[Ghoulish Delight]

It is fiction to imagine that intelligence agencies can sort out every single possible scenario, warning, plea, threat, etc. and know ahead of time with accuracy who is and isn't going to turn out to be acting on those warnings on any given day. They have limited resources and have to make judgment calls as to what seems the most likely.

After the fact, everything is crystal clear. With a definite endpoint, the path there is obvious. But that's an illusion. Like I said, I would be willing to bet the intelligence community has stacks of testimonials from dozens of people's family members warning them of radical rantings or whatever. It's only AFTER one of them actually does anything that their particular warning suddenly stands out from the crowd as "an obvious sign".

Does, "I'm worried he's starting to become radical" really sound like a pressing warning that would indicate cause for concern in the short term? Does someone who seeming just began to explore "radicalization" with no previous history really seem like someone "obviously" about to blow up a plane? Not to me it doesn't.

I'm sick of people trying to sell the myth that if we just "fix" our intelligence agencies, we'll be safe. As long as due process and freedom remain ideals here (and perhaps even afterwards), there is no 100% "fix" for the problem. And only in hindsight will the particular signs and warning for that particular person seem "obvious", while hundreds of others with various combinations of those same "obvious" signs will continue to be impossible to sort out from each other until one of them actually tries to act.