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You are sure enough to accuse me of "trickery" , "stretching" and "inflating"

I said that about the Compendium of Facts, referring to the Horowitz article. That article contains such things. I'm sorry, but it does. It may well contain useful and damning facts. They would be more apparent if they were not mixed in with what is quite obviously hatchetry.

To tell people that Grover Norquist knows a guy who works at the White House whose father was a terrorist does not pass my test for linking Grover Norquist with terrorists. It passes my test for wondering why the 'national security professionals' would like me to stare at Grover Norquist -- instead of at them -- when I hear that the son of a terrorist was working at the White House. When I ask questions about this, I get answers like, "That's not our department." When I suggest that's a BS, bureaucrat's answer, I get back condescending bureaucratese, and the message that I have not refuted the "facts."

Now get I get a victory dance. I still don't know why that story is in the Horowitz article, other than it is a lame attempt to get people with short attention spans to think they just heard something bad about Grover Norquist, instead of something bad about the people at the White House who do background checks on new hires.

Using flag words like "evidence" and "proposition" to describe a conversation with a campaign manager about how to win votes is rhetorical trickery. That's what I mean by "playing creepy organ music." The stupid people are supposed to think they just heard something damning and horrible, when all they really heard is that some guy was telling Karl Rove how he thinks they could get more votes. Since I don't fall for crap like that, I get to be the unpopular guy who is "defending the traitor."

If this article is a sincere effort to expose the deeds of the misguided and/or traitorous Grover Norquist, why it is peppered throughout with misdirection plays and tricks worthy of a "60 Minutes" hatchet job? That is not an unreasonable question.

Even if I stipulate to Norquist having done some pretty weird things here that do not look good, I'm still left with wondering where this hatchet job is coming from, who is behind that, and why... because the hatchet job is an independent event. It also has perpetrators, and may also be motivated by evil, greed, political agendas, foreign influence, and so on. To say so is not to defend Norquist in any way. It is to open a new file called "political hit jobs by the national security community," which in the long run might be just as scary as anything Norquist did.

One evil at a time, perhaps, and if the current events are as you describe I'll even thank you for warning me about that. But I'll still wonder what else is happening here, because this is a 'hit.' Don't tell me isn't; we see them all the time. Down goes Trent Lott. Down goes Newt Gingrich. Down goes Grover Norquist. And don't come back with some rhetorical BS about how I just equated the evil deeds of Grover Norquist with anything that Trent Lott did. I'm using them as illustrations of media-blitz hit jobs, nothing more. We have one here, and let's recognize that. You're part of it, and you're not a saint in all of this. You are part of a take-down, and you are having entirely too much fun with it to be pure of motive. The glow of petty vindictiveness emanating from your notes is blinding. So whether or not Grover Norquist is a bad guy, I think the Republic might not be entirely safe from you either.

Since I don't fall for crap like that, I get to be the unpopular guy who is "defending the traitor."

I really have a hard time believing that all this hoopla was the best way to deal with this problem, if, in fact, it's a real problem. And even if all the innuendo and insinuation about Norquist turns out to be 100% true, the undercurrent here seems to be that the problem begins and ends with him, and that therefore he's the only one who should have to face the music, which is just plain old bullshit, IMO. "Groverdunnit" is not an adequate answer to the question of how this happened, in that case, and I for one appreciate the hell out of your efforts to ask hard questions about the apparatus that is ostensibly - but apparently not actually - in place to prevent foreign agents from gaining influence.

To tell people that Grover Norquist knows a guy who works at the White House whose father was a terrorist does not pass my test for linking Grover Norquist with terrorists.

No, actually the point is that Grover placed him there -- his payback demand for "delivering the Muslim vote" -- after Khan served a stint on the campaign and on the Board of the Islamic Institute. Nobody, nobdoy, vets for who your father is in the security community. As I've said before, when the USSS caught Samil Al Arian's son because of his name, and escorted him from the building, Grover, Saffuri and the lobby went crazy and got Rove to demand, via the President, an apology. The President then also called Mrs. Al Arian, as above mentioned. So that sent an eveen clearer reminder to the USSS: if the guy's father is Hitler, don't say anything. Again, how things work in the real world is a bit different than you see to think, or indeed, than any of us might like. Again, though, the question is not what is the fail safe, the question is why are all these people associated with Grover, virtually every one of them, as donors, associates, or II staff, one or two clicks away from terror or a terror nexis.

Stop searching for motives; the facts stand on their own, irrespective of Gaffney's narrative style. What is your's by the way, and do you as a result of your style and expertise appear on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CSB, etc., daily and in hundreds of newspapers, etc. Stop doing your cheap shot literary-pscyhology analysis from the gallery. Does "flag words" actually mean "trigger words" as in words like evidence "trigger" some paranoid psychosis in you? It seems like it. But clever fellow that you are you "don't fall for crap like that" Neither do I. ON elast time on your "take down" screeds: I have plainly said, Grover has done these things, is still doing them, and needs to be stopped, for clear national security reasons. I am a national security professional and it is my duty. Simple as that. People actually do their jobs for honest and "pure" reasons. If you are some cynical crank angry at things he can't understand or control or play in, keep it to yourself.