Should Osama Bin Laden's Son-In-Law Be Treated As A Suspected Common Criminal

New York Hearing Set as Son-in-Law of Bin Laden Is Caught -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden was recently arrested in the Middle East, was transferred to the United States and is now in a New York jail, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a former spokesman for Al Qaeda, was taken into American custody in Jordan and will appear in court in New York on Friday, one person said. He is facing numerous charges, including material support for terrorism.

Details about Mr. Abu Ghaith’s arrest were sketchy on Thursday, but officials said that he was originally detained in Turkey several weeks ago. Reports in the Turkish press said that he was deported to Jordan, where American officials took him into custody.

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My Comment: I would have sent him to Gitmo, but now that he is lawyered up he will probably provide zero intelligence or information to investigators. I guess the administration is not at all interested in knowing what he knows. Talk about returning to a pre-9/11 mindset.

Should A NYU Terrorism Class Ask It's Students To Write A Paper On A Terrorist Attack?

NYU Terrorism Class Asks Students To Plot Terrorist Attack -- New York Post

It’s Terrorism 101.

A New York University class on transnational terrorism is requiring students to “hypothetically plan a terrorist attack” — and shocked cops say the outrageous lesson plan is an insult to the officers killed on Sept. 11.

The controversial course, taught by former Navy criminal investigator Marie-Helen Maras, asks the pupils to “step into [a terrorist’s] shoes” and write a 10- to 15-page paper on their battle plan.

“Some of the most notorious terrorists, including Anwar al-Awlaki, got their start on American campuses. It looks like after the CIA killed al-Awlaki, NYU is helping to produce successors,” said an outraged law-enforcement expert on terrorism.

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My Comment: This is a class on 'terrorism' .... what else will they write about.

National Security Leaders Discuss Terror Threat

Counterterror Officials: Terror Chatter on the Rise During Holiday Travel Season -- ABC News

Top Security Officials Tell ABC's Diane Sawyer About Efforts to Keep U.S. Safe

With the busy holiday travel season already in motion, the nation's top counterterror officials are seeking to assure the public of their efforts to safeguard the homeland even as they acknowledge real dangers.

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer yesterday, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Chief Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan said that though they know of no specific, credible threat against the U.S. at this time, there are plenty of warning signs to keep them on alert.

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My Comment: What struck me in this interview was the ignorance of the Director of National Intelligence on the London terror arrests .... an event that garnered world wide media coverage and discussion on how home grown groups and individuals are now plotting terror attacks.

On the day that the London plot and arrests were reported .... I knew about it (and all the details) within 30 minutes, and posted it on this blog a few hours later. It is astounding that President Obama`s very own Director of National Intelligence (James Clapper) was clued out when ABC`s Diane Sawyer asked him a simple question about this incident.

Even though an "explanation" was issued by the White House later, I do not feel reassured. In short ..... it makes me wonder if anything else is being missed.

After Last Weeks Cargo Bomb Plot, You Can Forget About Using A Cellphone Or Wi-Fi On A Plane

Aircraft Bomb Finds May Spell End For In-Flight Wi-Fi -- New Scientist

The long-awaited ability to use a cellphone or Wi-Fi connection on an aircraft might become a casualty of the latest aviation security threat.

It was revealed on 29 October that parcels containing a powdered explosive packed in laser printer cartridges had travelled undetected on aircraft to the UK and to Dubai in the UAE. A cellphone connected to a detonation circuit could have allowed a terrorist to trigger an explosion by calling or texting the phone.

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My Comment: Oh my God .... that means I must now watch the in-flight movie.

More US Government Powers To Monitor The Internet And Money Transfers

Money Transfers Could Face Anti-Terrorism Scrutiny -- Washington Post

The Obama administration wants to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country, a dramatic expansion in efforts to counter terrorist financing and money laundering.

Officials say the information would help them spot the sort of transfers that helped finance the al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They say the expanded financial data would allow anti-terrorist agencies to better understand normal money-flow patterns so they can spot abnormal activity.

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My Comment: The media is focusing on new wire tap powers for the internet, but the real impact on anti-terrorism activities will be in monitoring and following the flow of money.

On a side note, if it was President Bush who was advocating these added powers .... the media, civil liberties groups, academia and universities .... all of these groups will be foaming at the mouth in protest. But with President Obama in power .... I am hearing .... nothing.

President Obama's Shadow War Against Al Qaeda And Its Allies

Click On Image To Enlarge

Secret Assault On Terrorism Widens On Two Continents -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.

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My Comment: In the past (usually under Republican administrations) the New York Times never hesitated in expressing their disapproval and outright condemnation of such actions in their editorial pages, followed by exposing operational details and specifics that should be kept secret.

Different times .... different President .... different reportage.

Still .... this is an excellent article that provides a comprehensive analysis on what is happening, and its impact on Al Qaeda and its allies.

Read it all.

Training Mail Carriers To Disperse Anti-Terror Drugs

6 Cities To Train Mail Carriers To Dispense Anti-Terror Drugs -- USA Today

WASHINGTON — The Postal Service is ready to deliver lifesaving drugs to about a quarter of the residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only metropolitan area in the nation where letter carriers have been trained to dispense medication after a large-scale terrorist attack involving biological weapons.

Six years after the government began exploring the idea of using postal workers as rapid-response medicine dispensers and eight months after President Obama ordered government agencies to develop a plan to do so, efforts are underway in six cities to train workers to deliver the drugs needed to counter anthrax or other potentially deadly agents, the White House says.

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My Comment: The U.S. Postal Service does not strike me as an organization that will respond quickly to a biological attack. But ....they do have the personnel and the infrastructure to quickly disperse medication and needed supplies. My only concern is that in the event of such an attack .... will they still be at the job?

Is New York City's Anti-Terrorism Progam The Way To Go?

Photo: New York's Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly

Terror Target: Manhattan -- Judith Miller, Wall Street Journal

New York's police commissioner says it's a big mistake to write off failed attacks as the work of incompetents, and he's developed his own intelligence apparatus to make sure they don't succeed.

What rankles Raymond W. Kelly? Two things, he tells me as we sip lukewarm coffee in his conference room on the 14th floor of One Police Plaza, the dilapidated police headquarters overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge.

The first, New York's police commissioner tells me, is "incompetence," an inescapable fact-of-life, or so it would seem, in any large bureaucracy (he has 50,000 employees). A second is the media's tendency to downplay New York's hard-won victories against terrorism—the failure or foiling of some 11 serious plots against the city since 2001—by describing the would-be perpetrators as incompetent or stupid.

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My Comment: I have always believed that the reason why most terror attacks have failed in the U.S. (in the past few years) has been because of incompetence and/or bad luck. This article gives an opposite point of view.

Human Intelligence Is Preferable Over Technology By European Antiterrorism Agencies

Europe's Antiterrorism Agencies Favor Human Intelligence Over Technology -- Washington Post

PARIS -- The tip from Spain was only a vague warning. But it was enough for France's domestic intelligence agents to go to work, tapping phones, tailing suspects and squeezing informants. Before long, they rolled up a group of Muslim men in a provincial French town who, beneath a tranquil surface, were drawing up al-Qaeda-inspired plans to set off a bomb in the Paris subway.

The plot, described by a source with firsthand information, was one of 15 planned terrorist attacks by jihadist cells in France that have been thwarted in recent years, according to a count by the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), France's main antiterrorism force. One was a bomb plot directed against the directorate's own headquarters.

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My Comment: The paragraph that caught my attention was the following ....

"You have got to be proactive," said Jean-Louis Bruguière, who as an investigating magistrate handled many of France's major antiterrorism cases and now is a liaison to the U.S. Treasury Department on terrorist financing. "It is not a question of defense."

Hmmmm .... I suspect that Jean-Louis Bruguière is not a fan of the lawfare approach as supported by President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

The Military Strategy To Combat AfghanPak Taliban Leaders And Commanders

Baitullah Mehsud before being killed in a drone strike. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Evolving US Strategy Widens Assault On Terrorists -- Washington Post/AP

WASHINGTON -- In the early months of his presidency, President Barack Obama's national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud, the ruthless leader of the Pakistani Taliban. He was to be eliminated.

Mehsud was Pakistan's public enemy No. 1 and its most feared militant, responsible for a string of bombings and assassination attempts. But while Mehsud carried out strikes against U.S. forces overseas and had a $5 million bounty on his head, he had never been the top priority for U.S. airstrikes, something that at times rankled Pakistan.

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My Comment: Kudos to President Obama for implementing this strategy .... the situation was getting out of hand and something had to be done .... and he did it.

U.S. Budget Adds Billions To Fight Terror Threats Abroad

From Global Security Newswire:

The fiscal 2011 budget proposed by U.S. President Barack Obama calls for billions of dollars in heightened counterterror funding, allocating additional money for U.S. special operations units, unmanned aircraft and a new cyber command, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 3).

The increase in military funding is part of an Obama administration effort to concentrate on regions that harbor terrorist organizations and militants, where plans might be hatched for a new strike against the United States.

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Update: Pentagon seeks billions to battle terror abroad -- Yahoo News/AP

My Comment: Everyone recognizes the threat, but to confront it by pushing a policy to spend billions and to create a massive bureaucracy to contain the threat .... nope .... that is not going to solve the problem. But our alternatives are few, and what may contain terror threats (i.e. direct foreign intervention), is a policy that the White House has no stomach to pursue.

Is Somalia The Future For Terrorism And The War Against It

In Somalia, A New Template For Fighting Terrorism -- The New York Times

Somalia isn’t just a nagging geopolitical headache that won’t go away. It is also a cautionary tale. Few countries in modern history have been governmentless for so long, and as the United States has learned, it would be nice to think you could ignore this wild, thirsty, mostly nomadic nation 7,000 miles away. But you can’t.

Al Qaeda is working feverishly to turn Somalia into a global jihad factory, according to recent intelligence assessments, and the way the United States chooses to respond could serve as a template for other fronts in the wider counterterrorism war.

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My Comment: There are many parts of this article that I am in agreement with, and it is a good summary of what is happening in Somalia today.

Ministers Appeal For Amateur Inventors To Help Protect UK From Suicide Bombers

Innovative: Three ton blocks of steel outside Victoria Railway Station, central London, designed to prevent terrorist attacks

From The Daily Mail:

Inventors were urged yesterday to come up with gadgets to tackle possible future terrorist threats such as robot suicide bombers.

The Government, unveiling its three-year counter terrorism strategy, wants civilian scientists to follow in the footsteps of Q - the fictional inventor who supplies contraptions to James Bond.

Its strategy involved 'scanning the horizon' for potential future threats to the UK.

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My Comment: There could be something of value here.

Obama's Battle Against Terrorism To Go Beyond Bombs and Bullets

Mumbai Terror Attacks (2008)

From The Washington Post:

The U.S. government must fundamentally redefine the struggle against terrorism, replacing the "war on terror" with a campaign combining all facets of national power to defeat the enemy, John O. Brennan, President Obama's senior counterterrorism adviser, said Wednesday.

Previewing what aides said will be the administration's most comprehensive statement to date on its long-term strategy to defeat al-Qaeda and other violent extremists worldwide, Brennan said in an interview that the United States will maintain "unrelenting" pressure on terrorist havens, including those near the Afghan-Pakistani border, in Yemen and in Somalia.

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My Comment: I read the article twice to make sure that I was not missing any key points .... but when you ignore the oratory you quickly realize that aside from continuing some of the Bush administration's era policies towards combating terrorism, the Obama administration's policy only talks about ideals but lacks any clear strategy for implementation.

It is still too early in his term to pass judgment, but after 6 months there is nothing new with the exception that the message to the world is that we are now becoming "nuanced" in our approach, and we intend to exert "soft power".

U.S. Raises New Anti-Terrorism Approach With EU

European Leaders (2008)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States proposed to European Union leaders on Tuesday they adopt a joint approach to fight terrorism and set aside divisions spurred by the Iraq war and Guantanamo prison abuses, EU officials said.

The proposal was described as a broad idea in the early stages. It came as the two sides discussed a U.S. desire for Europe to accept inmates from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects are held.

President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the internationally condemned prison within a year and an end to harsh interrogation of suspects held there.

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My Comment: The Europeans love to talk the talk .... but they will never walk the walk. Anti-terrorism laws, strict immigration laws, and the imprisoning of dangerous men is a hot potato issue in Europe. The mass majority of the public is for it, but the political class has different ideas.

American efforts to put some rational in this discussion will be a waste of time. Europe's leaders want to go a European way .... and what the U.S. may propose will be discounted simply because of where it is coming from.

Is Pakistan Blocking Our Anti-Terrorism Efforts?

The Taj Mahal Hotel on fire during the Mumbai Attacks in November 2008

Pakistan Sets Roadblocks In U.S. Hunt For Extremists, Officials Say -- L.A. Times

American efforts to find plotters of a Mumbai-style attack in the U.S. were thwarted by Islamabad, officials said. Access to members of a militant group has been denied.

Reporting from Washington -- U.S. efforts to identify and thwart the growing threat posed by Pakistani extremists who enjoy easy access to the United States -- and already have a significant presence here -- are being undermined by the government of Pakistan, according to current and former U.S. and Western counter-terrorism officials.

After the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, in November, which killed more than 170 people, the FBI and other U.S. agencies went on high alert, searching without success for evidence of plotters in the United States. But they were essentially shut down in efforts to work the Pakistan side of the investigation, not only to find additional plotters but to learn more about the Al Qaeda-affiliated Pakistani militant group suspected of orchestrating the attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its global network of cells, the officials said.

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My Comment: This is a very troubling report. If our ally .... who is demanding tens of billions in aid .... will not assist in anti-terrorism actions, we are in serious situation.

President Obama's Anti-Terrorism Strategy Is Becoming Known

In this 2001 handout photo from the Peoria County Sheriff's Office, Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, former graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, is photographed in this booking photo at Peoria County Sheriff's Office in Illinois. The Justice Department has charged al Marri, the only alleged enemy combatant held on U.S. soil, in the federal court system. (Peoria County Sheriff's Office/Getty Images)

Obama Signals Major Shift In US Anti-Terror Policy -- Christian Science Monitor

He ordered the case of enemy combatant Ali Al-Marri, who has been held in solitary confinement for five years without charges, to be moved to the US criminal justice system.

In a major shift away from the controversial anti-terror policies of the Bush administration, President Obama on Friday ordered the transfer of a suspected Al Qaeda sleeper agent from a Navy brig into the US criminal justice system.

The two-paragraph order came shortly after a two-count federal indictment was unsealed in Illinois charging Ali Saleh Al-Marri with conspiring to provide material support to Al Qaeda.

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More News On U/S Policy Towards Terrorism

Obama Issues Memo Transferring Al-Marri to Federal Prison -- Washington Independent
U.S. Will Give Qaeda Suspect a Civilian Trial -- New York Times
U.S. Files Charges Against Enemy Combatant -- Wall Street Journal
Alleged terrorist charged with conspiracy -- CNN
Obama Wants Supreme Court to Dismiss Enemy Combatant Case -- CQ Politics
More on the Al-Marri Indictment -- The New Yorker

Another Reason Why Britain's Anti-Terrorism Laws Do Not Work -- A Commentary

Under This Rule, Even Osama Bin Laden Is British -- The Daily Mail

Some years ago, in the wake of the Afghan hijack fiasco at Stansted, I invented a spoof game show called 'Asylum!'

Anyone could play, provided they had no links to Britain. International terrorists were especially welcome.

All you had to do to win was find your way here and remember the magic word 'asylum'. Prizes included a council house, lavish benefits and lashings of Legal Aid.

It was supposed to be a joke but, as always, was based on fact. I can remember writing that none of the hijackers would be deported and they'd all end up living here permanently, courtesy of the mug British taxpayer.

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My Comment: And some wonder why Labour is at the bottom in the polls.

Why Europe's And Great Britain's Anti-Terrorism Laws DO NOT WORK

Deportation threat: Abu Qatada is demanding tens of thousands of pounds for being unlawfully held in Belmarsh prison

Preacher Of Hate Hits The Jackpot: Bin Laden's Man In UK Set For Huge Human Rights Damages... And Guess Who Pays -- The Daily Mail

Abu Qatada and ten other terror suspects are in line for 'crazy' compensation payments.

Qatada, often described as Osama Bin Laden's ambassador in Europe, is demanding tens of thousands for being unlawfully held in Belmarsh prison.

The others have launched similar claims against the Home Office, which is braced for defeat in the European Court of Human Rights.

Critics called it yet another example of human rights and European law madness.

They pointed out that the men could have walked free at any time if they had simply agreed to leave Britain. News of the case, which by-passed British courts altogether, overshadowed a victory by the Home Office in the long-running saga over whether Qatada can be deported to Jordan.

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My Comment: I am speechless.

NYPD Cuts Cops, Keeps Spycams For Terror Defense

From The Danger Room:

Turning New York's financial district into a panopticon was just supposed to be phase one. The real heart of the New York Police Department's "Lower Manhattan Security Initiative," I was repeatedly told, was going to be 800 more officers, protecting the bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, and landmarks of the most visible terrorist target on the planet.

But now, bad economic times are forcing the NYPD to "slow down plans to assign 800 officers to the area near Ground Zero and Wall Street," Newsday reports. The surveillance cameras are remaining, however, at least for now.

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My Comment: The consequences of the financial/economic crisis are now hitting home.