So many screw-ups, so no punishments

The official story relies a lot on the incompetence theory, that people just kind of screwed up, whether on the day itself or in the investigations prior to the day. Now, it's admittedly a tad unseemly to go pointing fingers and laying blame with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and punishing a bunch of poor slobs on the hot seat, but you might think, just for appearances, just to sort of give a semblance of accountability, that a few people who messed up might have received reprimands.

Nah. Didn't happen. A few of the seemingly most reprimand-worthy people were, on the contrary, rewarded with promotions and awards. Take old Spike Bowman, the guy at FBI headquarters who tamperd with the Minneapolis FBI agents' request for a warrant to search Moussaoui's stuff, the guy who, according to a congressional report, gave the Minneapolis agents "inexcusably confused and inaccurate information [that was] patently false." He got an award from the FBI for "exceptional performance." His case is not atypical.

Source: Griffin, p. 122.

Well, I don't like the fact that an apparent weenie like Spike Bowman gets any kind of award, and yeah it does smell kind of fishy too, but I'm not in a position to judge the guy's job performance as a whole with my few out-of-context details. I don't even know if the award was specifically related to 9/11. I guess it's suspicious...just not terribly very. I have to hold back my stars for the really juicy stuff.

Bottom line, me, I give it: