Homeland Security

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Errors in matching, though rare, have occurred. In a noted 2004 case, Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield was erroneously named as a suspect in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people. FBI lab analysts matched a print lifted from a plastic bag at the crime scene to his fingerprints that were stored in the FBI's criminal database because of a 1985 arrest for auto burglary when he was a teenager. The charge had been dismissed. After a critical Justice Department Inspector General audit, the FBI made fixes in its system. A recent inspector general report found the FBI fingerprint matching to be generally accurate.

Worries about watch list
Civil libertarians, however, worry that the systems are not transparent enough for outsiders to tell how the government decides who belongs on a watch list and how that information is handled.

"The day when the federal government can tell people the basis they've been put on the watch list is the day we can have more confidence in biometric identification," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Vetting the data is the job of analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center, an office park-like complex in McLean run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Analysts there scour intelligence reports to create the master international terrorist watch list.

"You cannot draw a bright red line and say that's a terrorist, this person isn't," said Russ Travers, an NCTC deputy director. "If somebody swears allegiance to Bin Laden, that's an easy case. If somebody goes to a terrorist training camp, that's probably an easy case. What if a person goes to a camp and decides, 'I don't want to go to a camp, I want to go home.' Where do you draw the line?"

Investigators are working on ever more sophisticated ways to evaluate the data. Analysts at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville, for instance, use software to scrutinize intelligence reports from sources such as electronic surveillance and informants. They then link the information to a person's biographic and biometric data, and look for relationships that might detect terrorists and plots.

For example, a roadside bomb may explode and a patrol may fingerprint bystanders because insurgents have been known to remain at the scene to observe the results of their work. Prints also can be lifted off tiny fragments of exploded bombs, said military officials and contractors involved in the work.

Analysts are not just trying to identify the prints on the bomb. They want to find out who the bomb-carrier associates with. Who he calls. Who calls him. That could lead to the higher-level operatives who planned and financed attacks.

Already, fingerprints lifted off a bomb fragment have been linked to people trying to enter the United States, they said.

In a separate data-sharing program, 365 Iraqis who have applied to the Department of Homeland Security for refugee status have been denied because their fingerprints turned up in the Defense Department's database of known or suspected terrorists, Richardson said.

If Iraq and Afghanistan were a proving ground of sorts for biometric watch-listing, the U.S. government is moving quickly to try to build a domestic version. Since September 2006, Homeland Security and the FBI have been operating a pilot program in which police officers in Boston, Dallas and Houston run prints of arrestees against a Homeland Security database of immigration law violators and a State Department database of people refused visas. Federal job applicants' prints also are run against the databases. To date, some 500 people have been found in the database and thus are of interest to Homeland Security officials.

Steve Nixon, a director at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the effort is key to national security.

"When we look at the road and the challenges, globalization and the spread of technology has empowered small groups of individuals, bad guys, to be more powerful than at any other time in history," he said. "We have to know who these people are when we encounter them. A lot of what we're doing in intelligence now is trying to identify a person. Biometrics is a key element of that."

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Arrest Rate on Terrorism-Related Charges in U.S. is 2.5 times Higher than Europe

"Since 9/11, there have been over 2,300 arrests connected to Islamist terrorism in Europe in contrast to about 60 in the United States." Thus writes Marc Sageman in his influential new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press).

This one statistical comparison inspires Sageman, in a chapter he calls "The Atlantic Divide," to draw sweeping conclusions about the superior circumstances of American Muslims. "The rate of arrests on terrorism charges per capita among Muslims is six times higher in Europe than in the United States." The reason for this discrepancy, he argues, "lies in the differences in the extent to which these respective Muslim communities are radicalized." He praises "American cultural exceptionalism," admonishes European governments "to avoid committing mistakes that risk the loss of good will in the Muslim community," and urges Europeans to learn from Americans.

Sageman's argument rehashes what Spencer Ackerman wrote in a New Republic cover story of late 2005, when he found that "Europe's growing Muslim culture of alienation, marginalization, and jihad isn't taking root" in the United States.

But Sageman's entire case is premised on the figures of 2,300 and 60 arrests. Aside from possible other causal explanations for these differences, such as the European legal system permitting more latitude to make terrorism-related arrests, are those figures even correct? He supports them with only a brief, vague footnote: "Updating Eggen and Tate, 2005; Lustick 2006: 151-52 agrees with this estimate." Here, "Eggen and Tate, 2005" refers to a two-part newspaper article and "Lustick 2006" sources a discredited extremist screed.

In fact, Sageman's numbers are scandalously inaccurate.

European arrests: His European number is inflated. The European Police Office (Europol) issued statistics showing that in 2007, 201 Islamists were detained in the European Union (other than the United Kingdom) on terror-related charges, compared to 257 in 2006. Earlier Europol statistics are less clear, but a close review of the evidence conducted for me by Jonathan Gelbart of Stanford University shows 234 arrests made in 2005, 124 in 2004. and 137 in 2003. In all, the total West European terrorism-related arrests appear to number less than 1,400.

U.S. arrests: According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Sageman's American figure is too low by a factor of almost ten. Department spokesman Sean Boyd indicated, according to a Fox News report, that "527 defendants have been charged in terrorism or terrorism-related cases arising from investigations primarily conducted after Sept. 11. Those cases have resulted in 319 convictions, with an additional 176 cases pending in court." Plus, as I documented at "Denying [Islamist] Terrorism" and its follow-up blog), politicians, law enforcement personnel, and the media are loathe to acknowledge terrorist incidents, so the real number of terrorism-related arrests is substantially higher.

Given that the Muslim population in the United States is about 1/7th size of its West European counterpart (3 million vs. 21 million), using the figures of 527 arrests for the United States and 1,400 for Europe suggests that the Muslim per-capita arrest rate on terrorism-related charges in the United States is 2.5 times higher than in Europe, not, as Sageman asserts, 6 times lower. In fact, Sageman (who was offered a chance to reply to this article but declined) is off by a factor of about 15.

His error has major implications. If the United States, despite the much better socio-economic standing of its Muslims, suffers from 2.5 times more terrorism per capita than does Europe, socio-economic improvements are unlikely to solve Europe's problems.

This conclusion fits into a larger argument that Islamism has little to do with economic or other stresses. Put differently, ideas matter more than personal circumstances. As I put it in 2002, "The factors that cause militant Islam to decline or flourish appear to have more to do with issues of identity than with economics." Whoever accepts the Islamist (or communist or fascist) worldview, whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female, also accepts the ideological infrastructure that potentially leads to violence, including terrorism.

In policy terms, Americans have no reason to be smug. Yes, Europeans should indeed learn from the United States how better to integrate their Muslim population, but they should not expect that doing so will also diminish their terrorism problem. It could, indeed, even worsen.

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U.S. eyes Iranians at nuke labs
Muslim scientists invited by Clinton still employed

As fears grow over Iran secretly developing nuclear weapons, U.S. counterintelligence officials are keeping a close eye on scientists from Iran and other Muslim nations working at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, WND has learned.

The Energy Department recently revoked the security clearance of an Egyptian-born nuclear physicist because he was suspected of "conflicting allegiances."

Last year, DOE and FBI agents began questioning Moniem El-Ganayni, who worked on the side as a Muslim prison chaplain.

Prison authorities in Pennsylvania alleged he advocated suicide bombing of Americans and jihad against the U.S. while ministering to inmates, charges El-Ganayni denies.

Even so, SCI-Forest prison in Marienville, Pa., terminated his contract. DOE contractor Bettis Laboratory also fired him.

Until May, El-Ganayni had access to classified nuclear secrets.

Last year, federal authorities accused a Muslim engineer at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station of illegally smuggling software codes into Iran and downloading details of control rooms, reactors and designs of the nation's largest nuclear plant. Arizona Public Service Co. operates Palo Verde.

Mohammed Alavi, 49, was arrested as he stepped off a plane in Los Angeles and later jailed. He was released, however, after Iran's foreign minister sent a letter to U.S. officials demanding his immediate release.

Under the Clinton administration, the Energy Department welcomed scientists and students from sensitive Muslim nations, including Iran, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and other nuclear weapons research labs as part of its "open-door policy."

No Iranian nationals were employed at Los Alamos when Clinton took office in 1993, according to an internal lab report. By 1997, three Iranians were employed there.

Iranians were assigned to other labs as well. Although the labs have cut back on the number of visitors from sensitive countries since 9/11, many of the foreign workers are still assigned there.

And U.S. officials say concerns have been raised specifically about the high number of Iranian students assigned to the labs.

"They let a lot of Iranians in on post-doctoral fellowships," an Energy official said. Such assignments typically last up to a year, but can extend much longer.

Another official who works in security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California says a number of warnings have been issued regarding possible Iranian espionage at the labs.

"There is a great deal of concern about Iranians throughout the national lab complex," he said. "A lot of directives have been issued concerning this issue."

A former senior Energy intelligence official says that in terms of developing deployable nuclear weapons, "the Iranians are years ahead of where the Iraqis ever were."

He says Los Alamos, which has been the target of an alarming number of security breaches over the past several years, is particularly vulnerable to penetration by Iranian spies.

"The opportunities they have to collect intelligence from the lab is pretty damn frightening given how leaky that place is," the former official said.

"They can do a lot of harm."

In December, Tehran sent a formal protest note to Washington for "spying" on Iran's nuclear activities. Iranian officials accused the U.S. of carrying out espionage activities.

Tehran last year stopped UN inspectors from visiting an underground bunker where it is building an industrial-scale plant to make enriched uranium.

Iran insists its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity.

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Explosive Device Detonated By Police At NC Wal-Mart Store

Officials are being tight-lipped on the details about an explosive device found at Wal-Mart. Police only told Eyewitness News it was “disrupted” and “diffused.”

Police say no one was injured by an explosive device that was detonated by a bomb squad at a Boone store.

Detective Matt Stevens of the Boone Police Department said the device was found at the front entrance of Wal-Mart by an employee about 5:40 a.m. Sunday. One worker said the package was smaller than a shoe box.

The store was evacuated for about five hours while a bomb squad from Wilkes County was called in to examine it. The store re-opened around 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

Stevens says the device was dangerous, but refused to further describe it. The only thing police said was the device would appear dangerous to the average person.

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U.S. headed for 'heightened alert' stage
Major events on horizon prompt surge in anti-terror efforts

Government officials have been quietly stepping up counterterror efforts out of a growing concern that al Qaeda or similar organizations might try to capitalize on the spate of extremely high-profile events in the coming months, sources tell ABC News.

Security experts point to next month's Olympics as evidence that high-profile events attract threats of terrorism, like the one issued this past weekend by a Chinese Muslim minority group that warned of its intent to attack the Games.

Anti-terror officials in the U.S. cite this summer and fall's lineup of two major political parties' conventions, November's general election and months of transition into a new presidential administration as cause for heightened awareness and action.

This is what the Department of Homeland Security is quietly declaring a Period of Heightened Alert, or POHA, a time frame when terrorists may have more incentive to attack.

According to drafts of government memos described to ABC News, the period would run roughly from this August through July 2009.

During this time, homeland security analysts will be asked to redouble efforts to study terrorism leads. And a number of agencies will be asked to review emergency response plans to a variety of attacks, from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to biological weapons.

Officials also are being asked to make sure they are prepared for all contingencies during the transition from the Bush administration to that of the next president.

In a recent interview, FBI director Robert Mueller told ABC News of his concerns for homeland security.

"When you have a series of events like this which are very public, where you have a number of people that are congregated together, we take additional precautions," he said.

"That means identifying, focusing on the intelligence that's available and scrutinizing it to pieces and running it to ground, to putting in place the precautions to assure the particular events go according to plan and free from terrorist attacks," he said.

At the moment, the nation's public threat level will remain at yellow, or "elevated," but not orange, or "high."

The reasons: There are no specifics indicating an attack on the U.S. is imminent, and U.S. officials do not want to be accused of trying to inject themselves into the presidential campaign.

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Official: US wanted death penalty in anthrax case

A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently has committed suicide in the wake of what a brother said was his intense pursuit by the FBI in connection with anthrax-tainted letters that killed five people.

The Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against the scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, a leading military anthrax researcher who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., the Los Angeles Times reported in Friday editions. Ivins had been told of the impending prosecution, the paper said.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine. A woman who answered the phone at Bruce Ivins' home in Frederick declined to comment.

Only last month, the government exonerated another scientist at the Fort Detrick lab, Steven Hatfill, whose name for years had been associated with the post-9/11 attacks that traumatized the nation. Investigators had publicly named Hatfill a "person of interest" in 2002. The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit contending he was falsely accused and had been made a scapegoat for the crimes.

Investigators have been interviewing Ivins' family and co-workers since at least last year, and the pressure increased after Hatfill's name was cleared. Justice Department officials declined to comment.

"We are not at this time making any official statements or comments regarding this situation," said Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, which is investigating the anthrax attacks, said Friday.

Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that his other brother, Charles, had told him that Bruce committed suicide and Tylenol might have been involved.

Tom Ivins said Friday that federal officials working on the anthrax case questioned him about his brother a year and a half ago. "They said they were investigating him," he said from Ohio, where he lives, in a CNN interview.

But he never talked to his brother about it: "I stay away from him," Tom Ivins said.

A woman who answered the phone at the home of the third brother, Charles Ivins, in Etowah, N.C., refused to wake him and declined to comment on his brother's death. "This is a grieving time," she said.

Henry S. Heine, a scientist who had worked with Ivins on inhalation anthrax research at Fort Detrick, said he and others on their team have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings for more than a year. He declined to comment on Ivins' death.

The Fort Detrick laboratory and its specialized scientists for years have been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings, which killed five people, shut down a Senate office building and postal center for months, and compounded Americans' sense of vulnerability to terrorism.

An aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who received one of the anthrax-tainted letters, said Friday that Leahy had not yet been briefed on the developments. Leahy, as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, has the FBI under congressional oversight.

Unusual behavior by Ivins was noted at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings, when he conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus long stayed on Hatfill.

Dr. W. Russell Byrne, a physician who worked with Ivins in the bacteriology division of the Fort Detrick research facility for 15 years, said he does not believe Ivins was behind the anthrax attacks.

Byrne of Frederick said he believes that Ivins was "hounded" by aggressive FBI agents who raided his home twice. He said Ivins was forcefully removed from his job by local police recently because of fears that he had become a danger to himself or others. The investigation led to Ivins being hospitalized for depression earlier this month, Byrne said.

He described Ivins as "eccentric," but not dangerous.

"If he was about to be charged, no one who knew him well was aware of that, and I don't believe it," said Byrne, who attended the same Catholic church as Ivins, who played the keyboards and led the church's musical program.

Norman Covert, a retired Fort Detrick spokesman who served with Ivins on an animal-care and protocol committee, said Ivins was "a very intent guy" at their meetings.

Ivins was the co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

The Times said federal investigators moved away from Hatfill and concluded Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the investigation in 2006. The new investigators instructed agents to re-examine leads and reconsider potential suspects. In the meantime, investigators made progress in analyzing anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two Leahy and Sen. Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., according to the report.

Besides the five deaths, 17 people were sickened by anthrax that was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida. The victims included postal workers and others who came into contact with the anthrax.

In the six months following the anthrax mailings, Ivins conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at USAMRIID - the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick - and found some, according to an internal report by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, which oversees the lab.

In December 2001, after conducting tests triggered by a technician's fears that she had been exposed, Ivins found evidence of anthrax and decontaminated the woman's desk, computer, keypad and monitor, but didn't notify his superiors, according to the report.

The report says Ivins performed more unauthorized sampling on April 15, 2002, and found anthrax spores in his office, in a passbox used for moving materials in and out of labs, and in a room where male workers changed from civilian clothing into laboratory garb.

Ivins told Army investigators he conducted unauthorized tests because he was worried that the powdered anthrax in letters that had been sent to USAMRIID for analysis might not have been adequately contained.

In January 2002, the FBI doubled the reward for helping solve the case to $2.5 million, and by June officials said the agency was scrutinizing 20 to 30 scientists who might have had the knowledge and opportunity to send the anthrax letters.

After the government's settlement with Hatfill was announced in late June, Ivins started showing signs of strain, the Times said.

Ivins was one of the nation's leading biodefense researchers.

In 2003, Ivins and two of his colleagues at the USAMRIID received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.

In 1997, U.S. military personnel began receiving the vaccine to protect against a possible biological attack. Within months, a number of vaccine lots failed a potency test required by federal regulators, causing a shortage of vaccine and eventually halting the immunization program. The USAMRIID team's work led to the reapproval of the vaccine for human use.

The Times said Ivins was the son of a Princeton-educated pharmacist who was born and raised in Lebanon, Ohio. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in microbiology, from the University of Cincinnati.

He and his wife, Diane, owned a small white home just outside the main gate to Fort Detrick, about two blocks from an apartment where Hatfill once lived.

[Soldier4Christ]

FBI Seizes Local Maryland Library Computers

The FBI removed computer records from the C. Burr Artz Library this week, a library official confirmed Saturday.

Darrell Batson, director of Frederick County Public Libraries, said two FBI employees came to the downtown Frederick library either Wednesday or Thursday. The agents removed two public computers from the library’s second floor. They told him they were taking the units back to their office in Washington, D.C., Batson said.

Batson expected the computers would be returned early this week, he said.

Debbie Weierman, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office, would not comment Saturday on whether the agency had removed records from the library.

This was the third time in his 10 years with FCPL that the FBI has come to the library seeking records, Batson said. It was the first time they came without a court order.

The library’s procedure for such requests usually requires a court order, however after the agent described the case and the situation, he was persuaded to give them access, Batson said.

“They had an awful lot of information,” he said, but he was not allowed to discuss specifics.

“It was a decision I made on my experience and the information given to me,” he said.

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"Our Joint Terrorism Task Force is involved in this simply because the victim here is from another country and it just kind of makes sense that our terrorism guys would take a look a look at this," FBI Special Agent in Charge James Davis said.

Davis told CBS 4 that nothing so far has been found to link the case to terrorism or the coming convention.

"I don't see how anybody could do anything but look into the possibility that this is a potential terrorist attack," said Dr. Andrew Ternay, a Department of Defense contractor.

Ternay has worked with the Pentagon for 25 years. He's published text books and written "The Language of Nightmares" which is a glossary of all things deadly, including cyanide.

"The very first thought that came to my mind was murder, or somebody who's got to kill an awful lot of rodents because years ago cyanide used to be used to kill rats and roaches," said Ternay. "A tablespoon would be enough to kill you. Less actually."

Authorities said The Burnsley Hotel is safe and is open for business.

Cyanide can be made from plants in very small amounts. It can be a gas, liquid or powder. It prevents the body from using oxygen and therefore is more harmful to the heart and brain than other organs.

"It was used in concentration camps in World War II and by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in the 1990s," CBD4 Medical Editor Dr. Dave Hnida said. "And put it in a little capsule, it is in fact used as a suicide pill just like you see in the movies."

Officials said cyanide can be used as a terrorist weapon if it is dumped in water put in food, sprayed as a gas, or many other methods.

Ternay said the question with cyanide is how pure it is. If the powder is only 10 percent cyanide, it is not nearly as lethal.

Ternay said cyanide can be easy to get if you want a quarter of a pound. Filling out some paperwork is all that is required to order it.

Larger amounts of 50 pounds or more are tougher to come by.

The investigation is continuing.

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Joint Terrorism Task Force Investigating Cyanide, Dead Man Found In Denver Hotel Room

An autopsy is now complete on a 29-year-old Ottawa man found dead in a Denver hotel room on Monday.

Although Denver police haven’t yet said how Saleman Abdirahman Dirie died, authorities told reporters they found one pound of sodium cyanide near his body.The pound of sodium cyanide found in a hotel room Monday is potent enough to have killed close to 1,000 people, according to an expert in deadly chemicals and counter-terrorism.

“You have a suspicious substance that was found in a hotel room in conjunction with a person being a foreign national, and we have a lot of questions and that is why we are assisting,” said Denver FBI spokeswoman Kathy Wright. Authorities were trying to determine why Dirie, 29, was in Denver and how and when he got into the United States.

“There is not necessarily more of a concern, but it is something we are aware of and how close the DNC is,” Wright said. “We want to make sure we do everything we can to find out the unknown.”

And they should be, according to Dr. Andrew Ternay, a chemist at the University of Denver and the director of the Rocky Mountain Center for Homeland Defense.

“A pound of cyanide would kill hundreds of people,” Ternay said. “It depends on, do you breathe it in? Does it get on your skin? That makes all the difference in the world. Sitting in a bag, it does nothing. But if you get it on your skin, it’ll go through the pores of your skin and kill you.”
Police say it appears Dirie was dead for several days before his body was found in room 408 of the Burnsley Hotel in downtown Denver, located about four blocks from the State Capitol.

The FBI and the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism agency are assisting in the investigation.

“Our joint services task force is involved in this simply because the victim here is from another country and it just kind of makes sense that our terrorism guys take a look at this,” FBI special agent James Davis told the local CBS News television station in Denver.

Ottawa’s Somali community in shock

Meanwhile, members of Ottawa’s Somali community, which Dirie belonged to, are in shock after learning of his death.

“I don’t know what happened. The community don’t know what happened but I think the community do care. One of their members who travelled to Denver lost his life there,” Abdirizak Karod told CTV Ottawa on Wednesday, adding that Dirie’s family left for Denver immediately after learning of his death.

Police are now waiting on toxicology results to determine how Dirie died and whether cyanide played a role in his death.

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Security Officials On The Lookout For Cloned Emergency Vehicles

Cloned emergency vehicles lookout memo issued.

Security officials around the cities hosting this year’s political conventions are being told to watch out for fake or cloned emergency vehicles.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency memo ‘bulletin’ says terrorists could use such “cloned” emergency or commercial vehicles to conduct surveillance or carry out an attack.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau says faking such vehicles is inexpensive, perhaps costing as little as $2000.00.

Meanwhile, the Secret Service says it doesn’t have any specific information that cloned vehicles are being used for terrorist or other illicit purposes at the Democratic convention in Denver or the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The bulletin, called an “infogram,” is distributed to emergency management officials across the country.

Officials are advised to know how to verify markings on government and military vehicles. Imaging systems that can see inside trucks as well as radiation detection equipment will be used in both convention cities to prevent anything dangerous from getting near or inside the venues.

Thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement officials will be working to secure the conventions, as will airport screeners, nuclear weapons experts and intelligence analysts.

Previous Incidents Involving Cloned Emergency Vehicles

Several recent incidents of cloned vehicles has caught the attention of intelligence analysts at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). In a nationwide survey of recent “cloned” vehicle reports, a troubling pattern emerged. In their study, tagged “law enforcement sensitive,” and completed this January, the FDLE charted some 15 incidents involving both faked official and commercial vehicles between 2005 and 2007, which should serve as a wake-up call to law enforcement and counterterrorism officials worldwide.

As the FDLE’s study, The Road Map to Cloned Vehicles, put it: “… the use of government vehicles with official markings, especially those associated with friendly military, government and public safety entities, could be a means of delivering a vehicle-borne explosive device to a target site. This method could allow terrorists to bypass established security protocols and strike hardened, high-value targets.”

“Load it with a conventional explosive or even a radiological device and you have the makings of a truly ‘ultimate nightmare’ scenario,” said a federal counterterrorism official familiar with the new Florida study.

Officially, at least, the FDLE declined to comment on their restricted clone report when asked for comment recently by HSToday. “That is ‘Law Enforcement Sensitive.’ The lawyers are looking at that now,” said Eva Rhody of the FDLE’s Office of Statewide Intelligence.

Some of the agencies, entities and commercial companies cited in this report also declined on-the-record interviews about the numerous incidents listed. To put it in context, they, too, are actually “victims” of such illicit practices.

One of the more ominous cases uncovered by the FDLE study was a July 2006 joint federal and state investigation in the Portland, Ore., area in which one stolen pickup truck displaying both National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emblems was seized.

“During the investigation, a second stolen truck, again with FEMA markings and other FEMA documentation, was also recovered,” the report stated. The results of this rather worrisome case have still not been released.

It’s not just law enforcement that has to be worried. “We’ve had a few incidents, too,” as Bill Anderson, Ryder Truck’s director of global security, put it in an interview with HSToday. “Fortunately, they ‘only’ involved cargo theft,” and not terrorism threats, he said.

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Predator Drone ‘UAV’ On Long Island Sparks Terror Investigation

Predator Drone ‘UAV’ On Long Island Sparks Terror Investigation - Investigators said the drone was being designed to carry 600 pounds of explosives. Jonathan Dienst breaks the story for WNBC.com

A predator drone being built by an engineer on Long Island sparked a large counter-terrorism investigation across the New York area, officials tell WNBC.com. Police said they had stumbled upon overnight testing of the drone at a little-used airstrip in Calverton, Long Island.

The investigation began in February of last year, when investigators first learned testing of the drone was underway. Officials said the drone was being designed to carry more than 600 pounds of explosives.

“It could be in the air for 8-10 hours and there’s potential harm if it is carrying a large amount of toxic material,” NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in explaining why his department’s counterterrorism officials were concerned.

Police surveillance video obtained by News 4 New York shows a white van rolling onto the tarmac, a small group of men jumping out and ground testing the unmanned flight vehicle.

Kelly said the engineer building the drone never reported his work to any agency including the Federal Aviation Administration or local authorities. Investigators said concern increased for a time when they learned the man behind the project was an Egyptian national who had entered the U.S. on a Sudanese passport.

“It was such a bizarre set of circumstances,” said New York State Homeland Security Director Michael Balboni. “Of course we watched it as closely as we did anything that was on our radar screen.”

NYPD officials worked with Suffolk County police and the FBI to determine there were no ties to terror. Under questioning, the engineer said he was an inventor hoping to sell this drone model to the U.S. military. NYPD Lieutenant William McGroarty said during the investigation they had other questions.

“What if this individual could not sell to the military?” McGroarty asked. “Would he then turn and sell it to the highest bidder?”

[Soldier4Christ]

Propane Tank Bomb Found Near Power Plant - Lewis Co. Wash.

Police are calling a homemade explosive device built out of a five-gallon propane tank in rural Lewis County a possible act of domestic terrorism.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office says an employee for Transalta Power Plant found the propane tank with green and yellow wires coming out of it along a set of access tracks leading to the plant five miles northeast of Centralia.

The employee picked it up, put it on his flat bed truck and drove it back to his supervisor who then called 911.
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The sheriff’s office says the wires appear to be similar to those used in electrical blasting caps.

A Washington State Patrol bomb squad was called in and the blasting cap was removed. The state patrol said it had been activated, but for some reason, the powder inside had not detonated.

Train cars bring coal to the plant for processing. Transalta managers say they have not received any threats, so who is responsible is a mystery.

A Washington State Patrol bomb squad says the blasting cap was activated, but for some reason, the powder inside did not detonate.

Sheriff Steve Mansfield says besides the obvious damage and deaths that could have occurred had the bomb gone off, there is another thing that concerns him about what happened Wednesday.

[Soldier4Christ]

Tracking Terror and Terrorists Online

For years, al-Qaida and other terror groups have set up shop in the Internet. Those who track them have covertly followed. The companies SITE and IntelCenter have penetrated even deeper into the terror Web than most intelligence agencies.

When al-Qaida was founded, Josh Devon was nine years old. Ben Venzke was 15. The year was 1988, and Devon and Venzke were as uninterested in the terrorist network as its leader, Osama bin Laden, was in the two young Americans.

Now, two decades later, things have changed. Venzke and Devon have both become fascinated in terrorism and have turned that interest into careers. And al-Qaida now takes careful note of their work.

Venzke and Devon are two of the most prominent "terror trackers" worldwide. In the United States, and increasingly in other countries, the term refers to a community of people who spend their days analyzing traces that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations leave behind, especially on the Internet. The two Americans are essentially digital trackers in the age of globalized terrorism.

IntelCenter and SITE Intelgroup are the companies that Venzke and Devon, respectively, have founded. They enjoy a strong reputation within the relatively small community of terrorism experts. Beyond that, though, they are virtually unknown -- but wrongly so.

Bin Laden's Words

The two companies exert tremendous influence, worldwide and around the clock. News agencies, intelligence services and law enforcement organizations from the entire Western world are among Devon's and Venzke's clients. SITE and IntelCenter deliver their product -- information -- via e-mail, telephone or fax, or directly to clients' PDAs or mobile phones.

Almost every statement by Osama bin Laden published on the Internet, to name only one example, is first made public by SITE and IntelCenter. They find the statements in the confusion of Web sites associated with al-Qaida, and within seconds they have sent the first screen shots to their subscribers. It takes the companies only minutes to summarize bin Laden's speeches and within hours, they will have provided full translations, analysis included.

Because hardly any news agencies, newspapers or magazines are in a position to obtain or examine this information themselves, the translations often end up being quoted verbatim in the media. They also land on the desks of intelligence analysts in the United States and Europe, providing them with special delivery, albeit secondhand, of bin Laden's words.

It is a hot day in June on the East Coast of the United States. The location of SITE Intelgroup's headquarters cannot be disclosed. The company is housed in an inconspicuous office building -- there is no company sign.

The interior -- neutral carpeting and light-colored desks, a humming air-conditioning system and a gurgling water cooler -- offers little hint of the company's delicate field of business. Josh Devon, holding a cup of ice tea from Starbucks, invites his visitor into a conference room where the walls are draped with maps. This is where Devon briefs FBI agents. The 29-year-old is wearing a white shirt and sporting three-day growth. When he founded SITE, together with Rita Katz, he was all of 23.

'We Simply Followed'

"We simply followed the jihadists," he says, describing the idea behind SITE. "We went where they went." He means online.

When he and Katz joined forces, Devon was still a student of Middle Eastern Studies, but his business partner was already a legend. Beginning in the late 1990s, Katz almost single-handedly uncovered a number of funding sources of Islamists. Katz, a Jew born in Iraq who speaks Arabic, infiltrated Islamist organizations disguised as a Muslim woman -- and wearing recording equipment. She passed her findings on to the authorities. There were court cases, and some organizations were banned.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

A short time later, Rita Katz and Josh Devon were among the first to notice that al-Qaida and its ilk were creating an online presence. They established SITE, an acronym for "Search for International Terrorist Entities," and began surfing their way in pursuit of radical Islamic terrorist organizations. A US magazine was one of their first subscribers. Government agencies in Switzerland and the families of Sept. 11 victims soon followed. SITE was in business.

Today this former non-profit organization has been turned into a business enterprise. But Devon and Katz see their work as more of an avocation than running a business. They are only offline when commuting between their offices and homes. In a later e-mail interview Katz, who was not at the SITE offices during the June visit, wrote: "I believe what I do is very important. It's a mission." Devon says: Terror tracking "is very addictive, especially when you experience a major success."

And SITE has certainly been successful. There is a reason Katz has a letter of appreciation from FBI Director Robert S. Muller III hanging on the wall in her office. The company's work has also led to arrests abroad, including those of would-be suicide bombers who had left farewell letters in chat rooms that SITE managed to penetrate.

'Could Blow Your Cover'

SITE doesn't like to discuss methods. But even without such information, it is not hard to figure out where its expertise lies. Katz and her employees surf the Net as if they were cyber jihadists. "In a sense it's similiar," she says, alluding to her previous undercover mission, "because in both cases you have to be very careful not to disclose your true identity and not make mistakes that could blow your cover."

In the past few years, al-Qaida volunteers have created a stable online infrastructure. Its mainstays are a handful of Arab-language discussion forums, where supporters of terrorism hold their debates. Most of all, however, the administrators of these sites allow terrorist organizations to post their speeches, videos and claims of responsibility for attacks and other acts of terror.

The forums are password-protected, but this is only the first hurdle. Anyone who wants more information than can be gleaned by reading the posts has to work up through the informal hierarchy. He or she must be able to credibly convey, using suitable language and the right tone, that he is a true jihadist. Gaining the confidence of the key users and, eventually, of the administrators is vital. Only then can one becomes a part of cyber networks with close ties to al-Qaida and other affiliated terrorist organizations, networks that posses the raw footage of terrorist videos, coordinate the flow of funds and know the real e-mail addresses of forum users.

SITE's competitive edge is that it got into the game earlier than government agencies. According to a European intelligence official, SITE has a head start of four to five years.

SITE's work for government agencies is always confidential and, in some cases, based on concrete assignments. Its public products include newsletters about Taliban activities, the situation in Iraq and the latest news from the jihadist chat rooms. Aside from official information from terrorist organizations, SITE also provides accounts of the "atmosphere" in the terrorist community.

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[Soldier4Christ]

SITE is frequently quoted by such papers as the New York Times and Washington Post. More often, though, SITE appears indirectly and without attribution in newspaper stories worldwide, although the company is now seeking less public profile than in recent years.

SITE is likely also the source of some of the reports exchanged by cooperating intelligence services. "In the worst case," criticizes terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College, "it's an echo chamber." In other words, because intelligence services do not reveal their sources to each other, the same report can become its own confirmation.

Of course, every intelligence service worth its salt also pursues cyber jihadists on its own. But SITE and IntelCenter are often faster, and their products are also sent to departments that lack these capabilities.

Ranstorp sees other problems as well. He believes that SITE and companies like it are commercializing intelligence and influencing analysts with their reports. Most of all, however, Ranstorp wishes there were more companies like SITE. "Then there would be more competition."

In fact, SITE has only one serious competitor: Ben Venzke.

He scored one of his most recent scoops in late July, when IntelCenter employees were the first to find a video on the Internet in which the Turkestan Islamic Party threatened to commit acts of terror during the Olympics.

Never Trusted the News

At 9:07 p.m., IntelCenter reported the discovery to its subscribers using the Flash Messaging System. Translated key passages followed at 9:46 p.m., and freeze images at 10:39. At the same time, the first news agency took up the report. The next day, Venzke analyzed the group's credibility and later send out information from an earlier video.

Although Ben Venzke doesn't look quite as young as Josh Devon, he still doesn't look like someone who routinely provides US special units with intelligence material. "This here," says Venzke cheerfully, wearing a casual black shirt, "is my second living room." The waitress in the café at the Four Seasons Hotel recognizes him immediately and brings him a cup of tea.

Venzke was even younger than Devon when he founded IntelCenter 19 years ago: 16, to be exact. He later studied journalism in college and eventually wrote for the Boston Globe and Jane's Intelligence Review.

"I never trusted the news to give the full picture," says Venzke. He says that he wanted to understand "how things really worked."

His motto goes something like this: "In order for a society to function, people have to be able to know they are safe. Life should be about film and music, not about worrying about buildings collapsing."

IntelCenter has a lot in common with SITE, but there are also some important differences. Both are capable of finding every important al-Qaida communiqué, sometimes even before it is published. Both can quickly send out relatively accurate translations of terrorist material, including videos, speeches and claims or responsibility. Both work for similar clients.

But IntelCenter, which also keeps its location a secret, provides more customized preliminary work for the intelligence services and the military -- at least based on what we are able to see and hear.

Involved in almost every Hostage Crisis

Venzke's catalog illustrates this approach. It contains services that he offers to government agencies only, such as the 24/7 "Hostage/Kidnapping Profiling and Incident Monitor" -- at a cost running up to more than $500,000 (€323,000) a year. According to Venzke, IntelCenter is involved in almost every hostage crisis.

IntelCenter seems to act more like a subcontractor to government agencies than SITE. "Much of what we do, they could probably do themselves, but we often have more experience in our specialty areas and can do it faster and cheaper," says Venzke. He explains that he invested heavily in infrastructure to meet the requirements of the intelligence community, including, for example, redundant power, cooling and other systems. Some clients want raw data, while others prefer finished analyses. IntelCenter offers both and can format the information using the standard "Analyst's Notebook" software.

Venzke prides himself on his professionalism. There is gossip about how Rita Katz once took it upon herself to call foreign officials, because she was convinced that somebody was planning something and US officials were unwilling to help her. Sometimes she acts as a private terrorist hunter, sometimes as an expert and sometimes as a business partner. Venzke, for his part, would never talk to strangers about this sort of potentially critical information.

Perhaps for this reason, Venzke has little praise for SITE. "What SITE does, is not even remotely in our class." Rita Katz disagrees: "Our information is of the highest quality and of unparalleled accuracy." She declined to comment on the work of others.

The Secret, Hidden Part

The competition between these two companies is probably healthy. Criticism exposes more of what SITE and IntelCenter do, but not, of course, the secret, hidden part. In the end, both companies earn more working for government agencies and businesses than for the media.

Still, compared to other private-sector companies that are contractors with the CIA, the Pentagon and the like, SITE and IntelCenter are transparent, tiny and laughably insignificant. "I've never thought about our influence," says Josh Devon with complete innocence. "We try to do the best job we can."

Nevertheless, both companies are part of an information oligarchy that hardly anyone in the Western hemisphere can monitor or assess. And the conspiracy theories pontificating that SITE and IntelCenter shoot the bin Laden videos themselves will continue to exist in the future.

And Katz, Venzke and Devon will continue to see the humor in such theories: Yep, this is Mossad Headquarters. Exactly!

But then something beeps, or a pager starts humming to indicate that a jihadist is sending a message. And they will keep on digging through information. And the hunt will begin all over again.

[Soldier4Christ]

Internet Detectives. What a concept. Who would think it was possible?