He wonders why this is covert when all smart terrorists know it already.
I'll play Devil's advocate and answer that. To the extent that the USA publicizes what it does, people in other countries around the world will get concerned and develop alternatives that are not subject to US jurisdiction. Alternatives developed for legitimate reasons by non-criminals then provide options for terrorists to use that are hard for US authorities to monitor.
Let me give a specific example. Around the world, terrorists are forced to use sites like Facebook to promote their views because that is where they will find the people that they want to convince. They take precautions, but they are still forced to use the tool, and it is still easy for them to slip up and get caught.
If, however, distrust of the USA had pushed the people that they want to convince to social networks based outside of the USA, then the exact same terrorists could use those networks in the exact same ways and it would be much harder for the US to capitalize on those inevitable small mistakes.
The answer to this is that the bad guys are doing it too. If Facebook is based in the US, China and Iran will eventually break into it and compromise national security. If Facebook was based in Germany, China and Iran (and the NSA) would eventually break into it and compromise national security. It doesn't really change anything.
However, if Facebook was a distributed system, such that no one could compromise it in its entirety at a central location, it would help keep the bad guys out. Which in this context is more important, because we have a lot more spies, undercover law enforcement officers, military and commercial secrets etc. that we need to protect than we have terrorists we can't catch through other means. Which, for exactly that reason, is the way things would go if they move away from centralized US servers in response to spying fears. There is a reason the Navy sponsored Tor.
The existence of stupid terrorists is a nuisance in the grand scheme of things. The inspiration for the level of our efforts is fear of something on the scale of 9/11..or bigger.
There are people with the funding, means, and motivation to do something like deliver a fully weaponized anthrax bomb in NYC or Washington, DC. A large portion of our intelligence efforts are devoted to making sure that they do not succeed.
If those people really exist with the motivation and means to do that, why haven't they done so? US Intelligence is clearly not perfect, as we saw in Boston.
First, existence proof. Do you think that al qaeda under Osama bin Laden didn't have the money, means, and motivation to have done something like that? If you think that, you should look into the situation at the time, Osama was from one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, had a network that extended around the world, etc, etc, etc.
Now why did he opt for planes over mass destruction? I don't have a window into his mind, but I can make some reasonable guesses.
First, he was looking for great visuals, and he got that. Killing 100k people with anthrax would have done more damage, but would not have the visuals of seeing an airplane disappear into a building and explode out the other end.
The second has to be concern for the US response. He took out high priority targets that struck at the heart of American power without undue casualties. He got multiple wars, and a worldwide manhunt for anyone in his network. If he had inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties, do you think that the USA would have held back on all out war? (Potentially including nukes, a draft, etc.)
A third is that the USA has been proactively identifying ways in which he could actually acquire those things, and blocking them. For instance look at the efforts we took to help secure Russian nuclear materials.
The effectiveness of biological warfare lead to major world powers accumulating hundreds of tons of such weapons, considering what would happen if they used them, then signing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention and destroying them. (It is, admittedly, easier to give up one "ultimate weapon" when you retain your supplies of another. And in warfare there is no question that nuclear bombs are more useful than biological weapons because they act immediately.)
The capacity to create them again exists and takes little resources in theory. Doing it effectively and actually having it work the first time you try is another story. There is no question that al qaeda can find people who could try, but the probability of success is a different story.
Now it says there must be physical contact, but the cop would probably just bump into you to get the charge. Look at what happened to Adam Kokesh during the Philadelphia Smoke Down Prohibition event. They claimed Adam assaulted the officer when he clearly just bumped into him and was trying to gain his balance.
These people take serious things like assault and water the definitions down to suit their corrupt MO.
EDIT: Tangential, but Kokesh was just arrested again during Smoke Down Prohibition D.C.
Some places will charge you with "addressing words to officers". The real problem is a cop can arrest you for anything and call it obstruction of justice. And then either the prosecutor will reject the case or you'll get charged and have to spend $2000+ to plead not guilty. Or pay an attorney $250 to get a plea deal of the lowest possible infraction.
There are zero repercussions for a cop falsely arresting you and no one cares about the truth or justice. Just pay to make it go away.
I'll play Devil's advocate and answer that. To the extent that the USA publicizes what it does, people in other countries around the world will get concerned and develop alternatives that are not subject to US jurisdiction. Alternatives developed for legitimate reasons by non-criminals then provide options for terrorists to use that are hard for US authorities to monitor.
Let me give a specific example. Around the world, terrorists are forced to use sites like Facebook to promote their views because that is where they will find the people that they want to convince. They take precautions, but they are still forced to use the tool, and it is still easy for them to slip up and get caught.
If, however, distrust of the USA had pushed the people that they want to convince to social networks based outside of the USA, then the exact same terrorists could use those networks in the exact same ways and it would be much harder for the US to capitalize on those inevitable small mistakes.