Via Spencer Ackerman, watch as I officially put to bed the notion that we can racially profile our way to peace and security.
Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe today report in the Washington Post on a forthcoming report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that assesses the threat posed by "as many as three dozen American citizens who converted to Islam in prison and moved to Yemen after their release in the past year." The report contains this little tidbit:
An additional concern, it says, "is a group of nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans who traveled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists, and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country." One U.S. official, it reports, described them as "blond-haired, blue-eyed types" who "fit a profile of Americans whom al-Qaeda has sought to recruit over the past several years."
Intelligence specialists have long cautioned that racial profiling "draws an investigator's attention toward too many innocent people, and away from too many dangerous ones." This report basically moots all counter-arguments.
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