Gaps that need filling
Lots of commentary and email about my post earlier today saying I was skeptical about Annie Jacobsen's article in a number of respects, and some folks who are other wise ideological allies took opposing views of my analysis. Hugh Hewitt said it was "sensible skepticism." OTOH, Andy McCarthy at NRO's The Corner blog said I was "seriously over-generalizing." Update: Also at The Corner, Katherine Lopez posted this evening that my previous post was a "a smart, sober post." So there you are - a lot of disagreement over substantial parts of the bona fides of Annie's piece, but unanimity that the story deserves a lot of attention.

But I reply to Andy McCarthy: yeah, I could be over-generalizing, just as he could be over-accepting. Probably the chief problem with Annie's piece is that it leaves us wanting a lot more after-story details, such as who hired the Syrian musicians, did the feds in fact authenticate their gig, did the Arab men actually fly back on the Jet Blue plane for which Annie said they had return tickets, how long were the men detained by the authorities, etc.

Some of this stuff I would not expect her to know, at least right away, but even so, readers want the rest of the story. It is in these gaps that some people, like me, find their unwillingness to accept the account as whole cloth - lots of details for some things, scarcity for others.

Real life, of course, is not neat and tidy, and neither is Annie's story. But her account's power lies less in what she says than how she says it. She's a talented writer and brings the reader into her story world skillfully. By the end of my first reading I was almost fearful myself, sitting at my desk at home.

But while it is factual she was fearful, her fear does not provide facts. And I suspect that many of the readers who conclude that there was more going on than met the eye so conclude less from the factual content of her story than her skill at communicating her emotional states in all their gripping detail.

It's noteworthy that after spending "several hours" being interrogated by the FBI, giving them "sworn statement after sworn statement" (multiple sworn statements?), the FBI didn't seem to be unduly alarmed. That is, the Syrians, who had already been detained before the Jacobsens started giving sworn statements, were checked out and released. The end, at least as far as we know.

What gets readers also emotively involved is that we know al Qaeda still wants to use airliners as missiles. We know that even if these 14 Arab men were entirely innocuous, on another airliner somewhere, somewhen, there seem certain to be other Arab men who intend destruction. The enemy is still out there and he still wants to kill us.

And so we are disturbed, even shocked, not at what Annie says did happen (remember, nothing happened), but at what could have happened with slightly different men flying for very different purposes, and which still may happen yet.

Update: Glenn Reynolds posted an email from a pilot named James White, who wrote,

I share Rev Sensing's skepticsm on most aspects of the report. There are a lot of details in the article such as those involving crew actions that are either flat out wrong or that she couldn't possibly have known enough about to assess things as she did. Based on subsequent news (like Malkin's confirmation of some aspects of the incident), I'll accept that the gist of her story is valid but embellished with uninformed speculation and conventional wisdom.