Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1087

So Much for the Hunt for a 'Dark-Skinned Male'

Moments after the the FBI released photos of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, a CNN analyst and former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes was, like many Americans, expressing surprise at how normal these guys looked. "We've been advocating, if you see it say it." But these guys, he asked, "What would cause you to say anything? Two guys with baseball caps walking down the sidewalk like going to a picnic. No one is going to be suspicious of that by itself." Because, yes, the FBI is asking the public to be on the look out for men who appear to be frat guys. One is wearing a Bridgestone golf hat. They even inspired a Twitter meme: brofiling.

There have been two things the reports of suspects reaching the media have had since the blast: they've been wrong and they've involved men of Middle Eastern descent. Thursday morning started with a 17-year-old track star of Moroccan descent splashed across the front page of the New York Post. On Wednesday, CNN anchor John King erroneously reported that a "dark-skinned male" was in custody. On Monday, the New York Post (banner week for those guys) lead the charge on the report that a Saudi student injured in the blast was a "suspect" on Monday. 

After the photos came out, CNN's Wolf Blitzer did point out that we still don't know the nationality, ethnicity, or motives of either man. "We can't say whether the person spoke with a foreign accent, or an American accent," he pointed out. It's still possible that these are Al Qaeda operatives in frat boy disguise, one supposes. It's a possibility.

But the suspicion that the bombing was the work of Middle Eastern terrorists has been tough for certain quarters of America to shake.  Even after the Saudi man was cleared, Fox News terror expert Steve Emerson wasn't buying it. On Wednesday night, he told Sean Hannity that the Saudi man "is now going to be deported on national security grounds next Tuesday, which is very unusual." He added, "You don't arrest their citizens, you deport them because they don't want them to be embarrassed and that's the way we appease them." Mark Fuhrman, the Fox News pundit and former LAPD detective caught up in the OJ Simpson trial, added that the federal government likes to "grease the wheel a lot because the Saudis are one of our biggest allies in the Middle East and we want to keep them that way." Right-wing sites picked up this story. But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano dismissed this as a rumor Thursday at a congressional hearing when South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan asked her about it. "I don’t even think he was technically a person of interest or a suspect, that was a wash," she said when pressed. 

We still don't know anything about the suspects except for what they looked like on the day of the bombing. And we all know we shouldn't judge someone just by what they look like. But before the photos were released, lots of people were pretty sure who they should be looking for. And it was based on judging people by what they look like. A man who was at the marathon told the Boston radio station WCVB, "I seen one kid that sticks out in my head... He looked Muslim -- I'm not racist, but that's my instinct. To look for someone Muslim." And there's the person who tackled Alharbi because he was running away from the explosion, just like everyone else. Imagine being tackled after being severely burned.

We will not be relieved until the people responsible for the Boston bombing — these men or some others — are in custody. But now that the FBI has released photos, there is a relief of some sort: the mob can stop looking for young guys who look kind of Middle Eastern.

       

Go Read Gabby Giffords' Times Op-Ed, No Matter What You Believe

Gun control is one of the most divisive issues in the country, and Wednesday's face-off in the Senate reminded of that. But Gabrielle Gifford's new piece in Thursday's New York Times reminds us that we're human. Whether you're an activist who's been fighting for gun control for decades or a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, it's hard not to be moved by the 897 words the former Arizona congresswoman who survived a gunshot to the head published in the hours after the latest attempt at gun reform hit a wall in the Senate.

This is how it begins:

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.

You should click through to The Times's website to read how it ends.

       

A Fertilizer Plant Just Exploded Near Waco, Texas

Updated (10:52 p.m.): Several homes are on fire, and residents of a nearby retirement home are trapped inside after an explosion at a fertilizer plant exploded in West, Texas, a small town near Waco. The cause of the explosion and extent of the damage is unclear, but the local Department of Public Safety says that several people are severely injured. The explosion could be felt as far away as Dallas, which is nearly 100 miles away. (Scroll to the bottom of this post for a live feed from the local NBC affiliate.)

Witnesses nearby reported seeing a massive fireball rise from the site of the plant. It's all pretty scary for those nearby. "I said, 'This thing is going to blow' ... and I told my mom and dad to get in the car," one witness told the Waco Tribune. "I was standing next to my car with my fiancee, waiting for my parents to come out and [the plant] exploded. It knocked us into the car... Every house within about four blocks is blown apart."

Once again, little is known about the incident. A hazmat team and firefighters had been dispatched to the fertilizer plant after reports of a fire. Apparently the explosion occurred after they arrived, and several firefighters were injured. "There's nothing I can tell you other than that we've had an explosion," the West, Texas Fire Department told the press. "There are injuries, casualties, it's terrible." The CEO of the local Hillcrest Hospital said that they anticipate about 100 injured people.

With the recent terror attack in Boston, an explosion like this is certainly unsettling. But again, we don't yet know what caused the explosion, so don't jump to any conclusions. It is worth noting that this week is the 20th anniversary of the end of the deadly siege in Waco. This is a developing story, and we'll update you with new information as it flows in.

Image via Instagram / andybartee

 

Image via Twitter / ReidGolson

Waco Tribune reporter Kirsten Crow has been live tweeting from the scene and says that the injured are being treated on the local football field.

Image via Twitter / Kirsten Crow

This appears to be the fertilizer plant:

       

Conservatives Sure Are Gloating About Blocking the Gun Bill

A lot of gun control advocates are upset about what happened in the Senate on Wednesday as a (mostly) Republican minority filibustered gun regulations that the majority of Americans support. Everybody probably knows by now how President Obama feels. Standing next to Gabrielle Giffords who is "furious" at the White House, the president scolded the Senate for failing to move forward with gun control reform and said it was "a pretty shameful day in Washington." A very vocal group of gun control supporters echoed the sentiment in the minutes that followed — more on that in a second.

But conservatives seem pretty pleased. And hey, why shouldn't they be? They took a measure like expanded background checks — a measure that 90 percent of Americans support — and blocked it from coming up for a vote. They even pulled some sympathetic Democrats across the aisle in the process. That's a quite a feat, politically speaking! However, if you agree with the president, it's also quite a betrayal. Stonewalling the popular legislation not only betrays the majority of Americans that support it. It also betrays the victims of gun violence whose friends and family have been pleading for Washington to do something productive about the problem.

Based on what many these conservatives have been saying, that's no big deal. They sure seem smitten about blocking the legislation and aren't afraid to say so. All else fails, this crop of politicians has won a friend in the National Rifle Association and, presumably, the organization's truckloads of money. In case you had any doubt about the contrast between the winners and losers of Wednesday's political poker match, we've collected some of the more powerful reactions below. Feel free to leave your own in the comments.

Cheerful Conservatives

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell jumped at the opportunity to mock the gun control advocates who lost out in the vote. The Kentucky Republican got all Internet snarky on his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid, posting this meme to the Majority Leader's Facebook Page just minutes after the vote:

Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who was the target of the recent ricin attack on Capitol Hill, gloated in real time by broadcasting his vote against one measure on Twitter. Wicker then followed up with a press release going into detail about his decision and yelping the too familiar line, "I have not and will not support any attempt to infringe or undermine the Constitution’s Second Amendment protections."

I just voted against the ban on assault weapons.

— Senator Roger Wicker (@SenatorWicker) April 17, 2013

Utah's Republican Sen. Mike Lee took the Twitter bragging approach as well and even used all caps. (You can almost hear him saying "Neener, neener" behind Democrats' backs.) Lee was apparently ready for the bill to fail, because not long after the vote, he had an opinion piece in USA Today. It's a little surprising he had the gall to namecheck the same shooting victims whose families said that senators should be ashamed of themselves:

Unfortunately, the proposals offered in the Senate — including the expansion of background checks and bans on certain semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines — served primarily to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing little, if anything, to prevent the kind of tragic crimes that took place in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.

Obviously, Sarah Palin had something to say. She'll also be joining Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and others at the NRA's "Leadership Summit" on May 3:

Politicians' expanded gun control effort fails in the Senate today. Count this a victory for the 2nd Amendment and law-abiding citizens.

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) April 17, 2013

Everybody Else

Again, President Barack Obama is very upset. In the reaction speech mentioned above, he not only criticizes the "distortion of Senate rules" that enabled the legislation to fail but also accused the gun lobby of deceit. "The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill," said the president.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also, obviously, upset. In a statement posted to New York City's Tumblr (of all places), Bloomberg didn't mince his words. "Today's vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington," the mayor wrote. It wasn't all fire and brimstone, though. Bloomberg rounded out his statement on an optimistic note. He declared, "The only silver lining is that we now know who refuses to stand with the 90 percent of Americans – and in 2014, our ever-expanding coalition of supporters will work to make sure that voters don't forget."

Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords penned an opinion piece for The New York Times that went live a couple hours after the vote. Perhaps most powerfully, Giffords wrote, "Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I'm furious." It's worth reading in full, and it's about fear. The lede:

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.

Sen. Pat Toomey who penned the failed amendment for expanded background checks took a rather humble approach, posting his reaction as a series of tweets. Those that hoped Toomey would be the Republican champion of gun control will be disappointed in the fact that Toomey is done with the issue and will not fight for it. In reverse chronological order:

I did what I thought was the right thing for our country.

— Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) April 17, 2013

I sought out a compromise position that I thought could move the ball forward on an important matter of public safety.

— Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) April 17, 2013

My only regret is that our amendment did not pass. It’s not the outcome I hoped for, but the Senate has spoken and it’s time to move on.

— Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) April 17, 2013

Sen. Diane Feinstein, who's sort of become the face of gun control, stated the opposite, despite the fact that her amendment won only 40 votes. I'm disappointed by today's vote, but I always knew this was an uphill battle," said Feinstein. "I believe the American people are far ahead of their elected officials on this issue, and I will continue to fight for a renewed ban on assault weapons."

Perhaps the most resounding gesture of discontent, however, came from someone who's not even American: Piers Morgan. In a tweet that was retweeted thousands of times, Morgan put it bluntly:

The U.S. senate just voted against expanding background checks for gun sales. What a pathetic, gutless bunch of cowards. #NewtownBetrayed

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) April 17, 2013

       

Feds Arrest Kenneth Curtis for Allegedly Sending Ricin-Laced Letters Signed 'KC'

Federal agents took a man from Tupelo, Mississippi into custody on Wednesday evening under suspicion of sending letters covered in ricin to the president and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker. Citing an FBI bulletin, NBC News reports that the suspect's name is Kenneth Curtis, and anyone who's been following the story will immediately realize that the suspect's initials match those in the sign-off on both letters: "I am KC and I approve this message." Both letters also contain the phrase "to see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance," and both were sent from Memphis, Tennessee on April 8, 2013.

Open and shut case right? We'll see. It's so far unclear if there's a harmful amount of ricin on the letters. To give the suspect the benefit of the doubt, one federal official told NBC News that the sender of the letters "may have stumbled onto something." We're not sure exactly what it means, but it sort of sounds like they're not ruling out the possibility that this person wasn't exactly a seasoned terrorist. 

A few suspicious packages remain on Capitol Hill, and this is obviously the early stages of a longer investigation and, eventually, trial. One thing's for sure, though. If Kenneth Curtis is the guy, he's not the brightest crayon in the box for signing his real initials at the end of the letter. Then again, people want to get caught sometimes.

       

Feds Arrest Paul Kevin Curtis for Allegedly Sending Ricin-Laced Letters Signed 'KC'

Federal agents took a man from Corinth, Mississippi into custody on Wednesday evening under suspicion of sending letters covered in ricin to the president and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker. Citing an FBI bulletin, NBC News reports that the suspect's name is Paul Kevin Curtis, and anyone who's been following the story will immediately realize that the suspect's initials match those in the sign-off on both letters: "I am KC and I approve this message." Both letters also contain the phrase "to see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance," and both were sent from Memphis, Tennessee on April 8, 2013.

Open and shut case right? We'll see. It's so far unclear if there's a harmful amount of ricin on the letters. To give the suspect the benefit of the doubt, one federal official told NBC News that the sender of the letters "may have stumbled onto something." We're not sure exactly what it means, but it sort of sounds like they're not ruling out the possibility that this person wasn't exactly a seasoned terrorist. 

A few suspicious packages remain on Capitol Hill, and this is obviously the early stages of a longer investigation and, eventually, trial. One thing's for sure, though. If Paul Kevin Curtis is the guy, he's not the brightest crayon in the box for signing his real initials at the end of the letter. Then again, people want to get caught sometimes.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story cited an NBC News report that identified the victim as a Kenneth Curtis from Tupelo, Mississippi. The FBI has since confirmed that the suspect in custody is Paul Kevin Curtis from Corinth, Mississippi. As such, NBC News has updated its story, and so have we.

       

Amazon Studios Flickers to Life

Today in show business news: Amazon Studios has released a big pilot, Starz quickly renews a new show, and The Croods is a hit.

Amazon Studios, the new production hut formed by Amazon because before they only sold everything else and now they want to sell everything, has made the pilot episode of Zombieland available online. The show, based on the hit 2009 movie, looks pretty low-budget but seems clever enough. Whether it gets a full season renewal will partly depend on user reviews, so if you like it, give it some stars or whatever you do on Amazon. Lots of other shows are set to pop up on the site in the near future, though we still have no idea if this wacky experiment is going to work at all. I mean, if they keep costs low and if they, good god, redesign the interface it might have a shot. But right now the whole thing seems pretty basic. Though, that' probably the point. This is grassroots stuff, giving opportunities to lots of people. Anyway, here's the Zombieland trailer. [Entertainment Weekly]

Speaking of fledgling content providers taking chances on unknown things, Starz has renewed its new show Da Vinci's Demons for a second season after just one episode. The show, described as an "historical fantasy about the young years of world’s greatest genius, Leonardo Da Vinci," drew in 1.04 million viewers in its initial Friday broadcast and collected 1.1 million more over the rest of the weekend. Those are good numbers for Starz! Hell those are practically good numbers for NBC at this point. So Starz said "Hot damn, let's do it again!" Renewing a show for a second season after one episode is some bold HBO business, but hey it works for them, so why can't Starz give it a whirl. The network has been trying to break through with original series for a few years now, and it feels like they're almost there, though the ultimate failure of Boss, their first critically acclaimed show, was a major setback. Da Vinci probably won't win any Emmys, but it could win viewers, who are more important right now. [Deadline]

DreamWorks Animation, which had a real bumpy fall and winter after Rise of the Guardians went kablooey, has some good news this spring. Its new film The Croods, about cave people who sound like Nicolas Cage and Emma Stone, has done well enough to merit a sequel. It's earned nearly $400 million worldwide since it opened last month, a nice reversal from the Guardians crash and burn. So there is hope yet for ol' DreamWorks Animation, and we were so worried about Jeffery Katzenberg for a moment there. How was he going to manage if he was bounced out of his job? It's hard to find work these days, especially when you're his age. But luckily he, and we, won't have to worry about that just yet, it seems. Thanks, Croods! [The Hollywood Reporter]

Sofia Coppola's based-on-real-events movie The Bling Ring, about snotty Valley teens who rob celebrities' homes in Beverly Hills, will kick off the Cannes "Un Certain Regard" lineup when the festival gets started next month. So it's not competing for the Palme d'Or, but it's still a definite part of the whole Cannes machine. The last time Coppola was at the festival a bunch of French people booed at screenings of Marie Antoinette, but obviously they had a particular connection to that story. This film, on the other hand, is all about a bunch of horrid, spoiled, amoral Americans, so they ought to love it! Good thinking, Sofia. Give the Frenchies what they want. [Deadline]

       

What We Can Learn from '100 Percent Men'

Lydia DePillis made the Tumblr "100 Percent Men" while procrastinating on a Sunday afternoon. By Wednesday, the single serving Boys Clubs site that posts pictures of 100 percent male dominated organizations—including the editors of The New Republic where DePillis works—was getting passed around Twitter. "I want to show a lot of manifestations of egregious maleness," the technology reporter told The Atlantic Wire. Outside of Tumblr, however, DePillis had been cataloguing the unfortunate trend on Twitter, tweeting out examples of all-dude conference speaker agendas, boards of directors, and the like for the record. "I would tweet about them in a frustrated way, but in a way that also collects them," she said. The Tumblr, however, does more than collect instances of groups curiously lacking women, it puts them on a public forum as a means of shaming. But, is that the best way to change a deeply rooted problem or is it just making the case for tokenism?

The Tumblr isn't overly critical. Commentary is sparse and the header takes a matter of fact tone: "Corners of the world where women have yet to tread. Shine a light," it reads. It doesn't come out and say "THIS IS BAD." But that's because it doesn't have to. The photos of the homogenous faces over and over again say enough. These companies or organizations or anythings—DePillis accepts a variety of "Boys Clubs," from Presidents of the United States to people ringing the NYSE bell—don't necessarily have anything against women, per se. It's just that their leaders aren't women. The Tumblr raises awareness not just of that, but that so many of these Boys Clubs still exist—even, and especially, in the era of Lean In.

Though DePillis says she had "no proactive intent" when creating the site, the natural order of things suggests awareness will facilitate change. But what kind of change? DePillis conceded the possibility that the forum might lead to more superficial advancements. "What I hope doesn't come out of this is people just putting one lady on their board and on their schedule just to avoid being blogged or Tumbl-d about," she said. But if people felt a little "embarrassed" by it, even, DePillis would consider that a success. And surely it's embarrassing to have your all male, mostly white, group next to a bunch of other all male, mostly white groups. But how does that sort of public shaming help? "The ideal outcome is that organizations which are completely full of men will think about why that is and think about what they can do," she added. 

The former outcome might have already happened. After posting the TechCrunch Disrupt speakers list, the technology blog updated its list with "a bunch" of women. It's not clear this was a direct result of the blog. DePillis wasn't the only one who noticed the oversight, others had been tweeting about it, too. It's also possible TechCrunch had people lined up. But no matter the cause, certainly slapping a bunch of female speakers onto a panel doesn't fix the well-documented sexism in Silicon Valley. Then again, it doesn't hurt to have more women speaking to the tech nerds, right?

But can we expect much more to come from this Tumblr than that. What's "really important," says DePillis is that people "see the overall disease" and right now the Tumblr just illustrations one symptom of that problem. Ultimately: "Tumblrs aren't deep, they're just galleries" DePillis says. 

       

MarcoPhone Turns Out Not to Exist Either

One of the main complaints some conservatives have against immigration reform is that a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants would create millions of moochers living off federal benefits. And what is the No. 1 symbol of American moocherdom? The Obamaphone. And so on Wednesday Shark Tank's Javier Manjarres unearthed its immigration counterpart: The MarcoPhone. Named for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Manjarres thought he spotted a provision in the 855-page immigration bill that gives free cell phones to undocumented immigrants. Breitbart News reposted the story. Talk radio host Laura Ingraham picked it up. MofoPolitics.com led with the image at right. The only problem was that the MarcoPhone is even less real than the Obamaphone. The immigration bill gives cell phones to ranchers so they can report illegal immigrants and violence on the border. It was inspired by a rancher who was killed by illegal immigrants. Breitbart's Matthew Boyle posted a clarification.

Despite Obama never proposing free cell phones for anyone, the notion of Obamaphones has been latched onto by conservative media as a shorthand for government dependency. The meme broke out after the Drudge Report posted a video of a black woman in Cleveland yelling about getting an Obamaphone in the last weeks of the presidential campaign. In fact, President Obama didn't create the "Obamaphone" -- Ronald Reagan created a program for poor people to get phone service, and George W. Bush expanded it after Hurricane Katrina. Those facts swayed some conservatives, but not all, as The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty noted last week. House Speaker John A. Boehner tweeted in February, "Nobody should be talking about tax hikes when govt is spending taxpayer dollars on free cell phones." In a response to Obama's State of the Union address, Sen. Rand Paul said," For those who are struggling, we want to you to have something infinitely more valuable than a free phone." Arkansas Rep. Tim Griffin and Wisconsin Rep. Michele Bachmann are working on legislation to eliminate the program. "Should the federal government be giving people cellphones?" Griffin said. "What about iPads? Where do we draw the line on this stuff?" (Currently the line is drawn at a crappy flip phone with very few minutes of free service.)

One of the arguments that conservatives who oppose immigration reform have made is that giving undocumented immigrants legal status will create a new class of moochers. But so far, those warnings have been vague. In November, The National Review's Jillian Kay Melchior wrote an article titled, "Immigrant Welfare: The New Colossus." Subtitle: "Are the huddled masses yearning to breathe free or eat free?" During his 2012 reelection campaign, Iowa Rep. Steve King compared immigrants to dogs, saying one should "pick the one that’s the friskiest, the one that’s engaged the most, and not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner." Republicans on the Senate budget committee issued a press release in April saying the immigration bill might contain "a major flaw that could allow millions of illegal immigrants to access federal welfare benefits and poverty programs."  In an April letter to the "gang of eight" proposing immigration reform, Sens. Jeff Sessions, Chuck Grassley, and Pat Roberts demanded to know the true cost of the bill when immigrants qualify for "approximately 80 different means-tested welfare and low-income assistance programs." 

Some think immigrants are already coming here to be moochers. "You're not supposed to be admitted to America if you're likely to be a charge on the public -- if you're going to need government aid to take care of yourself," Alabama's Sessions said in January. Sessions complained that in 2011, the State Department denied "only 0.0033 percent of net applications for admission to the United States" because they might not be able to support themselves. But Bloomberg's Shikha Dalmia explained that that was because "the system is set up to prevent people who are likely to become wards of the state from applying in the first place." And people aren't coming here just to get on the dole: The 10 states with the fastest-growing populations of immigrants spent much less on public benefits than the 10 states with the slowest-growing immigrant populations, Dalmia noted.

All those warnings sound so vague compared to the perfect single symbol of the MarcoPhone. Here at last was the knock-out blow to Rubio's amnesty. You can imagine Laura Ingraham's disappointment when she asked Rubio about it Wednesday, and he replied, "That's false." The phones are for people living in border areas who might not have cell phones. It's inspired by the 2010 death of Robert Krentz, a 58-year-old rancher from a well-known Arizona family, who was shot to death. Footprints at the scene traced to the Mexican border. His last words were reportedly "illegal and hurt."

Alas, he would still be a moocher, according to MofoPolitics:

I know what you’re thinking: “But the free cellphones aren’t for illegal immigrants! They’re for U.S. citizens!”

Uh, you realize the Obamaphone lady is a U.S. citizen right?

       

The Alphabet Soup of Agencies Hunting in Boston, and Feeding Bad Tips to CNN

We have managed to narrow down the origin of the "federal law enforcement source" who told CNN's Fran Townsend on a Wednesday afternoon full of conflicting reports that there had been an arrest in the Boston Marathon case. The leak likely came from the FBI, although, really, the FBI wasn't too pleased about the "widespread reporting" with "unintended consequences." So maybe it was the Secret Service. Or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Or Immigration, or Customs, or Homeland Security. Hell, maybe that "one law enforcement source in Boston" who told CNN's John King about the "game changer" arrest worked for the transportation authority cops. Really, on a day when confusion reigned, anonymous sourcing could have come from one of dozens of organizations and agencies and elected officials' offices involved in some part of the investigation. Here's the scope of what "law enforcement sources" look like in this case:

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (top right) is leading the effort. It has "hundreds of agents" involved in the investigation, both in Boston and the Boston area and at its headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. It is possible that one of those hundreds of agents in any of the locations was CNN's source — or one of its 36,000 other employees scattered around the world. The FBI is also a subset of the Department of Justice (top center), which itself employs thousands of people.

The agency also runs the Joint Terrorism Task Force (dark grey section at right), comprised of what it describes as "more than 30 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies." According to its memorandum of understanding with the Massachusetts police, those include, at the federal level:

The Internal Revenue Service (second row, center) The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (second row, right) The United States Secret Service (third row, middle right) The Department of Homeland Security (third row, right) Customs and Border Protection (fourth row, right) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (fifth row, right) The U.S. Postal Inspection Service (sixth row, right) The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (second row, left) The Defense Criminal Investigative Service (third row, middle left)

 

The JTTF also includes, at the state level:

The Massachusetts State Police (state row, right)

 

And at the local level, it includes at a minimum:

The Boston Police Department (last row, right) The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police (last row, left)

 

The rest of those 30 participating agencies are likely other municipal law enforcement agencies. Excluding those, the JTTF agencies have approximately 581,000 employees. But even that isn't the full extent of those involved in the investigation.

The role of the Department of Defense (top, left) isn't restricted to NCIS and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (grey box, top left). It also manages the Massachusetts National Guard (third row, left), which is helping the City of Boston manage security. There are hundreds of Guardsmen on-scene.

It's also possible that one of the media's leaks today came from other organizations involved in the case. The office of governor Deval Patrick (state row, left), for example, has been intimately involved in the investigation. As has the office of Boston mayor Thomas Menino (last row, left). And representatives of Massachusetts' two senate offices and nine House offices. Each has likely been briefed and is providing to the investigation what assistance is possible.

As we noted earlier, CNN later revised its original, inaccurate report about the arrest. New York's news blog quotes:

CNN: "Significant blowback at the leaks," says federal source at DoJ.

— Daily Intelligencer (@intelligencer) April 17, 2013

Just a few hundred thousand suspects they'll need to sort through to find the source.