down to knowing what brand of juice they buy (Tropicana ruby red grapefruit, with some pulp). So it is astonishing to learn that money can still be moved with near total anonymity.

I know married guys, trapped in full-disclosure direct-deposit paycheck hell, their eagle-eyed spouses privy to the movement of every dollar earned, spent or squandered, who would love to have a neighborhood hawala discreetly stash some of their spare cash.

Heck, I am one of those guys.

Sorry, honey.

Glen Slattery is fully disclosed in Alpharetta.??