I know a thing or two about apartments.
You can’t just walk into the office of a big apartment building, say “I’ll take 2 please. I’m not in a hurry, the weekend will do.”
Apparently, nobody in the Justice Department has rented an apartment since that room over Mrs. MacPherson’s garage in college. They would like you to believe that Jose Padilla and some unnamed colleague (who is still on the loose so Look Out!) planned to rent multiple apartments in multiple high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas fittings. They furthermore planned to seal all the vents — perhaps where Tom Ridge got his plastic sheeting and duct tape idea — open the gas and set timers to blow the place up. Oh yeah, and maybe work radiation into the blast somehow. Although it is possible to blow up an apartment with natural gas, it doesn’t work like in the movies. Padilla having lived in the Chicago area, he probably remembers a few years back when some poor soul blew up several apartments and a member of management staff who had gone to check on him in a suicide attempt. Sorry, no luck finding a link to that, folks.
Remember, we are talking about big apartment complexes. This is not a duplex, or a quad that the owner lives in one unit, but a multi-million dollar piece of real estate. Let us begin with the basic premise that the people who own such apartment buildings want to make money. Radical thinking, I know. So how do they make money? The two major ways an apartment building owner makes rent are as follows: collect enough rent money each month to cover and exceed the expenses; or sell the place at a profit. Both of these plans are predicated on the idea that the property remains in good condition.
Sticklers for detail will point out that you can also make money through vending deals, tax breaks, kickbacks, and insurance settlements. All but the last item still assume the property is rentable or salable at the end of the day. And maybe you’d better ask Larry Silverman about collecting insurance settlements. It’s a really tough way to make money. It’s much easier to just rent the property for more than it costs to run it.
So, keeping in mind that because the management wants to keep the property in good condition, and because a number of the management staff of such a property may well be paid at least in part with a rental unit, they want to do a good job of screening possible residents. They don’t want drug dealers as neighbors, let alone terrorists.
So, if you were to go look for an apartment at a reputable complex, you should expect to show your driver’s license, have it copied, answer a lot of questions about where you live now and where you lived before, answer some questions about your job (including your salary — they want to make sure you can afford rent and food), and sign an application which allows the apartment management to verify your application. As part of that process, they will run a credit check. They will call your current landlord, specifically asking if you have given proper notice that you are moving, and they will call your previous landlord. They will call your office and talk to the HR manager. They will probably even do a criminal background check.
In short, I am willing to believe Padilla and his unnamed coconspirator could have rented units in one large apartment complex. I am not willing to believe they could repeat the process in other complexes without somebody saying “How strange! This guy was just approved for an apartment across town last week!”
This is to say nothing of the merits or lack thereof of the case against Mr. Padilla. The most telling part of this is in the transcript of the Justice Department Press Conference (see CNN link above): the first question is as follows:
QUESTION: Why don’t you bring criminal charges against him now?
COMEY: Well, what we’re going to do is use all legal tools available to protect the American people from Jose Padilla. I’m not ruling out that criminal charges might not be an option some day. We, obviously, can’t use any of the statements he’s made in military custody, which will make that option challenging.
Why aren’t there criminal charges? Why weren’t there criminal charges 2 years ago, when the man was arrested? They admit that they have trampled this man’s rights under the Constitution. I’m terribly sorry, but “He’s a really bad man, trust us” doesn’t make this okay. At the time, they said Brandon Mayfield was a really bad man, trust us, too. The only thing that will prove Mr. Padilla’s “bad man” status is a clean, open trial, where all the evidence is clearly and convincingly laid out and cross-examined.
Sure, maybe he is a bad man. Prove it in court. Good luck finding an unbiased jury.