To properly put the withdrawal of the city of Portland from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, you have to look at what is really at play here.

On one level, you have a federal bureaucracy that is not so adroit fighting terrorism. This is a bureaucracy with a CIA that can’t infiltrate Al-Queda, and was sure there were terrorism weapons in Iraq. And an FBI with a Portland chapter that busted some losers for not being able to sneak into Afghanistan (as drug smugglers have done every day for hundreds of years – and based on an erroneous read of Brandon Mayfield’s fingerprints, thought he had something to do with the Madrid train bombings.

Our intelligence agencies try, but you can’t take a fine, churchgoing family man from South Carolina, send him to a language school to learn some Pashto, have him grow a beard, and then expect him to drop in on Peshawar,Pakistan and have a well-connected local tell him over tea where Osama is holed up and being protected.

So, with flawed intelligence skills, our collective defense against terrorism largely falls to our stateside federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Keep in mind that although most people at these agencies are dedicated to preventing another 9/11, that law enforcement and related investigation can attract a certain type of individual. One who is naturally suspicious rather than trusting.

And when those with a predisposition to be suspicious make policy, they naturally are informed by the secretive parts of their nature.

Secretive, rather than collaborative. Which is why the FBI, an agency with a conservative, secretive patina, might not want to share information with the Mayor of a city that is the municipal poster child for tolerance.

Even if your name is Ahmed,and your wife wears a burka.

If we do pull out,it won’t have an effect on our anti-terrorism efforts. It will just mean that people who should talk to each other are not.