Have you noticed that while we are being plagued by what seems to be an unprecedented plethora of celebrity scandals, evidencing an abysmal dive in our collective morality, that national security is simultaneously looming as a greater worry than the skittish economy? No, I'm not just some right wing kookie extremist. I am a person with experience in security matters.

Among them -- One year before 9/11, a limo driver who had been hired to take me to an interview with Hadassah Lieberman, whose husband was then running for Vice-President, met me at O'Hare airport. Long story short, the driver eventually told me sketchy bits about what was to come on 9/11, a year later. (See Chicago Jewish News archives, "The Liebermans come for a visit: Connecting with Soul Sister Hadassah," Sept. 29, 2000, for a very whitewashed version of what occurred.) It was whitewashed for fear of overly alarming readers.

However, I didn't whitewash the story when I called a senior administration official at the White House, someone with whom I had become well acquainted, particularly at the Camp David Summit.

I told him that the driver, who had eventually told me that he was from Syria, had said, "No, I don't send my money back to my family. I send my money to my people. You will see. What is going to happen is the biggest thing to ever hit this country. This country will never be the same. It will make Watergate look like nothing. The best part is that they won't be able to touch me when it happens. I am a citizen and they won't be able to touch me."

Of course, I pressed him as to who "they" were and what it was that was going to happen, but that's all part of the larger story and, for now, beside the point. The point is that when I told the White House what had occurred, I was told to take a Valium and was asked if my recollection wasn't perhaps exaggerated and that it was all of no consequence, but that I could call the FBI if it would make me feel better.

My info was disregarded until a few years later when a laptop of a terrorist was obtained in Pakistan that showed that reconnaissance had been done regarding using limousines and tour helicopters as a means of deploying terror attacks, given that those modes of transportation had access to places that the general public does not. (See upcoming story, G-d willing, on Sir Paul McCartney and me.)

My driver worked for a national limo company. And although I subsequently was in touch with Homeland Security, I was compelled to do so anonymously, having read in The Washington Post about people who came forward with information and "disappeared." When I expressed my concern to a Homeland Security higher up, I expected him to pooh-pooh my fears and assure me that there was nothing to be worried about. Instead, as I clanged coins into a pay phone at a nearby Target store, he told me that I was absolutely right and that he would do the same.

How aware are we of the insurgents within? And how safe and willing are we to come forward with critical information? This is not just about Yemen or Afghanistan or Iraq or Israel, the likely scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in the Middle East.

We need to be prepared and willing to have our civil liberties of privacy radically changed (ouch). And it would be wise to learn quickly from our embattled and spurned sister in democracy, Israel.

So while we are scrambling to get full body scan machines to airports, (here's an idea for a twofer -- why not make them CT Scans and get a medical full body x-ray for almost the same price?) as we so rightly need to, the terrorists, yes I use that word even though the President has been loathe to use that word, are able to deploy at other places, using other means, without having to send someone from far flung locales.

It is a credit to the government, intelligence services, law enforcement that those things have not yet occurred. 'Cept for Fort Hood.

Will closing Guantanamo solve anything? It seems like a symbolic gesture that is, in reality, shooting oneself in the foot. Or underpants. In truth, I don't know enough about its purportedly being a hotbed of Al-Qaeda instigation. I do know that it seems a lot better having them there, than having that happen within this country.

Nope, we Americans still don't get it. I am concerned that we are so intent on being politically correct that we don't see the forest from the trees.

Are we so intent on being popular that we refuse to acknowledge the ever-increasing threat of Radical Islam rising?

As Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, former Middle East specialist for the CIA, said on NPR, "Unless we talk about it openly, I don't think we can address it properly."

Did you see Diane Sawyer's interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad before Xmas? Did you notice the demonic, Charlie Manson smile as the Iranian leader said repeatedly that he wished the U.S. a merry Christmas? Then and there I made a wager with my editor that something was going to happen on Xmas. I even questioned him as to how the President would be able to handle things from Hawaii.

The point is not that I'm a little Ms. Know it all. The point is that while much of what is happening is covert, there are signs right out there that don't require national security agencies to coordinate intelligence.

Yes I know there has been no link yet between Iran and the underpants bomber or the Jordanian triple agent who killed our CIA operatives in Afghanistan. I also am aware that a terrorism expert on CNN right after the incidents said that it is very likely that there are Al Qaeda crypts in Iran and that we would have no way of knowing it.

One of the good things, if you will, one of the lessons I hope we learn from Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the terrorist on the flight to Detroit, is that this myth of terrorism being the result of despair of the downtrodden and poor (Palestinians) has extremely questionable credence. Mohammed Ata, the 9/11 leader, Mr. Mutallab and Osama bin Laden are all from wealthy families.

And if that whole sociological myth were true, then my immigrant, penniless grandparents would've blown this country sky high. Instead they and my parents worked their posteriors off to have enough money to barely subsist while focusing on obtaining an education for their children and carrying on Torah values of honesty, integrity, helping others and most of all, shalom. Yes they had made their way to this great country and were not being used as human shields, political pawns and getting handouts from Hamas to ease their way.

I can hear my colleague at the White House, Bill Koenig, half laughing and half crying. Bill is an Evangelical Christian who runs a website and has written several books correlating Presidents' clamping down on Israel and the resulting disasters that then occur to this country.

Perhaps we, as Jewish Americans, can take this opportunity to remember from where, from Whom, our real security comes. And perhaps we may gratefully act on this gift of a loud, clarion call, to evaluate where we are, and change course to where we need to be, instead.