THE BORDER REPORT My column in The News of Mexico City The barbarians are not at the gate; they are already inside the walls. That’s the latest message coming out of Washington, D.C. when it comes to the country’s border with Mexico. These ruminations came after an FBI agent went a little too far with the terror-on-the-border threat a few weeks ago and leaked an FBI memo about the most recent threat coming in from Mexico. The memo was a little frightening, not because it sounded plausible but because it sounded so far-fetched you have to wonder about the federal agents who react to these things. The plot was sexy; the wet dream of every border security pundit and budget-hungry federal law enforcement official; a battalion of Afghan and Iraqi terrorists sneaking across the Arizona border to launch an attack on Fort Huachuca, the U.S. Army base in southern Arizona. The story hit the front page of The Washington Times in late November, sending law enforcement officials into a flurry of negations and denials. It wasn’t true, they said. The FBI advisory had been written but it was just not credible. According to the Times’ story, the terrorists had negotiated with the Gulf Cartel; they’d be smuggled in through Laredo, Texas. Shaving their beards to appear more Mexican, they had already paid $20,000 each to be brought in. Their “high-tech” weapons were snuck in through tunnels leading in from Chihuahua and Sonora. Some of the terrorists were sitting in a safe house in Texas, awaiting orders. America’s worst enemies had penetrated the border. The nation’s largest intel-training center was now at risk. Pretty decent stuff – until it didn’t happen and the confidential source’s information was dispelled. I don’t blame The Times for running the story; what the hell, FBI memos make for good ledes no matter what they say. The military base really had taken precautionary measures when the word came down from FBI. And why wouldn’t they? Imagine the outcry if an attack really had been launched and they’d simply ignored the warnings. I’d say that any media critical of the right-wing newspaper’s decision to run the story is just whining. Any news outlet in the country would have done the same. No, what surprised me about the advisory wasn’t the newspaper but the Feds’ reaction. The FBI quickly dispelled the advisory, telling every follow-along Johnny in the country that it didn’t have any credibility. Had the chain of events been any closer, I would have called this an official leak. But in this case, the advisory was written last May. It was released to the newspaper last November. Now, I understand, FBI agents in Arizona are squirming as their bosses engage in a manhunt to find who leaked the advisory to The Times. Attacks coming in from Mexico are a story as old as the border itself, nearly clichés in the commonality of the adjectives used to describe this event that everybody waits for and never seems to come, the vulnerable underbelly, the porous southern border, the narco-terrorists, you get the idea. But things have changed and the new message from the bosses in Washington D.C. is no longer terror threats from Mexico but threats from inside the country. Here’s Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff last week in Washington: “It's much harder in a free country to prevent a single person from getting their hands on a weapon,'' he told reporters on a conference call reported on by Bloomberg News. Homegrown terrorists, he said, are more likely to attack the nation than those coming in from outside the country. So after six years of conditional rhetoric on visa overstays, billions spent on biometric laser visas, and hundreds of miles of new walls going up across the border, the latest news is that we’ve been looking in the wrong direction. The terrorists, we’re told, are already here, living among us. I suppose that's where the idea for crackpot House bills like H.R. 1955 come in from. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 passed under suspension of the rules to curb debate on Oct. 23. 404 to 6. The bill seeks state help to the Feds in curbing terror-related propaganda on the Internet in hopes of stopping home-grown terrorists like the Oklahoma City bombers. I can see what Chertoff was trying to do here. Keep Americans from becoming too focused on a terror threat from one direction – Mexico – and instead, get us thinking of the threat as something viral. But there’s got to be a better way to keep the country on its toes than scaring the tar out of us. It’s a high the American psyche can’t and won’t maintain and I wish the Feds would grasp a better understanding of this. For about three years following the Sept. 11 attacks, the watchword was Mexico. For a little while, 2003 to 2005, it became Canada but that proved to be boring. Then things picked up again in 2004 when a South African woman, Farida Ahmed, with pages missing from her passport, was popped crossing the Rio Grande. That story was reluctantly let go by most congressmen and newspapers after she was held on immigration violations and deported home. Now the word coming down from Washington is that the terrorists walk among us. Frankly, Secretary Chertoff, I wish you and the terrorists would make up your damned minds.

-- Michel Marizco