Safety first

I'm no fan of the FBI, and I'm as unhappy about the "war on terror" as you are -- but I don't see this as an example of failure at all. Assuming that the "chemotherapy" is actually radiotherapy, there can be pretty significant levels of radiation in pee and poop.

One of co-grad-students back in the day had radioisotope treatment, and he was screaming hot. He visited a neighbouring lab, where they worked with 32P, had a little chat, and then as he was leaving he casually flicked on a Geiger counter, smiled, and left as the whole lab there converged to clean up the apparently-massive (phantom) spill he had "found". He measured his pee, and it was off the scale on the Geiger counter.

In other words, it sounds as if the FBI really did find a significant source of radioactivity at a large public gathering. To me, that's a legitimate cause for concern. Sure, they should have had radiotherapy on their list of possible false alarms and ruled it out quickly, but from the sound of it -- to me, anyway -- this isn't the boondoggle that you imply it is.

Ian, I know what you mean. Radioactive tracers are used in medical imaging, chemotherapy isn't rare (and many chemo patients have to carry letters from their doctors because they are stopped at airports so often), and there's no reason the FBI shouldn't be concerned when they detect radiation. My issue is "For an hour, the JHAT frantically tried to determine if Chicago had been struck by a 'dirty bomb' a weapon that spreads lethal radioactive material mixed with conventional explosives."

That's the waste that bugs me. It's much more likely that a chemo patient, or someone who recently use a radioactive tracer, will attend Taste of Chicago than that a dirty bomb will be set off. Better to rule out that possibility first, and in much less than an hour.

The piece also documents how most of the people prosecuted by these joint task forces have been more-or-less entrapped by FBI informants, and how the FBI justifies these massive expenditures by asserting that they know a terrorist cell exists in Chicago (for instance), without offering any basis for that belief.

Okay, I'm going to have to do more research on "dirty bombs". A couple of years ago I watched a show (I know, I know...) where they interviewed a couple of scientists who said that a dirty bomb would be pretty much useless. It would scatter the small amount of radioactive material in such a manner as to be pretty much harmless to humans.

That's the waste that bugs me. It's much more likely that a chemo patient, or someone who recently use a radioactive tracer, will attend Taste of Chicago than that a dirty bomb will be set off. Better to rule out that possibility first, and in much less than an hour.

It would be nice, agreed. But, first, we're hearing this through the media, and as you know whenever you read the media account of something you know about, the media are always wrong. For example: What exactly does "frantically" mean? That's the media's interpretation of whatever happened, with editorial comment; it's not necessarily the reality.

And second -- how, exactly, would you rule out a radiotherapy patient? It's not all that trivial to come up with the precise radioisotope that's the source of a signal (and in any case, a "dirty bomb" is as likely to be made from medical waste as anything else). So what would you do? Stop the festival and interrogate all the visitors to find out if one was taking radiotherapy? Can you think of a way to distinguish the possibilities in less than an hour? (Maybe there is one, but I'm not sure what it is.)

Again -- no fan of the FBI; but there's no shortage of screwups to point at, and I don't see this as the black-and-white example that it's presented as.

To test whether a chemo patient "had just done a poop" (in Sgt. DeRosa's felicitous phrasing), the easy test would be to do a quick sweep for radiation sources in and around the portapotties nearest to the radiation sensor, and to look at how strong and how widespread the radiation is right there. Glowing poop indicates a false positive.

Another solution is to assume that a serious radiological attack will set off more than one sensor, allowing you to triangulate a source (obviously that requires placing the sensors in a sensible way). A single sensor going off would then indicate a much less worrying situation, and a less frantic response.

Sounds like a successful op!

Think about it, radiological material was deposited into a publically accesible container by persons unknown in a major US city. Thanks to the swift and diligent efforts of real American heroes however, the material was located and identified before panic could sweep the city.

Had these able people not been present, panic would have swept the land and Chicago would now only be a barren wasteland haunted only by terrifying mutants and poopmonsters.

Yes indeedy!

Yeah ... I guess I'm not convinced that's as easy as you make it sound. I mean, it would be easy in a nice, controlled environment with five portapotties, but in a huge and active crowd with god knows what arrangement of portapotties ...How long do you think it should take?

Keep in mind that we don't want to shut anything down, or cause any alarm, or make any announcements that would cause panic, because we don't really think this is an attack. (Since we only heard about this long after the fact, I think we can conclude that the "frantic" activity is mostly media BS, and that the FBI was working under the assumption that it was a false alarm.)

Your "single sensor" assumption, by the way, I think is wrong. The FBI would presumably like to detect a dirty bomb before it was set off, i.e. a single source.

I can much more easily imagine a setup that would take, say, half an hour or 45 minutes to get a definitive answer, than one that would take a simple five minutes. See the reading, check that it's real and not a defective machine (there's like three minutes there), notify the other agents (another couple minutes), check two-three other locations (five minutes), notice the reading is coming from the area of those 12 portapotties over there, get over to the portapotties (another two minutes), scan each one from the outside (a minute each for 12 portapotties), determine that one is the likely source, wait two minutes for the occupant to exit and politely move to the front of the line, scan the inside (a couple minutes), return and report to the other agents (five minutes), and handle a bit of paperwork (five minutes).

There's about 30-40 minutes there for what I'd see as a best-case scenario, without 10,000 people getting in your way. Round up to account for the usual media exaggeration there's your "frantic hour".

Anyway, I just don't think this sounds like such an egregious example of screwups.

This may be poor writing, but the author here says that "the JHAT frantically tried to determine if Chicago had been struck by a 'dirty bomb.'" The use of a past tense there suggests that they thought it had already detonated.

The other false positives chronicled in the article are more egregious, certainly, but are harder to summarize, and don't have as funny a punchline.

Josh you point an anecdote about one false positive and waving your hands to say "LOOK THEIR WASTING MONEY!" This is completely ridiculous commentary and a shining example of no matter what hard working professionals do there is always someone in the peanut gallery talking stupid smack.

DaPrez, please read the linked article before complaining that I only offered one example. I quoted one of many from the article, since quoting the whole thing would be improper. Read it and make your own judgment. And please apply some of this respect for hard working professionals to ecologists and climate scientists.