Homeland Security

[Soldier4Christ]

Homeland Security’s Islamist Payday     

I feel in debt to this great country. Specifically when the Medicaid covered me with the entire cost of both of my hips replacements which reached $350,000.00.
– Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout

On September 28th, more than $24 million was distributed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to organizations considered to be at high risk of a terrorist attack. Each organization chosen received up to $100,000. While many of the groups could probably make the case for why they needed the DHS funds, one in particular is of interest, as it has a number of terrorism ties, itself. And because those ties have been exposed, the decision to award it with a grant is now officially under DHS review.

American Muslims for Emergency Relief (AMER) is a non-profit 501(c)3 based in South Florida that claims to be “operated exclusively for charitable and educational purposes.” According to its website, it has assisted in numerous disasters, both inside the U.S. and overseas. Someone without any knowledge of the origins of AMER could easily believe that the “charity” is a worthy cause. Evidently that was the case, when DHS decided to dump thousands of dollars in AMER’s lap – $70,000, to be exact. However, when one looks at the group from which AMER came from, he/she will find that the government’s decision was nothing more than a terrifying lapse in judgment.

AMER is run by the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), out of AMANA’s North Miami Beach address. The President of both AMER and AMANA is Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout. [AMER’s Vice President, Rasheed Mahamad, and Secretary/Treasurer, Mustafa Nassar, are also directors of AMANA.] Shortly after he incorporated AMANA in September of 1999, Zakkout became involved with the Health Resource Center for Palestine (HRCP) as its Vice President.

While Zakkout was a leader in HRCP, the group told its followers, for HRCP “News Information & Updates,” to view the websites of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the American propaganda wing of Hamas, and Free Jerusalem, a site that, on its homepage, lauded the life and death (“martyrdom”) of and featured numerous pictures of the former spiritual leader and founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. As well, while he was with HRCP, the group’s Secretary and Treasurer was Syed Khawer Ahmad, the former webmaster of the official website of the Islamic Association, Al-Jamiya Al-Islamia, the parent organization of Hamas located in Gaza.

Around this time, Zakkout also held the position of President of the Shamsuddin Islamic Center. He incorporated the center in November of 2000, and like AMER, Zakkout would use the AMANA address as the business address for Shamsuddin. In August of 2003, Shamsuddin would welcome Gulshair Shukrijumah, an individual who had been involved with at least two of those convicted for their part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as a Director of the mosque. Shukrijumah died less than one year later, after suffering a series of strokes said to have been derived from his son gotcha98’s being named a “Global Terrorist” by the United States government. Zakkout, described in Gulshair’s obituary as “a family friend” of the Shukrijumahs, announced the death.

After finishing his tenure with HRCP (the group was shut down in April of 2003), Zakkout focused the majority of his activities on AMANA, including the creation of a full blown website, complete with a large amount of anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-homosexual content. As well, within the site’s links section, there were links to Jihad in Chechnya, one of the main websites that was raising money and recruiting fighters for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and the Al-Haramain Foundation, an Islamic “charity” that has been banned worldwide by the United Nations for being a financing arm to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. These links were placed on Zakkout’s site over a year after 9/11.

Today, AMANA’s website has been purged of much of its hatred and violence. Nevertheless, right on the group’s homepage, there are links to IslamiCity, a website that repeatedly calls for the murder of Jews and repeatedly “curses” Jews and Christians; the official website of Bilal Philips, an individual whose name was placed on the list of “unindicted co-conspirators” of the ‘93 bombing; and Islam Online, a site that features live dialogues with Hamas leaders and a ‘Fatwa Bank’ (religious ruling) section mandating terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

Found on AMANA’s website is a list of its advisors. One of the “AMANA Advisors” is Ibrahim Dremali, a former representative of the Southeast division of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA-SE), an organization that told its web viewers to give “material support” to groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda. In addition, Dremali was a witness for the defense of convicted terrorist Adham Hassoun, during Hassoun’s August 2002 court hearing.

Zakkout had also defended Hassoun, stating, “They don't have anything against him. It's just because he is Muslim... The guy is clean.” Hassoun, meanwhile, had been charged with being part of a support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to overseas terrorist organizations.

Prior to creating AMER, AMANA was involved in fundraising for Islamic Relief, a “charity” that the Israeli government has called a front for Hamas. Furthermore, the group’s logo has been seen in photographs taken inside the AMANA office.

With all of this in mind, one could easily ask how it was possible that AMER would be considered to receive funding from Homeland Security. It’s a question that those in DHS most certainly did not contemplate, when they made their decision to provide AMER with a grant. But now, in a stunning decision, based primarily on information exposing AMER and its parent organization’s terror ties, DHS has chosen to review the case.

In an official response from DHS, the following is read: “DHS through FEMA is currently reviewing the validity of several claims made in the grant application from which a determination was made to award DHS grant monies to AMANA. This review remains pending.”

While it would be an amazing change in direction for DHS to rescind the award, tragic mistakes, such as the giving of grants to those that wish us harm, have not been a rare occurrence. In far too many instances, the U.S. government has played a dangerous game of ‘Good cop/Bad cop’ with the enemy. However, the only winner in this game has been the enemy. Zakkout says that his organization deserves the DHS grant, because according to him, he “receives threats,” but what about the threat that Zakkout’s organization poses to us?

If, in the end, DHS decides to revoke the funding, it will have done the right thing. The hope is for this type of situation to never again be repeated.

[Soldier4Christ]

Chinese Sub Pops Up Undetected Near U.S.S. Kitty Hawk During Exercise

The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced

When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world's only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

The Americans had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

One Nato figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik" - a reference to the Soviet Union's first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The incident, which took place in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan, is a major embarrassment for the Pentagon.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.

According to the Nato source, the encounter has forced a serious re-think of American and Nato naval strategy as commanders reconsider the level of threat from potentially hostile Chinese submarines.

It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was "shadowing" the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence.

Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its "backyard".

The People's Liberation Army Navy's submarine fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching vessels.

Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

He said: "It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

"It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan."

In January China carried a successful missile test, shooting down a satellite in orbit for the first time.

[Soldier4Christ]

FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago

The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence report distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning.

The alert said al Qaeda "hoped to disrupt the U.S. economy and has been planning the attack for the past two years."

Law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com that the FBI received the information in late September and declassified it yesterday for wide distribution.

The alert, like similar FBI and Department of Homeland Security terror alerts issued over the past five years at holiday times, raised questions about the credibility of the information.

The bulletin acknowledges that U.S. intelligence officers are uncertain as to whether the information is real, and intelligence officers say there is a concern that it could be "disinformation."

Law enforcement officials at three different agencies told ABCNews.com the FBI alert was based on a source who has proved reliable in the past.

The source reportedly had only "indirect access" to al Qaeda and word of the actual threat came to U.S. intelligence officers "through a lengthy chain" of contacts.

With the shopping season approaching, however, the FBI officials decided it was necessary to share the information.

For the past few years, jihadist chat rooms have regularly posted comments from anonymous individuals who have suggested or boasted about similar plans to attack such soft targets as shopping malls.

"Out of abundance of caution, and for any number of other reasons, raw intelligence is regularly shared within the intelligence and law enforcement communities -- even when the value of the information is unknown," said Special Agent Richard Kolko. "In the post-9/11 era, sharing information is our top priority. Al-Qa'ida messaging has clearly stated they intend to attack the U.S. or its interests; however, there is no information to state this is a credible threat. As always, we remind people to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to authorities."

"We have no credible, specific information suggesting an imminent attack," a DHS official said.

[Soldier4Christ]

Two IEDs found, one exploded

Beacon, New York – Two improvised explosive devices were found at 13 South Cedar Street in the City of Beacon on Sunday afternoon. One had exploded. Fire officials secured the second device and no one was injured.

Fire officials got the call before 3 p.m. that what appeared to be two IEDs were found. Chief Timothy Joseph and firefighters found two homemade bombs, one which had exploded and the other that was intact.

Fire and police departments secured the scene until Dutchess County Haz-Mat personnel arrived and rendered the IED and other materials at the scene safe.

Fire officials said it was determined the device was made using acidic chemical compound, aluminum foil, and a plastic soda bottle.

No further information as to who is responsible for the IED's is currently available.

[Soldier4Christ]

12 Arrested In Counter-terrorism and Drug-trafficking Investigation


What do hip-hop, Hezbollah and meth have in common? More than you might think…

More indictments are expected in the probe, which has centered on L.A.'s garment district.

A dozen people were arrested Tuesday on charges of narcotics trafficking, money laundering and selling counterfeit goods after a two-year counter-terrorism and drug investigation centered in Los Angeles' downtown garment district.

The focus of the federal investigation was Ali Khalil Elreda, 32, who was detained at Los Angeles International Airport last year, accused of trying to smuggle $120,000 in money orders and cashier's checks, hidden in a child's toy, to Lebanon, according to an indictment and an affidavit filed in the case.

In 2005, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department official showed a Senate committee a picture of a tattooed shop owner who had been arrested the year before on charges of selling counterfeit high-fashion merchandise. The tattoo was a symbol of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed guerrillas operating in Lebanon.

In his testimony, Lt. John Stedman, a top supervisor in the department's emergency operations bureau, did not identify the shop owner. Stedman was not involved in the most recent investigation.

But two law enforcement sources said Tuesday that the merchant was Elreda.

Elreda and Hussein Saleh Saleh, 37, both of Bell, were charged in one of two indictments returned in the case with conspiring to smuggle cash out of the United States.

Five years ago, in an interview with The Times, Asa Hutchinson, then the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said authorities were examining dozens of domestic drug cases with potential links to Islamic terrorists, including a methamphetamine ring allegedly tied to Hezbollah.

During the recent Los Angeles investigation, law enforcement authorities allegedly seized 30 kilograms of cocaine and counterfeit clothing worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Others arrested Tuesday included Elreda's brother, Mohamad, 25, of Bell; his sister, Susanne, 34, of Smyrna, Ga.; Robert Bell, 36, of Corona; Dalisa Johnson, 37, of Corona; Moussa Matar, 48, of Cudahy; Matar's sons, Mohamad and Ali, both 28, of Cudahy; Juan Gonzalez, 26, of Lynwood; Frankie Higuera, 24, of Downey; and Crystal Hill, 25, of Hawthorne.

In addition to the two indictments, four complaints were brought in the case. The U.S. attorney's office said Elreda's siblings are charged in one complaint with trafficking in counterfeit goods at a store called Hip Hop Connections.

A second complaint accuses Elreda and seven others of conspiring to distribute cocaine.

A third complaint accuses Hussein Saleh of trafficking in counterfeit goods through his store, Star City A & H in the garment district.

A fourth complaint accuses Epifanio Mercado, 29, of Perris and Ricardo Nava, of El Monte of conspiring to traffic in cocaine. The two were arrested over the weekend.

A second indictment charges the Matars with structuring cash transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements.

The maximum penalty for the defendants charged with conspiring to distribute narcotics would be life without parole in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney's office. The maximum penalty for the defendants charged with trafficking in counterfeit goods would be 10 years in prison, and conviction on the charges related to concealing cash from authorities could carry a maximum prison term of five years.

Some of the defendants made their initial court appearances Tuesday, and others were expected to appear today before a United States magistrate judge in Los Angeles.

Authorities said they expect more indictments within the next two weeks. The task force investigation included the DEA, FBI, IRS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Los Angeles Police Department, Sheriff's Department and other law enforcement agencies.

[Soldier4Christ]

Reynolds gets 30 years in terror plot
Man with local ties sentenced for his botched effort to help al-Qaida.

A former Wilkes-Barre resident who was found guilty of attempted terrorist activity was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Tuesday.

Michael Curtis Reynolds, 49, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik. Reynolds was found guilty in July on four counts of attempted terrorist activity and of two counts of illegal hand grenade possession.

Reynolds attempted to assist al-Qaida in obtaining weapons and material support over a three-month span in 2005.

“Since Sept. 11, 2001, the first priority of all law enforcement agencies has been to prevent future acts of terror on our homeland,” acting U.S. Attorney Martin C. Carlson said in a prepared statement. “Today’s sentencing constitutes a triumph of the rule of law over those who would use terror against nations.”

Authorities believe Reynolds planned to blow up targets such as the Transcontinental Pipeline, a natural-gas pipeline that runs from the Gulf Coast to New York and New Jersey, as well as the Alaskan pipeline.

Reynolds was arrested on Dec. 5, 2005, when FBI officials surrounded an Idaho rest stop where Reynolds tried to retrieve a bag filled with $40,000 that was promised by someone Reynolds thought was an al-Qaida contact. The contact was part of an FBI sting operation to catch Reynolds.

During the investigation the FBI tracked explosives to a storage locker in Wilkes-Barre.

The Philadelphia division of the FBI and the Justice Department carried out the criminal investigation. Reynolds was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gurganus.

[Soldier4Christ]

U.S. simulates 'dirty bomb'
attacks on Phoenix, Portland 
WND invited to central command post
as interagency team springs to action

A dirty bomb explodes in Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific.

A few hours later, two more dirty bombs detonate, this time on the continental United States.

One bomb goes off at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, killing an unknown number of people and spreading radiation throughout the airport.

Almost simultaneously, a dirty bomb goes off in Portland, Ore., detonated on the Steel Bridge, one of the city's main arteries across the Willamette River to the downtown area.

Within minutes, the news media broadcast these disasters to the world.

Is the U.S. facing another 9/11, this time with dirty bombs set off by another wave of Islamic terrorists?

How many more dirty bombs are set to go off, and where?

As much as the scenario may sound like the screenplay of a Hollywood thriller, these terrorists events were being simulated as part of a national training exercise conducted by NORAD and USNORTHCOM in October.

Named Vigilant Shield 2008, or VS08, the exercise was also a "top officials exercise," code-named TOPOFF4.

As a top officials' exercise, this year's Vigilant Shield included a week of intensive training involving many top officials of the U.S. government, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, state and local government officials in Arizona and Oregon, the territory of Guam, U.S. Pacific Command, the military combatant command responsible for the Pacific (including Guam) and dozens of other agencies.

According to Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD and USNORTHCOM, the exercise was designed to stress USNORTHCOM's ability to integrate and assist state and local responders in the event of a terrorist attack involving radiological dispersal devices, or RDDs, known as dirty bombs.

Within the NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs is the command center heart of VS08/TOPOFF4, an inner, windowless room, where some 50 to 60 players from a myriad of federal agencies sit before computer screens and communicate via teleconference with remote players in Washington, D.C., as well as Guam, Arizona and Oregon.

Military and civilian federal players meet in this room every morning at 0900 hours to begin the information-sharing that is central to the operation of the command group known as the Joint Interagency Coordination, or JIACG.

"Interagency" was the applicable buzz word for the JIACG's activity as the 9:30 a.m. meeting began with a situation analysis posted on a large flat screen at the front of the room for group review and follow-up action.

Mal Johnson, the day-shift chief of the JIACG "battle cell" known as the Interagency Coordination Group, or ICG, sat comfortably at his computer at the head of the central table in the room. He proudly wore a golf shirt bearing a tyrannosaurus rex emblem copied from the Michael Crichton novel, with name changed from "Jurassic Park" to "JIACG Park."

Sitting around the room with Johnson are "resident reps" – those 40 or so non-Department of Defense agencies that have assigned permanent members to the JIACG.

Referencing the "virtual reps," the dozens of agencies in Washington, Denver and around the country that participate in the JIACG from a distance, Johnson told WND, "With everybody interacting right here in real time, we can advise the USNORTHCOM commander where we might need to go, where the interagency might need help."

"This is a win-win situation," he stressed.

In Day Two of the exercise, the JIACG is working hard to get accurate casualty statistics and to evaluate the radiological fall-our risk from the dirty bombs.

Is Sky Harbor Airport closed? How about the Steel Bridge in Portland? Are Phoenix and Denver shut down?

"Our focus in the JIACG is what's happening right now, today," Johnson explains, "but not only what's happening today, but what's happening tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the week after tomorrow, so that we can get ahead of the power curve. We are all viewing the same data and asking questions. Quite frankly, this helps bring the interagency together and be more efficient and effective."

Looking around the room, WND surveyed the following "resident" federal agencies represented in the JIACG at 9:30 hours on Day Two of VS08/TOPOFF4:

    * DHS – Department of Homeland Security

    * CBP – Customs and Border Protection

    * Federal Emergency Management Agency

    * Transportation Security Agency

    * U.S. Coast Guard

    * Director, National Intelligence

    * Central Intelligence Agency

    * Department of State

    * U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

    * U.S. Geological Survey

    * U.S. Public Health Service

    * Federal Aviation Administration

    * Federal Bureau of Investigation

    * Department of Energy

In addition, the following "contingency representatives" were in the room as interagency partners:

    * Federal Air Marshals

    * Department of Interior

    * Department of Health and Human Services

    * National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency

    * Environmental Protection Agency

    * National Aeronautics and Space Administration

    * U.S. Department of Agriculture

Communicating remotely by teleconference are state and local government officials designated by the governors of Oregon, Arizona and Guam, who have been assigned to lead the emergency response. Also in the conference are field observers the federal agencies have on site.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

In a separate, windowless command room full of computer terminals and telecommunications equipment resides the "White Cell," the civilian and military planners who form the brain of the exercise.

The White Cell's job is to keep the exercise moving by monitoring game play and entering new input.

"Earlier in the week, we entered into the exercise a simulated aircraft crash," explained Steve Zakaluk, a civilian within NORAD-USNORTHCOM at the center of directing the White Cell's activity. "It turned out to be a civilian airliner. It was not terrorist related, but it was smoke in the cockpit and they crashed back into Ted Stevens Airport up in Alaska, back in Anchorage."

Entering unrelated events into the exercise demands that players sort out facts and determine if the incident is related or unrelated to the emergency response to the RDD detonations that the exercise is focused on managing.

"So, the airplane crash involved a commercial plane, with 90-some passengers on board, completely unrelated," Zakaluk explained, "but that's part of the thing which the players need to be able to do – to sort out the things that are extraneous to the major problem, because that's realistic. Other things will be happening in the real world."

Zakaluk continued, "Up in Alaska, our Joint Task Force Alaska working with the FBI and local people in the airport, state and other local agencies, worked through the civilian airplane problem, and we moved on with the exercise."

Referring to a computer slide that described the exercise, Zakaluk went through the bullet points that described other incidents scripted into the exercise.

"The second bullet is an operational threat involving a maritime response involving a 'vessel of interest,' a cargo ship sailing under a Panamanian flag," he explained. "The intelligence coming into the exercise connected the possibility of people on that ship, or perhaps material on that ship, that might be related to the radioactive material that had been used in the RDDs. So they had to connect the dots, exactly like a jig-saw puzzle."

Zakaluk continued, "There's a procedure whereby the government agencies determine whether it's a military problem or a civilian law enforcement problem. That vessel is being successfully tracked now by the Navy and the Coast Guard as it approaches Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor. Throughout the course of the week, the JIACG will take certain actions to determine whether or not it's a threat."

Also scripted to occur during the week-long exercise was a foreign country announcement of a space launch.

"Cheyenne Mountain tracked the space launch for us," Zakaluk clarified, "and NORAD provided assessments both to the JIACG and to Strategic Command in Omaha."

Strategic Command, or USSTRATCOM, is another of the nine U.S. unified commands under the Department of Defense.

Headquartered at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska, USSTRATCOM is the lead combatant command responsible for DOD response combating weapons of mass destruction.

"Commander Renuart also dispatched a Commander's Assignment Element to fly out to Arizona and one to go out to Oregon, to see in person what was going on," Zakaluk noted. "Guam is not in our area. It's handled by Admiral Keating and Pacific Command, and it was Admiral Keating's decision to send out a Commander's (Assignment Assessment) Element to be on scene."

Keating preceded Renuart as commander of NORAD-USNORTHCOM.

"A Commander's Assignment (Assessment) Element is a small unit involving six or eight people who go out and meet with the governor, meet with the emergency operations people, and they try to gain information in anticipation of perhaps requirements coming to DOD," Zakaluk explained.

USNORTHCOM was established Oct. 1, 2002, to provide a military combatant command tasked with commanding and controlling Department of Defense homeland defense efforts and coordinating defense response of civil authorities.

NORAD is a bi-national U.S. and Canadian organization charged with the missions of maritime warning, aerospace warning and aerospace control for North America.

Zakaluk headed a group of exercise scenario managers at Peterson Air Force Base who were working in conjunction with a staff at the Joint War Fighting Center of the Joint Forces Command, or USJFCOM), headquartered in Norfolk, Va.

USJFCOM is another of the Department of Defense's nine combatant commands, with a mission to provide "mission-ready, joint-capable forces" as required by the Secretary of Defense.

In June, WND published an exclusive two-part interview with Col. Tom Muir, U.S. Army, deputy operations officer for Command Center Operations for NORAD and USNORTHCOM, detailing the distinctions between the NORAD command facilities housed in Cheyenne Mountain and the new NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters facilities at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

[Soldier4Christ]

Massive attack simulation to involve every state 
U.S. engaging in 5-year 'game-play' exercise for terrorism, major disasters

Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and USNORTHCOM, the United States Northern Command, invited WND staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi to visit Peterson Air Force base to observe Day Three of the NORAD-USNORTHCOM exercise Vigilant Shield 2008.

Corsi was the first outside news reporter allowed inside the Joint Interagency Coordination Group, or JIACG, to observe command center operations during a real-time national training exercise.

This article is the second of a five-part, exclusive WND series, based on an interview at the NORAD/USNORTHCOM headquarters with Eugene G. Pino, a member of the Senior Executive Service, who serves as director of Joint Training and Exercise at NORAD-USNORTHCOM.

Under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security, NORAD-USNORTHCOM has begun planning comprehensive, multi-year exercises aimed at involving every U.S. state in game-playing designed to simulate national emergencies.

The emergencies planned in the exercise scenarios range from natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, to terrorist attacks and health emergencies, as envisioned in a possible avian flu epidemic or pandemic influenza.

The exercises are designed to involve a wide spectrum of federal, state and local agencies that share a common interagency command center with the NORAD-USNORTHCOM headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"The most important thing to fully understand about our current Vigilant Shield exercise is that this is the maturation of a national exercise program," Eugene G. Pino, director of Joint Training and Exercise at NORAD-USNORTHCOM, explained to WND.

Pino serves as a chief architect in the national exercise program, responsible for developing a comprehensive plan to coordinate the response of the U.S. military into an emergency plan designed to be driven by civilian government authorities, first at the state and local level, then at the national level should the threat overwhelm local resources.

(Story continues below)

As WND reported yesterday, NORAD-USNORTHCOM conducted in October a national exercise involving the simulated detonation of Radiological Dispersal Devices, or "dirty bombs," exploding almost simultaneously in Guam, Arizona and Oregon.

The exercise code-named Vigilant Shield 08, or VS08, was also designated TOPOFF4, in reference to the many top federal, state and local officials the exercise was designed to train.

Pino was careful to make sure WND understood that the current VS08/TOPOFF4 exercise was part of a larger plan.

"Our goal," Pino explained, "is to develop working partnerships between federal and interagency departments, working together to design an exercise that exercises the entire national architecture, from federal to state to local and multi-national."

WND reported yesterday that over 40 federal agencies have permanent staff assigned as "resident agency" managers in the Interagency Coordination Group, or ICG, structure that operates the JIACG, or Joint Interagency Coordination Group.

The JIACG is the key operational component of the national exercise that meets daily in a combined command center, linked to the outside federal, state and local exercise participants by teleconference and computer.

Canada, UK, Australia join in

Pino noted that along with the countless observers – mostly in Washington, D.C. – there are several other nations participating in the exercise, including Canada, the UK and Australia.

The three countries, he explained, are physical partners playing in the exercise, with their own exercises linked to VS08/TOPOFF4.

"So, what you have is a mosaic of exercise objectives and exercise teams brought together into one synchronized, over-arching, large scale exercise," he said.

Maturation

Pino told WND planning for the current exercise started 14 months ago. Each year since USNORTHCOM was created in 2002, the command has run Vigilant Shield exercises in the fall and exercises code-named Ardent Sentry in the spring.

"The national exercise program in the Department of Defense has undergone a maturation process," Pino emphasized.

"In the past, those exercises were completely built, designed, controlled, executed and played by DOD personnel," he continued. "Sometimes, we would have other agencies and departments, either providing us subject matter experts, but not full participation. Every other department and agency conducted their own isolated stovepiped exercises."

The goal of NORAD-USNORTHCOM has evolved to transform its Department of Defense-managed exercises into full interagency participation, such that the Vigilant Shield and Ardent Sentry exercises now involve military planning coordinated through the lead efforts of the Department of Homeland Security.

"We started working on this particular construct of a national exercise program about three years ago, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security specifically," Pino said.

Pino explained President Bush reviewed an implementation plan for the execution of a national exercise program in April, approved the concept, and then the Department of Homeland Security was given the lead for executing the national exercise program.

"The Department of Homeland Security created an implementation plan for the national exercise program that was released in July," he continued. "This is our first national exercise under that construct.

With this change, interagency planning and cooperation was intended to replace the department-by-department emergency preparedness planning that was the norm before USNORTHCOM was created in 2002.

Pino explained: "So, rather than having stovepipe exercises without full integration and synchronization conducted by separate agencies, our goal now is to replicate a natural effort to deal with either a natural or man-made disaster within a national exercise program that starts to synchronize these disparate enterprises into one, focused exercise program.

"The various participating agencies are integrated from the very first step of planning the exercise," Pino said. "Where in the past we might have brought in another department, maybe a week before the exercise was going to kick off, now we coordinate through the Department of Homeland Security, and interagency cooperation is a central feature of the national exercise program."

Focused energy

Pino stressed interagency cooperation and coordination brought an added value to the national exercises.

"By the mere fact that all these agencies are integrated partners in the full development of the exercise, they are vested in the exercise, and they understand the objectives of the exercise," he argued. "Now we are able to focus all that energy into training our people together as to how we would operate in a real world environment.

"It is very difficult for departments and agencies that are working daily in protecting the nation and are fully focused on their individual requirements and their responsibilities to drop everything that they are currently doing when they find out about an exercise that's taking place in the next few months," Pino explained.

The solution was to develop a multi-year exercise plan announced well in advance to the many agencies expected to participate.

"The development of a five-year schedule where everybody knows this exercise is going to take place on this date, in this period of time, in '08, '09, 2010, 2011 and 2012 is powerful," Pino argued. "This way everybody can plan accordingly and build their budgets to support it. The key element of the national exercise program is the mandate for a five-year schedule.

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[Soldier4Christ]

"We are also following a tiered approach to exercises, so we are focusing our energies on the proper levels of how missions are executed," Pino continued. "This particular exercise by design and by name is 'Top Officials Exercise,' which means something. VS08/TOPOFF4 is a Tier 1 national level exercise designed to engage our top government officials, because they require training, too – including the White House, department heads, cabinet secretaries, under secretaries and assistant secretaries."

While President Bush did not participate personally in VS08/TOPOFF4, an "exercise president" was designated to receive briefings and make decisions.

Pino also explained that the five-year cycle of national exercises was planned to cover a full spectrum of challenges the U.S. could face, ranging from natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, to terrorist events, such as 9/11.

"There is a linkage and should be a linkage between what we have identified are strategic, operational and tactical threats to our nation, and then build plans to operate against those threats and then create the scenarios to exercise against," Pino stressed.

"The White House Homeland Security Council, working with the president, identified 15 national planning scenarios that would require plans to be built against them," he said. "Our goal then was to focus our national exercise program against those 15 scenarios."

Gaming a 'dirty bomb'

Pino explained in more detail the thinking behind the current scenario of VS08/TOPOFF4, involving Radiological Dispersal Devices being used in multiple sites throughout the nation.

"The RDD used in the exercised was scripted to involve CCM-137, the radioactive material used," Pino said. "We chose this, because CCM-137 is readily available. CCM-137 is used in hospital equipment, for example. What we are gaming right now is CCM-137 that terrorists have stolen and weaponized with high explosives, such that a blast effect will cause casualties from the blast, but then also there will be fallout challenges from radioactivity. That, in essence, is what we mean by a 'dirty bomb.'"

Pino explained that the current RDD scenario of VS08/TOPOFF4 has been designated as National Planning Scenario No. 11.

"We will exercise all 15 of these national planning scenarios in the construct of the national exercise program over a period of years," he explained. "A perfect example is that last May, we conducted a national exercise as a precursor to this one, where we exercised against national planning scenario No. 1; that is, a nuclear detonation in a major metropolitan city."

From May 10-18 in Ardent Sentry 07, USNORTHCOM, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, exercised the detonation of an improvised nuclear device in Indiana.

USNORTHCOM's Joint Task Force Civil Support deployed in the exercise more than 2,000 active-duty military personnel and some 1,000 National Guard personnel to Camp Atterbury and the Muscatatuchk Urban Training Area, simulating an attack on Indianapolis.

Pino explained that each year at least one exercise will be designated a national level event, in which multiple state and local jurisdictions will be involved.

"That one national level event will be coupled with four 'Top Official Seminars' per year," Pino explained. "In the Top Official Seminars, we will take those national planning scenarios and discuss them in a seminar format with the principals and department heads in a table-top discussion environment.

"The issues that surface from those seminars will then be fed into the planning process for the national level exercise we will conduct," he continued. "It's a learning process in which we say, 'Okay, we talked about this as a potential challenge. We worked on what we believe is a proper answer to that challenge. Now we exercised it to validate that it, in effect, did accomplish the effect that we were after.'"

Pino also explained that the national exercise program is constructed to coincide with the four-year cycle of a presidential administration.

"So, in the first year of a president's administration," Pino explained, "we will have a ramped-up training program for the new administration on all the duties they are going to have in their homeland security and homeland defense responsibilities."

Pino laid out how the exercise cycle would work in conjunction with a presidential term.

"So, in the first year of a president's administration, like in 2009, the scenario will be one of the terrorist-related national planning scenarios. Then in 2010, the second year of this upcoming presidential administration, the exercise will be a natural disaster, perhaps a major hurricane or a major earthquake, affecting multiple jurisdictions."

He continued: "The third year will be an overseas Department of Defense-centric or humanitarian assistance to another nation state during a large-scale natural disaster, or a counter-insurgency-type operation, because we need to work national security too; this is a national exercise program.

"Then in the fourth year of a new administration," he concluded, "we will have domestic terrorist events as the foundation of that exercise."

Pino further specified that in each specific national exercise, different training objectives are identified.

"As I mentioned," he continued, "the planning for this exercise started 14 months ago. We identified certain exercise objectives we wanted to focus upon. Because this is a strategic national Top Officials exercise, our focus is working linkages and relationships and information-sharing between a strategic theater commander, a combatant commander – in this case NORAD-USNORTHCOM – and the national political leadership in Washington."

Therefore, Pino, explained, VS08/TOPOFF4 "has placed very little focus downward to operational forces on the ground or tactical units on the ground."

"We never intended to move very many actual forces around in this exercise," he said. "But, we designed the exercise to involve three venues – one in a U.S. territory that allows us to work those challenges of working a territory, the other two venues in Oregon and Arizona."

Pino also explained how the exercises were designed to involve FEMA regions nationwide.

"We have 10 FEMA regions throughout the nation," he explained. "A particular FEMA region is assigned the responsibility for a certain number of states, to provide disaster response and support. But FEMA Region 9, in this particular case, also has the responsibility for our territories in the Pacific. Oregon is FEMA Region 10, out of Seattle, and Arizona is FEMA Region 9, out of Oakland."

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[Soldier4Christ]

"Our goal," he concluded, "is to exercise the full scope of national planning exercises – ranging from natural disasters, to terrorist events, to health emergencies such as epidemic flu, such that each FEMA region and all the states have the opportunity to work through emergency exercises within the planned exercise cycle."

Master-control cell

The master-control cell of the national planning exercise is in the Department of Homeland Security in Virginia," Pino pointed out.

"USNORTHCOM has representatives there in Virginia in that master-control cell," he said. "Then you have the venues in Guam, Oregon and Arizona, with on-site control groups that are linked by satellite to the master-control cell. The day-to-day game-playing takes place in the JIASC interagency environment where information is processed and decisions are made."

The objective of the exercise, Pino said, is to "drive the action forward by providing the injects on real world systems."

"Inside the white cell, we have representation from every element of NORTHCOM," he said. "You'll notice there's an intelligence seat, a public affairs seat; there an operations seat, there's an inter-agency seat.

The chief controller from the War Fighting Center, Steve Zakaluk, is Pino's chief manager.

Zakaluk, Pino said, built every aspect of the exercise for NORTHCOM, working in partnership with the War Fighting Center.

"We react to what the players are doing to create the next day's and next two-day's environment to make sure we are moving in the right direction," Pino said.

He explained how the exercises are designed to benefit from lessons learned as the exercise is gamed.

"The most important piece of exercising is to observe your performance," Peno stressed. "What tasks need to be accomplished to satisfy the requirements of the plan? Then, what are the standards you are measuring yourself against?

"We bring together a significant number of subject matter experts from throughout the Department of Defense to work with us to observe our performance during the exercise," he continued, "to identify accomplishments and challenges."

"These experts then report back to me with all their observations," he explained. "Then what I will do is take every single one of these observations, and I build a 'lesson-identified' on that observation. From there, we put in place a corrective action program to fix that issue, and then we will revalidate it on a future exercise."

Observer-trainers then, he said, are working with each of the staff elements to identify the value of standards and conditions of the tasks that are supposed to be performed.

"Then we have analysts and subject matter experts in specific domains like intelligence, operations, planning, interagency synchronization, etc.," he continued, describing an interactive feedback loop at the heart of systems and operations planning science.

"They observe our performance and report back to me on their observations," Pino explained, "and then the analysts give us a perspective on their analysis of particular trends that are going on. Then we take that information from these guys, and we feed it into that 'lessons-learned' corrective-actions program for the next planned exercise."

Built into the national exercise program, therefore, is a "corrective-action program," Pino stressed.

"We identify a challenge, an issue, something that didn't go right, and it is fed into the Homeland Security Council," said Pino. From there, the Homeland Security Council assigns a department among the interagency partners designated to fix the problem and reports back to the Homeland Security Council."

[Soldier4Christ]

FBI: Hole deliberately drilled at nuke plant
'No one is being charged unless more evidence becomes available'

An FBI investigation has found that someone deliberately drilled a hole into a pipe that is part of a nuclear reactor's cooling system at the Turkey Point power plant.

The defect was discovered in March 2006 during a routine inspection. Officials said they don't plan to file charges because they don't have enough evidence to prove criminal intent.

"No one is being charged unless more evidence becomes available," said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.

An out-of-state contractor worker hired to do routine maintenance is suspected of drilling the 1/8-inch hole, Orihuela added, describing the incident as an act of vandalism. More than 700 utility workers were interviewed as part of the investigation.

The public's heath and safety were not at risk, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said, so the act was not deemed to be sabotage.

A Florida Power & Light spokeswoman declined to comment on the investigation. The company had offered a $100,000 reward for information about the culprit.

[Soldier4Christ]

Ex-FBI, CIA worker took classified info
Lebanese national searched for intel on relatives tied to Hezbollah

A former FBI special agent and CIA analyst pleaded guilty Tuesday to using her database access privileges to search for information on relatives suspected of having ties to a reputed terrorist group, and who fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship.

In federal court in Detroit Tuesday, Lebanese national Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, pleaded guilty to secretly obtaining information about ongoing FBI national security investigations. She is suspected of passing it on to relatives suspected of having ties to Hezbollah, a group that the U.S. government has classified as a foreign terrorist organization.

"Right now, CIA and FBI are both trying to find out what more she might have known, what more she might have passed on to Hezbollah, and was she in fact sent here by Hezbollah in the first place to penetrate the United States intelligence services," former government counter-intelligence official and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke said.

"As a special agent," court documents said, Prouty "was granted a security clearance" and assigned to a unit investigating crimes against U.S. citizens overseas.

While employed as a special agent, Prouty entered the FBI's computer system "without authorization, and beyond her authorized access, to query her own name" and those of her sister and brother-in-law. Those relatives later attended a fundraising event whose featured speaker was a U.S.-designated terrorist linked to Hezbollah.

The criminal information states that Prouty acted against FBI policy and took "an unknown quantity of classified information home with her."

Prouty's sister, brother-in-law and others were charged in federal court last year for an alleged scheme to cover up more than $20 million in cash funneled to individuals in Lebanon. Her sister, Elfat El Aouar, pleaded guilty to tax evasion last year and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. El Aouar's husband, Talal Chahine, is considered to be a fugitive and is thought to be in Lebanon, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

Prouty resigned from her job as a midlevel CIA operations officer last week, after working at the agency for three years. According to an official familiar with the investigation, she worked for the National Clandestine Service, which runs covert operations.

Before joining the CIA in 2003, the FBI employed Prouty as a special agent, starting in 1999.

In an embarrassing twist, the investigation has also uncovered that Prouty fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship, admitting in court documents that she paid a man to marry her in 1990 so she could obtain citizenship after her student visa expired.

Sources told ABC News that officials at the highest levels of government have been briefed on the case, which is seen as an embarrassment for two of the nation's top intelligence agencies. Both the FBI and the CIA have launched internal reviews looking at organizational security procedures.

The case raises important questions about how careful and effective the vetting of employees is at the nation's premier law enforcement and intelligence agencies. FBI agents are supposed to be regularly polygraphed and take lie detector tests before obtaining a CIA job.

"This is a failure of three systems," Clarke said. "It's a failure of the FBI background system, including polygraphs. It's a failure of the CIA hiring system, including polygraphs. And it's a failure of the FBI's computer system security, because she was able to obtain information that she shouldn't have had access to about Hezbollah, which she probably passed on to Hezbollah, a terrorist group."

As part of the investigation, the government is conducting a damage assessment. Officials told ABC News the amount of information they suspect was leaked appears to be limited, but investigators are checking all the ex-agent's contacts within both agencies and looking to see what databases she might have tapped into.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield issued a statement on the investigation, saying that the CIA cooperated with the investigation and that Prouty "was a midlevel employee who came to us in 2003 from the FBI where she had been a special agent. The naturalization issue occurred well before she was hired by the Bureau."

Mansfield confirmed that Prouty resigned from the CIA as part of her plea agreement.

"It is a sad day when one of our public servants breaches our security and trust," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein said Tuesday. "This defendant engaged in a pattern of deceit to secure U.S. citizenship, to gain employment in the intelligence community, and to obtain and exploit her access to sensitive counterterrorism intelligence."

"It is fitting that she now stands to lose both her citizenship and her liberty," Wainstein added.

The plea agreement recommends that Prouty face a prison sentence between six and 12 months, and pay a maximum fine of $250,000. The documents also indicate Prouty will be on supervised release for two to three years after serving her sentence.

[Soldier4Christ]

'Shadow army' of bureaucrats at CIA, State Dept. undermining Bush, says author

A New York Times best-selling author has released a new book which details how a "shadow army" of bureaucrats and career employees at the CIA and State Department are waging a secret war against President Bush which is undermining America's national security.

Kenneth Timmerman's latest book, Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender, says there is a core of professional foreign service officers who were dead set against going to war against Saddam Hussein, were dead set against promoting freedom in the Middle East, and are dead set against helping the pro-democracy movement in Iran today.

"They have undermined the President's efforts in Iraq. I have called them a legion of shadow warriors at work inside the federal government bureaucracy whose sole purpose and goal is to make sure that the Bush policies do not succeed even if this costs the lives of thousands of American soldiers," says Tmmerman.

He says by manipulating intelligence, spreading misinformation through friendly media sources, and engaging in strategic deception, this group has undermined Bush administration policy at every turn, and made this country less safe and more vulnerable to attack as a result.

[Soldier4Christ]

General would deploy troops on U.S. soil 
NORTHCOM commander ready to obey any presidential order to act in domestic emergency

The commander of USNORTHCOM says he's prepared to obey any order from the president to deploy U.S. troops on American soil in response to a domestic emergency.

"If he were to choose to declare a national emergency, then clearly we at USNORTHCOM would be able to operate in that environment, in response to direct orders from the secretary of defense," Gen. Victor E. "Gene" Renuart told WND at his Peterson Air Force Base headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"But, I'm not sure that would ever be a routine event, and certainly it would be a minority event," he added in an interview conducted during a simulation of a multi-pronged terrorist attack.

As WND reported earlier this year, President Bush appears to have positioned the U.S. military and the National Guard, acting under presidential authority, to intervene in a wide range of domestic incidents that could occur anywhere in North America.

USNORTHCOM was established in 2002 with responsibility for a "homeland defense" area that includes the U.S., Canada, Mexico, parts of the Caribbean and waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans contiguous to the U.S.

WND asked Renuart to comment on the new constitutional ground created by USNORTHCOM's mission to have Department of Defense involvement in domestic emergencies.

"I think first, the Constitution is a pretty good document, and the founders and the writers of that document understood the real challenge to the democracy they envisioned of having too active a role for the federal military in law enforcement," he answered.

"And so, equally visionary was the establishment of the National Guard under the control of the state governors, who can give them, then, the law enforcement authority that those governors may need," Renuart added.

"As we see a situation develop that may require some additional support to law enforcement agencies, the governors have the ability to take advantage of the trained Guardsmen at the state level," Renuart continued. "This really frees us to do those supporting things that probably are the best use of the military in the homeland.

Standing on a cliff

In the NORAD/USNORTHCOM exercise in October – which included simulating simultaneous "dirty bombs" in Guam, Phoenix and Portland, Ore. – civilian authorities appeared to be in command.

"In the scenario we have in Oregon, the governor of Oregon is in charge of the response for his state," Renuart agreed. "The same is the case in Arizona."

"But it's a little bit like a cliff," he continued. "We don't want any state standing on a cliff with nobody to catch them if they fall. Or, we don't want them to try to climb a mountain without somebody to help them along the way."

Renuart added it's also not in the state's interest "to feel that their elected officials have failed."

"So in our case, we work very closely with our friends in DHS and FEMA, and the state emergency operations directors, to ensure that as they begin to respond and begin to see the need for more capacity (and that) they do that in a systematic way that allows for the states' National Guards to support the effort."

Renuart pointed out all of this is done through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, or EMAC, a state-to-state mutual aid agreement designed to provide material and personnel resources to states or territories affected by emergency situations or disasters.

"As the need continues to grow in an emergency situation," Renuart expanded, "then DOD military, if military is the best capability, is available. Our goal at USNORTHCOM is to make sure the Department of Defense military is in a position to respond. That keeps the governor as the principal responsible official in the state." Military response

WND asked Renuart how the current simulation scenario would change if the game play determined that the dirty bombs were detonated by a foreign terrorist organization.

"First, there is the local response to help the victims and to reconstitute," Renuart replied. "Certainly that is, and maybe should always be, the state's responsibility."

The issue of determining the source of the event and how to respond to it is a national issue, the general stated.

"And certainly, if it is a very localized event, for instance, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, you had a law enforcement activity that was able to follow that through to arrests," he said.

"If the event were attributable to an attack either by a nation-state or an entity outside of our country, then the president certainly has the ability, as we have done in the past, to use the military to respond to those perpetrators, should that be the most appropriate," Renuart stressed.

"I think we have to be careful that we don't immediately jump from a dirty bomb to (raising the question of) what is the military doing within the bounds of our country," the general said. "I think we have a good apparatus to balance that. And we go through those decision pieces in the course of this exercise."

The NORAD-USNORTHCOM response would vary depending on the nature of the emergency – a terrorist attack, for instance, versus an earthquake or a hurricane.

"We have created a capacity in the response to an event that is very robust," Renuart said. "But, the response to an event is different than the response of a nation to an attack. We need to be very clear that we maintain those differences."

During the course of an event, there could by a number of decision points at which a local emergency could become a matter for the federal government.

In May, a NORAD-USNORTHCOM exercise called Ardent Sentry simulated a 10-kiliton nuclear explosion in Indianapolis.

"In that case, the area affected was more than a single state could deal with, and the plume that resulted from that detonation, at least the modeling, carried it through two states, so you now have a regional effect," Renuart pointed out.

"In that case, you may or may not choose to have a federal lead on the situation," he continued. "Or, you may choose to have some portion of it become a federal response. Or, you may choose to have two states coordinate with each other, but with federal support to each."

He concluded: "So, there's a lot of ways as this thing grows from city, to state, to regional, that present decision points along the way that we just have to be deliberate about."

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the first catastrophic emergency USNORTHCOM helped manage.

"Certainly, there have been a lot of smaller size events that the command has been involved in, but that's really the first one that went across the borders of two or three states and became a regional event," Renuart said.

USNORTHCOM also assisted the state of California in managing the wildfires that recently hit Southern California.

cont'd