Terrorist Threat

[Petronas]

Tightening al-Qaeda's European grip
Feb 19, 2005

RABAT - When he was arrested in Dubai in July 2001, Djamel Beghal, a French Algerian already known to French services, confessed he had been ordered by Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to set up a terrorist cell to strike US interests in France. He admitted he had attended meetings in Afghanistan's training camps in preparation to blow up the US Embassy in Paris. But when he was later extradited to France, Beghal denied any involvement in terrorist activities. During his trial in Paris, Beghal delivered a detailed testimony accusing Emirates interrogators of having psychologically and physically tortured him to accept an already established scenario. "This attack never existed, neither in my imagination, nor in reality," said Beghal.

Beghal, who is being judged with five co-defendants, is accused of recruiting terrorists and leading a terrorist cell in France with ramifications throughout Western Europe in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. Last week, the prosecution requested a 10-year prison sentence against Beghal, 39, and his suspected accomplice Kamel Daoudi, 30, the legal maximum for the "association of bandits in connection with a terrorist enterprise". The verdict is expected on March 15.

Beghal's arrest subsequently led to the dismantlement of the so-called "Beghal network" in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, where he had lived until 1997, before leaving for the United Kingdom - where he met the influential Salafist preacher Abu Qatada - and later Germany and Pakistan. The kamikaze in the alleged planned attack would have been Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, a former soccer player. Trabelsi was arrested in Belgium in September 2001, two days after the September 11 attacks, and sentenced to 10 years in jail two years later. He admitted he was preparing a terrorist attack, but said his target was a military base in Belgium.

Beghal's main co-defendant Kamel Daoudi, a computer scientist suspected of taking care of the logistics, was arrested in England and extradited to France. Last June, four members of the network were sentenced in the Netherlands, including French convert Jerome Courtailler. Like Zakarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid, among others, Beghal attended the now famous Finsbury Park mosque led by Abu Hamza al-Masri. Several well-known Islamic radicals - among whom many have been involved in terrorism plots - found sanctuary in Great Britain, a country labelled "soft" on religious extremism.

From the early 1990s, North African militants - mainly immigrants who failed to fully integrate into their host country and turned to radical Islam, and a few converts - established sleeper cells in several European countries. At that time the ongoing Algerian civil war was partly fought from Europe, from the French neighborhoods to London, where Islamic leaders organized their support for armed groups in their war against the Algerian state. According to experts, Algerian-linked terrorist groups were actually prominent until 2001. "They were fierce, they had grand schemes [they hijacked an Air France airbus leaving for Paris in 1994]," says Evan Kohlmann, author of al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe.

Most al-Qaeda cells discovered in Europe have links to the Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat, known by its acronym GSPC, an organization suspected in several terrorist plots in Europe and the United States. A splinter group of the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA), GSPC was created under the initiative of bin Laden by GIA emir Hassan Hattab in 1998. A year earlier, the GIA had started losing foreign support due to its massive slaughter of Algerian civilians. Bin Laden, who had previously supported the GIA, financed this new Salafist organization which would distinguish itself from the then discredited GIA in order to continue to fight the "jihad" in Algeria.

The GSPC is accused of planning attacks during the soccer World Cup held in Paris in 1998 and against the Strasbourg Christmas market and cathedral in 2000. "GSPC remains a grave threat in Europe. There are networks linked to al-Qaeda and GSPC in England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain ... This network of North Africans will continue to be a threat to international security in the short and long term," explains researcher Jonathan Schanzer.

According to Kohlmann, the Algerian branch is "still there but not as influential" today. More recent organizations like the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), "the children of the GIA and GSPC", learned from their predecessors' mistakes and are now taking the lead of the terrorist network in the region. The GICM was involved in the terrorist attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 and Madrid in March 2004.

But although it has been weakened due to heavy losses in its ranks, the GSPC continues to be a nightmare for Algerian security services. On January 3, 18 soldiers and militiamen were killed in an ambush set up by the GSPC in the area of Biskra. Two policemen were later killed and one civilian was injured when suspected GSPC militants attacked a foot patrol in Tizi Ghenif, 100 kilometers southeast of Algiers. While vowing to maintain efforts to fight the GSPC, Algerian authorities have publicly expressed satisfaction at the near eradication of the GIA. With the killing last July of former GIA chief Rachid Oukali - alias Abou Tourab - publicly announced, as well as the death last December of its last chief Younes - alias Lyes - they proudly claimed only "about 30" GIA fighters were still at large.

The GIA, responsible for the blind murder of civilians, the targeted killings of intellectuals and the Paris metro bombings in 1995, had greatly declined in recent years. An amnesty launched in 1999 by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, followed by hundreds of fighters, divided the group, already torn by internal power struggles. Lately, amid a heated debate surrounding an expansion of the amnesty, Algerian leaders promised the same fate to the GSPC, which has lost several members in military operations in recent months. But last Sunday, the GSPC announced the exclusion of its founder Hattab, officially for accepting the amnesty proposal.

The group is now part of the global al-Qaeda nebula. Recently, it re-expressed its ties to al-Qaeda by vowing allegiance to al-Zarqawi. In a statement on January 24, GSPC leader Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud expressed his congratulations to al-Zarqawi in response to the latter's message to international al-Qaeda "affiliate" organizations, among which the GSPC was included. Despite its weakening presence at home, the group may indeed be poised to pursue a different path on both shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

"The European network of the GSPC is sufficiently distinct and separate from its Algerian counterpart that it can survive independently," explains Kohlmann. "I think it is significant that Hassan Hattab has surrendered [apparently] because he was not in favor of using international terrorism as a prime instrument of policy. Those who have succeeded him in the GSPC harbor no such reservations. You might say that Hattab's downfall may ironically serve to remove a previous political roadblock to GSPC-inspired terrorist attacks in Europe."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB19Aa02.html

[Petronas]

Scientists enlist cosmic rays to fight terrorism
Tuesday, February 22, 2005

WASHINGTON: Cosmic ray detectors, already used to look into the great Cheops pyramid in Egypt, could be enlisted to peer into cargo holds in a bid to prevent possible terror attacks, scientists said. The detectors read muon particles, which are more powerful than gamma or so-called X-rays. They would peek into the millions of shipping containers entering the United States by air, ship and land, to detect even nuclear materials wrapped in lead, physicist Chris Morris of Los Alamos National Laboratory told a conference this weekend of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“Existing radiographic methods are inefficient for detecting shielded nuclear materials and present radiation hazards to inspectors and vehicle passengers,” Morris said. And, he said, the muon rays are already around, and represent no additional risk to anyone. The possibility of a nuclear or radiological “dirty bomb” has haunted US authorities since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. However, just five percent of the millions of containers entering the country can be examined with existing equipment. “We believe we’ve worked through all of the major obstacles to building a prototype system for a range of security scenarios,” said Larry Schultz, also of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a member of the team with physicist Rick Chartrand at Los Alamos.

Unlike X-rays in the dentist’s office, which emanate from one point, muons from space hit the Earth from all angles. So the challenge for any detection system is to improve computer algorithms to allow tomographic reconstruction, the scientists said. Their device would measure the muon’s path and energy as it comes in, and as it comes out the other side, of an object, such as a container. Comparing how much energy it loses and how much it diverged from a straight line as it passed through allows a computer to sketch the object inside, said Kanetada Nagamine, of KEK Muon Science Laboratory in Japan. Because the muon is so powerful, it can penetrate plutonium, uranium and lead, as well as steel and aluminum. That means a muon machine could sniff out a bomb, nuclear materials or a lead casing meant to block other, lesser X-rays, Schultz said.

The margin of error, including triggering false positives or missing the real thing, is less than three percent - something that Chartrand said will improve with time. A million-dollar muon detector could scan a truck in 20 seconds or a shipping container in a minute, he said. Muon detectors are already used in Japan to view the innards of volcanos in hopes of predicting their eruptions. Nagamine, a geophysicist, told reporters that he had examined several volcanos with the equipment, and has measured the amount of lava in the crater of one.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-2-2005_pg4_7

[Petronas]

Interpol sounds bio-terror alarm
Wednesday, 23 February, 2005, 01:44 GMT

The world is ill prepared for the looming threat of a biological terror attack, the head of Interpol has said. Ronald Noble told the BBC the danger of an al-Qaeda attack had not diminished since the 9/11 strikes on the US. The head of the global police body also denied governments had played up the risks for political gain. "I don't think it is the sounding of false alarms," Mr Noble said, citing recent evidence. "I think the alarm is real and it is continuing to ring."

Recent attacks around the world; indications that al-Qaeda plans to use biological and chemical weapons; and its statements claiming "the right to kill up to 4 million people" are "enough evidence for me to be concerned", Mr Noble said. In an exclusive interview with the BBC's Ten O'Clock News, he warned that the potential cost of a biological terror attack left no room for complacency. "When you talk about bio-terrorism, that's one crime we can't try to solve after it happens because the harm will be too great. How could we ever forgive ourselves if millions or hundreds... or tens of thousands of people were killed simply because our priorities did not include bio-terrorism?"

Around 400 police officers and health officials from around the world are going to the French city of Lyons next month to attend a bio-terrorism conference - the biggest ever organised by Interpol. Mr Noble acknowledged that governments and security agencies were better organised against the threat than ever before - but "none of us can let our guards down and assume that the problem has been addressed".

Were al-Qaeda to launch a "spectacular biological attack which could cause contagious disease to be spread, no entity in the world is prepared for it", he said. "Not the US, not Europe, not Asia, not Africa." Interpol's bio-terrorism conference, due to start on 1 March, will seek to encourage intelligence agencies and police forces to share information and co-operate more closely against the biological terrorism threat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4289485.stm

[Petronas]

‘Theft of Russian nuclear material has occurred’
Thursday, February 24, 2005

WASHINGTON: US intelligence agencies have concluded that theft of radioactive materials from Russia’s nuclear complex “has occurred” and the country’s atomic power plants remain vulnerable to terrorist attack, according to a new intelligence report obtained late Tuesday. The unpublished analysis by the National Intelligence Council, a CIA-based think tank that serves the entire US intelligence community, came as US President George W Bush prepared for a potentially contentious meeting Thursday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The two leaders are expected to discuss in Bratislava what is seen here as flaws in the Russian democratic process as well as non-proliferation issues, including the security of Moscow’s nuclear stockpile. Russian officials have repeatedly denied terrorist groups could get access to either Russian nuclear weapons or weapons-grade materials. But in its report to Congress, an unclassified version of which was obtained by AFP, the council cast doubt on these assurances. “We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, and we are concerned about the total amount of material that could have been diverted or stolen in the last 13 years,” the report said.

The Russian nuclear arsenal is estimated to currently include about 4,000 warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. But Moscow also retains several thousand non-strategic nuclear warheads in storage, plus a network of production and research facilities dealing with fissile substances, according to US officials. The US intelligence community, according to the report, retains high confidence in safeguards built around battle-ready weapons. But, said the council, “we continue to be concerned about vulnerabilities to an insider who attempts unauthorized actions as well as potential terrorist attacks.” Suspected terrorists have already shown their interest in the Russian nuclear arsenal, according to the report.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_24-2-2005_pg4_5

[Petronas]

Government unsure how many shoulder-fired missiles are missing
:35 p.m. February 24, 2005

WASHINGTON – It has been known for years that thousands of light and lethal shoulder-fired missiles are in black-market circulation. What is not known is exactly who has them and whether many have fallen into the hands of terrorists or criminals. A worrisome puzzle, it explains why the United States and Russia signed an agreement Thursday to cooperate in destroying surplus Soviet-era SA-7s and other portable anti-aircraft missiles. The smallest of these are durable, relatively cheap and easy to smuggle.

The United States also has understandings with several other countries, including Nicaragua, Bosnia, Cambodia and Liberia, for Washington to provide technical assistance or money to destroy anti-aircraft missiles. The State Department estimates that about 1 million shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles have been produced worldwide since the 1950s. The number believed to be in the hands of "nonstate actors," such as terrorist groups, is "in the thousands," the department says.

"What's driving this is concern about the threat to commercial aviation," said Wade Boese, research director at the private Arms Control Association. A single successful missile attack on a passenger plane could paralyze the airline industry, at enormous economic loss, he said. There has been only one known attempt against a commercial airliner outside of a war zone. In November 2002, two surface-to-air missiles barely missed an Israeli charter airliner taking off from the airport in Mombasa, Kenya, with tourists returning to Israel. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network claimed responsibility for the attempt.

The U.S.-Russian agreement signed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov calls for sharing information about exports of these missiles to third countries. Of note, Boese said, is the absence of a commitment by either Washington or Moscow to halt the exports. The United States began selling its Stinger shoulder-fired missile to foreign countries in 1982. The CIA secretly transferred an estimated 2,000 to Afghanistan mujahedeen rebels in the mid-1980s, and they were used to down hundreds of Soviet helicopters and transport aircraft.

When the war against the Soviets ended in 1989, the CIA began offering to buy back the Stingers for as much as $150,000 apiece. In his book "Ghost Wars," author Steve Coll wrote that as recently as 1996 the CIA estimated there were about 600 Stingers still unaccounted for in Afghanistan. There also are an unknown number of SA-7 and other types of shoulder-fired missiles in the hands of insurgents in Iraq.

A study published last year by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the U.S. government's records on exports of shoulder-fired missiles are "neither complete nor reliable." The GAO said the Army and the office within the Pentagon that manages arms transfers have conflicted figures on missile exports. One says 7,551 Stingers have been sold abroad since 1982 and the other puts the figure at 8,331. One says Egypt bought 89; the other says Egypt bought none. The biggest buyer over the period was Taiwan, with more than 2,200, followed by Denmark with 1,140; Japan with between 871 and 1,025, and Italy with as many as 885.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20050224-1435-missilethreat.html

[Petronas]

U.S. prepares for germ attack
Posted: February 23, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

The world's richest governments are looking to create an international germ-warfare crisis center and vaccine bank as "a matter of top priority." According to Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor, the Group of Seven industrialized countries, also known as the G7, has agreed to locate the center in Canada's capital city of Ottawa, and will work in tandem with the United Nations' World Health Organization. The goal is to battle the threat of mass infections which could claim the lives of millions, whether sparked intentionally by terrorists or occurring naturally.

Joining the effort to defuse the threat of bio-terror attacks are some of the world's most advanced germ-warfare establishments originally built by the Soviets in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. "The Soviets are believed to have utilized as many as 50 biological agents in their weapons program, genetically engineering some of them to be resistant to antibiotics," reports Jane's. "Soviet Cold War secrets are now being used in the development of defenses against biological weapons of mass destruction."

Still, said U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson, "despite our best efforts, we must concede that the terrorists can still hit any of us at any time." Thompson's comments were echoed by other foreign leaders. "A biological terror attack is not a virtual threat. It is a real threat," said Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French minister of health. British Health Secretary John Reid added, "The price of security is eternal vigilance, intelligence, surveillance, awareness and preparations to respond to such attacks."

The nations officially involved in the program not only include the G7 (the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan), but also Mexico and the European Union as a whole. Russia is reportedly not interested, "perhaps because of the vast Cold War germ-warfare facilities and expertise that it has inherited from the Soviets," according to Jane's. On Jan. 26, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security decided to move forward with its long proposed $130 million National Bio-defense Analysis and Countermeasures Center in Maryland to handle immediate and future germ-warfare threats.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42999

[SmokedYourDSM]

Taken from TB2K.... this is serious because it is indeed true and has been verified that something DID set off the detectors... There are few possibilities of what could have set it off.. ill give ya one guess to what it potentially could be.

[ALERT!]Gamma Radiation Alert--O.C.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This will be quick...this is all I know. We were just contacted by Border Patrol checkpoint south of San Onofre with a "Gamma Radiation Alert"--we're guessing something just went through the checkpoint that set off their gamma radiation sensors. I've never had this alert before here at the Fire Department. As soon as I know anything else I will share. I am very busy now with calls, so as soon as I can get back, I'll let you all know. PLEASE keep your eyes open to media. I do not have access to TV right now.
__________________

[Petronas]

San Onofre has a nuclear power plant, I believe. One of the three units is in the process of being decommissioned.

[Casey]

Terrorist Threat Archive
http://www.afghanistanwar.com/showthread.php?t=86

[MohammedAli]

Shoulder-fired missiles that nobody has ever used. Mini nukes of which not even one has ever been produced as evidence. Germ warfare weapons (a la WMDs in Iraq infamy). Chemical weapons in the hands of terrorists? Show us the evidence, even one iota of evidence. It has never been produced.

What we have seen are the moms and dads, the sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins of all the hundreds of thousands of children and babies murdered by US government / military policies in the middle east, Africa, and elsewhere. We see them coming at us in bomb-laden cars and commandeered, fuel-laden aircraft in revenge against the murderous, oil seeking western powers of lies, deceptions, and slaughter of innocents. We see them doing exactly what any normal human being would choose to do whose cities and families are being murdered en mass. And all you no-goods can do is to vilify them.

I do not blame those people for wanting to kill you, and I would kill you too and give my life to do it under those circumstances. As a matter of fact, back in the early 1970s I was putting together just such an airplane attack against government in Florida, but obviously I did not follow through with it.

I say fuck you Amerikkkans who need to bolster you views of reality with lies and deceptions. If you need to use lies to back your arguments and views, then there is something very wrong with your views.

As any society would do, they have raised up leaders and friends to take the fight to their enemies---and you are the enemy. A just God has raised up friends to fight their battles for them. If I were you Amerikans and the lackey-led coalition members invading Iraq, I would refuse to follow orders and get the hell out of those people's territories. LEAVE THEM ALONE.

[Casey]

Hey John,

Rant & Rave is the place to really tell us how you feel. Get as mad as you want.

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=2

[Scooter]

I'm guessing he either didn't read that user agreement on sign up...or he just doesn't give a damn. Too bad, really...this isn't the only place he's venting his spleen.

[Casey]

I'm guessing he either didn't read that user agreement on sign up...or he just doesn't give a damn. Too bad, really...this isn't the only place he's venting his spleen.
Yes, he wants to be heard. Just Google his name. He's all over the Internet.

[Petronas]

Annan: Nuclear terror a real risk
Thursday, 10 March, 2005, 15:51 GMT

Terrorists must be denied the means to carry out a devastating nuclear attack, the UN secretary general has told an anti-terror summit in Madrid. Kofi Annan was setting out a global strategy to fight terrorism which calls for preventive and deterrent measures - without sacrificing human rights. Mr Annan said the time had come to outlaw terrorism in all its forms. The summit comes nearly a year after the 11 March bomb attacks on Madrid trains which left 191 dead. About 400 international experts and academics have spent three days discussing ways to combat terrorism while maintaining democracy.

Mr Annan said priorities included making it difficult for terrorists to travel, receive financial support and obtain nuclear material. He urged UN member states to adopt the international convention on nuclear terrorism. "Nuclear terrorism is still often treated as science fiction - I wish it were. "But unfortunately we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological know-how, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to inflict catastrophic casualties," he said. "Were such an attack to occur, it would not only cause widespread death and destruction, but would stagger the world economy and thrust tens of millions of people into dire poverty," he said. "That such an attack has not yet happened is no excuse for complacency. Rather, it gives us a last chance to take effective preventive action."

He set out the five-point strategy as the need to:

- dissuade disaffected groups from choosing terrorism as a tactic to achieve their goals,

- deny terrorists the means to carry out their attacks,

- deter states from supporting terrorists,

- develop state capacity to prevent terrorism,

- defend human rights in the struggle against terrorism.

"It should be clearly stated, by all possible moral and political authorities, that terrorism is unacceptable under any circumstances and in any culture," Mr Annan added. Spanish King Juan Carlos also addressed the summit on Thursday.

Among the tasks for delegates at earlier sessions of the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security, was to decide on a universally acceptable definition of terrorism. The conference was organised by the Club of Madrid - a group of more than 40 former heads of state. The experts are due to issue a Madrid Agenda, with guidelines on how to tackle the terror threat while preserving democratic values and traditions. Organisers planned the conference to coincide with the anniversary of the Madrid attacks to "honour the courageous people of Madrid who have suffered immeasurable grief since the 11 March attacks and set out a way forward".

Twenty-two people have been jailed so far in connection with the bombings. The attack was claimed by a Moroccan cell with links to al-Qaeda, and most of the arrested are Moroccan citizens. On Friday, the final day of the event, a minute's silence will be observed to mark the anniversary of the attack, which injured 1,900 people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4336713.stm

[Casey]

Pakistani, Afghan officials, top U.S. general skeptical of al-Qaeda's ability to launch new attacks with WMD

By Paul Haven
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10:42 a.m. March 13, 2005

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Senior Bush administration officials have warned in recent weeks that al-Qaeda is regrouping for another massive attack, its agents bent on acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in a nightmare scenario that could dwarf the horror of Sept. 11.

But in Pakistan and Afghanistan – where Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy are believed to be hiding – intelligence agents, politicians and a top U.S. general paint a different picture.

They say a relentless military crackdown, the arrests last summer of several men allegedly involved in plans to launch attacks on U.S. financial institutions, and the killing in September of a top Pakistani al-Qaeda suspect wanted in a number of attacks – including the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and two failed assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf – have effectively decapitated al-Qaeda.

Pakistani intelligence agents told The Associated Press that it has been months since they picked up any "chatter" from suspected al-Qaeda men, and longer still since they received any specific intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden or any plans to launch a specific attack

They say the trail of the world's most wanted man – long-since gone cold – has turned icier than the frigid winter snows that blanket the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the terror mastermind is considered most likely to be hiding.

Pakistani officials have been quick to hail the long silence as a signal that it has already dismantled bin Laden's network, at least in this part of the world.

"We have broken the back of al-Qaeda," Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said last month in a speech in Peshawar, the capital of the frontier province on the border with Afghanistan. Musharraf added last week that his government had "eliminated the terrorist centers" in the Waziristan tribal region and elsewhere.

"We have broken their communication system. We have destroyed their sanctuaries," the president told reporters. "They are not in a position to move in vehicles. They are unable to contact their people. They are on the run."

A senior official in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency told AP he couldn't remember the last time the agency got a strong lead on top-level al-Qaeda fighters.

"Last year, we frequently heard Arabs on radios talking about their hatred for (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and Musharraf for supporting Americans, and we were able to trace al-Qaeda hideouts in South Waziristan," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Lately, such conversations have decreased."

Pakistan's optimism seems to be backed by senior U.S. military officials in the region.

Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, said he had seen nothing to indicate that al-Qaeda was attempting to get its hands on nuclear or biological weapons.

There is "no evidence that they're trying to acquire a terrorist weapon of that type and, frankly, I don't believe that they are regrouping," he told AP in a Feb. 25 interview.

"I think the pressure on them here, the pressure on them in Pakistan, the pressure on them in Iraq, is pretty great and it makes very difficult for them to operate," Olson added.

The skeptical assessments from officials here fly in the face of warnings out of Washington, where President Bush is pushing Congress to approve a $419 billion defense budget for 2006.

The Homeland Security Department late last month issued a classified bulletin to officials that bin Laden was enlisting his top operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to plan potential attacks on the United States.

There have also long been fears – though no evidence to date – that rogue Pakistani nuclear scientists might have provided bin Laden's men with the know-how to build a crude atomic device or dirty bomb.

Newly installed CIA director Porter Goss and other senior American intelligence and military officials warned last month that terrorists are preparing for new strikes.

"It may be only a matter of time before al-Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons," Goss said at the Senate Intelligence Committee's annual hearing on threats, urging approval of the defense budget.

But Sherpao scoffed at such warnings.

"That is simply out of the question," he said of al-Qaeda's ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, adding that any al-Qaeda leader who has escaped arrest was "more worried about their own safety."

"How can such people launch attacks with nuclear or chemical weapons?" he asked.

Maj. Gen. Olson, who leaves Afghanistan next month to return to the 25th Infantry Division back in Hawaii, said al-Qaeda leaders were unable to use modern communications for fear of detection and were reduced to "16th century" techniques such as couriers. He said he wasn't discouraged by the success bin Laden and his deputy have had in releasing audio and videotapes filled with threats during the past few months.

"They can deliver all the videotapes they want, as long as they're not delivering weapons that can kill large numbers of people and I am convinced that their ability to coordinate large attacks like that is severely disrupted right now because of the pressure we have on them," he said.


Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, Pakistan, Zarar Khan in Karachi and Stephen Graham in Orgun, Afghanistan contributed to this report.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20050313-1042-al-qaida-wmdthreat.html

[Petronas]

Feds Catalogue Possible Terror Attacks
Mar 16, 2005 8:34 am US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (AP) The agency charged with protecting homeland security developed an elaborate, confidential report to alert states to a host of terror-strike scenarios, but the document was inadvertently posted on several states’ public Web sites before being removed. The department has been working for a year on a National Planning Scenarios plan that outlines a number of plausible attacks -- including by nerve gas, anthrax, pneumonic plague and truck bomb.

The report, still confidential, was requested by a presidential directive in December 2003 and will be made public in upcoming months, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Tuesday. It was inadvertently posted on Internet sites of several states, including Hawaii, before it was taken down, Roehrkasse said. The other states were not immediately identified.

Homeland Security “has developed a number of scenarios that will aid federal, state and local homeland security officials in developing plans to become more prepared to prevent and respond to an act of terrorism, should it occur,” Roehrkasse said. The plan also “will help us better target our efforts and resources in improving the nation’s preparedness,” he said. Officials said there was no credible indication that such specific attacks were being planned. The draft plan was first reported Tuesday night on the Internet site of The New York Times.

The report does not hypothesize where such attacks would take place, Roehrkasse said. “The overall goal is to increase the overall baseline preparedness of all states and cities throughout the country,” he said. Besides identifying possible types of attacks, Roehrkasse said the report also estimates how many deaths and amount of economic damage the attacks would cause.

According to the Times, they include:

Blowing up a chlorine tank, killing 17,500 people and injuring more than 100,000.

Spreading pneumonic plague in the bathrooms of an airport, sports arena and train station, killing 2,500 and sickening 8,000 worldwide.

Infecting cattle with foot and mouth disease in several places, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

But a nuclear bomb, an exploding liquid chlorine tank or a widespread and prolonged aerosol anthrax spray ranked among the most devastating attacks outlined in the report, Roehrkasse said.

An estimated 350,000 people could be exposed to an anthrax attack by terrorists spraying the biological weapon from a truck driving through five cities over two weeks, according to the report. An estimated 13,200 people could die.

The report also includes scenarios of natural disasters to hit major cities, including a 7.2 magnitude earthquake and a Category 5 hurricane.

http://wcbs880.com/terror/terror_story_075083553.html

[Petronas]

Transnational Threats Update
April 2005
Vol. 3, Issue 6

In this issue:

- Western Europe Faces High Risk of Terrorism
- Al Qaeda in Kosovo
- Guantanamo Detainees Reportedly Give Best Intelligence on Al Qaeda
- Arab Bank Linked to Terrorism Funding
- Australia's Trouble with Russian Organized Crime
- EU Ministers Boost Anticrime Efforts
- Arab Anti-Money Laundering Efforts Stepped Up
- Swiss Report Decrease in Money Laundering but Rise in Terror Funding
- Russia's Money-Laundering Problem Astronomic
- Major European Drug-Trafficking Gang Dismantled
- Growing Rate of Human Trafficking Worldwide

http://www.csis.org/TNT/ttu/

6 pages of worthwhile reading every month...

[Petronas]

How U.S. could be beat
June 19, 2005

Joining Sen. John Kyl, who warned of how an electromagnetic pulse attack threatens U.S. survival, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, chairman of the House Projection Forces Subcommittee, says an EMP attack – even by an underfunded, unsophisticated terrorist group – has the potential to cripple U.S. society. "Today we are very much concerned ... about asymmetric weapons," said Bartlett. "We are a big, powerful country. Nobody can contend with us shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face. So all of our potential adversaries are looking for what we refer to as asymmetric weapons. That is a weapon that overcomes our superior capabilities. There is no asymmetric weapon that has anywhere near the potential of EMP."

EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface. The explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field. "These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously, moreover, at the speed of light," said Dr. Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission appo9inted by Congress to study the threat. "For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico."

The commission, in its work over a period of several years, found that EMP is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold American society seriously at risk and that might also result in the defeat of U.S. military forces. "The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most specifically including our own, depend vitally," Wood said. "Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the American nation."

The commission concluded in its report to Congress earlier this year: "EMP is one of a small number of threats that may hold at risk the continued existence of today's U.S. civil society.''

"The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is greater than during the Cold War," said Bartlett. "We may look back with some fondness on the Cold War. We then had only one potential adversary. We knew him quite well." Bartlett pointed out that Iran has tested launching of a Scud missile from a surface vessel, "a launch mode that could support a national or transnational EMP attack against the United States."

"Iran has conducted tests with its Shahab-3 missile that have been described as failures by the Western media because the missiles did not complete their ballistic trajectories, but were deliberately exploded at high altitude," he said. "This, of course, would be exactly what you would want to do if you were going to use an EMP weapon. Iran described these tests as successful. We said they were a failure because they blew up in flight. They described them as successful. Of course, they would be, if Iran's intent was practicing for an EMP attack."...

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006714.php

[Petronas]

Saudi Expert: Al-Qaida Plans 'Catastrophic' Attack
Thursday, June 16, 2005 1:39 p.m. EDT

Al-Qaida is far from being neutralized and is planning its next "catastrophic" attack, according to a top expert on the terrorist organization. Dr. Saad al-Faqih, who heads the Saudi opposition group Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, was asked in an interview in London if there is any credence to reports of al-Qaida's "demise." His response was chilling:

"Nobody knows how al-Qaida really works. Consider, for instance, that the time lapse between the Africa embassy bombings and 9/11 was more than three years. Therefore the fact that no major attack has taken place since 9/11 is not altogether very surprising. Al-Qaida is an extremely resilient organization and it will most likely surprise everybody by how, when and where it executes its next catastrophic attack."

Asked when a weapons of mass destruction attack is likely to take place, Dr. al-Faqih said: "It could happen at any time."

The al-Qaida expert told interviewer Mahan Abedin – an editor with the Jamestown Foundation's publication Terrorism Monitor - that the terrorist organization's operations in Saudi Arabia have been severely damaged by government offensives. "But of course al-Qaida is an ideology and its potency cannot be reduced to the number of men in its ranks," he cautioned. "Moreover, the invasion and occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaida a huge boost and the Saudi government has indirectly admitted that at least 2,500 Saudis are fighting in Iraq."

Al-Faqih said that for the first time, the Saudi government has begun to talk about the problem of Saudis returning to the kingdom after fighting against the Americans in Iraq. "A classified interior ministry report claims that at least 200 have returned and are currently plotting attacks inside the Kingdom. An attack on the royals will likely be carried out by returnees from Iraq."

But al-Faqih acknowledged that al-Qaida's activities in Saudi Arabia have turned many Saudis against the organization. "Al-Qaida has lost ground militarily, politically and ideologically. Attacking civilians proved to be a major blunder and it remains to be seen whether they can fully recover from it. Also, by attacking the security forces they lost a lot of sympathy inside these organizations." The feeling in Saudi society today is no longer particularly sympathetic toward al-Qaida, according to al-Faqih. "The situation was very different two or three years ago, when ordinary people were willing to give the jihadis shelter and other forms of support."

Al-Faqih also predicted that 'al-Qaida in Iraq' leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would likely be killed soon – and said that ordinary Saudis view their government's support for the occupation of Iraq as "treason.”

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/6/16/134231.shtml

[Petronas]

Risk of WMD attack on the rise
Thursday, June 23, 2005

WASHINGTON: A new survey released here this week says the possibility of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack against a city or other target somewhere in the world is real and increasing over time.

The survey, in which a large number of experts participated, was made by Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The majority of those surveyed said that even within the short time frame of the next five years, the risks of a WMD attack were judged to be substantial. The median estimate of the risk of a nuclear attack during the next five years was 10 percent. The average estimate was 16.4 percent. When the time-frame was extended to 10 years, the median response doubled to 20 percent and the average response almost doubled to 29.2 percent. The estimates of the risks of a biological or chemical attack during the same time periods were each judged to be comparable to or slightly higher than the risk of a nuclear attack.

According to Sen Lugar’s report, the group saw the risk of a radiological attack as significantly higher. The median and average estimates of risk were 25 percent and 27.1 percent respectively over the next five years. Over 10 years, both the median and the average estimate of risk jumped to 40 percent. The median estimate of the probability of a radiological attack over 10 years was twice as high as the estimate for a nuclear or biological attack during the same period. “If one compounds these answers, the odds of some type of WMD attack occurring during the next decade are extremely high.

The report said, “Because the risks of each individual type of WMD attack are not statistically independent, one cannot calculate the risk of a WMD attack by just compounding through mathematical formula the median or average percentages for a nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological attack. But the survey responses suggest that the estimated combined risk of a WMD attack over five years is as high as 50 percent. Over 10 years this risk expands to as much as 70 percent.”

Experts were broadly agreed that nuclear weapons will proliferate to new countries in the coming years. Estimates of how many countries would be added to the nuclear club over the next five and 10 years were consistent. Large majorities judged that one to two new nuclear nations would be added during the next five years and that two to five would be added during the next 10 years.

Answers diverged somewhat when the group was asked to estimate how many new nuclear states would emerge over 20 years, but almost three-quarters estimated a number between four and 10. There was strong, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist than by a government in the next 10 years. The group of experts was split 45 percent to 55 percent on whether terrorists were more likely to obtain an intact working nuclear weapon or manufacture one after obtaining weapons grade nuclear material.

A majority of the group designated a black market purchase as the most likely method by which terrorists could obtain nuclear weapons or fissile material. Almost four-fifths of the experts surveyed said that their country was not spending enough on nonproliferation objectives. None of the experts believed that their country was spending too much on non-proliferation. More than half of the experts recommended an increase of 50 percent or more in their nation’s non-proliferation budget. The majority of experts said the top non-proliferation priority should be to secure and dismantle weapons and materials of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. The second most frequently listed ‘top goal’ was containing the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea. The experts had a number of different ideas about which area of non-proliferation work was most in need of more attention. The most commonly cited area, by about 10 per cent of respondents, was the need to expand efforts to prevent terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons. Others said we should do more to prevent weapons scientists from selling their knowledge, to shut down black market networks, or to secure ports and shipping.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_23-6-2005_pg4_1

[al-Canine]

FBI: No Specific Terror Threat for July 4

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The FBI says there is no specific, credible threat of a terror attack timed to the Independence Day holiday but is warning law enforcement to remain vigilant because the celebrations are inviting targets.

FBI antiterrorism command posts in several cities, including Washington and Philadelphia, will be manned around-the-clock over the holiday weekend because of special events. The bureau has taken that precaution in Washington and Philadelphia every July 4 since the Sept. 11 attacks.

An intelligence assessment that was distributed this week to FBI offices nationwide said that while there is no specific threat, large gatherings pose a target for international and domestic terrorists, according to a law enforcement official who read it. The official asked not to be named because the FBI does not typically make the intelligence document public.

The muted assessment is in keeping with the reduced level of terror threat "chatter" that administration officials first described in January.

Washington's Fourth of July festivities include a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra and a fireworks display over the National Mall.

Philadelphia will host a crowd predicted at 1 million people for Saturday's Live 8 concert. And the USS Cole, a destroyer attacked by terrorists in Yemen in October 2000, is scheduled for a weekend visit.

___

On the Net:

FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
©*2005*The Associated Press

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902499.html

[Petronas]

E-mail today from DHS. This is only the fifth such e-mail I have received from them.

At a press conference this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a targeted raise in the threat level in light of today’s attacks in London, and added: "The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the victims of this tragedy and our friends in Britain."

Secretary Chertoff explained that the United States Government is raising the threat level from Code Yellow – or Elevated – to Code Orange – or High – targeted only to the mass transit portion of the transportation sector. This only includes regional and inter-city passenger rail, subways and metropolitan bus systems. He added that at this time the United States has no specific, credible information suggesting an imminent attack in the United States, but that the intent of al Qaeda and affiliated organizations to attack in Europe and the United States has been well documented.

You may notice increased law enforcement presence, and as always are requested to immediately report any suspicious activities to local officials. Thank you for your continued vigilance.

Please do not reply to this email. For questions, you may contact the TSA Contact Center toll-free at 1-866-289-9673 or you may also E-mail us at TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov.

[Petronas]

Chronology of Terrorist Attacks Against Public Transit

http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/mass-transit-chron.htm

It covers from 1980 through today, and gives date, location, attack method, target, whether a suicide attack, and casualties. I just post the link, as it is a long table (14 pages if printed out).

[Petronas]

A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence
Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence – Threats

15 August 2005
Version 3.0

The handbook is a high level terrorism primer that includes an overview of the history of terrorism, descriptions of terrorist behaviors and motivations, a review of terrorist group organizations, and the threat posed to our forces, both in the United States and overseas. Additionally, it provides information on the various terrorist groups, the terrorist planning cycle, operations and tactics, firearms used by terrorists, improvised explosive devices, conventional munitions used by terrorists, and a discussion on weapons of mass destruction. The manual is designed to be used to help train and educate personnel on terrorism and assist units in recognizing the treat they face in planning for operations, both in the Continental United States and overseas.

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terrorism/index.html

[diamondgypsy]

A Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence
Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence – Threats

15 August 2005
Version 3.0

The handbook is a high level terrorism primer that includes an overview of the history of terrorism, descriptions of terrorist behaviors and motivations, a review of terrorist group organizations, and the threat posed to our forces, both in the United States and overseas. Additionally, it provides information on the various terrorist groups, the terrorist planning cycle, operations and tactics, firearms used by terrorists, improvised explosive devices, conventional munitions used by terrorists, and a discussion on weapons of mass destruction. The manual is designed to be used to help train and educate personnel on terrorism and assist units in recognizing the treat they face in planning for operations, both in the Continental United States and overseas.

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terrorism/index.html

thanks!
from where?
Homeland Security or...CIA or FBI?

[JaneDoe]

thanks!
from where?
Homeland Security or...CIA or FBI?
fas.org is the Federation of American Scientists website. "The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) was formed in 1945 by atomic scientists from the Manhattan Project.....Today, the Federation continues its 60-year exemplary record of achieving meaningful results in strategic security, with research and education projects in nuclear arms control and global security; conventional arms transfers; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; information technology for human health; and government information policy."

[Petronas]

FAS's website is just one where the guide has been posted. Another one is: http://www.hitechcj.com/homelandsecurity/id7.html

[Petronas]

Interpol, U.N. to test terrorist attack readiness
Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:29 AM ET

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Interpol will hold a global simulation under the auspices of the United Nations to test the world's readiness to deal with a natural disaster or terrorist attack, a top official said on Friday. "Basically it's looking at what we think will be a real incident, then having a real time response," Lord John Stevens, head of Interpol's Strategic Advisory Panel, told Reuters. The 10-member panel of senior figures in international law enforcement is meeting in Cape Town to help chart a global police response to security threats. Earlier this week, Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said there was a real risk of an international biochemical attack, while security officials remain on high alert for bomb attacks following recent incidents in Britain, Bali and Egypt.

Stevens, a former London police chief, said the panel had unanimously endorsed the proposed exercise, which was likely to happen in New York early next year. Representatives from police forces and international organizations such as the World Health Organization and Civil Aviation Authority would take part. "This will be the first time ... that we will have a world-wide link into a table-top exercise ... it will certainly be next year and perhaps even in the first part of next year," Stevens said. All the lessons that had been learned from last year's Indian Ocean tsunami and from the attacks in New York, London and Bali would be tested again to enhance the response to future events, he said.

http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-25T122853Z_01_RID544906_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-INTERPOL.xml

[hound of hell]

http://www.geocities.com/mannah90/BABY.gif
look for israeili terrorism against yong child age 2 month!!!!!
http://www.geocities.com/mannah90/image002.jpg

[Petronas]

Algeria vetoes U.N. anti-terror statement
12.07.05, 19:23

The U.N. Security Council did not issue a statement condemning Monday's terror attack in Netanya , after it failed to agree on a version due to Algeria's objection to the proposed wording. Algeria is not a permanent member of the council, but is currently participating in its meeting as a representative of the Arab countries. The original version of the statement, drafter by the United States, included a harsh denouncement of the bombing, and a demand of Syria to close down the Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus. However, Algeria refused to fall in line with the other member states and sign the statement.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton issued a statement Wednesday criticizing the Security Council for failing to condemn the attack. Bolton claimed that Algeria prevented the council from publishing a statement despite the fact that Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has himself condemned the bombing. According to Bolton, Algeria objected to the reference to Syria and to the reference to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

It is shameful that the U.N. Security Council is unable to speak up against the Netanya terror attack, Bolton said, adding that if the Security Council fails to do so, the U.S. will. Algeria's U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Baali stressed that he objected to the statement as it was "totally inaccurate and unfair," and that other countries including Russia disputed the proposed version. We are willing to reach an agreement on a version accepted by all, he concluded.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3181005,00.html

[Petronas]

Jihadist Forum Members Discuss the Use of Propane Cylinders in Bombing Operations
August 8, 2005

A recent discussion on a password-protected al-Qaeda affiliated forum concerned the use of propane cylinders in bombing operations, directed against myriad targets, including oil pipelines, buildings, and individuals. The member opening the inquiry proposed using the cylinders on oil pipes, and sought advice as to the advantages of such an operation. Those who replied maintain that it works well, and provides an equivalent destructive power to TNT; however, some members advocate detonating propane cylinders in car bombings, as they acknowledge the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) had utilized them, or for attacks upon tanks, like the “brothers in Palestine.”

One member in particular claims to have been a “helping agent in one operation,” and describes using propane cylinders as a component in a car bombing. He also suggests ways to augment the explosions, with the use of shrapnel, benzene, or napalm, or oxygen tanks in lieu of propane, and provides a mini-manual for preparing a car bomb with just the cylinder as the explosive.

http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications80505&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

[al-Canine]

Alert: Man photographed trucks, tankers

Nation's truckers asked to be on the lookout

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Department of Homeland Security has tapped the nation's truckers to help find a man who has been seen taking photographs of tanker equipment.

On three separate occasions, the man also asked truck drivers several questions about deliveries and operations, according to the Highway Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

"The individual in question is also reported to have videotaped tank truck operations and deliveries as well as taken photographs of tanker equipment," states the "Be on the Lookout," or BOLO, alert. "Law enforcement has requested assistance in ascertaining the identity or whereabouts of the person in question."

Officials say the man has short, dark, wavy hair and a dark complexion. He is in his early 50s, and truckers who have spoken to him say it sounds like English is his second language. He was last seen driving a white car.

The alert describes three incidents that raised concern: one in Fort Myers, Florida, in April; another in Tampa, Florida, in May; and another in Ringgold, Georgia, in 2004.

The same man is believed to be involved in all three incidents. There have been similar, more recent incidents, but it's not clear whether they involve the same man.

Though the BOLO request was made public this week, several bulletins have gone out to law enforcement officials in the last eight months. None has yielded any useful information.

The BOLO alert emphasizes that the Highway Information Sharing and Analysis Center has received no indication that the man engaged in illegal activity during any of the three incidents.

The information was disseminated by the the Department of Homeland Security's Highway Watch Program.

The primary goal of the program is to help prevent attacks by teaching highway professionals how to avoid becoming a target for terrorists who would use a large vehicle or hazardous cargo as a weapon.

A secondary goal is to train highway professionals to recognize and report suspicious activity.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/12/trucker.lookout/index.html

[Petronas]

Al Qaeda Video is 'Green Light' for Attack, Analyst Warns
January 11, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - The recently released video message from al Qaeda's number two leader is part of a pattern that signals a countdown to a major terrorist attack within the next 30 days, warns a Washington D.C.-based analyst. The new video was aired by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite network on Jan. 6. In it Ayman al-Zawahiri portrays U.S. government discussion of troop withdrawal from Iraq as a victory for Islam.

"If your forces with all its aircraft, missiles, tanks and fleets are moaning, bleeding and looking for an escape from Iraq, then will the hypocrites, conspirators, infidels (the Iraqi government) resist what the 'greatest power in the world' has failed to resist?" al-Zawahiri asked.

But it is not the content of the video that is a sign of a possible imminent strike, said terrorism expert Christopher L. Brown. Instead, it is the timing of the video that is consistent with previous patterns. Brown, a researcher with a Washington think tank, has briefed members of Congress and senior administration officials on key threats, and he has prepared testimony and briefing materials for officials at the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, National Security Council and the White House.

The pattern Brown observed is that each Zawahiri video appears to be part of a pair, with the second video followed by a significant attack within 30 days, outside of the major combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The videos released on Sept. 9 and Nov. 9, 2004, were the first "set" and were followed by the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, bombings on Dec. 6, 2004. The second "set" of videos was released Feb. 20 and June 26, 2005, followed by the July 7 London bombings. A third set of videos was released Aug. 4 and Sept 1, 2005, followed by the bombings in Bali, Indonesia, on Oct. 1, 2005.

A Cybercast News Service exclusive report on Sept. 8 of last year detailed Brown's warning regarding an impending October attack.

The fourth set of videos, according to Brown's theory was released on Oct. 23, 2005 and last week -- Jan. 6.

"This pattern has held for at least three of al Qaeda's last large-scale attacks," said Brown, "This most recent video is likely a signal that a large-scale operation is about to be launched within the next 30 days. The question is where."

A clue may be found in the Internet postings of the enigmatic Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades, said Brown. The brigades appear to be 'green-lighting' coming attacks prior to the release of the second video of each pair, Brown said.

The video that preceded the London bombings was itself preceded by a post by the "European division" of the brigades under the title, "Letter to mujahedeen in Europe." The posting stated in part, "We now call on the mujahedeen around the world to launch the expected attack." The message appeared on an al Qaeda-linked Internet forum.

Brown believes the larger pattern of two videos sandwiching an Internet posting by the Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades was repeated when a November web message declared that the upcoming attack would occur in the "land of the Romans," widely seen as a reference to Italy.

The Internet posting, under the name of al Qaeda's reputed military commander Saif al-Adel, mentioned future attacks involving unidentified poisonous substances and surface-to-air missiles procured from Chechnya. Brown notes that the Abu-Hafs Al-Masri Brigades are overseen by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the top al Qaeda terrorist in Iraq who is also known to have ties to Chechnya.

"It is even more interesting to note that Western intelligence officials believe that al Qaeda has had some of the most advanced Russian man-portable surface-to-air missile systems (the SA-18) within Europe for at least one year."

On Oct. 29, 2005, the London Telegraph reported that Abu Atiya, an al Qaeda operative close to al-Zawahiri, revealed to French authorities that a group called the "Chechen network" entered France with the missiles and chemical and biological agents such as botulin, ricin and cyanide. The missiles were reportedly purchased in 2002 and eventually smuggled through Georgia and Turkey to be used in a planned attack against French airliners in 2004.

Following the London bombings the brigades posted a communique on the Internet, stating: "We are in Italy, and not one of you is safe as long as you refuse [Osama bin Laden's] offer. Get rid of the incompetent (Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi or we will truly burn Italy."

A July 19, 2005, story in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper indicated that Italian intelligence feared the statement was a coded message activating known cells in Italy, which had previously been providing only logistical support.

Three more messages from the Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades were posted in July, promising to "burn Italy down.

"We will raze the cities of Europe to the ground and you will be the first, Berlusconi!" one of the messages declared. On July 31, the brigades claimed to be "calling up all our cells in Rome and other Italian cities for this war ..." Another Internet message followed in August.

However, the November reference to the "land of the Romans" could be misdirection Brown said, since al Qaeda is known to use coded language in many of its communications. The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) has indicated that al Qaeda intentionally labeled Italy as its target, prior to the London bombings.

If the "land of the Romans" doesn't refer to Rome, what might it refer to? Dan Darling of the Manhattan Institute believes it could be a reference to the United States. "It could just as easily apply to the U.S. -- America as the new Rome," said Darling.

Brown also believes the al Qaeda threat could apply to the U.S. and that America is the likelier target.

The "land of the Romans" could be a symbolic reference to the "countless examples of Romanesque architecture in Washington, D.C.," said Brown.

The missiles reportedly obtained from Chechnya have not been located and Brown believes it is possible that some of the weapons have been smuggled into North America since individuals involved in the "Chechen network" who procured the missiles were allegedly involved in the 1999 conspiracy to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

About Brown's theory of a timing pattern and imminent strike, Dan Darling said "I definitely think there's something behind this theory. One of my earliest observations about al Qaeda is that when people look for patterns they tend to forget to include events in places like Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq. "

Darling also noted that analysts often fail to take into account thwarted attacks. "Italy has arrested several members of GSPC cells intent on attacking Italy or U.S.-related installations," said Darling. The GSPC is also known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algerian group linked to al Qaeda. Italian officials announced on Dec. 23 that the suspected terrorists had plans to carry out attacks against the U.S. that would have surpassed 9/11.

Terrorism expert B. Raman told Cybercast News Service that Brown's theory is "fascinating" but that he was not in a position to agree or disagree with it.

"I personally feel that while the London explosions were externally inspired from Pakistan, the timing and the modus operandi used were decided locally. I would have difficulty in connecting it to Zawahiri's second message," said Raman. He also believes that Zawahiri's importance as an operational head tends to be over-estimated by many Western analysts.

"I also feel on the basis of my reading of the situation that there is a very high probability of a terrorist strike against Italian lives and interests this year," said Raman.

"In Europe, Al Qaeda's next targets in the order of probability are Italy (its Prime Minister is closely identified with Bush), France (ban on head scarves, its interior minister is hated in the Islamic world) and Germany (its role in Afghanistan)."

Raman is the former head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research & Analysis Wing in India's external intelligence agency and director or the Institute of Topical Studies, Chennai, India.

Italy has been bracing for possible attacks targeting the February Winter Olympics in Turin or the April 9 general elections. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told media last month, "The global resonance of the Games, and the coincidence with the election campaign could be of great interest to terrorist organizations, which carry out major attacks in order to rock public opinion and influence political stances."

The CIA has declined to comment on Brown's theory. "We don't comment on our own analysis. And we can't comment on Mr. Brown's theory either," said the spokesman.

Regarding the video release pattern, "once can be an interesting anomaly, twice could be a coincidence, but three times is a pattern," Brown said, indicating "that in all likelihood al Qaeda will launch a major attack sometime in the next month."

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200601/SPE20060111a.html

[al-Canine]

Caller threatens al Qaeda attack on U.N.

Offices closed temporarily in southwest Pakistan, official says

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- A threatening phone call that forced the United Nations to temporarily close offices in southwestern Pakistan said al Qaeda would attack the world body's offices there, the top U.N. official in Pakistan said Tuesday.

The phone call was received Monday by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, and the United Nations closed all offices in the province of Baluchistan that day and Tuesday, said Jan Vandemoortele, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan.

"Al Qaeda was mentioned twice in the phone call," Vandemoortele said, adding that the caller said "they were going to attack the offices."

The call came the same day a suicide bomber drove a motorbike into a crowd at a wrestling match just across the nearby border in Afghanistan, killing 20 people.

That was the third deadly bombing in a little over 24 hours in the former Taliban stronghold of southern Afghanistan, which abuts Baluchistan.

"It was found to be a credible threat," Vandemoortele said. "Since security is priority No. 1 for me, I decided to withdraw our staff from the field."

There have so far been no attacks or suspicious movements against U.N. operations in the region, Vandemoortele said. The world body has about 25 staffers in the region, mostly based in the provincial capital of Quetta.

The United Nations will reassess the security situation on Wednesday and decide then whether to resume operations, he said. It was unclear who made the phone call, but the United Nations was able to log the caller's number and turned it over to authorities.

Pakistani police were investigating the incident, Vandemoortele said.

The United Nations has six main agencies operating in Baluchistan, another U.N. official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Included in the closures were local offices of the World Food Program and the UNHCR.

Two years ago, aid workers from the United Nations and other international agencies sought refuge in a heavily guarded hotel after Pakistani authorities received intelligence reports that the Taliban were targeting their offices with suicide attacks.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/01/17/un.pakistan.ap/index.html

[Petronas]

Three Algerians arrested in Italy over plot targeting US
January 24, 2006
Tuesday Zil-Haj 23,1426 A.H.

ROME: Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said on Friday. The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11, 2001 strikes by Al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed some 2,700 people, Pisanu said.

The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an Al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama.

The first two were arrested Friday in the Salerno area south of Naples, and in Curingia, in the southern Calabria region, respectively. Bouhrama, 32, had been in jail in Naples since November 15 in connection with another investigation of the GSPC. He is believed to be the head of the Salerno cell and to have liaised with other cells in Milan, Brescia and Naples.

The three in custody are also alleged to have procured false papers and funds to finance the GSPC, a hardline fundamentalist movement that rejects the Algerian government's attempt to draw a line under years of Islamist rebellion. Pisanu said Friday's swoop was part of a wider operation involving other countries. Links were uncovered between the GSPC's Italian activities and groups in Britain, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.

http://www.geo.tv/main_files/world.aspx?id=99448

[al-Canine]

a propaganda campaign?

U.S. agencies find no proof of looming al Qaeda attack

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Despite statements by senior al Qaeda leaders, U.S. intelligence agencies do not have information indicating the group is ready to conduct a major attack, U.S. counterterrorism officials said.

The audio and video statements appear to be part of a propaganda campaign by the terrorist group to bolster morale in its ranks, the officials said.

Intelligence officials said al Qaeda has been damaged since the beginning of the global war on terrorism in 2001 but remains capable of a major attack.

John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and senior intelligence officials are scheduled to testify today before the Senate as part of an annual threat briefing. Mr. Negroponte will highlight the continuing but changing threat posed by al Qaeda, which U.S. intelligence officials regard as the most serious national security challenge to the nation.

However, there are no signs of an impending attack like the hijacked airline strikes on the Pentagon and World Trade Center that killed almost 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, the officials said.

The officials discussed, on the condition of anonymity, the analysis of an audio statement by Osama bin Laden and a subsequent video from his key deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Bin Laden said in an audio message broadcast by Arab satellite television station Al Jazeera on Jan. 19 that an attack "is being prepared and you'll see it in your homeland very soon."

Eleven days later, al-Zawahri appeared in a videotaped message, also broadcast on Al Jazeera, saying that the "truce" offered by bin Laden had been rejected because of a Jan. 13 U.S. air strike that killed several top al Qaeda leaders but missed al-Zawahri.

Al-Zawahri said in the message Monday that al Qaeda would conduct further attacks on the United States.

A U.S. intelligence official said no hard intelligence relates to the al Qaeda statements and nothing indicates that the group is set to carry out an attack.

"Not every tape that comes out has been followed by an attack," the official said. "However, when they make these kinds of statements, you have to take them seriously."

This official said al Qaeda, and specifically its leadership, has been "damaged" by U.S. efforts, including the captures and killings of numerous top leaders.

"There has been a great erosion of the leadership, but al Qaeda does remain a danger and has [attack] capabilities," the official said.

The official noted that other groups that are "inspired" by al Qaeda have formed and may have "faint" ties or no links to "al Qaeda central" -- the group led by bin Laden and al-Zawahri.

A second official said bin Laden's offer of a truce and al-Zawahri's statements against U.S. leaders are part of "a propaganda ploy" designed to "buck up the morale of the rank and file" and prove they are still alive.

"It's also part of an effort to make the United States and Pakistan appear ineffective" in the war on terrorism, the official said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060201-113852-8361r.htm

[Petronas]

Manual for Making Rocket Propellant
February 16, 2006

A manual posted online on a jihadist message forum provided instructions for making a kno3-sugar rocket propellant from using powdered sugar and potassium nitrate. The detailed instructions provide a method, adapted from amateur rocket manufacturing, for quickly making rocket propellant using very few resources, with illustrations at each step of the manufacturing process.

A translation of the manual is provided to our Intel Service members.

http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications149006&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

[Petronas]

Terrorist growth overtakes U.S. efforts
March 2, 2006

Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism.
"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve.
Gen. Caslen said that two years ago the Department of Defense had not settled on a clear definition of the nature of the war. Moreover, because each government department had its own perspective, "we all had different strategies," he said.
The Defense Department now has defined the nature of the war, he said. The enemy, he said, is "a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals that use violence and terrorism as a means to promote their end." It is not a global insurgency, the general said.
"We do not go as far as to say it is a global insurgency, because it lacks a centralized command and control," he said.
Groups such as al Qaeda, though, are constantly trying to increase their capabilities, and in some cases are outstripping the United States, Gen. Caslen said.
"We in the Pentagon are behind our adversaries in the use of communications -- either to recruit or train," he said. Compared with historical jihads, or enduring Muslim wars, this one "is accelerated because of its capability in communications."
The Pentagon official said Muslim thought ranges from secular and mainstream to extremist and intolerant.
The takfir (infidel) view of the world that falls under the Salafist teachings of the Sunni sect -- such as al Qaeda in Iraq -- is an example of the extremist view that condones violence to accomplish ideological ends, he said.
The general said the extremists' goal is to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and establish a radical state under Shariah, or Islamic law, remove what they consider the apostate governments of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, and destroy Israel.
But the enemy has vulnerabilities.
"The ideology is not popular among most, even Muslims," he said. "We need to undermine support by amplifying the moderate forces and undermining the enemy's repressive and corrupt behavior."
Gen. Caslen said the government and military are working to integrate their strategies and plans, and that a national strategic presidential directive and homeland security presidential directive are being drafted to face the terrorist threat.
Leading the war on terrorism is Special Operations Command based in Tampa, Fla. The command is writing a military global campaign strategy with a specific plan to deal with each terrorist organization.
Gen. Caslen said a governmentwide plan to assign tasks and responsibilities to all U.S. government departments and the military also is being created.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060301-113323-8165r.htm

[Petronas]

Canadian trash may be threat to safety
Trucks could be used in a terrorist attack, report says
March 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - In addition to being a stinky nuisance and an environmental hazard, Canadian trash trucks coming to Michigan also could pose terrorist threats, a recently released Department of Homeland Security report shows. Fewer than 10 of the 415 trash trucks that come into Michigan each day from Ontario are physically inspected by Customs and Border Protection agents. That would make it easy for terrorists to smuggle chemical or biological materials into the state.

That's what Sens. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, and Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, say is in the classified report. The Homeland Security's inspector general on Monday posted an unclassified summary of the report on its Web site. Levin, Stabenow and U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, asked the inspector general more than two years ago to investigate how well the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection screens trash trucks for terrorist contraband. "(The report) is so supportive of our position that the inspector general is afraid of making it public because it would show more vulnerabilities apparently in our security system," Levin said Wednesday. "It has so many vulnerabilities that I won't quote from it." ...

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060302/NEWS01/603020349/1001/news

[death2aq]

Canadian trash may be threat to safety
Trucks could be used in a terrorist attack, report says
March 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - In addition to being a stinky nuisance and an environmental hazard, Canadian trash trucks coming to Michigan also could pose terrorist threats, a recently released Department of Homeland Security report shows. Fewer than 10 of the 415 trash trucks that come into Michigan each day from Ontario are physically inspected by Customs and Border Protection agents. That would make it easy for terrorists to smuggle chemical or biological materials into the state.

That's what Sens. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, and Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, say is in the classified report. The Homeland Security's inspector general on Monday posted an unclassified summary of the report on its Web site. Levin, Stabenow and U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, asked the inspector general more than two years ago to investigate how well the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection screens trash trucks for terrorist contraband. "(The report) is so supportive of our position that the inspector general is afraid of making it public because it would show more vulnerabilities apparently in our security system," Levin said Wednesday. "It has so many vulnerabilities that I won't quote from it." ...

http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060302/NEWS01/603020349/1001/news

Sounds like someone needs to keep an eye on trash pickers at the sites where this trash is being dumped.

[Petronas]

Al Qaeda intent on attacking US oil facilities
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: A leading expert on Al Qaeda has predicted that in the next phase of the terrorist group’s war on the US economy, the number of attacks on oil infrastructure targets will increase.

Michael Scheuer, who served the CIA for 11 years and was head of the agency’s Osama Bin Laden unit, told a meeting on the threat to Saudi oil industry, organised by the Jamestown Foundation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Monday that Al Qaeda and its allies are well placed throughout the Persian Gulf to attack oil facilities and officials.

Saudi successes in 2003 in killing and capturing several Al Qaeda figures may be one reason there have not been more attacks against the region’s oil facilities. He said Al Qaeda, apart from military actions, clearly intends to use its media apparatus to “stir the troubled pot of oil-related international worries” and thereby increase pessimism about the price of oil and the dependability of oil supplies. Al Qaeda websites, he noted, had even owned the string of attacks on Nigerian oil facilities called the attackers the “lions of Nigeria” and reminding them that “Allah supports you”.

Scheuer said Bin Laden’s intention is to bankrupt the US economy, which is “entirely likely” to lead to attacks on infrastructure targets inside the US by Al Qaeda, its allies and groups that may not necessarily be associated with either. The attacks would probably focus on large targets that could cripple parts of the US economy. Other groups, however, may be satisfied with staging small-scale attacks on pipelines, pumping stations, tanker trucks as in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In a password-protected Al Qaeda forum on the Internet, targets such as the Trans-Alaska pipeline are highlighted. The attacks could be staged by small teams of Muslims living in the US or trams that could be brought across the border from Mexico or Canada.

Scheuer said that Al Qaeda’s February 2006 attack on the Abqaiq refinery in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest such complex, should be seen as the beginning of a new and more systematic phase of Al Qaeda’s targeting of the oil infrastructure. The attack appears to have been well planned but badly executed. Even in failure, however, the attack boosted the price of oil by nearly $2 a barrel and added to the readiness of oil producers and their worried insurers to increase the “terrorism premium” already built into the basic price of oil. The orders for the Abqaiq attack came direct from Osama Bin Laden. Two days later, there was a fatwa from the Al Qaeda-related cleric, Sheikh al-Anzi, which said that such attacks are legitimate and they must be conducted in a way that does not produce permanent damage to the Muslim community’s ability to exploit and benefit from its energy reserves.

Another speaker at the event, British expert Stephen Ulph, said the threat to the oil sector looms like a “menacing spectre” over the Saudi and Gulf states. In his view the Abqaiq attack has done damage to the image of Saudi stability and won prestige for Al Qaeda. These events, he stressed, “command our attention” as Al Qaeda’s insurgent strategy, right from the beginning, has focused on the issue of Middle East oil wealth as a cardinal feature of its global struggle. Originally, Bin Laden advised against targeting these facilities on the grounds that they constituted a fundamental resource for the Muslim community. However, it elaborated a new “bleed-until-bankruptcy” strategy against the US as the prime backer of Gulf regimes. He pointed out that although the US military has removed itself form Saudi Arabia, the ‘mujahideen’ continue to use the slogan “expelling the polytheists from the Peninsula” as an “ideological banner” rather than as a political demand. This is because it is a struggle whose dimensions simply dwarf the banalities of temporary reverses on the ground. He said Saudi and American electronic espionage against the insurgent groups was much improved today over the past. After the Abqaiq attack, Saudi security forces conducted raids across the country and rounded up Islamist militants, half of them suspected of financially aiding terrorist attacks and propagating jihadists ideology.

According to Ulph, “Al Qaeda’s objective in these attacks is more abstract – prestige to the movement, damage to Saudi self-confidence and uncertainty on the global oil market. As world energy consumption is predicted to increase by more than 50 percent by the year 2025, concerns from the security of Saudi energy exports will increase accordingly. With this trump card handed to Al Qaeda in its asymmetric warfare, actual success in damaging the country’s energy facilities is not necessary to raise fears of insecurity. In this respect, Al Qaeda has correctly identified a fundamental weak point and scored what has in fact been an uninterrupted series of triumphs.”

Another expert, John SK Daly, who addressed the meeting, said should a major terrorist attack on Saudi Arabia’s major oil facilities succeed, the impact on global oil prices would be immense, dwarfing any other man-made event. He pointed out that the massive Abqaiq complex is a critical element in Saudi Arabia’s prosperity. He said Al Qaeda’s most fearsome weapon is the hijacked commercial aircraft and its interest in using one for an attack in Saudi Arabia predates 9/11. He said, “The Abqaiq attack is the first harbinger of Osama Bin Laden’s December 2004 statement urging militants to attack oil targets in the Gulf to stop the flow of oil to the West.” He pointed out that the immediate answer to the Abqaiq attack by the Saudi government was “repression and more security”.

However, the fact that Saudi Aramco vehicles were used in the attack indicates that Al Qaeda operatives at the very least have access to the oil giant’s assets, leaving open the possibility of future “inside jobs”. An attack could also be mounted from across the border in Iraq, where Saudi fighters are active. He said the possibility of such an attack is ‘inevitable’ and 100 percent security in the kingdom is impossible. Most of the oil facilities are in the Eastern provinces where a restive Shia population “chafes under the austere tenets of Wahabism”.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006/05/17/story_17-5-2006_pg7_45

[Petronas]

Transnational Threats Update
May/June Issue
Vol. 4, Issue 6

In this issue:


Violence in Somalia Said to Be Fueled by Al Qaeda–linked Fighters
Colombian Drug Lord Captured; Submarines Used for Transport; Imprisoned Organized Crime Figures Wield Power from behind Bars in Brazil
North Korean Counterfeiting Ring Spreads Worldwide Ripples
Courts Sentence Islamist Terrorists for Plotting Chemical Attacks in Paris
Planned Attack on Israeli Airliner in Geneva Connected to Cells in France and Spain
Australia Convicts First Terrorism Crime
Israel to Participate in NATO Naval Exercise
Bangladesh is a Major Trafficking Route
Iranian Officials Assert Their Role in Stopping Narco-Trafficking to West
E-Passports to Be Issued in EU Member Nations
U.S., Afghan, Pakistani Special Forces Conduct First Antiterror Drill
Violent Jihad in the Netherlands: Current Trends in the Islamist Terrorist Threat


http://www.csis.org/TNT/ttu/

[al-Canine]

Mideast Violence May Raise Odds of U.S Attack: Experts

The Bush administration’s tacit support for Israeli military strikes on Lebanon may have increased the danger of militant retaliation against the United States and U.S. interests abroad, some experts say.

U.S. and European authorities have stepped up vigilance against groups including Hizbollah, which intelligence experts say has cells in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Israel’s attempt to cripple Hizbollah in Lebanon may have strengthened the Shiite organization by winning it fresh political support among moderate Arabs and Muslims, former officials and other experts said.

The Bush administration’s stance that calling an immediate cease-fire would not be productive has also angered many Arabs at a time when bombings in Lebanon are causing large numbers of Muslim civilian casualties, they added.

Washington argues it is supporting long-term efforts against terrorism in the region.

One European counterterrorism official said it was widely recognized there that Middle East hostilities could become a motivating factor for Sunni groups inspired by Osama bin Laden who ordinarily dislike Hizbollah but might try to exploit the outrage in Arab communities.

"Even al-Qaida itself may be ready with an attack, and they may choose to use it now," said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counterterrorism official who ran the agency’s bin Laden unit.

But Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the Middle East crisis had not increased the already tangible danger of attack. "We’ve always been a target, and Hizbollah already has American blood on its hands," Brookes said.

GROWING DANGER

Some former intelligence officers were adamant about a growing danger, however.

"There will be revenge attacks," said one former U.S. official, who remains up-to-date on counterterrorism strategy.

"The concern now is that there’s rising animosity that will be exploited, not just by Hizbollah," said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding: "Then there are people being driven over the edge by what’s happening, who aren’t necessarily members of any group, but who might strike."

Hizbollah had roles in a number of attacks on American targets in the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1983 barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines, Navy personnel and Army soldiers in Beirut, according to the State Department.

But intelligence officials said the group was believed to have suspended hostilities against the United States in the 1990s. There was currently no evidence of an imminent attack or any sign Hizbollah had changed its policy, officials said.

"That said, you can’t rule it out and people aren’t ruling it out," said a U.S. counterterrorism official.

Hizbollah has long supported Palestinian militant groups. In 2004, it signed an agreement with Hamas for joint attacks on Israel, the State Department said.

Scheuer said this would be extraordinary opportunity for al-Qaida to emerge as "the champion of the Palestinian people."

The United States could face spontaneous violence soon from local Islamist groups inspired by al-Qaida, or well-planned attacks over the longer term by professionals from Hizbollah or al-Qaida, former intelligence officials said.

"It takes time to prepare a terrorist attack and we’re watching closely. So far no one’s seen anything, but it’s not likely they’d see a lot if an attack is being planned by professionals," one former officer said.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1975134&C=america

[The 801]

Sometimes you have to wonder how much they pay these guys, don't ya?

[Alli]

The Bush administration’s tacit support for Israeli military strikes on Lebanon may have increased the danger of militant retaliation against the United States and U.S. interests abroad, some experts say.
What about other nations that support Israel?

Like al creepa suddenly liked the US over the past few years, and now they don't again. :rolleyes:

[kotzi]

What about other nations that support Israel?


You mean the UK? What other?

[Solo]

Experts fear terror attacks

By Jonathan Lyons in Jakarta

August 02, 2006 01:36pm
Article from: Reuters


SECURITY experts are bracing for a possible attack by Indonesian militants which would fit a pattern of yearly high-profile bombings dating from the 2002 Bali blasts that killed 202 people.
Three other big attacks have taken place since then, one each year and all between August and mid-October.

"There is no reason to think they will all of a sudden stop," Ken Conboy, a security consultant in Jakarta who closely monitors Indonesia's militants, said.

US-based analyst Zachary Abuza agrees. "We know there is tremendous pressure on them to pull off an attack by this fall," Mr Abuza said.

Proponents of this view say such regular cycles are dictated, in part, by the need for the bombers to go to ground for six to eight months after an attack, emerging just long enough to plan and execute their next operation.

But others question whether Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for the four earlier bombings in Bali and the Indonesian capital Jakarta, or any of its factions, now have the ability or the will to carry out a vigorous new strike.

Arrests, deaths, and what appears to be a "re-think" among some militants about the efficacy of violence in support of their stated goal of an Islamic superstate in southeast Asia, have all taken their toll.

So, too, has an apparent split within Jemaah Islamiah, into a political wing under the fiery preacher Abu Bakar Bashir and a pro-bombing wing led by Noordin Top, who remains at large.

Arabinda Acharya, of Singapore's International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, said Bashir, released in June after serving time in jail for a role in the 2002 Bali bombing, was taking more of a political tack these days.

The emergence of what some are now calling JI Mainstream, under Bashir, may pose a greater danger than any would-be bombers on the loose, he said.

"Although JI mainstream places a high emphasis on proselytising, they also provide military training to their members."

Most senior figures were veterans of the same US-backed campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan that gave birth to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

"Over time, their consolidated strength will be greater than the decentralised and ad hoc (pro-bombing) factions."

Meanwhile, the experts agree there is no shortage of recruits prepared to carry out attacks, including suicide missions. Sporadic religious clashes in Indonesia and an active radical movement provide breeding grounds for new militants.

"Unfortunately, the suicide volunteers is the easiest part," said Mr Conboy.

More daunting is the expertise to construct complex bombs. The death of Azahari bin Husin in a shootout with Indonesian police in 2005 deprived JI of a master bomb-maker, one of the few figures with the skill to wire and detonate powerful car bombs.

Other police operations in Indonesia and nearby Malaysia have further reduced JI's striking power, said Mr Abuza. But this has only spawned a new generation of unidentified militants.

"The good news is they are less capable as a result. The bad news is no one has ever heard of them," making detection by the authorities that much more difficult.

Widodo Adi Sucipto, Indonesia's chief security minister, said on Tuesday more incidents could be expected despite police successes.

"There have been significant results but we still have to prepare because... terrorism exists and Indonesia has become the target and the victim," he said.

[Petronas]

Worldwide: Media reports issued on 4 August 2006 indicate that more than 200 Islamic militants from various Southeast Asian countries are planning to conduct suicide bomb attacks against Israeli targets and against businesses and countries that support Israel, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The threat was disseminated at a press statement by the chairman of the Jakarta, Indonesia-based ASEAN Muslim Youth Movement (AMYM), and is aimed at punishing Israel for its military actions in Lebanon and Palestinian-controlled areas. Thousands of militants, 40 percent of whom have military experience, reportedly volunteered to be sent abroad; however, only 200 will depart immediately due to financial restraints. Approximately 3,000 of the volunteers are expected to rally in Indonesia's Pontiak, West Kalimantan, on 5 August. The validity of the threat cannot be independently corroborated and no additional information concerning possible targets is available.

http://www.airsecurity.com/hotspots/HotSpots.asp

[Petronas]

Bernard Lewis: August 22 "might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world"
August 08, 2006

In the Wall Street Journal (thanks to Sam), world-renowned Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis echoes some observations about possibilities regarding Iran ...

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/012603.php

[Petronas]

Here is an event those who can might find it worthwhile to attend. I plan to go.

I am particularly interested in meeting Walid Shoebat ( http://www.shoebat.com/bio.php?PHPSESSID=a28b9b2df74a227bb00db6e18805b8e1 ) ( http://www.shoebat.com/media/cn8_2006_01.wmv?PHPSESSID=a28b9b2df74a227bb00db6e1 8805b8e1 ) and Wafa Sultan ( http://blog.iamnotashamed.net/2006/04/06/wafa-sultan-al-jeezera-interview/ ) (click on the arrow on the "MEMRI TV" box half a page down).


Las Vegas, Nevada
November 10th & 11th, 2006

Understanding the Threat
of Radical Islamist Terrorism

In Negotiations R. James Woolsey - Vice President for Booz Allen Hamilton and former Director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995. Mr. Woolsey served as Chairman of Freedom House and as a Trustee for the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Confirmed Joe Kaufman - Chairman of Americans Against Hate. He is also an investigative journalist for Frontpage Magazine, the host of The Politics of Terrorism radio show. Joe has been featured on Fox News and has appeared on numerous local and national television and radio talk shows.

Confirmed Laura Mansfield - Author and counter-terror analyst. She uses her knowledge of the Arabic language and of Islamic culture and history to investigate jihad and jihadis both in the US and throughout the world.

Confirmed Harvey Kushner, PhD - Noted author, lecturer, professor and internationally recognized authority on terrorism. Dr. Kushner has advised and provided training to numerous government agencies, including the FBI, FAA, INS, and U.S. Customs.

Confirmed Robert Spencer - Director of Jihad Watch, a writer and researcher who has studied Islam for more than twenty years. He is an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation and has written a selection of critically acclaimed books on the subject of Islam including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

Confirmed Walid Shoebat - As a former member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Mr. Shoebat participated in acts of terror and violence against Israel, and was later imprisoned in the Russian Compound, Jerusalem's central prison for incitement and violence against Israel. He has since had an epiphany as to the evils of radical Islam and has become an advocate for his former enemy.

Confirmed Bruce Tefft, PhD - A 21 year veteran of the CIA, including 17 years abroad, and founding member of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center in 1985, Mr. Tefft has accumulated over 30 years experience in foreign affairs, intelligence, security operations and counter-terrorism.

Confirmed Paul Williams, PhD - Journalist and author of Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, and the Coming Apocalypse and Osama's Revenge: The Next 9/11: What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You. He has served as a consultant for the FBI, as well as an adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Scranton.

Confirmed Dr. Wafa Sultan - a secular Syrian-American psychiatrist who lives in Los Angeles, Dr. Sultan has become notable since the September 11, 2001 attacks for her participation in Middle East political debates, with Arabic essays that circulated widely and some television appearances on Al-Jazeera and CNN. Her thesis, described as witnessing "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose", has brought her telephone threats, but also praise from reformers. Her comments, especially a pointed criticism that "no Jew has blown himself up in a German restaurant", brought her an invitation to Tel Aviv, Israel by the American Jewish Congress.

http://www.americastruthforum.com/symposium.htm

[Petronas]

NYC Still a Terror Target, Police Warn
Sep 8, 2006

Five years after the attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic extremists including members of Hezbollah still view the city as a prime target for another terrorist strike, police say. The threat "is a permanent condition, and in all likelihood will worsen," the New York Police Department's top counterterrorism official, Richard Falkenrath, told an audience of private security executives Thursday. "It's a very sobering conclusion and I don't reach it at all happily, but I do think it is true," he said.

The NYPD summoned the executives to offer the terrorism threat assessment and to outline security measures for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said there were no specific threats involving the annual U.N. event opening Sept. 12. But guarding the concentration of world leaders "always is a large undertaking for us," he said.

Aside from putting hundreds of additional officers on patrol, authorities plan to create a frozen zone around the United Nations using checkpoints fortified by hydraulic metal barriers. All vehicles entering the area will be stopped and checked for explosives.

The briefing at Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan was part of a program designed to encourage more vigilance by private security at large hotels, Wall Street firms and other companies.

While al-Qaida operatives and their homegrown imitators remain the greatest concern, Hezbollah should not be ignored, police officials said. They emphasized the point by showing footage of a Hezbollah rally in Lebanon where a massive crowd chanted, "Death to America." Historically, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and is called a terrorist group by the United States, has been most active in the Middle East, but "we're worried that may be changing," Falkenrath said.

The city has pockets of Hezbollah loyalists who could be incited to violence, the NYPD intelligence analysts said. They said they suspect that Iranian spies working on the group's behalf had already done reconnaissance on landmarks, large synagogues and other potential targets in Manhattan and elsewhere.

In 2004, the United States expelled two guards at Iran's U.N. mission for photographing "sensitive" sites around the city. Iranian officials denied any wrongdoing, saying that the pair took pictures of typical tourist attractions.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2409829

[Petronas]

"And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events..."Al Qaeda threatens attacks in Gulf, Israel
Sep 11, 2006

Al Qaeda warned in a video aired on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks that U.S. allies Israel and the Gulf Arab states would be its next target in a campaign that would seal the West's "economic doom."

Deputy al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in remarks apparently addressed to Western leaders: "I tell them do not bother yourselves with defending your forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These forces are doomed to failure. You have to bolster your defences in two areas ... the first is the Gulf, from which you will be evicted, God willing, after your defeat in Iraq and then your economic doom will be achieved," he said in the video broadcast in part on the Arabic al-Jazeera television channel.

"And the next (target) is Israel. The current of holy war is closing on it and your end there will put an end of the Zionist-crusader supremacy." Zawahri's warning of attacks in the Gulf, the world's top oil exporting region, follows previous calls by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to target oil facilities to cripple the West.

Al Qaeda has also in the past branded U.S.-allied governments in the Middle East as infidels and traitors, and has used this collusion with the West to justify their attacks. Gulf Arab leaders all have strong ties with Washington and Saudi-born bin Laden has in the past singled out the Saudi royal family for censure. The Saudi wing of al Qaeda launched in 2003 a campaign of shootings and suicide bombings, many targeting foreigners, to topple the House of Saud.

In February, al Qaeda militants conducted a failed attack on the world's largest oil processing plant in Saudi Arabia. The group then vowed to carry out more attacks. Insurgents in Iraq have often targeted oil facilities and in Yemen, bin Laden's ancestral homeland which is cracking down on militants, al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000 and an attack on a French supertanker two years later.

Ceremonies were due to take place on Monday across the United States to mark the attacks on New York and Washington which killed almost 3,000 people and triggered Washington's global "war on terror."

In the video, Zawahri urged Muslims to step up attacks against the United States and the West, according to excerpts aired by CNN television network.

CNN said the video was available on Islamist Web sites, but it could not be found on the mainstream sites often used by militant groups. It quoted Zawahri as saying that "new events" were on the way. Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster," Zawahri said. "And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events, with God's permission and guidance."

The video showed Zawahri dressed in white and sitting in front of a book case. It appeared to be part of al Qaeda's own commemoration of the September 11 attacks.

Zawahri held the governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia responsible for the killing of Muslims in the Middle East, Al Jazeera said. "Israel has been able to dominate Lebanon and Gaza only because Egypt has been totally removed from the conflict with Israel," he said.

On Sunday, al Qaeda's media arm al-Sahab released a 92-minute video entitled "The Manhattan Raids," a collage of video footage showing bin Laden urging the attackers to prepare themselves for martyrdom, the wills of some of the attackers and clips showing the men training in an unidentified location.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2419234

[Casey]

Army official: Imminent al-Qaeda threat to Eilat

Senior officer says terror cells being set up around southern town – in Sinai, Jordan, Saudi Arabia – and that defense establishment needs to stay alert in order to prevent attacks

Meir Ohayon
Published: 09.19.06, 00:51

A senior army official said that the defense establishment needs to be prepared for the possibility of a global jihad attack in the southern town of Eilat. "Eilat is a target. In the last two years many global jihad attacks were carried out around it. The ability and
the intent to attack exist, and we must stay alert in order to prevent a strategic strike," he stated.

The escalation in infiltration attempts from the Egyptian border, al-Qaeda's threats to carry out a terror attack in Israel, and the formation of terror cells in Sinai, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, give the IDF further reason to step up operations to thwart infiltrations.

"The threat to Eilat is multi-dimensional: From the air, the sea, and of course – from land, and can be launched from Jordan or Egypt," the officer explained. "We have yet to see the Islamic jihad's fingerprints in this region, but nevertheless I consider it to be an imminent, worrying threat that I don't want to see nearing the area," he added.

The official recommended to close the western road along Egypt's border until an electronic fence is erected in the area.

Due to plans of the terror organizations across the border to hit tourist destinations, the IDF recently decided to establish a new base in Mount Sagi in the Negev, and station reserve and compulsory service units in the place that will reinforce the operations of army forces in the area.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3305586,00.html

[Petronas]

LET ISSUES FATWA TO KILL THE POPE
2.10. 2006

Acting on behalf of the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People, which is headed by Osama bin Laden, the Markaz-ud-Dawa (MUD) of Pakistan, which is the political wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), is reported to have issued a Fatwa calling upon the Muslims to kill Pope Benedict XVI for a recent speech of his delivered on September 12,2006, which has been projected as anti-Islam by Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist organisations of the world.

2. The issue of the MUD fatwa came a few days before the latest video message of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No.2, in which he has made a severe attack on the Pope.

3. A report on the the MUD Fatwa to kill the Pope has been carried by the Pakistani journal "Ausaf" in its issue dated September 18,2006. It has reported as follows:

"Pakistan's Jamaat-ud-Dawa has issued a Fatwa asking the Muslim community to kill Pope Benedict for his blasphemous statement about Prophet Mohammad. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa has declared death to Pope Benedict and said that in today's world blasphemy of the Holy Koran and the Prophet has become a fashion. The leaders of the Jamaat were speaking at a Martyrs' Islamic Conference in Karachi. Prominent Jamaat leader Hafiz Saifullah Khalid said that in the present circumstances, jehad has become obligatory for each Muslim. Muslims are being declared terrorists and our battle for survival has already started. The Muslim world has rejected the Pope's apology and decided to continue protests and demonstrations in big cities. The Pope's apology is just a drama and no political leader has any power to pardon him. It is part of a crusade initiated by the US in the name of terrorism. Instead of accepting fake apologies, Muslims should realise Europe's enemity towards Islam and Muslim Ummah should prepare itself to defend its faith. Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader Hafiz Abdur Rahman Makki said the West and Europe have started a campaign against the Holy Koran and the Prophet and have abused jehad. We should take appropriate steps to deal with the champions of crusade. It is time for Muslim leaders to open their eyes and understand that the West had never been a friend of the Muslims and will never be so."

4. In his video message disseminated through the Internet on September 29,2006, Zawahiri called Pope Benedict XVI a "charlatan" and stated that the Pope "accused Islam of being incompatible with rationality while forgetting that his own Christianity is unacceptable to a sensible mind."

5.The LET has secret cells in the UK and France, but there is no confirmed information of any LET activity in Italy so far. It is likely that the task of executing this Fatwa might be entrusted to one of its cells in the UK or France.

6. The US State Department categorises the JUD as well as the LET as terrorist organisations. President General Pervez Musharraf has rejected the US categorisation of the JUD as a terrorist organisation. He treats it as an Islamic charity organisation, which, according to him, has been doing humanitarian relief work in Pakistan and he asserts that it has nothing to do with the LET. The media had recently reported that a move in the UN Security Council to order the freezing of the accounts of the JUD under the Security Council Resolution No.1373 failed because of Chinese opposition. According to the media, China supported Pakistan's contention that the JUD is not a terrorist organisation. The Security Council acts as the Monitoring Committee for monitoring the implementation of the UNSC Resolution No.1373. The JUD issue has come up before it in its capacity as the Monitoring Committee.

The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: itschen36@gmail.com

http://www.saag.org/papers20/paper1974.html

[Petronas]

Experts: U.S. Must Protect Food Supply
09.26.2006, 02:56 AM

The United States needs to continue taking steps to protect its food supply from terrorism just as it would its buildings, airports and other infrastructure, FBI deputy director John S. Pistole said. "The threat from agroterrorism may not be widely recognized, but the threat is real and the impact could be devastating," Pistole said Monday. "The recent E. coli outbreak in California spinach has captured the public attention even without a terror nexus."

Pistole, keynote speaker at the second International Symposium on Agroterrorism, pointed to a nonterrorism example - a single case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003 - to illustrate the potential impact. "Days after the discovery, 53 countries banned U.S. beef imports. The economic loss to the U.S. cattle industry from the loss of beef imports just to Japan was more than $2 billion a year," Pistole said. "Almost three years later, countries have reopened their borders to U.S. beef, but exports still have not reached 2003 levels."

Pistole told about 1,000 delegates from 21 countries attending the four-day symposium that terrorist groups like al Qaeda have shown interest in U.S. agriculture and could threaten the food supply. He said while there was no "specific communicated threat at this time," the "absence of a communicated threat does not prove the absence of a threat." The U.S. food and agriculture industry employs about one in eight Americans and is important not only to Americans, but because of its massive exports, to much of the world, as well, Pistole said. "The bottom line is that agriculture, just like buildings, bridges and tunnels, is a critical infrastructure in need of defense," he said.

Barry Erlick, president of BJE Associates, a scientific and technical consulting firm, said the U.S. food supply faces threats from livestock diseases around the world. He said there are several animal-borne diseases that occur in livestock overseas and have not been present in U.S. livestock. But he said terrorists could bring the diseases to the United States. "An attack on agriculture is about all those things that terrorism is about: fear, tension, cause, disruption and possibly a political statement," he said.

Donald Kautter, general health scientist for the Food and Drug Administration, advised those attending who were in the food business to learn about ensuring the safety of their products. When he asked for a show of hands on who had taken the FDA's online one-hour course, Food Defense 101, very few hands went up. "Consider this your push" to take the course, he said. "I bet you're not as secure as you think."

http://www.forbes.com/business/manufacturing/feeds/ap/2006/09/26/ap3044457.html

[Petronas]

Terrorists targeting energy sector, says spy chief
12 October 2006

Terrorists are setting their sights on the global energy infrastructure, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND) said on Thursday. Ernst Uhrlau told a Berlin seminar on energy and security there had been a marked increase in the number of terrorist attacks directed at energy targets in recent years.

Groups like al-Qaeda, he said, had improved their capability and were concentrating on global energy supplies instead of local attacks of fuel depots or pipelines. Urhlau said dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas could lead to new conflicts and even wars. "It is important, therefore, to identify potential conflicts over access and distribution and defuse them before they come to a head," the BND president said. One of the ways to achieve this was for states to increase cooperation, he said, citing the example of Pakistan and India.

The head of Germany's federal chancellery, Thomas de Maiziere, told the gathering that energy was increasingly becoming a factor in the wielding of power. He cited the example of Russia's Gazprom, which he said had made a series of threats if obstacles were placed in the way of its international expansion. Last winter Gazprom temporarily cut off supplies of natural gas to Ukraine after the government in Kiev balked at paying higher prices for the fuel.

De Maiziere also warned of the dangers of abuse by emerging economies where nuclear power was seen as a way of lowering their reliance on non-renewable energy sources. North Korea, which recently tested an atomic device, was an example to the international community that it needs to be firm in dealing with violations of international treaties, he said. Otherwise there is a threat of a nuclear arms race with dramatic consequences, de Maiziere said.

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=33680

[Petronas]

Watch out for a MAJOR attack before the election, a la Tet Offensive in 1968 (an election year), Beirut marine barracks attack, or Madrid train bombings in 2004. The enemy's leaders should not be underestimated - they are well aware how in the past U.S. casualties have swung public opinion in favor of pulling out the troops. If they are smart enough, they will realize that the United States is not Spain, and that a major attack on civilians inside the U.S. would likely solidify support behind the Commander in Chief, like after 9/11, rather than lead to a change in the majority in parliament, as it did in Spain. Tet, Beirut and Mogadishu would be more applicable models, suggesting a series of major attacks in Iraq.

[kotzi]

Presidential elections in France are coming up as well ...

[SmokedYourDSM]

Presidential elections in France are coming up as well ...

And yet France is aiding Hezbollah.

I don't think they are going to go after France, especially after yesterdays announcement that France will shoot down Israeli Jets patroling Lebanon airspace.....

[kotzi]

Yeah, but then again, the head scarf issue ...

That, plus it doesn't matter really what the official reason is; the infidels must be beaten wherever muslims have settled down.

[Petronas]

Taliban plotting attacks in Europe: commander
Posted: 23 October 2006 2318 hrs

Afghan militants are planning to launch deadly attacks on civilians in Europe in revenge for the 2001 invasion by US-led forces, a Taliban commander said on Sky News television on Monday. Mullah Mohammed Amin said resurgent militants had built up stockpiles of weapons and were bent on vengeance against "the foreign invaders".

The Taliban, overthrown by the invasion, now wanted to export terror to the West, he said. "It's acceptable to kill ordinary people in Europe because these are the people who have voted in the government," he said. "They came to our home and attacked our women and children," he added. "The ordinary people of these countries are behind this - so we will not spare them. We will kill them and laugh over them like they are killing us and laughing at us."

Amin said the Taliban was inspired by tactics used by insurgents in Iraq, namely remote-controlled bombs, land mines and suicide bombers. "They are our best tactic," he said. Fighters were sheltering in Pakistan and being aided by sympathetic locals, he said in an interview with the British TV channel in the Pakistani border region.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Thursday that suicide bomber tactics proved that Taliban rebels could not defeat multinational forces through conventional warfare. "The Taliban and the other spoilers of the process of nation-building and democracy in Afghanistan are having to go with these kinds of horrible tactics - improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers and so on - because they know they cannot beat NATO in other ways," he told BBC radio.

There are around 31,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force soldiers in Afghanistan trying to help the government establish stability against a resurgent Taliban to allow reconstruction. Some of the 37 nations in the force have admitted to facing some of their fiercest fighting in decades.

Led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's Sunni Islamist fundamentalist movement effectively ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. They sheltered Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network, which was responsible for the deadly September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/237213/1/.html

[Petronas]

Coalition Navies on Watch for Oil Attack
October 27, 2006 12:05 PM EDT

Coalition naval forces in the Gulf are on watch for possible terror threats to oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Western naval officials said Friday. A British navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said a threat from al-Qaida last month to target Gulf oil terminals had resulted in stepped-up security and vigilance at Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura terminal, as well as a refinery in Bahrain. Oil exports in the region were proceeding as normal, he said.

The British navy, part of the Italian-led Coalition Task Force 152 that patrols international waters off the Ras Tanura terminal, sent an e-mail warning on Friday asking merchant shippers in the region of Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia to be on alert for suspicious vessels or other activity. Task Force 152 also contains ships from French, U.S., German and other navies.

The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, said it was aware of the British warning. "We support the recommendation that commercial mariners be especially vigilant while transiting the Gulf," Lt. Cmdr. Charles Brown said Friday in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

Brown acknowledged the security measures but referred to them as "routine." "Coalition forces are taking prudent, precautionary measures and focusing maritime security operations in the Gulf on these possible (al-Qaida) threats," he said. "These operations are nothing new. Coalition maritime forces routinely conduct maritime security operations in the Gulf," he added.

The British official said the coalition ships were confining their patrols to international waters and had not been invited by Saudi Arabia to patrol inside its territorial waters near the terminal. "The Saudis are very protective of their patch," the British official in Dubai said, describing the patrols as normal naval operations that had been under way since 2002, albeit on a heightened state for the past month.

Ras Tanura, just north of the Saudi oil capital of Dhahran, is the world's largest offshore oil loading facility with a capacity of 6 million barrels per day. Bahrain, an independent island kingdom, lies in the Gulf just off the Saudi east coast. In February, al-Qaida-linked car bombers attacked the Abqaiq oil processing plant near Dammam, Saudi Arabia, killing two guards. The attack did no damage to the facility, but sent oil prices briefly spiking up $2 a barrel. On Friday, light sweet crude for December delivery fell 10 cents to $60.26 a barrel.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/gen?guid=20061027/45418440_3ca6_1552620061027-1261720129

[rectar]

http://www.albawaba.com/img/new_sys/mediabank/dup_img/2_31/12_1_5_4722_mb_file_5146d.jpg (http://www.albawaba.com/ar/countries/Saudi%20Arabia/254750)السعودية - تخصيص 946 مليون ريال سنويا لخطة الاستراتيجية لمعالجة الفقر (http://www.albawaba.com/ar/countries/Saudi%20Arabia/254750)


Saudi Arabia - an appropriation 946 million annual riyals for the strategy plan for the poverty treatment.

Posted : the 24-10-2006 07:00, GMT .


Saudi Arabia - an appropriation 946 million annual riyals for the strategy plan for the poverty treatment.

Uncover Dr. Abdallah (élmàeeql) secretary general (llistrateejeea) the nationalism for the poverty treatment the king quantity budget Abdallah adoption 946 million annual riyals for the strategic plan for the poverty treatment, was a result. Recommendations and previous decisions specified for in different the Saudi regions and conservations from it the social security allocations increase and what the system guarantees in the annual salary identification for the first beneficiary communicated 9400 riyals and an increase 3100. A riyal arrives in an increase to 31100 riyals for the guarantee from 16200 riyals for all the minimum limit additional and lifting individual to 90 percent , and as that an adoption ten billion budgets for the popular house and an increase. In a percentage the and real bank lending bank capital and the salaries increase 15 percent ..

Between and (élmàeeql) adoption king Abdallah for the budget based on come what the doctor Abd Al-Muhsen lifted (élàkas) the social affairs minister for the strategic complete plan in the (élisbouà) Council of Ministers session (élfaét),(wdhlk) . As the Middle East newspaper bring..

And the strategic plan includes several programs complementary support program establishing locked the gap between the factual income from it Fakra for the captivity and the individuals and poor abject and the poverty and support inscribed in an amount 264 million annual riyals and an increase. The special for the orphans and the circumstances parents allocations from in judgment and in an amount 82 million annual riyals, and a program residence in the urgent helps name for the captivity the fact under the divorced poverty line and the philanthropic association allocations increase. 100 million to 300 million annual riyals, and the presented allocations increase for the orphans the special circumstances parents, from in judgment and in an amount 82 million annual riyals, and the captivity assistances the nursemaid. And the scholastic assistances and the nursery end reward and the residents (wmkafàat) matrimony assistances in the orphans attention role, and the emergency helps program residence for the captivity the fact under the poverty inscribed (élmtlq5ouqal) (élmàeeql) these decisions endurance . In folds good for the entering parents low what the biggest will better in income increase and enabling become the trace of the life to it ..

© 2006 (élbouaba)(www . albawaba( . com .)

[rectar]

http://www.albawaba.com/img/new_sys/mediabank/dup_img/1_1/9_1_0_12904_mb_file_269f1.jpg (http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/204999)Iraq: 43 dead in Baqouba clashes as Baghdad calm (http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/204999)
The U.S. military said Friday that the fighting between Sunnis and Iraqi police near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killed one civilian and 24 police. (http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/204999)

[rectar]

NVM: ModulesPrint This (javascript:window.print();) http://jamestown.org/terrorism/images/Focus_title.jpgVolume 3, Issue 39 (October 10, 2006) | http://jamestown.org/terrorism/images/pdf-icon.gif Download PDF Version (http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/uploads/tf_003_039.pdf)

Al-Muhajir Calls for Nuclear Scientists to Join the Mujahideen in Iraq
By Robert Wesley (http://jamestown.org/terrorism/analysts.php?authorid=308)
The recent audio statement of al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Hamza al-Muhajir contained several points of analysis for looking at the current state of jihad in Iraq through one of its leadership nodes. Among the issues in al-Muhajir's message included his frustration with established religious figures' lack of commitment to jihad and the inferred need for increased religious guidance to support ongoing operations. Al-Muhajir saved his most unique statement, however, for the end of the recording, where he emphasized the need for individuals of scientific and technical specialities to join the mujahideen in Iraq. He even attempted to play upon the implied belief that scientists can be enticed to join such programs through offers of field experimentation as he tells potential listeners that "the battlefield will accommodate your scientific aspirations" [1].

The overt recruitment offer for non-conventionally-focused scientists is unprecedented. Strategists such as Abu Musab al-Suri have expressed the necessity of scientific expansion in the fields of non-conventional weapons, but as far as operational commanders are concerned this is the first known overtly disseminated advertisement (Terrorism Monitor, September 21; Terrorism Monitor, October 5). Al-Muhajir also explicitly emphasizes the need for "nuclear scientists" and offers U.S. military encampments as a testing ground for dirty bombs (radiological) and germ weapons (biological).

Al-Qaeda and related groups have not traditionally placed much emphasis on the development of chemical, biological or radiological weapons for tactical battlefield use. Iraqi insurgents on the whole have not pursued these weapons with any consistency or conviction. The al-Abud network initiated the most successful of these endeavours during late 2003 and early 2004. This network was linked to the Jaysh Muhammad group and attempted to procure and weaponize both crude chemical and toxin agents. Although some progress was made on chemical weaponization, it was generally believed that, even if the network was not shut down, its program was not suitable for producing effective tactical munitions [2].

If the same lessons were to be applied to the current scenario, al-Muhajir might not be requesting the radiological and biological assistance for the Iraqi battlefield, but rather to develop an unconventional capability to be used in other settings abroad for their disruptive and symbolic values. In the context of his statement, it makes even more sense since he has requested scientists to use Iraq as a testing ground rather than framing the development as a current battlefield necessity.

In the event that specialists actually heeded his call, the operational environment and material limitations would likely restrict substantial progress for chemical and biological programs but not necessarily so for radiological. There would most likely be adequate radioactive sources or other material from which to conduct Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) experimentation as Iraqi authorities have had limited control and recoverability programs since 2003. Aside from available resources, it is also logical to test such weapons away from the future intended targets.

On the other hand, there is little perceived benefit—other than networking and training others—for chemical and especially biological specialists to risk exposure to infiltrate and operate in Iraq. Laboratories would lack resources. Furthermore, although labs could operate on a micro level, with the volume of raids conducted by counter-terrorist forces, the requisite mobility to evade detection would be extremely difficult to maintain. This is especially true if al-Qaeda desired to pursue a productive research and production schedule.

Notes

1. Statement by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, September 28, 2006.
2. Annex E, Volume 3, "Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD," September 30, 2003. Find this article at:
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370157

[rectar]

ويتوالى الحصاد .. مفخخة تقتل وتصيب 26 من جيش المهدي بالمحمودية


عام (http://www.islammemo.cc/news/group.asp?CatNo=0&IDCategory=1) :العالم العربي والإسلامي (http://www.islammemo.cc/news/group.asp?CatNo=1&IDCategory=1) :الأحد 7 شوال1427هـ –29 أكتوبر 2006م آخر تحديث 7:30م بتوقيت مكة http://www.islammemo.cc/news/newsimages/iraq5/milishya-almahdi08.jpg

مفكرة الإسلام [خاص]: قتل 16 عنصرًا من عناصر جيش المهدي، وأصيب أكثر من عشرة آخرين جراء انفجار سيارة مفخخة اقتحمت تجمعًا لهم في مدينة المحمودية جنوب العاصمة العراقية بغداد.
وذكر مراسل 'مفكرة الإسلام' في المدينة أن سيارة مفخخة يقودها فدائي اقتحمت تجمعًا لجيش المهدي بالقرب من مجمع القعقاع حيث انفجرت سيارته وأدت إلى مصرع 16 وجرح عشرة آخرين اغلبهم حالتهم خطيرة.
هذا وتفيد أنباء في المدينة أن المقاومة قامت بتفخيخ سيارة أحد عناصر جيش المهدي بعد أسره قبل يومين ثم قاموا بإطلاق سراحه وإعطائه سيارته التي قاموا بتفخيخها والتحكم بها عن بعد ولدى وصوله إلى مقر مكتب الصدر في مجمع القعقاع تم تفجير السيارة وهو بداخلها على التجمع.
هذا ولم تؤكد تلك التفاصيل مصادر من المقاومة حتى الآن إلا إنها حسب مراسلنا حدثت كثيرا في الآونة الأخيرة آخرها في منطقة العامرية ببغداد حيث استهدفت تجمعًا لقوات الحرس الوطني.
وكانت عصابات جيش المهدي الصفوية قد أقدمت منذ عدة أسابيع على إحراق عشرات المخازن والمحلات التي يملكها التجار السنة في منطقة ناحية الرشيد بمنطقة المحمودية.





(vytvaaly) atheisms.. (mfkhkhh) (tqtl) (vtsyb) 26 I (jysh) (aalmhdy) (baalmhmvdyh)


General (http://www.islammemo.cc/news/group.asp?CatNo=0&IDCategory=1):(aalàaalm) (aalàrby) (vaaleslaamy) (http://www.islammemo.cc/news/group.asp?CatNo=1&IDCategory=1):(aalahd) 7 (shvaal1427h) – 29 (aktvbr) (2006m) end (thdyth) 7:(30m) (btvqyt) (mkh) http://www.islammemo.cc/news/newsimages/iraq5/milishya-almahdi08.jpg

(mfkrh) (aaleslaam) [ particular ]: killing 16 (ànsraa) I elements (jysh) (aalmhdy) (،vasyb) (akthr) I tenth last candelabrum blow up mobiles (mfkhkhh) (aaqthmt) (tjmàaa) crushed (fy) (mdynh) (aalmhmvdyh) South (aalàaasmh) (aalàraaqyh) Baghdad .
(vdhkr) (mraasl) ' (mfkrh) (aaleslaam) ' (fy) (aalmdynh) (an) mobiles (mfkhkhh) (yqvdhaa) (aaqthmt) (tjmàaa) (ljysh) (aalmhdy) (baalqrb) I society (aalqàqaaà) (hyth) (aanfjrt) (syaarth) (vadt) (ely) hemistich 16 (vjrh) Tenth last (aaghlbhm) (haalthm) (khtyrh) .
(hdhaa) (vtfyd) (anbaaà) (fy) (aalmdynh) (an) (aalmqaavmh) stature (btfkhykh) mobiles (ahd) elements (jysh) (aalmhdy) next (asrh) ago days (thm) (qaamvaa) (betlaaq) (sraahh) (veàtaaéh) (syaarth) (aalty) (qaamvaa) (btfkhykhhaa) (vaalthkm) cost Shit next son patches (ely) place (mktb) (aalsdr) (fy) society (aalqàqaaà) teams (tfjyr) (aalsyaarh) (vhv) (bdaakhlhaa) (àly) (aaltjmà) .
(hdhaa) loose (tùkd) (tlk) (aaltfaasyl) infinitives I (aalmqaavmh) even (aalaan) (elaa) (enhaa) accounts (mraaslnaa) (hdtht) (thyraa) (fy) (aalaavnh) (aalakhyrh) ends (fy) logics (aalàaamryh) (bbghdaad) (hyth) (aasthdft) (tjmàaa) (lqvaat) (aalhrs) (aalvtny) .
(vkaant) (àsaabaat) (jysh) (aalmhdy) (aalsfvyh) stature (aqdmt) (mndh) (àdh) (asaabyà) (àly) (ehraaq) tenth (aalmkhaazn) (vaalmhlaat) (aalty) (ymlkhaa) (aaltjaar) languages (fy) logics (naahyh) (aalrshyd) (bmntqh) (aalmhmvdyh) .

[rectar]

الخطة الخمسينية التي وضعها آيات قم تطبق خطوة خطوة والامة في غفلة لا تشعر بما يدبر لها فالامس ضاعت افغانستان واليوم العراق والدور على ....

http://www.alburhan.com/home_pictures/016929.jpg

The Pentecostal plan situation verses stand up step step closing and the nation does not feel in which that prepare an inadvertence and yesterday disappeared to it Iraq Afghanistan and the day and the role on.....

[Petronas]

CTC Releases Study of Jihadi Movement

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point is pleased to announce the release of The Militant Ideology Atlas, an in-depth study of the Jihadi Movement's top thinkers and their most popular writings. This is the first systematic mapping of the ideology inspiring al-Qaeda.

The CTC’s researchers spent one year mining the most popular books and articles in al-Qaeda’s online library, profiling hundreds of figures in the Jihadi Movement, and cataloging over 11,000 citations. The empirically supported findings of the project are surprising:

The most influential Jihadi intellectuals are clerics from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, two of the US’s closest allies in the Middle East. Among them, the Jordanian cleric Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi has had the most impact on other Jihadi thinkers and has been the most consequential in shaping the worldview of the Jihadi Movement. In contrast, the study finds that Usama Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri have had little influence on other Jihadi theorists and strategists.

The Executive Report summarizes the main conclusions of this comprehensive effort and provides policy-relevant recommendations informed by these findings.

The Research Compendium contains summaries of all the texts used in the study as well as biographies of the texts' authors and the figures they cite most.

Links to both are provided at:
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/atlas/default.asp

[Petronas]

Jihad's femmes fatales
Originally published on November 17, 2006

That's not a pregnant belly - that's a bomb. The NYPD is warning business owners to be on the lookout for female jihadists who can hide explosives by faking pregnancy or sweet-talk their way past security officers. "The threat posed by women is real, and it can't be overlooked," Rachel Weiner, an NYPD intelligence specialist, said at a security conference yesterday.

The warning was not in response to a threat against any specific targets in the city, but a general caveat for private security in light of the radicalization of women in other parts of the world. "What this means is that we don't have the luxury of ignoring 50% of our population in assessing whether someone is a threat," Weiner said.

Cossor Ali, a young mother among two dozen suspects accused in a London-based plot to blow up U.S.-bound flights, intended to use her 8-month-old baby's bottle to hide a liquid explosive, authorities said.

Counter-terrorism experts noted that 19 of the 41 Chechen militants in the 2002 siege of a Moscow theater were women, part of a group known as the "black widows." More than 120 civilians were killed.

Experts said yesterday that female terrorists achieve martyr status among radicals. Wafa Idris, widely considered the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, killed one person and injured more than 150 in an attack in Jerusalem in 2002. She has a Palestinian summer camp named in her honor.

A growing number of female terrorists are housewives, scientists or even teens schooled in the U.S. and Europe, officials said yesterday, blurring the profile of would-be bombers.

During the NYPD Shield conference yesterday at police headquarters, cops also gave business owners tips on the general behavior of potential terrorists. The NYPD Shield is a security partnership between cops and private businesses designed to prevent terrorist attacks.

Peter Patton, an NYPD intelligence specialist, drew from an "Encyclopedia of Jihad" found at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, saying that 80% of jihadists' information is drawn from public sources. They read newspapers and scour the Internet for maps and shareholder reports, he said. The other 20% of their information comes from taking panoramic photos of potential targets, casually interviewing security staff, examining surveillance equipment and traffic patterns onsite and observing product delivery schedules.

In one of the most startling parts of the multimedia session, Patton showed actual photos and video footage taken in 2000 by convicted plotter Abu Eisa al-Hindi, who was prosecuted under the name Dhiren Barot. Among his desired targets were the New York Stock Exchange, the Prudential building in Newark and the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington. The wanna-be terrorist kept detailed notes, documenting in one building the exact number and location of surveillance cameras, uniforms worn by security guards and discrepancies in security for building employees and the public. Hindi once sat at a Starbucks on consecutive days staring at one of the potential targets. "He was trying to figure out the best time to launch an attack to inflict massive casualties," Patton said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/472233p-397332c.html

[Petronas]

Al Qaeda May Be Plotting Holiday Attacks
Nov. 10, 2006

Intelligence agencies have been warned that al Qaeda may be planning to attack air and rail travel in Europe in actions that may occur during the busy holiday travel season, CBS News has learned exclusively. In separate interviews with Arab and other intelligence sources, CBS News has been told that the warnings come from interrogations of al Qaeda suspects who recently left Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"One suspect said plans for repeating the Heathrow attempt (a reference to the failed 'liquid bomb' plot interrupted in August) were all prepared. It is now a matter of taking action," said one Arab official who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. "Al Qaeda's strategy appears to be raising the pressure in Europe."

In a move that has been puzzling intelligence agencies, al Qaeda has been withdrawing well-trained Arab fighters from the mountains and battlefields of Afghanistan. In detailed interviews with Arab diplomats, intelligence sources and Pakistani and western officials, Arab members have been leaving Afghanistan for the past six months while handing over its militant activities in Afghanistan to that country's resurgent Taliban movement.

The new information helps to shed fresh light on a key mystery at the heart of al Qaeda's decision, first reported by CBS News in September, to withdraw its Arab members, fighters and logisticians from Afghanistan. Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at Singapore's Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies, and the author of "Inside Al Qaeda; Global Network of Terror," said "We have seen that several hundred, perhaps five to six hundred al Qaeda members who were located on the Afghan-Pakistan border, have now left." ...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/10/terror/main2170878.shtml

[Petronas]

I recently attended a conference on "Understanding the Threat of Radical Islamist Terrorism" in Las Vegas. Here are a few of the things I learned, not neceassarily in any particular order, that some readers of Alneda might find interesting, if they do not already know them:


OBL is alive and well and moving freely between NW Pakistan and border areas of Afghanistan where there are few U.S. troops.
In the five years before 2001 77,000 terrorists passed through Al Qaeda's Afghan camps, as confirmed by written records found after Nov. 2001. Prior to 1996 it is estimated that as many as an additional 50,000 may have passed through those camps.
Since 9/11/2001 over 6,300 terrorist acts were committed by Muslim terrorists.
In 2005 over 11,000 Muslim terrorists were detained worldwide.
Osama Bin Laden's $300 million fortune was never found. He is supposed to have spent about $50 million while in Sudan. He is not believed to have had to use any appreciable part of his fortune to finance Al Qaeda's operations. Both the over $100 million confiscated worldwide so far as well as the estimated $13 million annual Al Qaeda operating budget (remember, the most expensive attack, that on 9/11, cost less than $500,000) are believed to by funded by fundraising and illegal activities.
One perhaps less known illegal fundraising activity Islamic terrorists are believed to engage in is coupon bundling. Another one is involvement with the $1+ billion per year khat trade in the U.S. (khat is a narcotic, illegal in the U.S., popular in Somalia and surrounding areas).
There appears to be some credible evidence (and I am not a believer in conspiracy theories in general) that there was Middle Eastern involvement in the Oklahoma City bombings. David Schippers, formerly Chief Investigative Counsel of the House of Representatives, personally interviewed over half a dozen witnesses he believes to be credible, who saw Timothy McVeigh both before and after the attack with an individual identified as a member of the Iraqi intelligence services. See also "The Third Terrorist" by Jayna Davis (which I have not yet read).
Before 9/11 there were 42 to 44 Al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. Thus, there are 23 to 25 left of that group, since we have not captured any of them.
Abu Daud said recently to Hamid Mir: "The Mexican border is a joke for us, no one can stop us from getting across".
Also speaking were former FBI consultant Paul Williams and Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, who believe that Al Qaeda already has nuclear weapons. More on that here: http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=884413&postcount=31

[The 801]

Thanks Petronas, sounds like It was an interesting program. Anything else brought up?

[Petronas]

That was pretty much what I recall as being noteworthy in the terrorism department. There was a lot of other stuff too, of course, some if it probably known to most here, like the massive funding by the Saudis of Wahabbi mosques and imams around the world (as much as $80 billion in the last 30 years), and hearing from secular (considered heretic) Muslims like Wafa Sultan or converts to Christianity like ex-PLO bomber Walid Shoebat what it was like to grow up and live in the West Bank or Syria.

[Casey]

Thank you, Petronas.

[Petronas]

BOMB WATCH
November 17, 2006

New York City private-sector security companies were given a terrorism briefing by the NYPD yesterday and told to learn from newly obtained intelligence data gleaned from England's top terror suspect. Several hundred corporate officials responsible for safeguarding New York were given an inside peek into the playbook of Dhiren Barot - who had plans to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and other key financial buildings.

Barot, 34, also known as Abu Esa al-Hindi, was busted in August 2004 after British officials uncovered several plots to attack high-profile targets in London as well as New York and Washington. The tactics included using new vendors or panhandlers in an area to carry out terror attacks and detonating bombs on parked vehicles with no company phone numbers listed. After he was arrested, authorities gained access to his notes, which detailed his reconnaissance efforts in New York during 2000 and 2001 and revealed the special attention he paid to security measures taken to protect individual buildings.

"The most obvious technique to utilize that comes to mind . . . would be a limousine in the VIP underground[parking lot]," Barot wrote in a memo about the Prudential Building in Newark. Barot also suggested that "arson may be the best choice" and advised "ramming trucks (oil tankers, etc.) straight through the glass front entrance into the lobby area."

Barot, a Muslim convert, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mass murder in England and was sentenced to life in prison last week. It is unclear if and when he will be extradited back to the United States to face charges of conspiracy and providing support to terrorists.

Among other topics discussed during yesterday's confab was the trend toward the use of women bombers. "The threat posed by women is real and should not be overlooked," NYPD Intelligence Research Specialist Rebecca Weiner said.

Yesterday's meeting was part of an initiative dubbed NYPD Shield that is designed to make sure corporate security heads are alert for unusual activities and possible ploys terrorists use to carry out their atrocities.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11172006/news/regionalnews/bomb_watch_regionalnews_erika_martinez_with_post_w ire_services.htm

[Petronas]

Historical Background
Office of the Historian
Bureau of Public Affairs

Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/5902.htm

[Petronas]

Al Qaeda welcomes Democratic victory
By Walid Phares
November 22, 2006

The latest audio by al Qaeda's Iraq commander -- posted 48 hours after the midterm elections -- sends a clear signal to the readers of the jihadi strategic mind: Al Qaeda and its advisers around the world want to provoke an "American Madrid." Portraying the United States as a bleeding bull in disarray, the war room projects its wish to see America's will crippled. The video attempts to do the following:

1. Convince the jihadists that the United States is now defeated in Iraq and beyond. While no reversal of the balance of power has taken place on the ground, the jihadi propaganda machine is linking the shift in domestic politics to a withdrawal from Iraq. It projects the change in Washington as a crumbling of the political process in Baghdad and America's foreign policy. Interestingly, others in the region are also "announcing" the upcoming defeat of America in the war on terror. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah declared: "The Americans are leaving, and their allies will pay the price."

2. Spread political chaos at home. Jihadists portray the Democratic takeover of Congress and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (and maybe others) as signs of American weakening in the resolve to fight jihadism. The video had a potential to frustrate U.S. citizens if it is not accurately interpreted by experts. Americans may end up believing that the message reflects the situation in the Middle East and that it is a logical outcome of a faulty U.S. policy. If the Bush administration and the new congressional leaders do not respond adequately to the video, some "chaos" of this sort may ensue.

3. The terminology used in the videotape is a powerful indicator that al Qaeda's political network relies on Western-educated minds, familiar with political processes in the United States and serving as advisers to the jihadists. A regular al Qaeda emir does not use the term "lame duck." It is more likely that a U.S.-based cadre, who understands the impact of political jargon on domestic audiences, had suggested the use of this word. Abu Hamza al Muhajir's use of the term batta arjaaa (lame duck) is striking to any native speaker of Arabic. This term does not exist in Arab culture, let alone in jihadi rhetoric. Its use is yet another proof of the Americanization jihad has undergone. Thus, Iraq's al Qaeda is using the term as a weapon -- something most likely requested by the jihadi brains operating on the other side of the Atlantic.

So what do the speechwriters want to achieve with these kinds of tapes? They aim at sapping American public morale during a time when reorganization is taking place in the U.S. government. Reading from the jihadi wishful thinking, the audiotape of al Muhajir and the statements made by other radical Islamists send the following message: Americans are being thanked for removing Mr. Bush's party from the leadership of Congress, which the jihadists attribute to the war on terror rather than U.S. domestic problems. Al Qaeda's audio tells citizens in the United States that they were wise for having responded positively to the previous messages by Osama bin Laden. Al Masri's words aim at convincing the American public to pressure their newly elected legislators to pull U.S. forces hastily from Iraq.

In short, al Qaeda wants an American Madrid: it wishes that a change of power in January would be accompanied by a change of national determination, not just a change of course within Iraq.

In the Salafis chat rooms, the commissaries explained to their audiences, that the Democratic Party victory in Congress means that America is now divided and al Qaeda can push to create more cracks in the system -- as it has successfully done in Spain. The masters of the forum, emulating al Masri's audiotape, said not only that "we got their soldiers on the run in Iraq," but "we got their citizens on the run on their own soil" referring to the November electoral outcome. They promised that with more killings in Iraq, they will break the will of Americans at home; and that the new Congress, seeking to fulfill one of its electoral promises will force the Bush administration to pack up and leave the Middle East.

In Washington, both the administration and the new congressional leaders failed to seriously respond to the al Qaeda message. Grave mistake; for ignoring the speech would help convincing the jihadists that America is divided and crumbling and would embolden them to strike further, not only in Iraq but also inside the United States. The silent treatment works in favor of the Salafi combatants: It only leads them to believe that they are right and that their strategy is working; just as Allah had crushed the Soviets in Afghanistan, he has divided the Americans. It is, therefore, imperative that Washington strikes back in a unified manner at every opportunity that arises. It must tell the dreamers of a terror caliphate that American democracy will not serve as a weapon to defeat freedom worldwide.

Walid Phares is a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of "Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America."

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061121-083639-1601r.htm

[Petronas]

New RFJ wanted poster:

12410

[Petronas]

The US counter-terror nerve centre
Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 17:44 GMT

In a Washington suburb, I am on a journey. No address, no postcode. Just the phone number of a US government official known only as "T". After months of requests, he has granted us permission to visit one of America's newest and most secret establishments: the National Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC. It is a nondescript building, but inside is the beating heart of America's counter-terrorism nerve centre.

"This is where we maintain a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week operational watch in the counter-terrorism intelligence community and monitor situational awareness in the world of CT [counter-terrorism]," says Vice Admiral Don Loren, one of the watch officers in the Operations Room. The Operations Room is a large open-plan chamber filled with desks and computer terminals.

But today it is almost empty. Because we are media, all the undercover agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency who would normally sit here have been moved out of sight.

But up on the wall is a giant plasma screen showing every plane approaching the United States. "Right now, you're looking at the Eastern Seaboard air corridor, and we use that to monitor events of special interest and to keep an eye should there be any reports of what we call no-fly activity," Vice Adm Loren says. A "no-fly" means a plane with a passenger suspicious enough that the flight can even get turned back over the mid-Atlantic. In everyone's minds is the thought: "9/11, never again."

The NCTC is also intended to remedy the sort of information blockages that led to 9/11. When it was set up two years ago, they brought in the "imagineers" from Hollywood - experts on sharing information.

The data flow here is enormous: more than 6,000 reports come through every day from satellite, electronic and human intelligence sources. When an incident happens, a "terror line" is created to pass the information to everyone who needs it.

Central to all this is the Briefing Room, where screens rise up like something out of a James Bond film. This is the nerve centre of the US-led global "war on terror". It is here in this room, three times a day, every day, that America's specialists in counter-terrorism gather to share information. It brings in 16 agencies like the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security as well as the White House, and has been described as a "stock exchange" for counter-terrorism intelligence.

The man in charge is almost unknown, yet he has one of the most sensitive jobs in the world. Vice Admiral Scott Redd gives the president America's war plan on fighting terrorism.

"Before 9/11, agencies didn't talk to each other, now all counter terrorism information comes into NCTC," Vice Adm Redd says. "We take that, we've created an electronic library, we have over six million pieces of CT info that can be accessed by over 6,000 counter-terrorism analysts around the world. Vice Adm Redd gives the president the war plan on fighting terrorism
"So bringing that together has been very significant."

But I put it to Vice Adm Redd that although America itself had not been attacked since 9/11, al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism appears to be as active as ever. Did America's strategy go any deeper than tackling the symptoms? "Obviously you want to stop an attack, but you don't want to stop an attack just in the nick of time," the NCTC director replied. "You want to go after, you sort of work your way back, ultimately all the way back to the radicalisation/recruitment phase, proselytisation, with things like travel, the finances which underpin it, training, leadership, planning, typically more travel and then everything up to and including stopping the attacks."

The NCTC has 400,000 names in its database here. It has five watch teams working 12-hour shifts and a vast electronic library. But of course, despite all the technology and resources, none of this is guaranteed to stop terrorism.

Senior officials here admitted that this war could last another 40 years or more, and there will be defeats along the way.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6210090.stm

[Petronas]

Terror Fears as Blind Sheikh Faces 'Medical Emergency'
December 14, 2006 11:31 AM

The imprisoned al Qaeda spiritual leader known as the "Blind Sheikh" suffered a "medical emergency" at the Springfield federal prison last week, and the FBI is warning his death could lead al Qaeda to launch terror attacks against the United States in reprisal.

According to an FBI bulletin, obtained by ABCNews.com, the 68-year-old Omar Abdel-Rahman began to spit up blood on Dec. 6, and was rushed from prison to the emergency room of St. John's Regional Hospital in Springfield, Mo.

"He accepted a needed transfusion to replace lost blood. While he was under examination, medical authorities also discovered a tumor on his liver," the FBI situational awareness bulletin noted.

Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted in 1996 of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, has long suffered from diabetes and heart ailments and has spent much of his imprisonment at the Springfield Medical Center for federal prisoners. The FBI bulletin reminded authorities that the sheikh had previously called for reprisal attacks in the case of his death in prison.

The bulletin cited what it said was his last will and testament distributed at an al Qaeda press conference in 1998. "My Brothers...If they [the Americans] kill me, which they will certainly do – hold my funeral and send my corpse to my family, but do not let my blood be shed in vain. Rather, extract the most violent revenge, and remember your brother who spoke the truth and died for the will of God...The Mujahid Sheikh Omar Abdel al Rahman. In the name of God the kind and merciful."

The FBI bulletin also notes, "During Ramadan of this past year, al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI) released a videotape encouraging all Muslims in Iraq to exert efforts in capturing Western personnel so that they may be exchanged for the release of the Blind Sheik, suggesting that the Blind Sheikh remains a significant source of inspiration for AQ and their sympathizers."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/12/terror_fears_as.html

[Petronas]

The Regathering Storm
Dec. 25, 2006 - Jan. 1, 2007

For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person. One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with close Taliban and Qaeda ties, spoke to NEWSWEEK recently in southern Afghanistan, demanding anonymity because he doesn't want the Americans looking for him. He says he met the 12 recruits in November 2005, at a mud-brick compound near the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. That was as much as the tight-lipped former detainee would divulge, except to mention that Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the notorious fugitive "American Al Qaeda," was with the brothers, presumably as an interpreter.

Another Afghan had more to say on the subject. Omar Farooqi is the nom de guerre of a former provincial intelligence chief for the Taliban; he now serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan. He says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers. The 12 included two Norwegian Muslims and an Australian, along with nine British subjects, says Farooqi. Their mission, Farooqi told NEWSWEEK, will be to act as underground organizers and operatives for Al Qaeda in their home countries—and their yearlong training course is just about finished.

U.S. and British security agencies have known this threat would come sooner or later. While saying he could not confirm the English brothers' case specifically, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office (unnamed as a matter of standard policy) calls it "common knowledge" that jihadist recruits have been traveling from Britain to Pakistan for indoctrination and training. The existence of a Qaeda pipeline between those two countries has grown harder to deny with every new terrorism story that has broken since the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 subway and bus passengers on July 7, 2005. Each new case that emerges features at least one or two suspects with ties to Pakistan—such as an alleged plot that began before 9/11 to bomb financial buildings in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, and this past summer's alleged plot to blow up airline flights from Britain to the United States.

A few weeks ago Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British security service M.I.5, publicly disclosed that British authorities are monitoring 200 networks and 1,600 individuals "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas." A "substantial" fraction of those 1,600 people have connections to Pakistan, says a British official, declining to be named because the subject is sensitive. The M.I.5 chief added that her investigators had identified nearly 30 separate plots "that often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here."

Indeed, while often thought to have become mostly an inspiration to jihadists around the world, Al Qaeda appears to be gaining strength along the unruly Afghan-Pakistani border. Within the past year, M.I.5 has produced detailed reports about a group of British men, ethnic Pakistanis, who traveled to jihadist training camps in Pakistan by way of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Afghanistan, according to a counterterrorism official in London who requested anonymity because of the sensitive subject. And the scariest part is not what M.I.5 knows but what it doesn't know: there's no way the authorities can watch more than a tiny percentage of the 400,000 British residents who visit Pakistan every year.

U.S. security agencies are no less worried. American intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that their people are definitely concerned about terror suspects and operatives shuttling back and forth between Britain and Pakistan. One particular worry is that under current practice, British visitors to the States are not required to apply in advance for temporary visas, which are routinely granted to any British passport holder who is not on a watch list. In other words, the door is wide open for Britain's growing ranks of young jihadists, even those who have attended Qaeda training camps, if they are unknown to intelligence agencies. U.S. officials are discussing how the visa system could be tightened. "For the most effective background checks on passengers, the United States needs information and assistance from the country where the traveler resides," says Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke, adding that such help should be "routine."

While the Americans talk, Al Qaeda is pressing on with its training plans, Farooqi says. He confidently described those plans to a NEWSWEEK correspondent at a mud-brick house in Paktia province, not far from the Pakistan border, mentioning the English brothers almost in passing as an example of the jihad's recent successes. The specifics of his story could not be independently corroborated. But one gunman among the dozen or so guarding the house, with most of his face hidden by a black-and-white kaffiyeh, appeared to be a European with light-colored eyes; Farooqi later confirmed that the guard was one of the brothers. An open notebook lay on the carpet where Farooqi sat, and the NEWSWEEK correspondent caught a fleeting glimpse of scrawled names and phone numbers, including several that were preceded by the United Kingdom's country code: 44.

Farooqi says he first met the brothers, all of them in their 20s, soon after they reached Waziristan in October 2005. He recalls one of them, known as Musa, telling him that the 7/7 bombings in London "were just a rehearsal of bigger acts to come." A few, he couldn't say how many, had arrived in Pakistan by air, but most had taken a clandestine overland route across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, escorted by a network of professional smugglers. As NEWSWEEK has reported previously, Al Qaeda uses the same underground railroad to transport Iraqi bombmakers and insurgent trainers to share their skills with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to Farooqi, the brothers' travel arrangements were made by Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, one of Al Qaeda's top operations men and a liaison with insurgents in Iraq. (His name has also cropped up in an ongoing British criminal trial in which seven London-area defendants of Pakistani descent are accused of conspiring to bomb British targets with homemade explosives. Prosecutors have alleged that Abdul Hadi's deputy even visited Britain and prayed at a mosque near London with one of the suspects.) The transcontinental journey took a month to complete, but Farooqi claims the brothers left no official traces of their passage, slipping past every border-control post without showing any travel documents. Once they get home, there may be no record that they ever visited Pakistan.

That's something a British Qaeda operative would certainly want to keep secret. A newly issued International Crisis Group report on the tribal areas says the militants have been able to "establish a virtual mini-Taliban-style state there" where they can "provide safe haven to the Taliban and its foreign allies." In the words of a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad, who asks to remain nameless to avoid offending his hosts: "The Pakistanis simply don't control the territory in any meaningful way, and that means a common enemy has a place [to operate]. You have to assume Al Qaeda will make the most of it." Before September 11, Al Qaeda had no network inside Pakistan and only limited contact with Pakistani militants. Now the group has close support on both sides of the border.

Inside Afghanistan, Taliban field commanders depend on regular visits from their Qaeda paymasters. Guerrillas in eastern Ghazni province say the Arab money teams ride in from the direction of the Pakistan border astride motorcycles driven by Taliban fighters. The Qaeda men ask each local commander what weapons, money and technical assistance he needs—and then deliver the aid that is required. According to Zabibullah, a senior Taliban official who has been a reliable source in the past, Al Qaeda has more than 100 specialists, mostly Arabs, helping support Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Still, Al Qaeda took no chances with the English brothers' safety. They received much of their training behind mud-brick walls in the sprawling compounds that are typical of Pakistan's tribal areas. The idea was to keep the men hidden from U.S. and Pakistani reconnaissance planes. Farooqi says the recruits were taught a wide variety of subjects, from religious and ideological doctrine to the art of molding, assembling and detonating state-of-the-art Iraqi-style shaped-charge IEDs. They learned how to make and use suicide-bomb vests, how to rig car bombs, how to motivate other men to sacrifice their lives for the jihad and how to maintain communications with Al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. They're not meant to be suicide bombers themselves, Farooqi says; they are far too valuable to waste. The recruits that M.I.5 was tracking also seemed bound for bigger things than cannon fodder.

Some counterterrorism experts argue that Al Qaeda has become only a figurehead, with no real control over the local terrorist cells it has spawned around the world. The English brothers—and the Pakistan pipeline—are signs that the organization is still in action. Farooqi says he believes, based on overhead conversations, that Al Qaeda is planning for the very long term, a decade into the future. He says the terrorist group is talking about gradually fielding more than 1,000 operatives in Europe over the next 10 years. From what he has heard, only 10 percent of those jihadists are in place so far. Based on information from M.I.5, the British Home secretary, John Reid, recently warned that a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom could be highly likely during the holidays.

The English brothers completed their Waziristan stay in October, Farooqi says, but before going home, they had one final assignment. Their Arab handlers separated them into several smaller groups and sent them into Afghanistan to see the jihad firsthand, embedded with Taliban units in Khowst and Paktia provinces. The unit commanders were warned to avoid putting them in any danger. After that, the brothers were supposed to return to Britain the same way they got to Pakistan. That means most of them could be getting home any day now—if they aren't there already.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240565/site/newsweek/

[Petronas]

My gut feeling also says it is just about time for the next one: 1 1/2 years since the last big attack in Europe, no big attack during Ramadan this year. The possible release soon of an al-Zawahiri tape could be linked to a coming attack, or even the execution command.

Festive terror attack threat 'extremely high'
Sun 17 Dec 2006

EUROPEAN intelligence and security chiefs are said to be on "tenterhooks" over the "extremely high" threat of a Christmas terror attack by Islamic militants.

A senior French counter- terrorism official has said that "all of the warning lights are red", even though they had yet to uncover any specific plan. "The threat is at its highest level," said the official, who spoke anonymously.

"All [security] services are on tenterhooks, and it's not just us [in France]. Work is under way everywhere, but nothing concrete is emerging." Those fears were echoed in Britain, already on edge after the alleged failed plot to bring down airliners over the Atlantic in August.

Home Secretary John Reid said last weekend it was "highly likely" terrorists would attempt to mount an attack over the holiday period. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, has said her agents are tracking almost 30 terrorist plots involving 1,600 suspects, and that at least five major plots had been thwarted since the 2005 bomb attacks in London.

In Washington, US intelligence and law enforcement officials said there was no specific, credible information pointing to a holiday threat. The FBI recently sent a bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies, urging them to be on the lookout for suspicious activity around Christmas. But the intelligence officials say authorities are more concerned about an attack in Europe than the United States at present.

French prime minister Dominique de Villepin announced this month that he had called in reinforcements for beefed-up military patrols of public transportation, railway stations and airports. Villepin also promised that a 1,000-man reserve force would also be available in case of emergency. France's terror alert level remains at red, the second-highest rank out of four.

It was not immediately clear what measures, if any, other European nations were planning as Christmas approaches. In Spain, police said they would increase security at airports only if they received word of a specific threat. In Italy, officials said security was always put on high alert during the festive season, especially around the Vatican and other sites that attracted pilgrims and tourists.

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1872642006

[mez31]

All this talk of the "big" one coming soon and something "large" is in the making could be the complete opposite. Here we are so busy thinking and analyzing the terrorist mindset that we probably are missing the small things. I agree that all of the signs are present for another imminent attack (zawahiri tape, nothing during the month of Ramadan, the blind sheik's health deteriorating, etc...) I am thinking of all the shopping malls in the U.S. major cities chicago, new york, miami, detroit, atlanta, los angeles and how crowded they are going to be with procrastinated shoppers. you do the math. :mad_12:

[Petronas]

True, but Al Qaeda could have carried out smaller attacks in the US long ago had they chosen to. They may feel that, for propaganda reasons, the next attack on the Great Satan needs to be an order of magnitude or two bigger than the ones in London, Madrid, Istanbul, etc. That is the what the magnitude on the foiled attack on the 10 airliners this summer would have been. What else they have in the works and when it will be ready we don't know, but you can count on there being something.

[Petronas]

In 2006, Attacks Were Thwarted. But Why?
December 26, 2006

The week between Christmas and New Year's is a time of high alert for counter-terrorism officials. The fear is that as the number of travelers swells, so do the opportunities for terrorists to strike. In Britain, Home Secretary John Reid has warned it's "highly likely" that terrorists will attempt an attack over the holidays. This past weekend, a British newspaper, The Observer, added to the holiday jitters with a report that the Channel Tunnel is being targeted.

But as the year draws to a close, security officials can take solace in the fact that 2006 has not yet brought a single terror attack of note in the West. That's in sharp contrast to last year, when suicide bombers attacked London; and 2004, when almost 200 people died in the Madrid train bombings.

You could call 2006 the year of the thwarted terror attack. From the Heathrow airline plot to the Miami men indicted for wanting to blow up the Sears Tower, security officials were busy this year talking about attacks that were averted.

Some seemed more serious than others -- even the FBI admitted the Miami "plot" was far from fruition. But it should be noted that there were no terrorist attacks of note this year in the West. But experts disagree on the reason behind the lull, whether it was better intelligence, a weaker al-Qaida -- or mere dumb luck.

In addition to London and Miami, attacks were also apparently averted in Germany, where bombs placed in suitcases on trains near Cologne failed to explode. And in France, dozens of suspected members of an Algerian-based network were arrested. French authorities cited links to three terror plots, including an alleged plan to blow up an airport in Orly.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second-in-command, has kept up a steady stream of taped messages, threatening attacks and rallying supporters. Last week, Zawahiri released his fifteenth tape of the year. In it, Zawahiri warns of the consequences of U.S. military action in Muslim countries. He concludes: "Just as our emir, Sheik Osama bin Laden, may God watch over him, told you: 'As you bomb, you shall be bombed, and as you kill, you shall be killed.'"

The question is, does Al Qaeda have the ability to make good on this threat? Some experts say no, that if it could, the group would have struck already. Ohio State University professor John Mueller, author of a book about al-Qaida titled Overblown, says the terrorist threat has been massively exaggerated.

"Osama Bin Laden is constantly talking about doing things in various places," Mueller says. "Not only the United States, but also Italy and Australia, for example. And nothing has happened there either. If Al Qaeda was so dedicated, numerous, devoted, diabolical and so forth as the common image has it, you'd think they'd have been able to do something by now."

U.S. terrorism expert John Brennan says he is guardedly optimistic that things are moving in the right direction in the fight to stop terrorism. Brennan, a CIA veteran and former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, lists international intelligence cooperation and increased security measures among the reasons why this year passed peacefully in the West. "I don't think the terrorists are as plentiful or as powerful as some people would suggest," Brennan says. "They are very dangerous. And it only takes one cell to do tremendous damage, or cause significant loss of life. But I think sometimes the terrorist threat is overstated, giving one the impression that terrorists are everywhere to be found. That's not the case."

But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, believes the United States should take Zawahiri's threats at face value. Hoffman says, "That Zawahiri and his minions are still trying is beyond doubt. They know they only have to get lucky once." Hoffman argues that the Heathrow plot is evidence that al-Qaida remains undeterred in its ambitions. And he agrees with recent assessments from U.S. Intelligence officials, who say the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border have given al-Qaida and its supporters a place to rebuild after being routed by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6682409&ft=1&f=1001

[Petronas]

Mass slaughter in our schools: the terrorists’ chilling plan
Friday, January 05, 2007

Probably the last place you want to think of terrorists striking is your kids’ school. But according to two trainers at an anti-terrorism conference on the East Coast, preparations for attacks on American schools that will bring rivers of blood and staggering body counts are well underway in Islamic terrorist camps.

• The intended attackers have bluntly warned us they’re going to do it.
• They’re already begun testing school-related targets here.
• They’ve given us a catastrophic model to train against, which we’ve
largely ignored and they’ve learned more deadly tactics from.

“We don’t know for sure what they will do. But by definition, a successful attack is one we are not ready for,” declared one of the instructors, Lt.Col. Dave Grossman. Our schools fit that description to a “T”—as in Terrorism and Threat.

Grossman, the popular law enforcement motivational speaker, and Todd Rassa, a trainer with the SigArms Academy and an advisory board member for The Police Marksman magazine, shared a full day’s agenda on the danger to U.S. schools at a recent three-day conference on terrorist issues, sponsored by the International Assn. of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI) in Atlantic City.

They reminded the audience that patrol officers, including perhaps some with their own children involved, will inevitably be the first responders when terrorists hit. And they documented chilling descriptions of the life-or-death challenges that likely will be faced.

In Part 1 of this two-part report on highlights of their presentations we focus on what’s known about the threat to our schools to date, why terrorists have selected them as targets, and what tactics you’re likely to be up against in responding to a sudden strike.

In Parts 2 and 3, we’ll explore Grossman’s and Rassa’s recommendations for practical measures you and your agency can take now to get ready, including some defensive actions that don’t require any budget allocations.

Why schools?

Two reasons:

1. Our values. “The most sacred thing to us is our children, our babies,” Rassa said. Killing hundreds of them at a time would significantly “boost Islamic morale and lower that of the enemy” (us). In Grossman’s words, terrorists see this effort as “an attempt to defile our nation” by leaving it “stunned to its soul.”

2. Our lack of preparation. Police agencies “aren’t used to this,” Rassa said. “We deal with acts of a criminal nature. This is an act of war,” but because of our laws “we can’t depend on the military to help us,” at least at the outset.

Indeed, Grossman claimed, “the U.S. in the one nation in the world where the military is not the first line of defense against domestic terrorist attacks. By law, you the police officer are our Delta Force. It is your job to go in, while in most other nations cops will wait for the military to come save their kids.”

School personnel, Rassa said, “are not even close” to being either mentally or physically prepared. “Most don’t even have response plans for handling a single active shooter. Their world is taught to nurture and care for people. They don’t want to deal with this.”

The American public, “sticking their heads in the sand, can’t be mentally prepared,” he said. “They’re going to freak when it happens,” their stubborn denial making the crisis “all the more shocking.”

Noting that “sheep have two speeds: ‘grazing’ and ‘stampede,’” Grossman predicted that “not a parent in the nation will send their kids to school the next day”—perhaps for many days—after a large-scale terrorist massacre. If day-care centers—“also on the terrorists’ list”—are hit as well, “parents will drop out of the work force” en masse to protect their children and “our economy will be devastated.”

How we know they’re coming.

Al-Qaeda has publicly asserted the “right” to kill 2,000,000 American children, Rassa explained, and has warned that “operations are in stages of preparation” now. He played vivid videotapes confiscated in Afghanistan, showing al-Qaeda terrorists practicing the takeover of a school. The trainees issue commands in English, rehearse separating youngsters into manageable groups and meeting any resistance with violence. Some “hostages” are taken to the rooftop, dangled over the edge, then “shot.”

“Any place that has given [Islamic terrorists] trouble, they’ve come after the kids,” Grossman said. Muslim religious literature, according to Rassa, states clearly that the killing of children not only is “permitted” in Islam but is “approved” by Mohammed, so long as the perpetrators “are striving for the general good” as interpreted by that religion.

He cited instances in Indonesia where girls on their way to school have been beheaded and in other countries where children have been shot, mutilated, raped or burned alive.

In this country this year [’06], Rassa said, there have been several school bus-related incidents involving Middle Eastern males that raise suspicion of terrorist activity. These include the surprise boarding of a school bus in Florida by two men in trench coats, who may have been on a canvassing mission, and the attempt in New York State by an Arab male to obtain a job as a school bus driver using fraudulent Social Security documents. The latter gave an address in Detroit, home to a large colony of fundamentalist Muslims. Rassa claimed that floor plans for half a dozen schools in Virginia, Texas and New Jersey have been recovered from terrorist hands in Iraq.

The terrorists’ tactical model.

A “dress rehearsal for what terrorists plan to do to us” has already taken place, Rassa and Grossman agreed. That was the brutal takedown in 2004 of a school that served children from 6 to 17 years old in Beslan, Russia. Some 100 terrorists were involved, nearly half of whom were discreetly embedded in the large crowd of parents, staff and kids who showed up for the first day of school; the rest arrived for the surprise attack in SUVs, troop carriers and big sedans. Across a three-day siege, 700 people were wounded and 338 killed, including 172 youngsters.

If a similar assault were launched against a school in your jurisdiction, how would you and your agency respond? Consider this modest sampling of challenges that were deliberately planned or arose from the ensuing chaos at Beslan, as outlined by Rassa:

• The school was chosen because it was one of the taller buildings in the area and had a very complicated floor plan, making a rapid and effective counter-assault by responders extremely difficult. Offender weaponry included AK-47s, sniper rifles, RPGs and explosives, with everything the terrorists needed carried in on their backs. RPGs were fired at a responding military helicopter and at troops.

• More than 1,000 men, women and children, including babies, were penned inan unventilated gym and a cafeteria. As the days passed without food or water and inside temperatures rose to 115 degrees, survivors were eating flowers they’d brought for teachers and fighting for urine to drink out of their shoes in desperation. Women and some children were repeatedly and continuously raped.

• Adult males and larger male students were used as “forced labor” to help fortify the building, then shot to death. Bodies were thrown out of an upper-story window, down onto a courtyard. Attempts at negotiation by responders were used by the terrorists strictly as an opportunity to buy time to solidify their fortifications.

• Surviving hostages were surrounded by armed guards standing on deadman switches, wired to explosives. All entrances to the building as well as stairwells and some interior doorways were booby-trapped. Youngsters were forced to sit on window sills to serve as shields for snipers. “Black widows” (potential suicide bombers) were rigged so their bomb belts could be detonated by remote control when leaders considered the timing was right. The terrorists stayed cranked up on some type of amphetamine to keep awake.

• Armed, outraged parents and other civilians, some of them drunk, showed up and started “rolling gunfights” outside in a futile effort to defeat the takeover. The crowd identified one embedded terrorist and “literally ripped him apart.” The media was everywhere, unrestrained. So many people were milling around that responders often could not establish a clear field of fire.

• When troops finally stormed the school in a counter-assault on the thirdday, “pure pandemonium” reigned. Soldiers and the kids they were trying to rescue were gunned down mercilessly. Explosions touched off inside started multiple fires.

• Responders who made it inside had to jump over trip wires as they “ran” up stairs under fire from above. By then terrorists were holding hostages in virtually every room. Rescue teams were subjected to continual ambushes. Gunfights occurred predominately within a 6-ft. range, with some responders having to fight for their lives in places so cramped they couldn’t get off their hands and knees.

• Some children successfully rescued from the building were so crazed by thirst that they ran to an outdoor spigot and were killed by a grenade as they filled their hands with water.

• Terrorists who escaped during the melee ran to homes of embedded sympathizers who hid them successfully and were not immediately suspected because they were considered “non-strangers” in the community. Some townspeople who volunteered to help as stretcher bearers for the injured were, in fact, embedded terrorists.

• During the siege “at least four people or agencies claimed to be in charge. Actually, no one was in charge and no one wanted to be.” “Osama bin Laden has promised that what has happened in Russia will happen to us many times over,” Grossman warned. “And Osama tries very hard never to lie to us.”

[For more details on this siege, Grossman recommends the book, "Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America’s Schools" (http://www.amazon.com/Terror-Beslan-Russian-Tragedy-Americas/dp/0976775301) ,
by John Giduck.]

What’s likely here.

Probably not so many terrorists involved at a single location. Moving that big a contingent into place would likely attract too much attention and thwart the attack. Grossman describes a more likely possibility, in his opinion: Terrorist cells of four operatives each will strike simultaneously at four different schools. They’ll probably pick middle schools with no police officers on site, where the girls are “old enough to rape” but students are not big enough to fight back effectively.

The targets will probably be in states “with no concealed-carry laws and no hunting culture” and in communities where “police do not have rifles.” Rural areas may be favored, where 30 minutes or more could be required for responders to arrive in force.

The attackers will “mow down every kid and teacher they see” as they move in to seize the school. They’ll plant bombs throughout the buildings, and “ rape, murder and throw out bodies like they did in Russia.” Emergency vehicles responding and children fleeing will be blown up by car bombs in the parking lot.

In all, 100 to 300 children could be slaughtered in a first strike. Terrorists capable of this are already embedded in communities “all over America,” Grossman and Rassa agreed. More will probably gain entry surreptitiously from Mexico, making southern California potentially a prime target.

No time for despair.

It’s a grim picture, for certain. “But if we think there’s nothing we can do to prepare, that is a defeatist mentality,” Rassa said. “We ought to be trying. If we’re not trying, we’re failing. We may as well give up our guns and surrender now.

“I can’t think of a better thing to train up for than protecting our kids. If we try but fall short, look at how much else we’ll still be able to handle than we can now.

“What made most of us do active-shooter training? The killings at Columbine. Are we going to wait for something far worse than that before we do the most that we can to stop the terrorists who are coming for our schools?”

http://ordnance-corner.blogspot.com/2007/01/mass-slaughter-in-our-schools.html

[Petronas]

Terror on the Tracks
Sunday, January 14, 2007

Let's say the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter really was a terrorist.
What if those were bombs he was placing on the chemical placard of a rail car inside the Thatcher Chemical Co. plant in suburban Las Vegas, and not his business cards? Instead of a camera recording lax security over some of the deadliest chemicals ever produced, he held a detonator? And the string of chlorine gas cars trundling down Union Pacific Railroad tracks in the heart of Vegas was his prey?

If he was a terrorist, and his goal was to release a potentially catastrophic cloud of deadly gases, explosives and caustic acids -- in unguarded cars, left abandoned -- then a U.S. Department of Homeland Security's planning scenario might apply: 17,500 people dead, another 10,000 suffering injuries and 100,000 more flooding trauma wards, convinced they've been poisoned. The environmental damage would take weeks to clean up, forcing the evacuation of as many as 70,000 residents from a city built on sin, military might and heavy industry.

Less detailed and unlikely "Worst Case Scenario" plans filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggest the gases that could be released by the reporter perched atop millions of pounds of zinc chloride, phosphoric and sulfuric acids, and chlorine gas could drift 18 miles and threaten 1.1 million people with death, displacement or injury.

But, luckily, he was only a reporter. Five years after terrorists murdered 2,996 people in the Sept. 11 attacks, the Trib embarked on a probe to see how well railroads and their customers secure lethal hazardous materials -- termed "hazmat" by first responders. The road map: Reports compiled since 2003 by the Federal Railroad Administration detailing defects in the way railroads and chemical plants conducted counter-terrorism security planning and worker training.

Armed with that data, the Trib penetrated 48 plants and the freight lines that service them to reach potentially catastrophic chemicals in populated parts of Seattle, Tacoma, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, San Francisco's Bay Area and the New Jersey suburbs, as well as two port facilities in Oregon and Washington.

"What you uncovered is a criminal tragedy, and it's a criminal tragedy that's just waiting to happen. It's also criminal what we haven't done about this," said U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, who has sponsored legislation designed to revamp rail hazmat security nationwide and pledges to hold hearings on the issue. Biden has taken at least 7,000 round trips by rail from his home in Wilmington to Washington, D.C., since entering the Senate in 1972. He routinely talks to railworkers, and when he pulls into a depot, he scans for hazmat tankers, guards and gates. ...

... the Trib found:


Little visible differences in security between the largest and smallest train lines. The Trib easily reached hazmat shipments or locomotives controlled by 12 railroads, ranging from giant Union Pacific to the tiny, city-owned Tacoma Municipal Beltline. Workers never challenged the reporter as he climbed trains, photographed derailing levers or peeked into signaling boxes controlling rail traffic.
No police presence. Despite long trips down tracks nationwide, no rail cops detained the reporter. At a Clifton, N.J., station where explosive railcars hug teeming commuter lines, a Transit Police cruiser idled unconcerned while the reporter spent an hour around hazmat cars. According to the railroads, fewer than 2,300 cops patrol the tracks, about one for every 100 miles.
Shoddy security even at 11 refineries, railroads and chemical plants bound by "stringent" voluntary guidelines created by the AAR and other industries. The Trib penetrated security at four railways adhering to AAR's guidelines. Seven plants that had voluntarily upgraded security to meet standards of their trade groups also had tracks open to terrorists. ..

In Marietta, Ga., the Trib reached hundreds of thousands of pounds of acrylic acid, a highly explosive chemical with choking fumes, stowed on the tracks near several factories. Woodbridge Corp.'s toluene diisocyanate railcars in Lithonia also were unguarded. If ruptured, the chemical can cause severe burns or death as gases seek out moist human flesh. Bombs also easily could have been placed on propane, caustic soda and fuming sulfuric acid tankers and vats in nearby Carroll, Fulton and Gwinnett counties, causing massive explosions and corrosive gas releases. ...

With cameras, roving patrols and high fences, Pioneer America's Tacoma bleach plant seeks to bar terrorists from chlorine railcars. But a Trib reporter walked past rail switching levers and safety chocks to 90 tons of deadly gas abandoned by the Tacoma Municipal Beltline Railroad outside the gates. In 2004, FRA reported the railway failed to create a security plan and the Trib certainly didn't find one that kept chlorine gas safe from intruders two years later. According to EPA "Worst Case Scenario" filings, a catastrophic chlorine tank rupture there could push gas to as many as 14 miles, threatening 900,000 people. ...

In Benicia, San Jose, Salinas, Richmond and Fairfield, Calif., the Trib found that a terrorist easily could have placed bombs on more than 100 other tank cars containing asphyxiating anhydrous ammonia, flammable petroleum distillates, highly explosive propane, and LPG, often on Union Pacific tracks. ...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/letters/send/s_487117.html

[Petronas]

Los Angeles seeks to open anti-terrorism academy
January 28, 2007

Los Angeles is seeking the federal government's help to set up an anti-terrorism academy, the first in the country, it was reported Saturday. Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton, joined by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, will press U.S. officials for the creation of the school for law enforcement training, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Lee Baca has begun seeking local support for a separate tactical training center where officers could get hands-on experience in responding to terrorist threats, said the paper. The academy would complement the training center by blending theory developed there with the center's training, Bratton said.

The center under the name of Southern California Regional Homeland Security and Emergency Operations Center would allow police, fire and medical personnel to hold exercises in mock villages or neighborhoods as well as a fake airline terminal, where chemical, biological and radiation attacks would be simulated, according to the paper. The center and the academy could make Southern California a national center for terrorism study, Bratton said.

Bratton and Baca are scheduled to meet with officials of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security next week, during which they will make a pitch for federal funds and participation in the fleshed-out academy proposal, according to the paper.

A working group of experts from USC, UCLA and other schools has developed the outline of a curriculum that they envision being provided to hundreds of law enforcement personnel each year, said the paper, quoting Deputy Chief Mark Leap, head of counter- terrorism for the Los Angeles Police Department. There would be four or five courses each for executive managers, middle managers, line officers and counter-terrorism investigators, Leap said.

http://english.people.com.cn/200701/28/eng20070128_345461.html

[Petronas]

Link to the U.S. Counterterrorism Center's 2007 Counterterrorism Calendar:
http://www.nctc.gov/docs/ct_calendar_2007.pdf

Check it out, in addition to anniversary dates it has a lot of information about terrorist groups and individual terrorists.

[Klaus]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1323939.ece

ISLAMIC terror cells in Britain have been instructed to carry out a series of kidnappings and beheadings of the kind allegedly planned by the nine terrorist suspects arrested in Birmingham last week.

The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.

As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack.

The revelation explains the recent deployment of a permanent SAS unit to London. The unit has been placed on 24-hour standby to respond to a terrorist attack in the capital. It would aim to carry out a hostage rescue mission within minutes of being alerted.

Muslim police officers serving in London may also be given extra protection. The Association of Muslim Police is in talks with the Met, which is expected to carry out a risk assessment of the dangers.

One well placed source said: “Cells in the UK have been alerted to carry out this type of attack as opposed to the more sophisticated type of bombing in which you place a large number of volunteers at risk. All you need for a beheading is a bit of courage and a sharp knife.”

The order to encourage “low-tech” assassinations is said to follow a review by senior Al-Qaeda planners after an alleged plot to smuggle bombs onto airlines was foiled by police last August.

The order encouraged followers to adopt the tactics used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, who was behind the abduction, torture and beheading of Ken Bigley, a British engineer, in Iraq in 2004.

Bigley, 62, was kidnapped and filmed on video begging for Tony Blair to end the war before being beheaded. Footage of his “execution” was later posted on the internet.

At least two cells are believed to be preparing attacks using cars packed with fertiliser explosives to cause mass casualties.

Armed guards were last month deployed outside the Bacton gas terminal in Norfolk following intelligence that it had been “scouted” by known terrorist suspects. Intelligence suggested the suspects were discussing how to carry out a car bomb attack.

A Whitehall official said MI5 was now monitoring about 280 terror suspects.

Each was suspected of serious intent to carry out an attack. Cells are being closely observed in at least four British towns and cities.

[Petronas]

RAND STUDY IDENTIFIES WAYS SHOPPING CENTERS CAN SHARPLY REDUCE TERRORISM RISK
February 12, 2007

A RAND Corporation report issued today identifies and prioritizes 39
security measures that can substantially reduce the risk of terrorist
attacks at enclosed shopping centers. The study ranks the security measures based on the relative risks of a
set of attack scenarios and on the cost and effectiveness of each
measure. It identifies a high-priority set of six to 10 security
measures that can cut terrorism risk to just one-fifteenth the level it
would otherwise be, based on case studies of three enclosed shopping
centers in the United States.

The highest priority measures identified by the RAND study span a range
of approaches and include: public information campaigns encouraging
people to report suspicious packages; placing vehicle barriers at
pedestrian entrances to block suicide car bombers; searching kiosks for
bombs and weapons; more clearly labeling exits so shoppers can quickly
find their way out of malls in an emergency; and searching all bags and
requiring everyone entering shopping centers to remove their coats to
check for explosives and weapons.

Costs of implementing the highest priority security measures range from
$500,000 to $2 million per year per at each of the three shopping
centers examined. In addition, researchers found that implementing the
high-priority measures would be 95 percent as effective as implementing
all 39 measures.

“The RAND analysis does not assess the probability of terrorist attacks
at shopping centers and does not suggest that the risk is high or
increasing,” said Tom LaTourrette, lead researcher on the project.

Millions of people shop safely at shopping centers every day, but the
threat of terrorist attacks at the centers has become a more prominent
concern since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. There have been more
than 60 terrorist attacks against shopping centers in 21 countries since
1998. ...

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR401/

[Petronas]

Qaeda camps in Pakistan to train operatives
Mon Feb 19, 6:29 PM ET

Al-Qaeda is believed to have established compounds inside Pakistan to train small groups of operatives for possible attacks in the West, a US official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the compounds had been detected over the past year in a semi-autonomous tribal area along the mountainous border with Afghanistan.

The compounds are "not big ones. These are small," the official told AFP. "They are not like the big camps that they had seen in Afghanistan previously." But they were being used to train groups of 10 to 20 people at a time for what were believed to be operations in the West, particularly in Western Europe, the official said.

The Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, played down the developments. "There may be an odd place. And when we find out we take it out. We have done that recently," he said in an interview with CNN. "But saying they have reestablished themselves, and there are a lot of compounds, and they have rejuvenated. That is incorrect."

The compounds suggest that Al-Qaeda, once seen as having been reduced to a largely inspirational role in an increasingly dispersed, decentralized international jihadist movement, is rebuilding its capacity to mount international operations.

The US government is concerned about a stream of Muslims with British passports traveling between Europe and Pakistan as a source of recruits for Al-Qaeda operations, the US official said. ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070219/wl_sthasia_afp/usattacksafghanistan_070219231358

[Petronas]

U.S. to stage biggest anti-terrorism exercise on Guam
February 20, 2007

The world's biggest anti-terrorism exercise will be held this year on Guam, underscoring the Pacific island's growing importance to Washington, officials said yesterday. Exercise TopOff4 is part of a series of large-scale maneuvers established to strengthen the U.S. ability to respond to terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

William Marhoffer, the U.S. Coast Guard commander in Guam, said the TopOff4 exercise would be bigger than last year's Valiant Shield war games, in which the United States mobilized 30 ships, 280 aircraft and 22,000 military personnel. "It will be bigger in some ways. Valiant Shield was a military exercise. It was a show of force. It was the first time we had three carrier strike groups in combined operations in the Pacific since the Vietnam War," he said.

TopOff4 "is a domestic counterterrorism exercise. ... It involves the intelligence communities, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard." The exercise is expected to simulate a maritime terrorist attack. Vice President Dick Cheney is to visit Guam later this week.

"This exercise highlights Guam's strategic value and will show the world that we are prepared to defend our island and our nation from any threat of terrorism," Gov. Felix Camacho said in his State of the Island address.

Guam and neighboring U.S. territories, including the Northern Mariana Islands, are considered by the United States as strategic locations in the Asia-Pacific region. Guam is home to one of the largest U.S. military naval bases in the region, and 8,000 Marines will soon be relocated there from Japan. The island, with a population of 171,000, is banking on the U.S. military buildup to bail it out of its economic woes.

The United States and Japan are spending $15 billion on the relocation of the Marines from Japan, which is expected to further boost Washington's military strength in the Asia-Pacific.

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20070219-105421-2049r.htm

[Klaus]

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=256868152570596&view=1


War On Terror: We've been warning for years that Pakistan has become the new Afghanistan for al-Qaida, and that Islamabad has not exactly been a reluctant host. Now it's front-page news.

The New York Times, quoting U.S. intelligence officials, says al-Qaida has re-established a chain of command inside Pakistan, thanks in part to cease-fire deals Islamabad has cut with local militants who protect al-Qaida. Fox News has confirmed the story, which developed from recent congressional testimony.

Last month, as we noted, departing U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte dropped the bombshell that al-Qaida leaders are projecting power to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe "from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan."

Shockingly, Osama bin Laden and his deputies have managed to set up a training and communications infrastructure there that rivals what they lost five years ago in Afghanistan. Far from being cut off from their followers or on the run, they're calling the shots — from within the borders of our purported ally.

Last year alone bin Laden and his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri produced and released 21 tape-recorded messages — twice as many as the year before. And their statements are more current, at times referring to events that took place just days earlier.

That suggests America's Most Wanted Terrorists are having little difficulty in Pakistan creating a secure means of distributing the tapes. They're also communicating with lieutenants through couriers and the Internet.

Meanwhile, they're training groups of up to 20 men at a time at a band of camps they've set up inside Pakistan. They've already trained and exported terrorists to Western cities, from London to Lodi, Calif., as we've also warned.

They've even trained British and American citizens — all under the nose of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who assures us he's cracking down on our enemies and earning every penny of the billions in aid we send his regime.

Some al-Qaida terrorists trained in Pakistan have carried out their assignments, others luckily were caught first, while still others are lying in wait. After foiling the plot to down 10 airliners over U.S. cities, the MI5 uncovered dozens of other terror plots with Pakistani links.

All this we've reported on these pages. Still left undebated, however, is what Washington is doing about it.

President Bush says he's leaving it up to Islamabad to crush al-Qaida central. "Mr. Musharraf assured me he will take care of leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaida," he said in a recent interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.

This is the same Muslim ally who insists his country is free and clear of Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, who just surrendered to al-Qaida-sympathizing warlords the area of Pakistan where al-Qaida leaders are believed to be holed up and who has banned U.S. patrols inside his country.

Our Afghan-based troops not only can't conduct search-and-destroy raids on al-Qaida hideouts and camps in Pakistan. They can't even pursue al-Qaida and Taliban fighters back into Pakistan when they mount cross-border attacks on our positions in Afghanistan. The White House has agreed to these restrictions as part of our "valued partnership" with Islamabad.

[Petronas]

Firebombs Used in India Rail Attack Have U.S. Officials Worried
February 23, 2007 1:48 PM

The kerosene bombs that killed nearly 70 aboard a highly symbolic India-Pakistan train Feb. 18 have sparked new worries among U.S. law enforcement authorities, who noted the success of the cheap, lethal, easy-to-make-and-deploy terror device, ABC News has learned.

Two suitcases packed with plastic kerosene bottles, planted by exits and triggered by a low-explosive, timed black powder fuse sent tongues of intense flame licking through one rail car aboard the Friendship Express in that militant attack. Only the fact that two others placed in another car failed to ignite prevented further casualties aboard the train put into service between India and Pakistan in 2004.

U.S. authorities and private intelligence firms have expressed concern that the devices could supplant more complex improvised high explosive devices as a terrorist bomb of choice and that they could be used on U.S. subway and commuter rail lines, according to law enforcement sources and written reports.

The successful use of a tactic by terrorists and militants in one sphere of operations has frequently led to the use of similar tactics in other areas of conflict. Most recently, in Iraq, this has been seen in the use of armor-piercing charges that use molten projectiles to maximize damage. Similar charges were used in both Lebanon and Afghanistan, among other conflict zones.

The private intelligence forecasting firm, Strategic Intelligence Forecasting, noted on Feb. 19 that the attack "portends similar attacks against India's highly vulnerable mass transit system by militants. Moreover, the use of TIDs (Timed Incendiary Devices) easily could spread elsewhere."

"High concept, low technology, that's the most scary," said one northeast U.S. emergency management official. In New York last year, authorities devoted one mass transit rescue drill to a scenario that involved removing numerous victims from a regional commuter line that had been wrought by explosions and the spread of chemical gases.

Sources tell ABC News that following the India-Pakistan attack, U.S. authorities in at least some other urban areas recommended that emergency response teams incorporate knowledge of the devices into future training regimes.

Strategic Intelligence Forecasting noted that the India-Pakistan attack "sets a potentially dangerous precedent, especially since TIDs can be more easily constructed, and with more readily available materials, than more complex high-explosive IEDs. This type of attack likely will be copied elsewhere in India, and beyond."

"Explosive-actuated TIDs, more commonly called firebombs, work by using a relatively small low-intensity explosive charge to ignite a more volatile flammable material. This results in an intense, rapidly spreading fire that quickly can engulf a confined space such as a rail car, subway car or airplane," the brief stated.

Similar attacks were unsuccessfully attempted on trains in Germany in August 2006. The devices used in those plots failed to ignite.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/02/firebombs_used_.html

[Petronas]

The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
September 2006

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nsct/2006/nsct2006.pdf

[Petronas]

From the 2007 Intelligence Summit:
I. Four steps to the creation of the terrorist mind, as set forth by a former associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, that he went through himself as he was being prepared to become a mujahedin:
1. Suppress critical thinking. If you think for yourself, you will become an infidel.
2. Threaten with damnation, hellfire, and eternal torture (as laid out in the Qur’an) those who do not heed Allah’s injunction to fight for him.
3. Making the second life, in paradise, more important than the first life, on earth. Suicide bombers are afraid of death – they believe that by becoming shaheed, or martyrs, they assure that they will never truly die but live in paradise forever. The ‘death’ they suffer in the attack is merely a temporary inconvenience on the road to immortality and bliss.
4. The sexual deprivation of a young, unmarried Muslim male, for whom marriage and permitted sexual relations may be a long time in the future, 10 years or more. The promise of immediate enjoyment of the promised 72 virgins, with all the accompanying, very graphically described, pleasures, was something at the forefront of the minds of many of those preparing for jihad.

The differentiation of the enemy (by dress, for example), and his dehumanization (referring to Jews and Christians as “apes and pigs”) lead to the hatred that is the indispensable prerequisite for the willingness to indiscriminately kill other human beings without a second thought.

II. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad all have cells in the US. Hamas is present in 40 states and in most major urban centers. Hamas and Hezbollah each may well have more agents in the US than Al Qaeda. Total numbers are estimated to be in the thousands. About 300 Hezbollah agents have been arrested so far. It costs $25,000 for an arranged marriage to obtain US citizenship for a member of one of these organizations.

III. Enemy infestation of our Arabic translator corps is severe. Read the relevant chapter in Paul Sperry’s book “Infiltration” and be advised: the real situation today is even worse. In Iraq we have hired as translators many English speaking Iraqis who were deliberately trained by Saddam to infiltrate US forces after an invasion. Individuals found passing operational information to the enemy get of with jail sentences rather than being executed as traitors and spies. Of 5,000 translators hired in Iraq by a contractor only 8 were rejected following security screening. After a change in contractor, they were re-screened and about 1/3 did not pass the screening.

In the entire Secret Service there are only two Arabic translators, and less than three dozen in the whole FBI. Over ¾ of Arab Americans are not Muslim and there are large, non-Muslim, fluently Arabic speaking Jewish, Egyptian Coptic, Lebanese Maronite and Iranian exile communities in the US, many of whose members have offered their services as translators post – 9/11. Nonetheless there continues to be a pronounced hiring bias against non-Muslim translators (part of the reason supposedly is that at least some of the existing Arab Muslim translators do not want to work next to Jews, Christians or women). I won’t belabor here what people can read in Paul Sperry’s book, but do want to say that it seems that the story about some of the FBI translators cheering after the 9/11 attacks is indeed true.

[Petronas]

Waking up to terror
March 7, 2007

WASHINGTON - New York City's counterterrorism chief said yesterday he wakes every morning braced for another terrorist attack - most likely from satchel bombs blown up near-simultaneously in the city's subways. "The threat to New York City's transit system is not just theoretical," New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Richard Falkenrath warned House lawmakers in sometimes apocalyptic terms. "It is real. There have been 22 bomb threats and 31 intelligence leads related to subway attack plots this year."

Despite those threats and a spate of deadly train bombings in London, Madrid and Mumbai, India, Falkenrath, a former White House homeland security official, said the federal government has done little to protect the nation's subway and rail systems. "Given the severity of the terrorist threat to the U.S. mass transit system ... the disparity between the federal investment in aviation security and ... mass transit security is a national embarrassment," he said.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee on a bill that would require a national mass transit strategy and would appropriate $4 billion to fortify subway and rail systems - including $100 million to secure six tunnels in New York's Penn Station - Falkenrath praised it as "a step in the right direction." ...

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usrail07q5120911mar07,0,1039521.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print

[Petronas]

Huh?

FBI Puts Local Officials on Notice About Extremists Trying to Sign Up to Be School Bus Drivers
Friday, March 16, 2007

The FBI has issued an "informational bulletin" to state and local officials saying to watch out for people tied to extremist groups trying to earn licenses to drive school buses. The Associated Press reports that members of the unnamed extremist groups have succeeded in gaining the drivers licenses, but a Department of Homeland Security official told FOX News that "at this time there is no evidence that any of these individuals have got these jobs, or got hold of school buses."

"There is no plot. There is no threat. And parents and children can feel perfectly safe," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told FOXNews.com.

The Department of Homeland Security official said the bulletin was sent to state and local law enforcement officials, and "some school districts have reported an increased number of foreign nationals seeking school bus driver positions and a number of other unusual events." The official said that, out of an abundance of caution, FBI shared the information.

An unnamed counterterrorism official told The Associated Press that the bulletin — sent Friday to state and local law enforcement agencies — did not say how often foreign extremists attempted to get licenses or drive school buses, and did not specify where this might have happened. The bulletin noted "recent suspicious activity" by foreigners who either drive school buses or are licensed to drive them, the official told The Associated Press.

Foreigners under recent investigation include "some with ties to extremist groups" who have been able to "purchase buses and acquire licenses," the bulletin says.

But the Homeland Security Department and the FBI "have no information indicating these individuals are involved in a terrorist plot against the homeland," it says. The memo also notes: "Most attempts by foreign nationals in the United States to acquire school bus licenses to drive them are legitimate."

It was not immediately clear whether the extremists intended to do with the school buses. One counterterror official, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that the foreigners investigated were merely employed as bus drivers, and did not intend to use them as part of any terror plot.

"I hate to characterize this as a warning," Kolko said, calling it an "informational bulletin." He said this was part of routine information sent to local law enforcement agencies that they should use only as background information while doing their normal duties. "This is just an awareness issue for local law enforcement. ... It just makes them smarter," he said.

Kolko said that if he knew which extremist groups were involved in the report, he would not identify them.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259168,00.html

[Petronas]

EXTREMISTS are Buying School Buses
Wednesday March 21, 2007

I know you've been hearing some in the news about the Arabs buying school buses and then it's played down in the press and buy the Feds. Well there's much more to it. Remember the school bus story? FBI:"Nothing to Fear of Terrorist School Bus Drivers." The plot thickens ......... apparently these extremists are buying school buses and much more.

The FBI bulletin that I pesonally read stated. "Foreigners under recent investigation include "some with ties to extremist groups" who have been able to "purchase buses and acquire licenses," There is a very important fact that is not getting the attention it needs in the Extremists Driving School Buses in the USA story, the general impression all the news commentators have is that the 'extremists" are just getting school bus drivers licenses to work for a school, no they are buying the school buses for as little as $1,205.00, and they are saying they are for personal use!

This fact leads me back to the Muslim who are buying these used car/trucks. The dealers involved in buying such vehicles at the auto auctions around the USA, says you must have a vehicle dealer license to purchase such vehicles at auction and the auction is the main source for such sales.

In the Tampa, Florida News it sited on such insident of a Muslim making such a purchse, it stated, "Upon running the used car dealer, Abdalla, for wants and drivers license information from Police Dept communications center, it was revealed that Abdalla Deiab was a know(n) affiliate of a terrorist organization and should be approached with caution." DUH!!

Abdalla Deiab was buying used cars, vans, buses and ambulances at Auto Auctions all over the State of Florida, he used at least 4 Social Security Numbers with the last four numbers almost in sequence.

From the St. Petersburg Times another incident

The two men who walked into Scott Weaver's office trying to buy surplus vehicles wore T-shirts and jeans and were very polite. One was 45 to 50, balding, spoke with a slight accent and introduced himself as a car dealer. He said his name was Abdalla, Weaver said. His companion seemed to be in his late 30s, had glasses, a full head of dark hair and said little or nothing.

The two men appeared to be Middle Eastern. "They said they were interested in vehicles," said Weaver, St. Petersburg College's supervisor of institutional services. They didn't say why.

While Abdalla Deiab didn't buy the college's surplus ambulance or three other vehicles, public records suggest he may have acquired a similar vehicle elsewhere. A 1997 Navistar 4700 - commonly used as an ambulance or utility truck - was registered in April to Deiab's former address on Shelley Street in Clearwater, according to state records. It is the same address he wrote on the bids he submitted to SPC for a used ambulance, two former police training cruisers and a large truck. The Navistar was registered under Mintulla Inc., a defunct corporation. Deiab was not an officer in the company, but he did apply for a fictitious business name similar to Mintulla Inc. It was Mintulla International.

Deiab bid on SPC's ambulance and other vehicles in a surplus equipment auction on Aug. 6. It was earlier that week that Weaver recalls the pair of Middle Eastern men coming to his office.

That same week, four men described by college officials as Middle Eastern went to the college's warehouse in Tarpon Springs and took photos of surplus vehicles for sale, Weaver said. It was unclear whether Deiab was one of the four men.

SPC auction buyers aroused suspicion St. Petersburg Times

Now look at the AP school bus story, below, and make note of the fact that these people are "buying the buses".

In the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Suspected members of extremist groups
(al-Muhajiroun, islamic jihad, hamas, etc.) have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An FBI spokesman said, "Parents and children have nothing to fear." ... Asked about the alert notice, the FBI's Rich Kolko said, "There are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern," although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety.

The bulletin, parts of which were read to The Associated Press, did not say how often foreign extremists have sought to acquire licenses to drive school buses, or where. It was sent Friday as part of what officials said was a routine FBI and Homeland Security Department advisory to local law enforcement. It noted "recent suspicious activity" by foreigners who either drive school buses or are licensed to drive them, according to a counterterror official.

Foreigners under recent investigation include "some with ties to extremist groups" who have been able to "purchase buses and acquire licenses," the bulletin says. (In Iraq, al-Qaeda is now using dump trucks filled with explosives and chlorine). But Homeland Security and the FBI "have no information indicating these individuals are involved in a terrorist plot against the homeland," it says. The memo also notes: "Most attempts by foreign nationals in the United States to acquire school bus licenses to drive them are legitimate."

Kolko said the bulletin was sent merely as an educational tool to help local police identify and respond to any suspicious activity. One counterterror official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the government felt it was likely that the foreigners investigated were merely employed as bus drivers, and did not intend to use them as part of any terror plot.

A second official said the government felt it prudent that the backgrounds of all those who come in contact with school children be checked. Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the government has no credible information to suggest terrorists are "involved in buying school buses or seeking licenses to drive them." He said there was no indication of any immediate threat to the country.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-QD7Z2Dwyc6.08bem0ugpgHMKtjDN1FhQ4sg-?cq=1&p=2643

[Petronas]

Rail lines in Tucson could be terror bait
04.01.2007

More than 1,600 rail tanker loads of poisonous gas vulnerable to terrorist attack roll through Tucson in a year, potentially threatening most of the city. A chlorine disaster could kill people up to 5.6 miles downwind of Union Pacific Railroad in Tucson.

In a less-likely or "worst-case" scenario in which the weather and other conditions are ideal for toxic terrorism, the deadly fog could maim and kill up to 9.6 miles away, newly disclosed emergency-planning documents show. "That's incredible," said Gwyneth Scally, an artist whose warehouse studio is just off the tracks near North Sixth Avenue and East Ninth Street. "I'm sure that would never occur to the people in the (upscale) residences just a block or two off."

Security experts have known for years that terrorists could try to blow open a highly hazardous rail car to send a lethal cloud across a U.S. city. The chemical industry is scrambling to design rail cars less likely to break open if they derail. Congress, while moving to increase funding for railroad security, continues wrestling with whether to reroute hazardous cargos from densely populated areas when possible.

Metro Tucson, home to more than a million people, has grown up around Arizona's biggest rail yard. Kids play in neighborhoods close enough to hit a baseball into the rail yard, which borders Barraza-Aviation Parkway, stretching nearly from the 22nd Street Bridge to the Palo Verde overpass. Trains crawl or hurtle through the metro area on the state's busiest line, which links cities from Los Angeles to New Orleans. Phoenix is a branch line on this economically vital "Sunset Route." That main line's potential appeal to saboteurs is one reason the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently named Tucson to a list of 45 areas of "high threat" for terrorism.

There is no known immediate threat to Tucson. The "high threat" designation allows the city and other places to compete for funds to continue hardening themselves against attack. Many say the country has focused on securing airlines and, to a lesser extent, passenger rail lines, while largely ignoring the freight lines.

"When you look at the amount of money that both the federal government and the railroads are spending on railroad security, you just have to shake your head and wonder why there isn't more focus on that," said Kris Mayes, a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, which inspects railroads on behalf of the Federal Railroad Administration. "It's particularly relevant at a time when Union Pacific is proposing to lay down the first new railroad track in Arizona in more than 50 years, which will almost double the rail traffic through Tucson and the rest of Arizona," she said.

The area hit by poison or explosion would depend on where a tank car blows up or derails, the rate at which the gas or liquid gets released and the atmospheric conditions that affect how it spreads. "There's highly hazardous things that go through, I would say, on a daily basis," said Brad Olson, a Tucson Fire Department deputy chief in charge of disaster planning.
Olson and Pima County emergency-response officials said Union Pacific cooperates with local authorities, provides free training to local hazardous-materials responders and is quick to disclose what's on board once a derailment occurs.

Unlike many businesses that make or use hazardous materials, railroads are exempt from key right-to-know laws designed to let citizens know what environmental hazards are in their neighborhoods. When the city of Tucson recently requested a list of the most commonly shipped hazardous materials, Union Pacific required the city to sign a standard nondisclosure agreement.
Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis told the Star he would not divulge the types and quantities of lethal loads "because of the security enhancements." But documents prepared in October for the Arizona State Emergency Response Commission give a glimpse at what comes down the rails. AMEC Earth and Environmental Inc. obtained carload counts from the railroad as part of a study for the commission.

In 2005, Union Pacific carried 629 tanker loads of poisonous chlorine on the tracks at Tucson and east of the city, the records show. Another 998 loads at Tucson were anhydrous ammonia — the poison involved in a North Dakota derailment that killed one person and injured 1,442 five years ago. Those two gases are highly toxic when inhaled — the type of cargo that is drawing attention these days in part because insurgents in Iraq have increasingly blown open tanker trucks hauling chlorine. Together, those two gases make up 3 percent of the 231,502 cars loaded with hazardous materials that traveled through Southern Arizona in 2005.

The railroad also hauled 2,439 carloads of liquefied petroleum gas. Other types of highly hazardous cargo also rolled down that Tucson-area track, including 754 carloads of flammable toluene diisocyanate and 541 loads of corrosive hydrochloric acid. Similar amounts of most of these hazardous chemicals show up on the tracks west of the city, suggesting most hazardous freight passes through Tucson instead of being unloaded here. The documents show only the top 20 most-recorded hazardous materials. Railroad officials say that since 9/11 they have taken big steps to secure rail yards and hazardous shipments, including tightening access to key facilities, restricting information that terrorists could use to plan an attack and training employees to report suspicious activity and to keep mum about sensitive information.

"Individual terminal plans are something I cannot comment on," Davis told the Star, "but I can say our employees and the public have become a great (help) by reporting anything out of the ordinary to UP police or local law enforcement."

Tucson's Union Pacific main yard, a maintenance facility, appeared easy to get into when a reporter made unannounced visits in recent weeks. On the east end near Palo Verde overpass, anyone could park a car and walk alongside the tracks into the yard. A reporter loitered there 20 minutes without being challenged. Elsewhere, emergency entrances to the rail yard were open and unguarded.

Finding highly hazardous loads outside the yard, as a terrorist might do, is even easier. On a recent weekday afternoon, a reporter reached four tankers marked to carry explosive liquid petroleum gas as they paused on the tracks for 40 minutes within 200 feet of golfers swinging their clubs at practice tees. A reporter also had no trouble reaching propane tankers paused on other parts of the track.
A terrorist could blow up a truck on the road, of course. But a 30,000-gallon rail tanker has more appeal as a target because it carries nearly three times the hazardous material and because a rail wreck promises more news coverage, said Capt. Frank Duarte, head of homeland security for the Pima County Sheriff's Department. "Terrorists generally want something spectacular. That's part of their game," he said.

Former trucker Emmett P. Gracey thinks officials might be more eager to reroute highly hazardous loads if they'd been with him in Kingman in 1973. He and his co-driver were eating in a restaurant as workers across the street unloaded liquid propane from a rail tank car. "We had just gotten up to go out and they told us to get out of there, the propane was on fire," Gracey recalled last week.

Witnesses reported the rail car erupted in a 350-foot fireball, destroying or damaging gas stations, restaurants and motels along U.S. 66. Gracey hit the ground near his truck as the heat seared the tops of his ears and head.
"I remember thinking, 'God almighty. You're supposed to lie on the ground when you get hit by fire, but I've got to get out of here!' " A highway patrolman hurried to evacuate others until "he shriveled up like a ball," Gracey said. "You couldn't even recognize him." All but one of 13 who died were volunteer firefighters and other public-safety officers responding to the emergency. More than 100 people suffered burns or other injury. Rail tankers have been strengthened since then to prevent that type of catastrophic explosion.

Concerned after Kingman, the Tucson City Council in 1973 sought to reroute hazmat shipments but decided the rails were under federal control. But in the wake of 9/11, the city councils of Washington, D.C., and some other cities have challenged federal control and moved to limit the most hazardous rail shipments. The railroads are fighting back in court, saying the local laws wrongly interfere with interstate commerce.

UP spokesman Davis said rerouting promises to increase not only transit time — which increases the risk of terrorism or accidents — but "also shifts any risks from one community to the other." Advocates of rerouting say moving cargoes through less-densely-populated areas makes them an unappealing target, so there's no real risk.

Railroad officials stress that they are required by law to accept shipments of hazardous materials, but Congress should cap their liability if they must carry toxic, inhalable gases like chlorine and ammonia, even though accidents are rare. "Every time a railroad moves one of these shipments, though, it faces potentially ruinous liability," Edward R. Hamberger, head of the Association of American Railroads, told a U.S. House panel last summer.

Accident or terrorist attack, part of a long-term solution may be finding alternatives to some of the scariest chemicals we use. For example, Tucson dramatically reduced its vulnerability with respect to Tucson Water when the utility phased out chlorine gas for treating water in the 1990s. Others have proposed dedicating a single cross-country rail line to hazardous materials to avoid high-risk cities.

Frank Walter, a hazmat specialist in the University of Arizona emergency-medicine division, warns that the threat of toxic terrorism in this country remains at an all-time high. He calls that a significant concern and says cities must be prepared to respond. "Obviously, we are on a major rail artery," he said. "So in terms of the possibility, it's always present."

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/crime/176343.php

[The 801]

France Warned CIA of Hijack Plot in 2001

ANGELA DOLAND | AP | April 16, 2007 05:11 PM EST


PARIS — Nine months before al-Qaida slammed airliners into the World Trade Center, French intelligence suspected the terror network was plotting a hijacking _ possibly involving a U.S. airline _ and warned the CIA, former French intelligence officials said Monday.

But the French warning hinted at a plot in Europe, not the United States, and there was no suggestion of suicide attacks or multiple planes. One former official said al-Qaida may have leaked misinformation to divert intelligence agencies from the bigger, deadlier plot to come on Sept. 11, 2001.

The warning was another example of how intelligence agents sensed al-Qaida was hard at work in the months leading up to Sept. 11 but were unable to piece together fragmented warnings into a coherent plot.

Le Monde first reported the story Monday as it published excerpts of 328 pages of classified documents from France's main foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE. One note, dated Jan. 5, 2001, reported that al-Qaida was plotting a hijacking.

Details were vague.

"It wasn't about a specific airline or a specific day, it was not a precise plot," Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, the former chief of staff for the agency's director, told The Associated Press. "It was a note that said, 'They are preparing a plot to hijack an airplane, and they have cited several companies.'"

Le Monde printed a copy of part of the note. In early 2000 in Kabul, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden met with Taliban leaders and armed groups from Chechnya and discussed the possibility of hijacking a plane after takeoff in Frankfurt, Germany, the note said, citing Uzbek intelligence.

The note listed potential targets: American, Delta, Continental, and United airlines, Air France and Lufthansa. The list also mentioned a "US Aero," but it was unclear exactly what that referred to.

Two of the carriers, United and American, were targeted on Sept. 11.

CIA spokesman George Little said Le Monde's article "merely repeats what the U.S. government knew and reported before Sept. 11 _ that al-Qaida was interested in airliner plots, especially hijackings."

"The article does not suggest that U.S. or foreign officials had advance knowledge of the details surrounding the Sept. 11 plot," he said. "Had the details been known, the U.S. government would have acted on them."

The Sept. 11 Commission and a joint congressional inquiry into the attacks have described vague warnings of potential threats in the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

The 9/11 commission said that, as the year began, the CIA started receiving "frequent but fragmentary" threat reports. Among other warnings, the intelligence community sent out a March 2001 terror threat advisory about a heightened threat of Sunni extremist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel and other interests.

During that investigation George Tenet, CIA director at the time, told the commission that "the system was blinking red."

"Everyone knew that something was cooking, that these people were preparing something big and spectacular," Alain Chouet, former chief of the security intelligence service at the DGSE, told AP. "Our American colleagues knew, our European colleagues knew, everyone did. But nobody had a hint it would happen inside the United States _ on the contrary."

The DGSE drew up nine reports about al-Qaida threats to U.S. interests in the year leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, Le Monde said. The agency gained experience fighting Islamist terrorism when Algerian insurgents set off deadly bombs in Paris in the mid-1990s.

The Sept. 11 Commission report mentions a 1994 Algerian plot with chilling similarities to Sept. 11 _ the hijacking of an Air France flight by Algerian militants who threatened to blow it up over the Eiffel Tower. The hijackers were killed when French commandos stormed the plane.

Before drafting the January 2001 notice, the DGSE was tipped off by Uzbek intelligence. Chouet said Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord from the Uzbek community who was fighting the Taliban, had sent his men to infiltrate al-Qaida camps. Their information was passed to Western intelligence officials. Today, Dostum is chief of staff of the Afghan army.

The French certainly passed the note along to the CIA, Chouet said.

"We transmitted everything to our American counterparts, everything that could have posed a threat, and they did the same with us," Chouet said.

He suggested details of the plot _ such as the European setting _ may have been leaked by al-Qaida to confuse intelligence services. It would not be the first time, he said.

An alleged bin Laden associate named Djamel Beghal was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. Investigators suspected he was the ringleader of a plot to send a suicide bomber into the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Chouet says he has concluded that plot was a fake _ "part of a misinformation operation by al-Qaida."

___

Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070416/france-911

This is old news here, right?

[rectar]

Perhaps an aeroflot departure from us airport, fully fueled ?

[Petronas]

Exclusive: Suicide Bomb Teams Sent to U.S., Europe
June 18, 2007 4:45 PM

Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com. Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions.

The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood. "These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places," Dadullah says on the tape. "Why shouldn't we go after them?"

The leader of the team assigned to attack Great Britain spoke in English. "So let me say something about why we are going, along with my team, for a suicide attack in Britain," he said. "Whether my colleagues, companions and Muslim brothers die today or tonight, every drop of our blood will invigorate the Muslim (unintelligible)."

[Video: Watch the Taliban's 'Graduation' Ceremony]

U.S. intelligence officials described the event as another example of "an aggressive and sophisticated propaganda campaign." Others take it very seriously. "It doesn't take too many who are willing to actually do it and be able to slip through the net and get into the United States or England and cause a lot of damage," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism official.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/exclusive_suici.html

[al-Canine]

Why the %#@*&?! is this "secret?!"



Secret Document: U.S. Fears Terror 'Spectacular' Planned

Official Cites Resemblance to Warnings and Intelligence Before 9/11

By BRIAN ROSS, RHONDA SCHWARTZ and RICHARD ESPOSITO
July 1, 2007 —

A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document.

"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com.

U.S. officials have kept the information secret, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that the United States did not have "have any specific credible evidence that there's an attack focused on the United States at this point."

As ABCNews.com reported, U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of terror attacks in Glasgow and Prague, the Czech Republic, against "airport infrastructure and aircraft."

The warnings apparently never reached officials in Scotland, who said this weekend they had received "no advance intelligence" that Glasgow might be a target.

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff declined to comment specifically on on the report today, but said "everything that we get is shared virtually instantaneously with our counterparts in Britain and vice versa."

Unlike the United States, officials in Germany have publicly warned that the country could face a major attack this summer, also comparing the situation to the pre-9/11 summer of 2001.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3336148

[al-Canine]

Relegated to the "business" section, deemed "not credible," but...

Goldman Sachs targeted with death threats

Hand-written letters say hundreds will die; bank believes threat isn't credible.

By CNN's Katy Byron

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The FBI is investigating letters sent to newspapers nationwide that say "Goldman Sachs. Hundreds will die. We are inside. You cannot stop us," the FBI said Friday.

The letters were sent to nine newspapers, including publications in Fort Wayne, Ind.; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Boise, Idaho, a law enforcement official told CNN.

"We take these things very seriously," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said.

The FBI does not yet know who mailed the letters but said they were signed "A.Q.U.S.A." FBI sources tell CNN.

"We are working closely with the law enforcement authorities, who tell us they don't believe the threat to be very credible," Goldman Sachs (Charts, Fortune 500) said in a statement Friday.

"We have a broad range of security measures in place to counter all likely threats and we're monitoring the situation closely," the statement reads.

"We have no specific and credible information about a credible threat to Goldman Sachs other than these letters," Carter told CNN.

According to a law enforcement official, the letters were post-marked late June from New York and were handwritten in red ink on loose leaf paper.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette received the letter Monday, said Bobby Wells, the newspaper's administrative assistant, and the FBI and local police department have since picked up the letter.

The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger reports that it received one of the letters, postmarked June 27. The letter was addressed to the News Department and was turned over to the FBI, according to the newspaper's Web site.

Calls to the Star-Ledger for further detail were not returned Friday.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/06/news/companies/goldman/index.htm?cnn=yes

[Casey]

This is very similar to messages that were received through an online form at the Fortune 1000/Finance e-zine, based in Manhattan that I was working at in the weeks ahead of 9/11.





Relegated to the "business" section, deemed "not credible," but...

Goldman Sachs targeted with death threats

Hand-written letters say hundreds will die; bank believes threat isn't credible.

By CNN's Katy Byron

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The FBI is investigating letters sent to newspapers nationwide that say "Goldman Sachs. Hundreds will die. We are inside. You cannot stop us," the FBI said Friday.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/06/news/companies/goldman/index.htm?cnn=yes

[Alli]

This is very similar to messages that were received through an online form at the Fortune 1000/Finance e-zine, based in Manhattan that I was working at in the weeks ahead of 9/11.

Can you elaborate on this, Casey?

[Casey]

Can you elaborate on this, Casey?


Providing the message is quoted in the article there are 3 differences:

The online message did not make any claim to "We are inside".

The online message said "many" people will die, rather than 100's.

And, the online message was written as though the author's first language was not English.

I was able to trace the messages to a university in the U.K.

The only follow up information we were given, was that the people thought to have sent the messages were already being observed before the authorities were contacted with the threat.

[Alli]

What if it's a financial attack rather than physical?

[Klaus]

the financial district of New York alone would interrupt the US economy for several weeks. The fallout would last for months or years.

"American Hiroshima" calls for multiple cities.
Charlotte, S.F, NYC, Miami, Las Vegas and Houston would disrupt all electronic banking for months.

Whatever cash you have and food on hand, is all you have.

[Petronas]

The unexpected profile of the modern terrorist: 26, from a caring family, married, with children, graduate
July 7, 2007

We expect suicide bombers to be uneducated social outcasts who have been twisted by fanatics. But the reality can be very different. Two men attempt to commit suicide and mass murder by driving a jeep packed with gas cylinders and petrol into an airport terminal. One is suspected to be a doctor, a man supposed to be committed to saving, not taking, lives. The other, now fighting for his life in a burns unit, is a “pleasant, calm and sociable” aeronautical engineer.

Fast forward a week. By now, a further three doctors and two trainee doctors are under arrest in Britain and Australia on suspicion of involvement in the botched car bomb attacks on London and Glasgow.

For the many people – including colleagues and patients – who had personal contact with one or more of these medical professionals, the suggestion that they may be terrorists will have come as a profound shock. Some may owe their lives to them.

To this sense of disbelief can be added the horrified astonishment felt worldwide at the very suggestion that a group of physicians may have been involved in a plot to commit mass murder.

Bewilderment stems not merely from the knowledge that there can be no more fundamental way to break the Hippocratic Oath, in which a doctor vows not to act “with direct intent deliberately to end a human life”. Doctors – dedicated, intelligent, well-educated, relatively affluent – do not fit the profile of the maniacal jihadist terrorist that is lodged in our collective imagination.

If someone hates us so much that he is prepared to sacrifice his own life in order to commit mass murder, then we want to find a rational explanation in his personality or his background to separate him from the rest of us.

He would ideally have grown up in deprivation, with a dysfunctional family, few friends, minimal education, a poverty of expectation and a world view that can be easily moulded by the Islamist zealots whose nihilistic creed offers a simple, deadly solution to all of life’s problems.

The reality, disturbingly, is very different. A study of 172 al-Qaeda terrorists conducted four years ago by Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA case officer in Pakistan, found that 90 per cent came from a relatively stable, secure background.

Three quarters were from middle-class or upper-class families, two thirds went to college and two thirds were professionals or semi-professionals, often engineers, physicians, architects or scientists. The average age for making an active commitment to violent jihad was 26, and three quarters of the terrorists were married, most of them with children. Only one in a hundred had shown any form of psychotic disorder. Two thirds became drawn towards a terror group while living in a country that was not their homeland.

Dr Sageman’s findings, published in 2004 in Understanding Terrorist Networks, led him to conclude that “most of these men were upwardly and geographically mobile”. He wrote: “Because they were the best and brightest, they were sent abroad to study. They came from moderately religious, caring, middle-class families. They spoke three, four, five, six languages.”

Unlike the lone serial killer, these men functioned well in groups. Indeed they depended, isolated as they were in a foreign country, on a close circle of friends who reinforced and legitimised their beliefs. “You could almost say that those least likely to cause harm individually are most likely to do so collectively,” Dr Sageman wrote. Yesterday he told The Times that the existence of a terror plot involving foreign doctors should surprise no one.

“When you look at the global Salafi jihad, you have three waves. The first were the companions of bin Laden, the characters in Afghanistan in the 1980s,” he said. “The second, on whom my 2003 research was based, were the best and the brightest from the Middle East. Those are the guys who became radicalised in the West. Many of them are engineers and physicians.

“And the third are what people call the home-grown, these are the guys who are second or third generation in the West, and they are less well-educated. Their average age is about 19 or 20, and there are more criminal elements there.”

Before the attack on London in 2005, Britain expected Islamist terrorists to be foreigners. Since 7/7, the focus has been on British-born extremists, but the second wave, as Dr Sageman describes them, have never ceased to be a threat.

“Just because, right now, we’ve got so many home-grown terrorists, that doesn’t mean that what attracted the second wave to this violent ideology is dead.” Ask Dr Sageman to name two likely professions for a second-wave terrorist and he selects “engineers and physicians”.

“What makes people like engineers or physicians try to work for the good of the whole society is also the very same impulse which makes people sacrifice their lives for the sake of a community, albeit [in this case] an imaginary community like the ummah [the global community of Muslims].

“You would expect those people to be more active [in terrorism]. “Engineers and physicians are far more active in their everyday lives, trying to do things. They’re far more action-oriented than, say, lawyers. You don’t find many lawyers, but you find a lot of engineers and physicians.” Step forward Osama bin Laden, graduate in civil engineering, or his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, a brilliant Egyptian surgeon, or Mohamed Atta, the architectural engineering graduate who piloted the American Airlines flight that destroyed the north tower of New York’s World Trade Centre.

Dr Sageman’s second wave – for example, the 9/11 hijackers – and the third wave of home-grown terrorists as represented by the boys from Beeston, may seem to have little in common except an impulse to commit mass slaughter in the name of Allah.

Both groups, however, typically experience a sense of dislocation from the society in which they live and work. Clive Walker, a terrorism specialist and Professor of Criminal Justice at Leeds University, says that Mohammad Sidique Khan and his three companions shared a form of “social anomie”.

“It’s a kind of in-between state, a symptom of rejection in many ways. They feel rejected, but equally they reject the available cultures, both of their fathers and of the society they find themselves in,” he said.

“So they’re looking for some kind of explanation or some kind of cultural philosophy which makes them feel important and valued in ways which they don’t find from the other two, obvious sources of cultural expression.”

A similar absence of connection, he says, is often felt by Middle Eastern professionals working in the West, “receptive young men who’ve left the rather more conservative background and culture of their parents, have been exposed to something else and find that equally strange and unpalatable”.

Those searching for an identity that is neither Western, nor the passive Islam of their parents, are presented with a seductive call to duty, and a ready-made sense of belonging, by those espousing the Manichean tenets of radical Islam.

Here is a black and white world of good, the global ummah, and evil, in the form of everyone and everything nonMuslim. Because the West is seen as engaged in a global war against Islam, jihad in the name of Allah is seen as the duty of every Muslim.

That jihadist terrorism is abhorrent to the vast majority of Muslims, and Muslim doctors, living in Britain was emphasised yesterday when a coalition of groups calling itself Muslims United took out advertisements in national newspapers to condemn the car bomb attacks.

“Not in our name,” they said, quoting a verse from the Koran: “Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind. And whoever saves one, it is as if he saved the whole of mankind.” Your educated, middle-class jihadist will point out that the full verse actually prohibits the killing of another human being “except as a punishment for murder and other villainy in the land”.

The Koran’s fifth chapter continues: “Those that make war against God and his apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain . . .” For some Muslims, especially those who have lived in or near Iraq, it does not demand a great leap of faith, whatever their profession, to include the United States and Britain among those “that make war against God”.

And so a few dislocated individuals meet, bond and grow to share a belief system in which they are the chosen for whom Allah has reserved a place in paradise.

Martyrdom is heady stuff.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2039865.ece

[Petronas]

White House, FBI Agents Race to Disrupt 'Summer of '07' Threat
July 11, 2007 2:18 PM

Senior law enforcement officials said today that the growing signs of a "Summer of '07" terror attack on the U.S. have led the FBI to dispatch dozens of agents to track down new leads across the country. The threat has also led the White House to begin a weekly meeting of senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. The group met last Friday and will meet tomorrow in the White House Situation Room at 1 p.m., according to the officials.

The White House has described the meeting as "not urgent" and "regular," but law enforcement officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com the new weekly sessions, to be held every Thursday, were designed specifically to counter the summer threat. "The Thursday meetings will be regular, but the first one is tomorrow," said one official.

Dozens of FBI agents have been given a two-week deadline to run down more than 700 leads on an FBI "worry list," developed in the wake of the failed attacks in London and Glasgow. The list includes some 100 specific leads in the New York area, senior law enforcement officials also told ABCNews.com.

Although the White House says there is no credible, imminent threat to the United States, the origin of the intelligence that a small group of al Qaeda terrorists was headed to the United States came from a credible intelligence source, who in the past has been reliable, officials said. The source of the intelligence specified the small cell was traveling from Pakistan.

The new threat comes as FBI agents were already trying to sort through a mountain of e-mails, jihadist message board postings, telephone intercepts and human source intelligence, in an effort to pluck an intelligence gem from the background of "chatter" louder than has been heard in any recent summer season. There is so much terrorist "noise" that some agents and officers have already dubbed June and July a "summer of chatter."

Agents also have been running down financial leads and telephone records that could have linked several members of the recent failed London and Glasgow, Scotland incendiary bomb plots to North America.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/white-house-fbi.html

[al-Canine]

Signal to Attack? Worries Over Latest al Qaeda Tape

Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz Report:

Fearing a possible coded signal to attack, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are studying an unusual pattern of words in the latest audiotape from al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri.

On the tape, posted on the Internet Wednesday, Zawahri repeats one phrase three times at the end of his message.

Have I not conveyed? Oh God be my witness.

Have I not conveyed? Oh God be my witness.

Have I not conveyed? Oh God be my witness.

A new FBI analysis of al Qaeda messages, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, warns that "continued messages that convey their strategic intent to strike the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests worldwide should not be discounted as merely deceptive noise."

Intelligence analysts are also investigating technical clues that Zawahri's most recent audio message was phoned in via computer phone, using voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

The ease and frequency of Zawahri's propaganda messages is one of the factors that have led U.S. intelligence analysts to worry about a possible attack against the United States this summer.

The new FBI analysis, reviewing more than 70 al Qaeda messages over the last 14 years, found a recurring theme of "the duty to kill Americans -- both military and civilian."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/signal-to-attac.html

included in user comments, for what it's worth...?

Mohammad's Last Sermon:

All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly. Be my witness O God, that I have conveyed your message to your people.

[al-Canine]

Mohammad's Last Sermon:

All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly. Be my witness O God, that I have conveyed your message to your people.

read the whole thing here...

http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/sermon.html

[Petronas]

Transnational Threats Update May 2007 - Vol. 5, No. 04

SYNOPSIS:

In this issue:

- Europe to Profile Mosques and Imams
- UK Considers New Antiterror Legislation
- Saudi Arabia—Morocco Antiterror Pact
- 488 Muslims Lose Bosnian Citizenship
- Spain Arrests 16 Militants
- Rise of Al Qaeda in Bangladesh
- Cyber Attacks on Estonia Investigated
- Loss of 130,000 Norwegian Passports
- Poisonous Chemical Crossing Borders
- EU to fight Drug Trafficking in Africa
- Biggest Drug Haul Ever Made in Holland
- UN Peacekeepers Trade Guns for Gold
- Attacks Halt Oil Supply Transports

http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/ttu_0705.pdf

[Petronas]

New Al Qaeda threat of radioactive truck attacks naming New York, Los Angeles, Miami
August 10, 2007, 1:11 AM (GMT+02:00)

The threat was picked up by DEBKAfile’s monitors from a rush of electronic chatter on al Qaeda sites Thursday, Aug. 8.

The al Qaeda communications accuse the Americans of the grave error of failing to take seriously the videotape released by the American al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gaddahn last week. “They will soon realize their mistake when American cities are hit by quality operations,” said one message.

Another said the attacks would be carried out “by means of trucks loaded with radio-active material against America’s biggest city and financial nerve center.”

A third message mentioned New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets. It drew the answer: “The attack, with Allah’s help, will cause an economic meltdown, many dead, and a financial crisis on a scale that compels the United States to pull its military forces out of many parts of the world, including Iraq, for lack of any other way of cutting down costs.”

There is also a message which speaks obliquely of the approaching attacks easing the heavy pressure America exerts on countries like Japan, Cuba and Venezuela.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources and monitors say there is no way of gauging for sure how serious these threats are, how real, or whether they are part of a war of nerves to give the Gaddahn tape extra mileage. But it is important to note that the exchange of messages took place over al Qaeda’s internal Internet sites and that they contained the threat of radioactive terror and specific American cities for the first time after a long silence on these subjects.

In addition, a growing number of clips has been disseminated of late over al Qaeda sites instructing the faithful how to design remote-controlled gliders, pack them with explosives and launch them against predetermined targets.

http://www.debka.com/

[Vancouver]

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources and monitors say there is no way of gauging for sure how serious these threats are, how real, or whether they are part of a war of nerves to give the Gaddahn tape extra mileage.If it were part of a "war of nerves", i.e. a bluff, AQ would not be keeping it so secret. The good thing about enemy propaganda is that -- by definition -- it cannot be secret.
Anyhow has anybody other than Debka seen these communications? If some enemy person is annoyed that Gadahn's rant is not being taken seriously, who is that annoyed person most likely to be? Gadahn himself.
It's true enough that Gadahn's rant has failed to intimidate anybody. People on the Hill have said publicly that no terrorist action has ever yet been traced to Gadahn's authority. Talking heads on TV have described Gadahn's latest piece very unflatteringly. Even SITE and MEMRI, who tend to pump up everything because they want to sell it, have admitted that Gadahn's tape is basically the same old Gadahn stuff, with no surprises.

[Petronas]

New York police take precautions after purported al Qaeda threat
updated 8:55 a.m. EDT, Sat August 11, 2007

NEW YORK (CNN) -- New York police officers screened vehicles Saturday near Wall Street with radiation detection devices as "a precautionary measure" after an unconfirmed Web report about a possible radiological attack on U.S. cities. The report was based on chatter allegedly seen Thursday on al Qaeda Web sites, but the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and New York Police Department insist the threat is unsubstantiated.

Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, said the purported message doesn't appear on any Web sites that CNN monitors and that the claim cannot be independently verified. In addition, counterterrorism experts who work closely with CNN also were unable immediately to verify the claim, Nasr said.

The report about the purported radiological attacks was published on the Israeli Web site DEBKAfile based on a "rush of electronic chatter on al Qaeda sites." One of the messages mentioned New York, Los Angeles, California, and Miami, Florida, as possible targets.

The New York Police Department stepped up some monitoring activities as a "precautionary measure," Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said late Friday. Police set up barricades to slow traffic and on Saturday were pulling vans and trucks aside to aid in the detection of a possible radiological threat. "While the threat remains unverified, our counterterrorism posture -- which is reconfigured daily based on intelligence from around the world -- has been modified," Browne said. New York police have increased the deployment of radiological sensors on vehicles, boats and helicopters and set up vehicle checkpoints in the city, Lower Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels, Browne said.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "These actions are like those that the NYPD takes every day -- precautions against potential but unconfirmed threats that may never materialize." The city's alert status for an attack was unchanged and remains at the "orange" or "high" level. "As New Yorkers we have gone about our lives even with the daily threat level at 'orange' every day since September 11, 2001," Bloomberg said. "That threat level has not changed because of this unverified threat, and we shouldn't let anyone terrorize us by spreading fear."

The report about the purported radiological attacks was published on the Israeli Web site DEBKAfile based on a "rush of electronic chatter on al Qaeda sites." The report does not provide a link to the purported al Qaeda "chatter" or post the original statements. The "chatter" allegedly chastises Americans for not taking seriously the threats American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn made in an al Qaeda-produced video released last week. In that video Gadahn -- also known as Azzam the American -- says U.S. embassies and American interests "at home and abroad" were prime targets for terrorist attacks.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the purported threat was of "low credibility." But he said his agency was working with the Department of Homeland Security to share it with local authorities. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said, "We consider this threat to be unsubstantiated. There continues to be no credible or specific information telling us of an imminent threat to the homeland," Knocke said. "There is no substantial uptick in chatter. We are hearing more because we are better at collecting than we were in the summer of 2001." But Knocke said his department supported New York's decision to take precautionary measures.

Officer Jason Lee, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said, "LAPD has not heard of any threats and is not aware of any warning on a federal, state or local level at this time." Miami FBI Special Agent Judy Orihuela said, "We consider this to be of very very low credibility, and we're not doing anything differently in Miami."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/11/terror.chatter/index.html

[NYer]

Who needs radiological bombs? To paralyze NY City, all that's needed is heavy rain. (http://www.nypost.com/seven/08082007/news/regionalnews/storms_cause_nyc_commuting_hell_regionalnews_.htm) I'm quite surprised young Adam isn't giving Allan the credit for NY's woes this week.

[NYer]

NYPD: 34th Street (http://wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1122120#post1122120) was the threat.

[NYer]

Anyone know what to make of this? (http://wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1122127&posted=1#post1122127)

[Klaus]

They are confident that a major "retaliation" is coming, and soon.

And that is the biggest problem we face...

Who do we retaliate against?

Pakistan is supposed to be our ally. There will be a coup there shortly. If Musharraf "leaves" power, that brings a whole new dynamic to WORLD PEACE.

If we nuke mecca or medina, there will be "one billion suicide bombers".....
that's a 3:1 ratio to our home team, and our best fighting force is halfway around the world...

[Vancouver]

Anyone know what to make of this? (http://wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1122127&posted=1#post1122127)Al-Qaida evacuating Waziristan? That would be very interesting if it were true. :)

[NYer]

Regarding the NY City Threat -
Israeli website unreliable. (http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--israel-nycalert0812aug12,0,519850.story)

Somehow, I think Ray Kelly knows all about Debka. I doubt the NYPD would go on alert solely on the basis of a Debkafile report. I think we're being given the "Nothing to see here ... move along" treatment again.

[Petronas]

NYPD warns of homegrown terror threat
Wed Aug 15, 8:22 PM ET

They preferred bookstores or hookah bars to mosques. They stopped listening to pop music and instead surfed Web sites promoting radical Islam. They threw away their baseball caps and grew beards. New York Police Department intelligence analysts have concluded those were some of the telltale signs of homegrown terrorists in the making — a mounting threat as grave as that from established terrorist groups like al-Qaida.

An NYPD report released Wednesday warns of a "radicalization" process in which young men — otherwise unremarkable legal immigrants from the Middle East — grow disillusioned with life in America and adopt a philosophy that puts them on the path to jihad. "Hopefully, the better we're informed about this process, the more likely we'll be to detect and disrupt it," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said while presenting the findings at a briefing of private security executives at police headquarters.

The findings drew swift criticism from Arab-American civil rights groups, which accused the NYPD of stereotyping and of contradicting recent federal warnings that the chief terrorism threat remains foreign.

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said federal authorities "appreciate efforts to better understand the phenomenon of radicalization." "We are fortunate that radicalization seems to have less appeal in the U.S. than in other parts of the world," he said, "but we do not believe that America is immune to homegrown terrorism." The FBI declined to comment.

Police officials said the study is based on an analysis of a series of domestic plots thwarted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including those in Lackawanna; Portland, Ore.; and Virginia. It was prepared by senior analysts with the NYPD Intelligence Division who traveled to Hamburg, Germany; Madrid; and other overseas spots to confer with authorities about similar cases.

The report found that homegrown terrorists often were indoctrinated in local "radicalization incubators" that are "rife with extremist rhetoric." Instead of mosques, those places were more likely to be "cafes, cab driver hangouts, flop houses, prisons, student associations, non-governmental organizations, hookah bars, butcher shops and bookstores," the report says. The Internet also provides "the wandering mind of the conflicted young Muslim or potential convert with direct access to unfiltered radical and extremist ideology."

The report warns that potential terrorists are difficult for law enforcers to detect because they blend in well with society. It also argues that more intelligence gathering is needed to thwart potential terror plots at their earliest stages. Potential homegrown terrorists "are not on the law enforcement radar," the study says. "Most have never been arrested or involved in any kind of legal trouble."

They "look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them," the study adds. "In the early stages of their radicalization, these individuals rarely travel, are not participating in any kind of militant activity, yet they are slowly building the mind-set, intention and commitment to conduct jihad."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations accused the NYPD analysts of distorting the innocent behavior of observant Muslims. "Is Islamic attire or giving up bad habits ... now to be regarded as suspicious behavior?" asked the group's chairman, Parvez Ahmed.

Kareem Shora, legal adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the findings faulty and inflammatory. "The report is at odds with federal law enforcement findings, including those of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, and uses unfortunate stereotyping of entire communities," Shora said in a statement. "The use of such language by the NYPD is un-American and goes against everything for which we stand."

The National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Osama bin Laden's network had regrouped and remains the most serious threat to the United States. Kelly insisted the NYPD report made no effort to provide a "cookie-cutter" profile for terrorists. He also argued that the NYPD report "doesn't contradict the National Intelligence Estimate — it augments it."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070816/ap_on_re_us/nypd_terror_threat_8;_ylt=AsdIhdtM_xgR.DN8JaMquWVH 2ocA

[NYer]

Link (http://wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1125679#post1125679) to the entire NYPD report.

[Petronas]

Counterterrorism Officials Analyzing Islamic Web Post Warning of 'Special Gift'
Thursday, September 06, 2007

Federal counterterrorism officials are analyzing a posting on an Islamic forum Web site that warns of "a special gift" to be given on the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, FOX News has learned.

The warning was posted Sept. 2 on a site frequented by radical groups and said in part that "there will be a special gift coming on the day of the blessed invasion of Manhattan."

Federal officials told FOX News they are trying to determine if it might be a specific warning or just part of broad chatter that has been heard during the last few months. Postings talking about "gifts" have been seen before in the days leading up to the anniversary of Sept. 11.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295943,00.html

[uva]

New York City Postal trucks no longer have license plates. The box trucks have numbers painted on the back panel. Who thought of this and what is to prevent some bad guys from duplicating a US mail truck and using it for a bad purpose!!!

[NYer]

Counterterrorism Officials Analyzing Islamic Web Post Warning of 'Special Gift'


Have they figured out how Sammy is getting younger?

[Petronas]

Oman (Country threat level - 3): On 9 September 2007, the U.S. Embassy in Muscat issued the following Warden Message: "As we near the September 11th anniversary, the U.S. Embassy in Muscat would like to remind American citizens in Oman about the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against Americans and American interests overseas. The information below is based on the current Department of State Worldwide Caution, which expires on 9 October 2007.

"The Department of State remains concerned about the continued threat of terrorist attacks, demonstrations and other violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests overseas. Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. interests in multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics to include assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bombings.

"Ongoing events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East have resulted in demonstrations and associated violence in several countries. Americans are reminded that demonstrations and rioting can occur with little or no warning.

"The arrests earlier this month in Germany of suspected terrorists planning attacks against U.S. interests, the September 2006 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Syria, the August 2006 arrest by British authorities of a significant number of extremists engaged in a plot to destroy multiple passenger aircraft flying from the United Kingdom to the United States and the March 2006 bombing near the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan illustrate the continuing desire of extremists to strike American targets.

"Extremists may elect to use conventional or non-conventional weapons, and target both official and private interests. The bomb attacks targeting buses carrying foreign workers in March 2007 and December 2006 in Algeria, a series of bombings in Thailand in May and September 2006 that targeted commercial and tourist destinations in the far south, and the bombings in the Egyptian resort town of Dahab in April 2006 all illustrate how terrorists exploit vulnerabilities associated with soft targets. Additional examples of such targets include high-profile sporting events, residential areas, business offices, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, public areas and locales where Americans gather in large numbers, including during holidays. Financial or economic targets of value may also be considered as possible venues; the vehicle-based suicide attack on an oil facility near Mukalla and Marib in Yemen in September 2006 and the failed attack on the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia in late February 2006 are such examples.

"In the wake of the August 2006 plot against aircraft in London, numerous terrorist attacks on trains in India in 2006, the July 2005 London Underground bombings, and the March 2004 train attacks in Madrid, Americans are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems. In addition, extremists may also select aviation and maritime services as possible targets.

"U.S. citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a high level of vigilance, be aware of local events, and take the appropriate steps to bolster their personal security. ..."

http://www.asigroup.com/HOTSPOTS.asp

[Petronas]

Al-Qaida associates in N.J.
Monday, October 15, 2007

Osama bin Laden may be hiding in the impenetrable mountains near the Afghanistan border, but FBI counterterror officials say they have identified several of his associates in a far more accessible spot -- northern New Jersey.

The FBI's elite Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark says it is not only monitoring a number of North Jersey residents with ties to al-Qaida, but that agents have quietly "disrupted" their activities and even deported a few. These glimpses into North Jersey's war on terrorism, from a series of interviews with task force leaders, come on the heels of revelations last summer that Bin Laden's terror network had regained strength. But that rebuilding was thought to have taken place overseas.

This is the first time since the 9/11 attacks that FBI counterterror officials have revealed an al-Qaida presence in North Jersey. "There are definitely facilitators in this state," said Kevin Cruise, the veteran FBI counterterror agent who directs Newark's 100-member terrorism task force of FBI and CIA agents as well as state police and even local beat cops.

One of Cruise's deputies was even more specific. "There are people in your county who are affiliated with known al-Qaida members overseas," said Jack Jupin, the FBI agent who heads the counterterror squad for Bergen County.

Cruise, who supervised FBI investigations of terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole before taking over the Newark task force, cautioned that his agents have no information about an imminent attack here. But he said several al-Qaida sympathizers would try if given the chance. "There are many people who are like-minded who want to commit acts of terrorism and have just not taken that extra step," said Cruise, who keeps a "wanted" poster of Bin Laden on his office wall.

Sometimes, he said, counterterror agents "disrupt" these North Jersey residents with al-Qaida ties. Cruise declined to describe any case in detail. But in general, such disruption methods ranged from outright deportations to quiet visits by FBI agents in which suspected terrorists are told their activities are being monitored. "There are many disruptions that occur that the public does not know about," Cruise said.

For the past six years, FBI officials have routinely declined to discuss counterterror measures in northern New Jersey. But last week, the FBI granted The Record limited access to the offices of its Joint Terrorism Task Force, in a gleaming glass building in Newark overlooking the Passaic River.

This unusual glimpse into the inner workings of North Jersey's primary counterterrorism force revealed the following:

Task force investigators have discovered that every major terrorist group in the world, including Hamas and Hezbollah, has at least one North Jersey contact. The lone exception is Afghanistan's ultra-fundamentalist sect, the Taliban.

The task force is currently conducting more than 400 counterterror investigations. These range from probes into Bin Laden's network to neo-Nazis to environmental terrorists.

Each month, a task force "response" squad receives as many as a dozen new tips about possible nuclear, biological or chemical terrorism in New Jersey. These range from citizen concerns about a mysterious powder to the report that three ships were sailing to New Jersey with radiological material on board. Squad members were even dispatched to Emerson last month after school administrators received a threat to blow up schools.

Undercover agents attend all professional football games at Giants Stadium. Agents also plan to monitor the upcoming Breeders' Cup at Monmouth Park Racetrack.

Task force agents routinely travel overseas. One is currently in Iraq; another is in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, helping to question suspected al-Qaida captives at the U.S. naval base there. Newark-based agents also played a role in the investigation of the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and provided information to assist the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Task force agents say they are united by one common fear -- that they may overlook information that could stop a potential terrorist attack. Indeed, almost every office seems to contain some reminder of the 9/11 attacks.

In weighing his own fear of an attack, Cruise noted that northern New Jersey has a wide range of tempting and vulnerable targets, from tunnels and bridges to sports venues, shopping malls and chemical plants. "My greatest fear in New Jersey is that somebody or some group will slip through our grasp," he said.

Scott Nawrocki, the FBI agent who directs the task force's special response squad, keeps a photograph of the World Trade Center on the wall by his desk. On the opposite wall is a poster with a mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb. "The first things I see are a daily reminder of why I'm here," Nawrocki said. But he added that it's dangerous for his counterterror agents to fall into the trap of assuming that future terrorists will try to duplicate the 9/11 attacks. "We use our imagination when we conduct assessments," Nawrocki said.

William Sweeney Jr., whose squad monitors potential terrorists in Hudson County, said some tips for local investigations can originate in the unlikeliest places.

In one case, Sweeney described how U.S. soldiers confiscated a laptop computer when they captured a suspected al-Qaida operative in Iraq. When the laptop's files were examined, investigators discovered several New Jersey phone numbers. "Why was a person in New Jersey in the address book of a bad guy picked up in Iraq?" Sweeney asked. "We have to check it out." He declined to describe the result. But the process, described by Sweeney, is not uncommon for the task force.

As a result, task force agents are in daily contact with officials at the CIA and other American intelligence agencies who monitor phone and Internet traffic from North Jersey to known operatives for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. "I talk to them 10 times a day," Jupin said of the CIA.

Cruise holds several top-secret intelligence briefings each week with fellow agents as well as police from such small towns as Old Tappan and Ho-Ho-Kus. Amid the wash of tips and ongoing cases, though, Cruise said the task force has to make difficult calculations -- especially when monitoring phone or Internet contacts. "If it's somebody who is simply communicating with somebody who is known to be an al-Qaida operative, that in itself is not illegal," Cruise said. "It's what they intend to do."

To better understand some of his enemies, Cruise even listens to Arabic language CDs during his commute. But he tries to keep himself and his agents from becoming too confident. "We have better security measures in place and we have better intelligence," he said. "But we are still vulnerable."

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyNjMmZmdi ZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcyMDgyODgmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZU VFeXky

[Petronas]

An interesting resource. Just hold your cursor over the symbol on the map to find out more.

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

[Petronas]

The unclassified shopping mall threat information was circulated by the FBI on November 7th, based on intelligence received by the FBI in late September. The full text of one version of that report is as follows:
December 2007 Al-Qa’ida Plan to Target US Shopping Malls in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California.

As of August 2007, al-Qa’ida planned to strike US shopping malls in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California during the 2007 Christmas season. Al-Qa’ida hoped to disrupt the US economy and had been planning the attack for the past two years.

FBI Comment: This information was obtained through a lengthy chain of acquisition, and was provided to the source by a sub-source who spoke in confidence. The veracity of the information is uncertain but the threat is being reported due to the nature of the information.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/FBI_bulletin071108.pdf

[Casey]

LAPD chief downplays mall terror threat
By Kerry Cavanaugh, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 11/08/2007 10:58:29 PM PST

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton on Thursday downplayed reports of possible terrorist attacks on shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, saying the information was not credible and considered a low-level threat.

At a news conference in City Hall, the mayor and chief said the FBI has received similar warnings every holiday season since 9-11.

"We have very serious doubts about the voracity and source of this information," Bratton said. "The information is unsubstantiated and uncorroborated."

Nevertheless, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Mayor's Office reached out to mall owners to discuss the report.

Bratton and FBI Acting Director Pete Brust said the mall was being released through a routine intelligence information report when it was picked up by news agencies.

The warning states that "as of August 2007 Al-Qaeda planned to strike U.S. shopping malls in Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, during the 2007 Christmas season. Al-Qaeda hoped to disrupt the U.S. economy and had been planning the attack for the past two years."

Brust said the FBI distributes thousands of such reports in a year, "in an abundance of caution."

"The good that will come of this release today is that the citizens of Los Angeles will remain vigilant and report suspicious activities to authorities as soon as possible," he said.

Villaraigosa added that the report shouldn't scare Angelenos away from malls.

"Al-Qaida has made this threat with this intent of disrupting our way of life and damaging our local economy during the holiday season," he said. "We have a responsibility to make sure they fail."

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_7411330

[Petronas]

Terrorism: European attacks 'inevitable' as al Qaeda influence spreads, say experts
26 Oct.

European countries can expect more terrorist attacks in future because of continuing disaffection among Muslims and the low cost of producing bombs, according to international experts. Bob Ayers, associate fellow for international security at London-based thinktank, Chatham House, told Adnkronos International (AKI) on Friday, while police successfully foiled the planned terrorist attack in Germany last month, more attacks were inevitable.

"The lessons are clear, this is not a problem confined to the United Kingdom or countries engaged in combat in Iraq, " Ayers told AKI. "Iraq is a rallying cry but it is not the cause. This is a terrible clash of cultures that transcends boundaries."

Ayers was responding to an Adnkronos interview with terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins, who said western countries needed to do more to win the ideological battle against al-Qaeda. "We need to wage more effective political warfare, not just pound al Qaeda's operational capabilities, but blunt its message, discredit its ideology and tactics, reduce the appeal of its narrative to angry young men from Copenhagen to Cairo," Jenkins told AKI.

Ayers said UK surveys of Muslims conducted after the London bombings showed 50 per cent of the population considered themselves to be Muslim first, and British second. He said 25 per cent thought suicide bombings were a legitimate form or political expression. "This shows that they haven't been integrated and the sources of home grown terrorism are people who are economically better off. We in Europe are yet to come to grips with what we are dealing with - fanatical Islam is a theologically motivated movement."

Ayers also expressed concern about instability in Kurdistan and Pakistan - two regions widely considered as ripe recruiting grounds for terrorists. "Pakistan is a very serious problem because Musharraf is not firmly in power and doesn't control the (country's) boundaries," he said.

James Walston, professor of political science and international relations at the American University in Rome, said terrorist acts like the Madrid bombing were very cheap to produce. He too said European countries should expect more instances of terrorism in continental Europe. "Whether al-Qaeda exists as an organisation which controls lots of people is almost irrelevant," Walston told Adnkronos International (AKI). "You have local people who carry out operations with very little money. All you need are a few cell phones, a few backpacks and very little money," he said. "The Madrid bombing cost around 10,000 dollars," he added.

Walston said it was important to create dialogue with Muslim communities, whether in Italy, France or Britain. But he too was pessimistic about the security outlook. "Sooner or later something is going to happen because of the sorts of resources you need for a terrorist attack, " Walston said. He said the Italian interior minister, Giuliano Amato, was taking the right steps to better integrate the Muslim community in Italy. But Ayers said the best solutions would come from Muslims. "Europe cannot impose its values on culture," he said. "The only solution will come out of the religious communities themselves."

The Madrid train bombings occurred on 11 March 2004 - three days before Spain's general election - killing 191 people and wounding close to 2,000. In September 2007, German police foiled a major terrorist plot when they arrested three young Islamists who were preparing a series of explosives attacks at several locations including Frankfurt Airport. Two of the men were German nationals who had converted to Islam, while the third was a Turkish man.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1478409734

[Petronas]

FBI Hires Civilians To Help Find Local Terrorist Hot Spots
UPDATED: 10:59 am EST November 26, 2007

Authorities said the six people suspected of planning a terrorist attack on Fort Dix were captured because of a tip, but now the FBI is beefing up efforts to fight homegrown terrorism in the Philadelphia area without tips, too. Jorge Garcia, Assistant Special FBI agent in charge in Philadelphia, said his new taskforce is expected to find potential threats without called in clues.

The most interesting part? Garcia's taskforce members are not FBI agents, but civilian analysts. "We have former engineers, former associate professors, former high school teachers and police officers," Garcia explained.

Analyst Bill Dietze, a former computer programmer, said part of his job includes analyzing the Delaware Valley's population, trends in violence and a number of foreigners moving in and around the region. "We're trying to be predictive in where the next trouble spots are going to be," Dietze said. Dietze -- who studies several FBI investigations at the same time looking for connections -- passes his findings on to FBI officials to help answer specific questions like which infrastructures could be targets for terrorist attacks and other areas that could be problematic that the bureau or division hasn't already checked out. Ultimately, federal agents said they hope to ensure there will never be another 9-11.

http://www.nbc10.com/print/14676570/detail.html

[Petronas]

Cops remind shoppers about terrorism
November 29, 2007

An international tourist, having heard about Woodbury Common Premium Outlets' global status, stakes out the facility during a shopping trip. Then, during subsequent trips, he plans out an attack that would cripple major thoroughfares to New York City, as well as cost some of America's top retail stores millions of dollars in earnings. While such an attack remains a reality only among armchair theorists, law enforcement isn't taking any chances.

That's the rationale behind an annual show of force called "Operation Safeguard" that deployed 70 officers from 25 law enforcement agencies in Orange, Rockland and Sullivan counties to various shopping centers yesterday. The deployment, which included state police, county sheriffs' offices and local police, is meant to thwart a potential terrorist attack through a public education campaign, as well as create an unannounced presence at local malls and the roads that feed them during the busiest shopping season of the year. "There's no hard and fast intelligence of a terrorist threat to local malls, but when we discuss vulnerabilities in our area, those are the places that concern us," said state police Maj. Ed Raso, one of the coordinators of the event.

Such retail stores are considered "soft targets" by anti-terrorism officials, because they have no armed guards or heavily fortified entrances. Terrorists tend to prefer such targets, as they are easier to attack, and because they deal a psychological blow to their enemies by incurring mass casualties, Raso said.

Major retail centers such as Woodbury Common and the Palisades Center in West Nyack would make potentially attractive targets. But even smaller centers, such as the Galleria mall at Crystal Run and the Route 42 corridor stores in Sullivan County could end up as targets, said Raso, referencing similar attacks by extremists in Israel.

Troopers, sheriff's deputies and Woodbury police officers handed out fliers to shoppers at Woodbury Common that urged "If you see something, say something." Such public awareness campaigns are the most effective weapon against terrorist attacks on soft targets, if they're done year after year, Raso said. "A lot of people get busy in their lives and in their jobs, and they put public safety on the back burner," he said.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071129/NEWS/711290329

[Petronas]

Jihadis Post Scenario for the Defeat of the United States
May 22, 2007
By Abdul Hameed Bakier

On May 14, jihadi forum users Abu Kandahar and Roslan al-Shami posted a five-point scenario for the collapse of the United States and the rise of the Islamic ummah, entitled, "The Next Strikes in the Heart of America, When and How." It appeared on the al-ommh.net forum, although at least one other jihadi forum, alhanein.com, reposted the scenario. The posting outlines a scenario for attacking the United States, although the sheer size of the operation suggests that it is jihadi propaganda and not an actual plan that could be operationalized. The alleged operation is dedicated to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq.

The first stage in the scenario involves multiple terrorist attacks on three major U.S. cities, preferably with nuclear weapons, using an unspecified number of trucks. The scenario places priority on attacking New York City because it is the central artery of the U.S. economy and it would prove that the mujahideen are capable of recurrent attacks on the same target. The second city to attack is Los Angeles, an important West Coast "atheist" city. The third "city" to be attacked is Florida because, they argue, it is an East Coast congregation city and has the Kennedy Space Center (considering the description, the statement's authors probably meant Orlando). While those are the three primary cities for attack, the writers of the document suggest that if the mujahideen wish to expedite the collapse of the United States, they should also conduct attacks in Seattle since it is a strategic border city; Washington, DC, the political center of the United States; and cities in Texas, since the "biggest oil companies" are located there.

According to the writers, the purpose of attacking these specific cities is to cause a sharp decline in the U.S. economy; mass amounts of casualties; the support for the mujahideen by anti-U.S. countries such as Cuba and Venezuela; a decrease in American support for their own government; the withdrawal of the "blasphemous" U.S. military from Islamic territories; mass military desertions; and the inability to fuel U.S. military fighter jets. The document also outlines how the fallout from such large-scale attacks would cause the U.S. military to return to the United States in order to conduct massive relief operations. They refer to the example of how Hurricane Katrina overburdened the U.S. National Guard, calling the hurricane a "Soldier of God."

After such attacks, they argue that the Islamic State of Iraq will seize the opportunity to launch mass strikes on the apostates in the Iraqi military and police, paving the way for the third stage of the scenario: the commencement of the golden era of the triumphant Islamic conquests that includes the implementation of Sharia, the liberation of the Arabian Peninsula, the removal from power of "the U.S. ruling family" in Jordan and, finally, the big march toward Palestine. In the end, even Washington DC will fall to the mujahideen and that will conclude the final stage of Islamic control of the globe.

The scenario appears less of a planned operation than a hope for the fulfillment of a prophecy. The supposed factuality of the scenario is based on various verses in the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad's teachings. Nevertheless, some of the users on the forums who discussed the scenario asserted that all of the details to execute the operation had already been prepared. One such user, by the alias of Abu Nedal, said, "For your knowledge, the operations are ready and awaiting the orders from our leader Osama bin Laden, God protect him, to decide what he deems appropriate either to strike now or to wait."

Islamist extremists have always fabricated factitious scenarios for victory over the West based on their own interpretations of Quranic prophecies in times of crisis and defeat. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda has shown prior interest in acquiring nuclear materials for use in an attack, and it is necessary to take such forum postings seriously as they display the mindset and the intent, although perhaps not the capability, of al-Qaeda-affiliated militants.

http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373415

[Petronas]

Chertoff: Terror threat has not abated
53 minutes ago

The terrorist threat to the United States has not abated despite government steps in the past year to tighten rules for people and goods that enter the country, the nation's chief of homeland security said Wednesday.

"The fact that we have not had a terrorist attack on this country in the last six years is not a cause for complacency or a time to celebrate," Michael Chertoff said Wednesday during a year-end speech. "The threat is not going away. The enemy has not lost interest. And if you have doubt about it, look at yesterday's reports about bombings in Algeria." Chertoff spoke a day after twin truck bombings by an affiliate of al-Qaida targeted U.N. offices and a government building in Algiers, killing at least 31 people.

In 2008, the final year of the Bush administration, Chertoff said his department plans to complete a fence along 670 miles of the nation's southwest border, push states to issue more secure driver's licenses, launch a plan to protect cyberspace and stabilize the department — which has seen constant change in its five years of existence. Homeland Security was created from 22 separate agencies in response to the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and has gone through nine reorganizations.

Chertoff blamed Congress for some of what he calls the department's "organizational churn" because Congress has refused to consolidate its oversight, despite the 9/11 Commission's recommendation to do so. Eighty-six congressional committees and subcommittees have some oversight of the department. Chertoff called this "a recipe for conflicting direction and constant fighting over who controls jurisdiction over what part of my agency."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said the department needs better management overall. "The department has come a long way in five years, and the American people have benefited from the work it has done," Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, said in a statement. "Am I satisfied? No."

Chertoff's speech sought to highlight the department's accomplishments in 2007, such as issuing regulations to secure dangerous chemicals in facilities across the country and an agreement with the European Union to provide passenger name information for international flights.

Missing from Chertoff's top four priorities for 2008 was emergency management, but that does not mean the department is not focused on it. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, improving the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been at the top of the department's agenda. "There's no greater advocate for FEMA and its role in the department than the secretary," Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said improvements to FEMA have been evident in the agency's good response to the California wildfires in October and other natural disasters this past year. Collins is the top Republican on the Senate homeland security committee.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071213/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/chertoff_terrorism

[Petronas]

Experts worry about college stadium security
updated 1:42 p.m. PT, Tues., Dec. 25, 2007

After more than a decade in counterterrorism, Jim McGee can no longer relax and enjoy watching a sports event. The fans look like potential victims of terrorism to the former FBI agent turned college instructor. The players are possible targets and the security gaps are easy to detect. "It's always in the back of my mind, even when I'm watching them on TV," McGee said. "You're kind of looking at things. The thing is if I can sit there or any spectator can sit there, and think, 'Hmmm, that doesn't look right,' that's probably a little bit of a risk there."

It was long McGee's job to worry about security at stadiums and arenas. Now, as part of the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Spectator Sports Security Management, it is his job to teach others the concerns that face event managers in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era. While professional leagues and NASCAR appear to be taking security seriously, officials worry enough is not being done at college sports events. Those contacted about the issue believe it is only a matter of time before another domestic or international terrorist attack targets a sports event. This time of year is especially worrisome because of all the high-profile games during bowl season.

Bill Flynn, head of Homeland Security's protective security coordination division, said stadiums and arenas are "a concern, something that we want to pay attention to. Why? Because we've seen attacks overseas in resorts, hotels and arenas, so obviously while al-Qaida and the terrorists have attempted to hit hard targets like refineries, soft targets and commercial facilities become more of a target of opportunity."

U.S. Rep Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee, said basic procedures followed by professional sports security managers are not followed by all colleges, leaving vulnerable those who cut corners because of cost or other reasons. "What we found is that there's a need for athletic administrators, campus police, emergency medical service, for all those people to have training," Thompson said.

The Southern Miss program is beginning to fill that need. The security management program, created in October 2005, is believed to be the only program of its kind in the United States and is offered as part of the sports management master's degree program. The school recently won a $3.5 million (euro2.43 million) grant from the Department of Homeland Security to conduct 95 training seminars around the nation to train and certify security professionals. The program's director, Lou Marciani, said there are significant research opportunities for students in the program, and qualified security professionals are in demand across the country. The school also can help certify retiring federal agents and military personnel for second-career security jobs in the private sector.

Marciani said the center's research quickly showed that college sports events were among the most vulnerable, with hundreds of venues, varying security emphasis and a high emotional impact. More than 48 million people attend at least one National Collegiate Athletic Association football game a season, offering an easy target. Researchers discovered most schools had never conducted an emergency evacuation drill or a threat assessment.

By far the largest variable, however, was training. Law enforcement and private security guards are not the only employees in need of training for a venue to be safe. Everyone from ticket takers and ushers to the people approving credentials must be vigilant. "In our lifetime you saw Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts being ushers," Marciani said. "The new usher is the first responder. Big difference, huh? Sixty-two percent of NCAA schools use an outsource company to manage their security. So the question is, 'Who are these people coming in to manage their security?'" NCAA officials turned down repeated requests to discuss the issue, even in the broadest terms.

Marciani said certification of credentialing processes, stadiums and risk management plans will quickly harden so-called "soft targets." But one factor that will continue to limit security is money for operations, physical protection equipment and vulnerability assessments.

The best security plans include a buffer zone around the stadium or arena, a hard shell at the fence and enough personnel inside the facility to divide the crowd into small groups for easier monitoring. As fans filtered into M.M. Roberts Stadium for a Southern Miss game this season, Marciani gestured toward the stands and talked about some of the security features. He said each section has its own observer, and security supervisors oversee three sections each. An emergency operations center is run by the school police and everyone is patched into the communications network for quick response.

The precautions seem standard, but surprisingly are not universal. "Some stadiums aren't fortunate enough to attract 30,000," Marciani said. "Some only attract 17,000. So where are you going to get the money to offset the black hole called security? People don't see security, so they don't want to spend money on security."

There have been very few terrorist attacks on sports or entertainment events on U.S. soil. The most prominent was Eric Rudolph's attack at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta to protest abortion. Several security professionals said the Virginia Tech killings and other instances on college campuses year helped push security into a new light.

Marciani said security leaders understand it takes only one person not checking bags or one credential handed out to someone posing as a media member to create a hole in the net. Or worse, they worry about someone with security clearance working in tandem on a major attack.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22394686/

[Petronas]

Al Qaeda's New Face Of Terror: American?
Feb. 11, 2008

U.S. officials are increasingly worried that the next attack on America could be carried out by Americans trained in terror tactics inside al Qaeda's safe-haven in Pakistan, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

Arrests last month in Barcelona underline the fear. More than a dozen trained suicide bombers - many of them European citizens just back from Pakistan - were taken down as they prepared to launch attacks against transit systems in Spain and four neighboring countries. "They've realized that if they want to operate successfully, they need to have people who look like us, act like us, and are very difficult to find," said Philip Mudd, a top counter-terrorism official at the FBI.

Is al Qaeda actively looking for American or Western recruits? "Whether it's Americans or whether it's people who can launch from Europe, because they have visas or passports that allow them to travel to the United States, they are looking for people who can operate in the West," Mudd said.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News, Mudd said intelligence has tracked Western recruits to small training centers in Pakistan's rugged tribal region. Many of the recruits are European citizens of Pakistani descent raised in London, Berlin, and Madrid - but drawn to the radical Islamic movement. And there have been a few Americans. Among them is convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, who grew up in Chicago, and Adam Gadahn from California, who is now a leading voice in al Qaeda's propaganda.

Unlike the large-military style camps al Qaeda used in Afghanistan before 9/11, the new training is being done in small groups, specifically tailored to Western recruits plotting strikes against Europe and the U.S. "There is a different kind of person who is going to come to Western Europe, and they don't necessarily need paramilitary training; you might simply be talking about how do you build a small device that you could put in a back pack so you could take it on a train," Mudd said.

The transit bombers who hit London in 2005 were trained in Pakistan. So, too, were al Qaeda recruits arrested a year later in a plot to blow up passenger jets over the Atlantic.

But, officials warn the U.S. remains al Qaeda's top target. "The purpose of the recruitment is to train people in weapons of mass destruction and then get them back into the United States," said Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. Understanding al Qaeda's new tactics offers a first line of defense. But the real security challenge, at the airport or the border, may be finding the terrorists - if they look like us.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/11/eveningnews/main3819364.shtml

[Petronas]

DHS, FBI Warn of Possibility of Female Homicide Bombers
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The growing use by terrorist groups of women — some disguised as expectant moms — to deliver deadly homicide bombs has prompted the Department of Homeland Security and FBI to issue a rare warning that such attacks could take place on American soil.

The joint security assessment cited recent female homicide bomber attacks in Baghdad — in which two women who appeared to have Down syndrome delivered a deadly explosion that killed 99 — as well as in Sri Lanka, Chechnya, India, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories as reason for the warning.

"Female suicide bombers may have an advantage over their male counterparts in accessing targets," the analysis cautioned. "The means to conduct a suicide attack vary widely, but a key element in maximizing the lethality of a suicide bombing is the bomber's ability to get close to the target."

The assessment also strongly warned that potential female homicide bombers could use "prosthetic devices that mimic the look of a pregnant woman."

"Regardless of delivery by a man or a woman," the warning reads, "improvised explosive devices may contain fragmentation or shrapnel, such as nails, bolts, glass fragments, marbles, ball bearings, or other small metal pieces."

The assessment, which emphasizes that DHS and FBI have no solid evidence indicating imminent homicide bombing attacks on U.S. soil, also reminds law enforcement officials that "facilities such as public places" are the most vulnerable to homicide bombing attacks and that "the terrorist's latitude in determining and adjusting the target and timing of an attack up to the point of detonation" make it difficult to prepare countermeasures.

"These factors indicate the importance of ... alertness by security professionals to potential threats from the full range of gender and age groups," the bulletin reads.

While homicide bombings within the U.S. have yet to occur, law enforcement agencies have increased their vigilance. In one near-attack in 1997, a Palestinian immigrant came within hours of detonating himself in a crowded Brooklyn, N.Y., subway station used by many Orthodox Jews. His roommate discovered the plot and tipped off police, who were able to prevent the bombing.

Last June, Al Qaeda and Taliban-trained homicide bombers reportedly were dispatched to the U.S., Great Britain, Canada and Germany following a videotaped graduation ceremony that included congratulations from Taliban commander Monsoor Dadullah. Pakistani security forces reported Monday that they had captured Dadullah in a gunfight at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

http://www.foxnews.com:80/story/0,2933,330415,00.html

[Petronas]

Fears Mount for Pope's Safety After Threats by Bin Laden
March 21, 2008

Osama bin Laden's first public message this year, in which he accused Pope Benedict XVI of complicity in a "new Crusade" against Islam, is raising fears here over security measures for the papal visit next month and the possibility of a terrorist attack.

The accusations directed at the pope have some in the city worried about security during the pontiff's visit to America between April 15 and 20, which culminates in a Sunday, April 20, Mass at Yankee Stadium. "When I heard the thing about bin Laden, I thought, this isn't good," Father Robert O'Connor of the Blessed Sacrament Church on the Upper West Side said. "It could stir up some wacko who wants to get attention."

Spokesmen for the police department and the United States Secret Service, the two agencies that will be spearheading what is expected to be an enormous security operation when the pope arrives in the city April 18, wouldn't say directly whether Mr. bin Laden's message raised any red flags regarding security and the pope's upcoming visit. "The New York City Police Department has been working closely with the United States Secret Service to provide the highest level of protection possible for the pope during his visit to New York," the police department's top spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, said.

Still, several security experts and police sources said the bin Laden comments are undoubtedly garnering ample attention from police department brass. "I think there is always enormous concern whenever the pope travels, and I'm sure bin Laden's comments probably add to that," the president of the Citizens Crime Commission, Richard Aborn, said. "Even though he may have not made a specific threat, some self appointed terrorist may want to carry out an attack."

Even with the news of bin Laden's message, confidence regarding the department's planned security measures appears high. Several law enforcement experts said that the city's police are widely regarded as the premier department in the world when it comes to guarding dignitaries.

In a move that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said would bolster security at high profile events in the city, such as papal visits, the police commissioner announced yesterday that the police and the United States Coast Guard signed an accord that will bolster their working relationship. "This new agreement will help protect New York City's critical infrastructure by giving the NYPD full authority to enforce the maritime safety and security zones that only the Coast Guard can establish," Mr. Kelly said in a statement.

While the police are accustomed to guarding high-profile dignitaries, the pope's arrival will create more security concerns than even that of a presidential visit due to the sheer number of people that will covet just a glimpse of the revered figure, security experts said.

A professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eugene O'Donnell, said that in the aftermath of a 1981 assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, popes have been less accessible to the public. In a measure that demonstrates tighter security than previous papal visits to New York, people who want to hear the pope speak publicly in Yonkers on April 19 or at Yankee Stadium the following day, are required to have tickets — all of which have already been given out, according to the Web site of the Archdiocese of New York. Father O'Connor said that anyone with tickets for the Yankee Stadium address must arrive at the venue at 10 a.m. for the scheduled 2:30 a.m. Mass. He said he has to arrive four hours early for a private mass at the Cathedral of St. Patrick on Saturday.

Upon signing up to become a volunteer to assist in the pope's visit, one member of the choir at Blessed Sacrament Church, a Wall Street employee, found out that federal agents were looking into his background by calling some of his associates, Father O'Connor said. "The amount of security precautions they are taking is incredible," he said.

http://www.nysun.com/article/73365

[Petronas]

Menacing Message
Mar 26, 2008

The FBI, spurred in part by this week's unusually menacing audio message from Ayman Al-Zawahiri, today advised state and local law enforcement officials to expect an increase in Al Qaeda propaganda messages aimed at inciting followers to commit terrorist acts.

FBI and counterterrorism officials stressed today that they have no fresh intelligence about any specific threats—one reason why today's FBI intelligence bulletin, issued in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, was blandly worded and low-key in tone.

But privately some analysts are worried about the blunt new message from Zawahiri, the deputy to Osama bin Laden. "It's a little spooky," said one senior official. Seeking to exploit a worldwide Muslim backlash over recent Israeli bombing strikes in Gaza, Zawahiri exhorted followers to "attack the interest of the Jews and the Americans." He then added, "Select your targets, collect the appropriate funds, assembly your equipments, plan [your attacks] accurately, and then charge toward your targets … There is no place today for those who claim that the battlefield with the Jews is limited to Palestine."

Counterterrorism officials and analysts have been debating for the last few days whether Zawahiri's directive to "select your targets" was a direct command to operatives in the field or a more general incitement to sympathizers.

Evan Kohlmann, a government counterterrorism consultant who studies Al Qaeda messages, says the new tape seemed "palpably different" from Zawahiri's usually fiery anti-American tirades. "It's quite rare that he would be this direct and blunt about it," Kohlmann says. "My personal opinion is when he said this"—referring to the "select your targets" line—he "wasn't talking in the abstract, he was saying, 'We're doing it.' It was very much a call to arms."

But counterterrorism officials say that they have no idea what "it" might be—or any hard indicator that a major Al Qaeda strike is imminent, at least not in the United States. There has been no spike in terrorist "chatter" picked up by U.S. surveillance in recent weeks or recent arrests suggesting an operation might be underway, said one official who asked not to be identified talking about intelligence information.

But Europe may be another story. One development cited in today's FBI intelligence bulletin is the imminent release of an anti-Muslim video by Geert Wilders, a stridently right-wing member of the Dutch parliament who has made a point of baiting the country's Muslims. Wilders has said he will release the film, which is expected to directly criticize the Koran, by April 1. Dutch authorities, bracing for a backlash, recently increased their security threat level from "limited" to "substantial."

"There is a real possibility of a terrorist attack in the Netherlands," the Dutch counterterrorism office now states on the home page of its Web site.

Today's FBI/Homeland Security bulletin, called a "Joint Homeland Special Assessment," makes no such dire warnings. It does note that Al Qaeda, despite setbacks, has been able to maintain a "robust media and propaganda capability" evidenced by a steady increase in the number of audio- and videotapes from the terror group's leaders. The number of such tapes released by Al Qaeda's As-Sahab media arm jumped from 58 in 2006 to 97 in 2007—with 12 new ones so far in 2008. Just before Zawahiri's tape appeared, Osama bin Laden surfaced in his own audiotape. Like Zawahiri, he too invoked the "siege laid upon Gaza" and other recent developments. "The recent wave of audio statements from Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri over the past week attempts to capitalize on flashpoints—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and the Danish cartoon controversy—to inspire others to take violent action against what they believe are transgressions against Muslims worldwide," the FBI bulletin states. Among developments that could trigger more such tapes, the FBI bulletin says, are the U.S. presidential election and the release of Wilders film.

One big concern among FBI officials is that the tapes are registering with terrorist "wannabes" and other sympathizers inside the United States. "It's the home-grown guys who are downloading this stuff and watching them on their computers," says Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman.

http://www.newsweek.com:80/id/129176

[Petronas]

The New Face of Terror
5:35 p.m. ET Apr 2, 2008

A German counterterrorism investigation was a key source for a claim by Central Intelligence Agency director Gen. Michael Hayden that Al Qaeda is now deploying operatives who look and sound like Westerners.

Appearing on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Hayden told host Tim Russert, "It's very clear to us that Al Qaeda has been able, over the past 18 months or so, to establish a safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, that they are bringing operatives into that region for training, operatives that … wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles [International Airport] with you when you're coming back from overseas." Russert asked whether such suspects would look "Western." Hayden said they would, and therefore could "come into this country … without attracting the kind of attention that others might."

According to U.S. and European intelligence and counterterrorism officials, Hayden was referring to recent information indicating that Al Qaeda and its affiliates are making a concerted effort to recruit and activate operatives who, by virtue of their Western appearance, can more easily slip through heightened airport and border security nets—particularly in the United States. The 9/11 hijackers were all from Middle Eastern backgrounds—most were Saudi—and U.S. and Western agencies long ago greatly increased surveillance of travelers coming from that region.

"Al Qaeda has an obvious interest in attracting individuals who can gain access to Western societies despite the higher levels of scrutiny given to travelers there," a U.S. intelligence official told NEWSWEEK. (The official, like others quoted in this article, declined to be named talking about sensitive matters.) "That not only means converts to Islam from Western nations and people with legitimate identity documents from those places, but militants from anywhere who simply look Western." The official added, "These guys are resourceful. They learn. They think about different means and methods to try to place operatives in the countries they target."

There is little hard information on how many Al Qaeda recruits actually fit the mold Hayden was talking about. But the CIA chief's concern was triggered by an inquiry, made public last summer by German authorities, into the activities of an alleged jihadist cell purportedly linked to the Islamic Jihad Union of Uzbekistan (IJU). Originally an Islamic militant group based in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, elements of the IJU migrated to the tribal areas of Pakistan and loosely affiliated themselves with other jihadist factions in that region. Those factions, it is believed, sometimes take direction from the fugitive central leadership of Al Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian sidekick, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Last summer German authorities arrested a handful of alleged IJU operatives who came under suspicion after they were spotted by U.S. personnel apparently casing American military bases in Germany. Particularly alarming to both U.S. and German investigators was the early discovery that the leader of the group, Fritz Gelowicz, was a Caucasian native-born German who had converted to Islam. Gelowicz, who attended an Islamic center in southern Germany, became a radical and traveled with two fellow suspects to Pakistan for indoctrination and training by militants in the tribal region where Al Qaeda leaders are thought to be hiding out.

German agencies mounted a massive investigation of the suspects. Hundreds of police and intelligence officers watched them around the clock for months as they allegedly plotted and assembled large quantities of raw materials that authorities believed could be used to make explosives. At one point during the investigation one of the surveillance cars following the suspects had its tires slashed; German investigators concluded that the IJU suspects knew that they were being watched. Investigators were particularly alarmed that the suspects appeared to proceed with their plans anyway.

Shortly before German authorities believed the IJU plot was about to come to fruition, the counterterrorism officers staged a stealthy operation to neutralize the would-be explosives. They managed to sneak into the building where the suspects had stashed large quantities of high-concentrate hydrogen peroxide—a homemade bomb ingredient also used in hair bleach—and replaced it with identical containers of a harmless liquid. Gelowicz and a handful of other suspects were then arrested, and an international manhunt was launched for suspected co-conspirators, some of whom had allegedly fled to Turkey and at least one of whom was believed to be in Britain. Gelowicz is still in jail in Germany awaiting trial.

Counterterrorism officials in Europe and the United States say that Al Qaeda is not only seeking to recruit Western-born converts like Gelowicz as future terrorist operatives but also native Muslims who can pass for Westerners when going through security checkpoints. A German counterterrorism official told NEWSWEEK that German authorities are doing their best to track suspected militants going to and from the Pakistani border region. The problem: the most popular travel route for suspects is from Germany to Turkey and then via Iran to Pakistan, and it is very difficult for investigators to determine who among the hundreds of thousands of travelers might be planning an onward journey for terrorist training. (As Terror Watch reported last year, German authorities set up a special project to monitor dozens of suspects traveling back and forth between Germany and war-torn Iraq.)

British counterterrorism officials are also monitoring the huge volume of people who travel between the United Kingdom and Pakistan—an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 per year. British investigators have produced evidence showing that suspects in recent U.K.-based terrorist plots made trips to Pakistan for terrorist training. Among the suspects are British-born or British-raised operatives in several notorious terror plots, including the July 2005 bombings of London subway trains and a double-decker bus, a plot to bomb U.S. financial buildings, and a 2006 plot to bomb airliners crossing the Atlantic from Britain. The trial of several suspects in the airline bombing plot—reportedly including at least one British convert to Islam—is soon set to begin in London.

Other U.K.-born converts to Islam have been detained by antiterrorism investigators in the U.K. and Kenya. One of the most notorious British-born Muslim converts who subsequently became involved in an Al Qaeda plot was Richard Reid, a petty criminal from South London who unsuccessfully tried to blow up a transatlantic airliner in December 2001 using a bomb built into a shoe. Investigators believe Reid initially converted to Islam while serving time in a juvenile prison and that he later became more radical while attending extremist London mosques.

A handful of American converts to Islam have also become involved with Al Qaeda or related groups. The most prominent is Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam al-Amriki (Adam the American), a California native who has appeared frequently in Al Qaeda propaganda videos hurling bloodcurdling threats against the United States. Another well-known U.S. convert was John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, who was picked up in Afghanistan after American-led forces rousted the Taliban government there in the wake of 9/11. Lindh, who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and is now serving a U.S. prison sentence, never made it into Al Qaeda's inner circles.

Gen. Hayden is not the only U.S. official to comment in recent months on the growing threat posed by terrorist recruits with European backgrounds. These suspects may carry European passports, which make them eligible for instant U.S. tourist visas simply by showing up at an American entry port. Earlier this year Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the BBC, "I have to say the biggest threat comes from overseas, and one of the places we are increasingly worried about is Europe."

U.S. officials have been trying to come up with new ways to gather additional information on European travelers that won't cause headaches or delays for those coming to the United States. One idea under consideration: requiring foreigners to apply online for tourist visas several days in advance of their flights to the United States. This would give authorities more information about visitors and more time to check them out before they arrived. But the idea is controversial. In addition to gathering intel on possible terrorists, it would also give U.S. agencies a means of building vast new databases of personal information on all foreign travelers

http://www.newsweek.com/id/130155

[Petronas]

I am posting this for what it may be worth. This is a second hand account - I did not attend the lecture by Juval Aviv and have not met him.


Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent whom the movie "Munich" was about... He was Golda Meir's bodyguard and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.

In a lecture in NYC a few weeks ago he shared information that EVERY American needs to know but our government has not shared. ... He predicts the next attack on the U.S. is coming within the next few months.

Forget hijacking airplanes because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as the people on the plane will not go down quietly. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke- we are being reactionary versus looking at strategies that are effective.

1) our machines are outdated. They look for metal and the new explosives are made of plastic

2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire - we now have to take off our shoes, a group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives - now we can't bring liquids on board. He is waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on their underwear and light up in a plane or in the terminal and then we will all have to travel naked!

3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates, he says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times and on the front end when people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. Israel checks bags before people can enter the airport.

Now, back to his predictions: He says the next attack will come in a few months and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places that people congregate: Disneyland, Las Vegas, Big Cities (NY, SFO, Chicago, etc...) and there it will be shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, casinos, etc.. as well as rural America (Wyoming, Montana, etc...). The attack will be simultaneous detonations around the country (they like big impact) 5-8 cities including rural areas. They won't need to use suicide bombers because at largely populated places like the MGM Grand in Vegas - they can simply valet park!

He also says the next level of terrorists will not be coming from abroad, but will be homegrown - having attended our schools and universities - but will have traveled frequently back and forth to the Middle East. They will know and understand Americans but we won't understand them - we still only have a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks and we need that to change he said...

What can we do? From an intelligence perspective he says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence but follow Israel, Ireland and England's example of human intelligence both from an infiltration perspective as well as trust citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens but our government treats us like babies and thinks we can't handle it and will panic.

He did a test for Congress recently putting an empty briefcase in 5 major spots in 5 US cities and not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago - someone tried to steal it! In Israel an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds with a citizen shouting "Unattended Bag" and the area cleared slowly, calmly and immediately by the people themselves. Unfortunately, we haven't hurt enough yet for us to be that concerned....

He also discussed how many children were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11 without parents to pick them up and the schools did not have a plan. Do you have a plan with your kids, schools and families if you cannot reach each other by phone? If you cannot return to your house? If you cannot get to your child's school - do they know what to do? We should all have a plan.

He said that our government's plan after the next attack is to immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use their telephone, cell phone, blackberry because they don't want terrorists to be able to talk to one another - do you have a plan if you cannot communicate directly with those that you love?

Juval Aviv holds an M.A. in Business from Tel Aviv University and is President and CEO of Interfor, Inc., an international corporate intelligence and investigations firm.

Juval Aviv is President and CEO of Interfor, Inc. Based in New York with offices around the world, founded in 1979, Interfor provides foreign and domestic intelligence services to the legal, corporate and financial communities and conducts investigations around the world. In addition, Mr. Aviv serves as a special consultant to the U.S. Congress and other policy makers on issues of terrorism, fraud and money laundering.

A leading authority on terrorist networks, Mr. Aviv served as lead investigator for Pan Am Airways into the Pan Am 103-Lockerbie terrorist bombing. He was featured in the recent film, Munich, as the leader of the Israeli team that tracked down the terrorists who kidnapped the Israeli Olympic team. Interfor's services encompass white-collar crime investigations, asset search and recovery, corporate due diligence, litigation support, fraud investigations, internal compliance investigations, security and vulnerability assessments. Since its inception, Interfors asset investigation services have recovered over $2 billion worldwide for its clients.

Before founding Interfor, Mr. Aviv served as an officer in the Israel Defense Force (Major, retired) leading an elite Commando/Intelligence Unit, and was later selected by the Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) to participate in a number of intelligence and special operations in many countries in the late 1960s and 1970s. While working as a consultant with El Al, Mr. Aviv surveyed the existing security measures in place and updated El Al's security program, making El Al the safest airline in business today.

Most recently, Mr. Aviv wrote Staying Safe: The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business, (2004,Harper Resource). He has been a guest on ABC Nightline, FOX News, CNN, BBC Newsnight, ZDF (German National Television) and RAI (Italian National Television) and has been featured in numerous articles in major magazines and newspapers worldwide.

[Casey]

Jihad Press article Arabic and machine translation:

Al Qaeda prior to the implementation of jihad in Palestine
Analyst baseline: punitive strike on Europe, America and the imminent (http://worldanalysis.net/smf/index.php?topic=219.0)



Web Terror Threat To U.S. "Not Serious"

May 22, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS) CBS News consultant Hoda Osman wrote this story for CBSNews.com.
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An “analyst” who supposedly has “close connections” to al Qaeda was quoted in an article posted on the Internet Wednesday as saying that a strike against the United States and European countries was imminent. The article was published by “Jihad Press” and posted on the popular jihadi Web site al Ekhaas.

Such threats are based on speculation and should not be taken seriously, says Yasser Serri, an expert on Islamic movement, who heads the London-based Islamic Observatory. “If a group that really wants to do something, they would not reveal it,” he adds.

It’s clear from the statement that the “analyst,” who was identified as Yaman Mokhadib, has based his prediction on his own analysis rather than information he learned through his alleged connections with al Qaeda. He notes that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden issued three statements addressed to Americans and three to Europeans, which included offering both a truce. Mokhadib argues that Bin Laden was following Islamic law in making three attempts that included the truce offer before launching an attack. He therefore expects Bin Laden not to release any more statements to Americans or Europeans before a punitive strike against them.


Mokhadib, a “jihadi writer” whose articles were found on several radical Web sites, assumes al Qaeda has the capability to launch an attack against the U.S. and/or Europe but has been waiting until it fulfills the requirements of attempting to communicate with the targets of the attack first. It is difficult to verify the credibility of the warning or determine if the “analyst” has any real connections to al Qaeda, as the article claims. If is not uncommon for al Qaeda sympathizers on the Internet to make predictions and warn of strikes against Western countries.

Serri believes most members of the jihadi Internet forums have no real connections to militant groups, but are rather sympathizers. “There’s often competition amongst them on who posts more messages and who gets to post something first,” he explains. “They believe they are thereby contributing to the media war.”

Serri also notes that members of intelligence and security services are also active on the jihadi forums and cites the case of a number of young Egyptian men who were arrested after communicating with a security official.

In the article, Mokhadib also argues that bin Laden’s recent statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict signal the beginning of “a new stage of jihad in the world,” which he believes would start with a double strike against “the powers of apostasy in the U.S. and Europe,” resulting in weakening support for Israel. The “analyst” also argues that bin Laden, through his recent statements, gave the green light for militants to overthrow Israel’s neighboring Arab countries. The next stage, he added, would be a direct war with Israel.

CBS News reporter in London contributed to this report


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/22/cbsnews_investigates/main4118366.shtml

[Casey]

Terror threat in UK 'approaching critical'

The terrorist threat in Britain is approaching critical as police and MI5 face an increase in activity by al-Qaeda militants, senior security officials have disclosed.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:54PM BST 02 Oct 2008

The terrorist threat in Britain has been considered severe since the arrest of the men allegedly plotting to attack transatlantic airliners in 2006 Photo: REUTERS
The threat level is at the "severe end of severe" according to sources who say the level of "chatter" among terrorist cells has increased in recent months.

The security services say they are now operating at full stretch to counter the elevated threat.

Britain's close relationship with the US has been particularly inflammatory after cross-border raids into Pakistan by American forces.

Security officials had considered downgrading the official threat level from "severe" but that plan has now been abandoned as a result of the increase in terrorist activity.

A senior counter terrorism source said: "We were looking at the threat level six months ago and asking how severe is severe? But it is October now and we are at the severe end of severe.

"Al-Qaeda's core exists on the Afghan-Pakistan border. The arrangement of people changes at a frighteningly rapid pace but they have enough people to replace them and there are people who are looking at us and at external operations, some at this country in particular.

"We are not chasing shadows. These are potential threats to security and life. Police and the security network are operating at full capacity."

The source said a review by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which looks at information from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, had considered downgrading the threat from "severe," meaning an attack is highly likely, to "substantial," meaning an attack is a strong possibility, but that move was abandoned after the level of activity increased.
The assessment, which has five levels, has been considered severe since the arrest of the men allegedly plotting to attack transatlantic airliners in 2006 but moved up to "critical," meaning an attack is imminent, during last year's car bomb alert which led to the attack on Glasgow airport.

It is now only just below that level.

MI5 is watching around 200 networks across Britain and MI6 and GCHQ are constantly monitoring communications on the crucial Afghan-Pakistan border area.

Although key commanders have been killed in air strikes, one of the particular concerns is the disappearance of Rashid Rauf from Birmingham, an alleged al-Qaeda mastermind who escaped from Pakistani custody last December.

Security officials are also worried about threats which may come from off the radar.

They are particularly worried by lone operators who "self-radicalise" over the internet and stock-pile chemicals from domestic sources.

"They are discreet from traditional networks and have a very small intelligence signature which makes them hard to pick up," the source said.

There is also a fear that some in the Somali community in Britain could have "potential connections" with al-Qaeda terrorists.

Last week's attack on the US embassy in the Yemen means security officials now consider the Arabian peninsular "particularly combustible."

"Over the past year, al-Qaeda has invested huge energy in outlying organisations," the source said.

But it is the lone operators who pose the biggest threat, particularly since attempts to cut off the supply of "kitchen chemicals" used in home made bombs, such as hydrogen peroxide and ammonium nitrate, have been unsuccessful because they are so widely available.

"We are doing a lot of research work into the detection of explosives at train stations and so on but this really demonstrates the importance of preventing radicalisation," the source said.

Part of the strategy has involved tackling al-Qaeda propaganda over the internet.

"We are looking at the way we see the threat as a movement by the al-Qaeda core and we're finding a new language to help move on the debate," the source said. "Whatever they do, we want to do."

The Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, a part of the Home Office which co-ordinates Britain's count-terrorism strategy, is working on a number of strategies for diverting vulnerable young men and de-radicalising those who have become involved with extremist organisations.

"We have limited evidence about what works but we want to get moving forward," the source said. "We need some quick wins."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3124098/Terror-threat-in-UK-approaching-critical.html

[Vancouver]

IMO the UK is in greater danger of a Sunni terrorist massacre in the near future than any other country in the West, including Russia and the United States. There are many reasons for that, but just for one: if a British Muslim massacres a bunch of Britons, millions of the British themselves will automatically blame his crime on the United States and Israel, crying in their beer about the poor British innocents. And the Muslims know this. Many years of British conceit and denial are what have allowed the Muslim fascist subculture to grow larger in the UK than anywhere else in the kufr world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7649763.stm

UK terror strategy to be updated
The government is updating its counter-terrorism strategy to focus more on preventing the radicalisation of Muslims, the BBC has learned. Officials are increasingly aware of a threat from loners unconnected to al-Qaeda who have become radicalised. A top priority for the government's strategy, known as Contest, will be reducing the supply of terror recruits. Working with local communities and dealing with the role of the internet will be key to the updated strategy.

'Severe' threat level
The government's terrorist threat level has remained pegged at its second highest rating - severe - since last summer. Senior Whitehall officials say the police and security service are working near capacity and the threat level is unlikely to be reduced soon. They say that it currently lies at the high end of severe, with no sign of it being downgraded. There is an increased awareness that threats are coming not just from core al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and affiliated groups, but also unconnected people. The updated strategy is expected to be completed later this year.

[Klaus]

Elections in the USA and Canada. Hmmmmm.....This is simple logic that dictates IF there is to be a strike that AQ feels capable of success "now is the time, cato". In the same fashion that elections were in fact influenced in Spain, so shall there objective be. Not to mention mass casualties, and economic ruin..... The UK is a sitting duck. And to hear that "chatter levels" are elevated sound a little like late August, early September 2001 to me. AQ has fulfilled all of their obligations as far as Islam teaches.

Being in the media, I have noticed an increase in EAS testing patterns over the last months.

[Vancouver]

Klaus, but would an attack in Canada or the US advance the cause of al-Qa'ida, via the elections or otherwise? I really doubt it. It wouldn't work in Denmark or Holland or Russia either. But in the UK it would. There are millions of Yankee-haters in the UK these days, who will flock to the side of the Muslim perpetrators. Look:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/03/uksecurity.terrorism

Excerpt: Ministers have been persuaded that foreign policy and the country's close ties to the US are a real issue for many Muslims. "You can't just say, 'British foreign policy is no excuse for radicalisation'," a Whitehall security source said.

To the Guardian, if not every Briton hates the Americans as much as the British Muslims do, then a massacre of random Britons by British Muslims is only to be expected. The Guardian knows that many Britons want to be told that every problem in the UK -- Muslim terrorism, teenagers knifing each other, banks going under, anything at all -- is the fault of the Americans.

[Klaus]

An event between now and the elections could conceivably postpone US elections. The next coordinated AQ level event will be designed to exact an economic toll that breaks the banks of the US and UK and the will of the people. Good thing our economy is rock solid.

The UK is full of people who will qualify as loner self radicalized martyrs. A number of them female. Not affiliated with any known group. Schools, malls, churches, movie theaters.


Logic tells me that right now is a very high probability window for maximum psycholgogical impact.


http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46235

Al-Qaida's spectacular 'Ramadan Offensive'

Bodansky is a very good source.

[Klaus]

From Northeast Intel Network
www.homelandsecurityus.com

Directives for Islamic terrorist attack in U.S. appear on the Internet


SPECIAL REPORT: "Commandments Before The Strike"

ALERT: Instructions for actions Muslims are to take before, during & after an attack in the U.S. posted;

Message suggests activation of worldwide jihad following U.S. attack;

Message indicates large-scale attack within the U.S., perhaps early October;

Text, posting under analysis by U.S. Intelligence officials

Analysis by Douglas J. Hagmann, Director & By Randy Taylor, Independent Analyst

Intelligence provided by "Archangel"

24 September 2008: A posting uncovered in an Arabic language Internet forum is currently raising a few eyebrows in the intelligence community. The single posting, which is presently being scrutinized by intelligence officials, appears to provide detailed instructions for Muslims living within the United States, giving them specific actions to take before, during and after an upcoming attack in the U.S. The communication was discovered by "Archangel," a well-known independent intelligence analyst active within the intelligence community.

The post was initially published on August 2, 2008 under the title “Commandments [Directives] Before the Strike,” and appears to be a sort of a conflict management guide, or instructions on what Muslims should do prior to the attack, actions that should be undertaken concurrent with the attack, and well as additional instructions following the attack.

The text addressing the nature, location and timing of the planned attack, although specific to the U.S., appears otherwise ambiguous. For instance, the timing appears to focus on the Tuesday following the end of Ramadan, which would be October 7, 2008. The nature of the attack is less clear. Although the author appears to talk about a strike greater in magnitude than the 9/11 attacks and makes reference to the possibility of it being nuclear in nature, the text references to the nuclear aspect of the attack appear somewhat muddled.

In terms of the location of the attack, it is clear that the author identifies both New York, as the financial capital of the U.S., and Washington, DC, as the nation’s capital, as being both desirable and affected. It is interesting that under analysis, the details of “the attack” referenced by the author are nestled within the text of instructions, rather than being prominently placed to serve as an overt warning as seen in the past. The relative subtlety in which the targets and type of attack was referenced is most interesting from a historical and analytical perspective.

The author who wrote the posting appears to be well established and respected by the community of terrorists and their supporters who frequent such forums. Research of the various membership profiles within that community indicates the author could be a sheik or other Muslim with leadership status. To be clear, research indicates the author has a level of credibility within the forum community. Accordingly, it would be completely consistent for the author to be able to issue a set of instructions that could be expected to be followed by the readers of the forum.

An investigation of the post, in terms of placement, links and replies, also provides significant insight with regard to its weight and credibility. Looking at a specific patterns of posting on Arabic language forums over the last seven years, investigation and research takes into account the number, type and authorship of follow-up postings or replies, for example to the original communication.

What makes this post particularly interesting is the limited number of replies to date – a total of three- despite the length of time it has been posted. Further, the replies in this case are general blessings, such as “May Allah Bless You” and general wishes of support for the operation. Based on extensive research of historical posting patterns over the last seven years suggest that this posting could be classified, recognized and acted upon as an order, as opposed to being a point for further discussion.

The commandments or directives are written as a set of instructions to an audience the author has divided into six groups as follows, most if not all having some presence in the United States:


1. Muslim scholars, students, followers of Islam;
2. Various Islamic movements.
3. Islamic peoples not belonging to any specific movement.
4. “Dubai Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus” the Islamic State of Iraq and other jihadist movements;
5. Sleeper cells and potential recruits;
6. The general command of al Qaeda.

Various directives are issued to each of the groups referenced above, providing direction to each group on activities that need to be conducted before and after “the” attack. For example, members of “sleeper cells” should immediately seek out those who are already activated – known by some Islamic scholars and religious leaders – for further tactical advancement.

Specific instructions were also given to the Muslim people to move Muslim children to the safety of training camps at a time that would correspond to the Tuesday after Ramadan – a date that was established as the potential attack date within this posting.

In addition to the varied instructions within this post, there is an additional directive that appears to serve as a worldwide activation order for Islamic terrorists to carryout maritime missions subsequent to the attack, with the obvious intent on disrupting all major maritime supply routes.




Some Interesting Things to Consider

"All things considered, it would be wise for law enforcement to start putting their feelers out, tap their street resources and listen for any hints of this type activity."

By Randy Taylor, Independent Analyst

3 October 2008: We received quite a bit of response recently as we have shared some of the chatter on the al Qaeda Arabic Internet forums. It’s been difficult because many of the typical venues of communication have been shut down by the people that operate these forums and chat rooms.

A recent communiqué and has bugged me since the beginning. It was the report where the person mentioned the first Tuesday after Ramadan as a possible date for terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad, against US interests [Report HERE]. What was significant about that Tuesday? After doing some research the significance wasn’t the day, it is the date. Tuesday October 7, 2008 isn’t significant as to 2008 but October 7 is significant as it is the date back in 2001 when the US and UK attacked Afghanistan.

I will state this quite openly. Over the years there has been many dates speculated as a possible date for al Qaeda to unleash attacks in the North American continent and abroad. I wouldn’t put any more thought into Tuesday after Ramadan than I would any number of dates. I only mention this date because of the communiqué and the fact that it was a significant event date in the War On Terror.



By Randy Taylor, Independent Analyst

4 October 2008: Shortly after 12:00 AM October 4, 2008 EST a video was released featuring the “surfer turned Jihadi” Adam Gadahn. The movie was released in English and another copy was released with Gadahn speaking English and an Arabic translator translating his words into Arabic [with Gadahn muted out].

The highlight of the film was al Qaeda’s obvious displeasure with the Pakistani government for their alliances with the Americans in the hunt for al Qaeda remnants in the mountain tribal regions of Pakistan and neighboring areas. The film was more of a plea to Pakistanis to not be fooled by the false premise of the Pakistani government being upset about US Military incursions over the Pakistani border and to assist the mujahideen in their fight against crusader forces.

Overall, there wasn’t much significance on the surface to this video. If anything it sounds as if the “near hits” as of late against Ayman al-Zawahiri and the supposed killing of Gadahn are making them a bit nervous. Worth mentioning is that they will continue to elude us as they have done for years unless we are given full access and full authority to pursue them in the region, all gloves off. Since that isn’t going to happen, we can only hope for a lucky Predator missile hit.

As to Gadahn reportedly being killed, I hope you have learned something. Don’t believe everything you hear in the mainstream media. There are certain tell tale signs that appear after a prominent al Qaeda figure is killed while performing jihad. Until you see the body, assume that person is still alive.

[Vancouver]

NEIN's rather theatrical claim from 24 September has no credibility, according to various people (including us here at the Previously Unknown Group):

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/08/1516771.aspx

No credible intelligence predicting a terror attack

...

NBC News has obtained a "note" by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security that debunks recent Internet reports predicting a terror strike inside the United States prior to the elections or the inauguration. The note was distributed yesterday to thousands of U.S. law-enforcement officials, and authored by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI's Threat Analysis Unit.

The unclassified note said: "A privately-run U.S. website that comments on Homeland security issues on 24 September posted an article describing an alleged 2 August posting to an Arabic language Internet forum suggesting that a large-scale attack against the U.S. Homeland would be forthcoming in early October. Subsequently, the same U.S. website warned that the threat window could be anytime from the present into early November. Further fueling speculation, a former FBI counterterrorism analyst predicted in an interview with an Internet news website that al-Qa‘ida or affiliated groups would attack the United States in the months after the election or inauguration in order to influence the new administration and its policies. These and similar Internet reports cite the recent terror attacks in Yemen and Pakistan as indicators of stepped-up efforts by al-Qa‘ida and its affiliates to implement an 'October surprise.'"
------
BTW I still haven't seen the 2 August posting that "Archangel" is supposed to have spotted.

[Casey]

NEIN's rather theatrical claim from 24 September has no credibility, according to various people (including us here at the Previously Unknown Group):

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/08/1516771.aspx

No credible intelligence predicting a terror attack
------
BTW I still haven't seen the 2 August posting that "Archangel" is supposed to have spotted.

I have not seen the posting either however, from what was described it is very similar to some of the articles Alyeri or similar wrote for the old AlNeda website which pop up from time to time in current postings on the forums.

I am curious about the dates mentioned but in not seeing the post I can't comment.

[Klaus]

Terror threat in UK 'approaching critical'

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:54PM BST 02 Oct 2008

The terrorist threat in Britain has been considered severe since the arrest of the men allegedly plotting to attack transatlantic airliners in 2006 Photo: REUTERS
The threat level is at the "severe end of severe" according to sources who say the level of "chatter" among terrorist cells has increased in recent months.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3124098/Terror-threat-in-UK-approaching-critical.html

Maybe it's just hype.
Still I have to believe that AQ has been hard at work since 9/12/01.

[The 801]

FBI finds most terrorism threat reports baseless
Fri Nov 7, 2008 6:23pm EST


By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI tracked about 108,000 potential terrorism threats or suspicious incidents from mid-2004 to November 2007, but most were found groundless, a Justice Department review found on Friday.

The department's office of inspector general gave the figure in an audit of the FBI's terrorism case-tracking system, called Guardian, launched in 2002 after the September 11 attacks.

"The FBI determined that the overwhelming majority of the threat information documented in Guardian had no nexus to terrorism. However, as a result of information reported in Guardian the FBI initiated over 600 criminal and terrorism-related investigations from October 2006 to December 2007," the inspector general's report said.

The report did not discuss the result of the investigations.
(That means, no one was convicted, so it was a waste of your money and time. -801)

FBI policy requires that each threat or suspicious incident reported by the public or other government agencies and law enforcement officers be reviewed to determine whether there is a link to terrorism.

The report expressed concern over delays in the development of a related system, called E-Guardian, for sharing terrorism-related information with local law enforcement. It said the automated Guardian system had improved since it was first implemented, and the number of incidents tracked had grown dramatically.

FBI spokesman John Miller said the agency had implemented steps to resolve concerns and it accepted recommendations made by the inspector general.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4A67T820081107

Yea, right. Anything you say MOHAMMAD. I know that my govenment has been spending my money wisely, by wise and knowing people, to keep me safe from the Taliban rising up in middle america. If only they could protect me from conservative religious legions already here from lockstepping themselves into my life.

Q) If the taliban were to arrive in america today, would they be able to get tax free status?

[al-Canine]

Well, for what it's worth... it wouldn't be 9/11 without a little threat in the air....


Is another 9/11 set to unfold?

By Lee Benson

Published: Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009 9:32 p.m. MDT

Earlier this year, quite by happenstance, I read a book written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James B. Stewart.

"Heart of a Soldier" tells the story of two men who, well before it happened, foretold not only of the terrorist attack of 9/11 but also the 1993 bombing in the World Trade Center parking garage that preceded it.
One of the men, Rick Rescorla, was chief of security for Morgan Stanley with an office in the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11, but not before he shepherded all but six of Morgan Stanley's 2,700 employees to safety because of a well-prepared and well-executed evacuation plan. He'd have made it out, too, had he not gone back in the building looking for those six.

The other man, Daniel J. Hill, is still alive.

With another Sept. 11 approaching I wanted to talk to The Man Who Predicted 9/11.

Although the primary focus in Stewart's book is on Rescorla — a bona fide hero for his actions on 9/11 — I found Hill to be an even more fascinating character.

It was Hill who converted to Islam as a young U.S. Army paratrooper stationed in Beirut in 1958. It was Hill who learned fluent Arabic. It was Hill who joined the Mujahedeen Freedom Fighters in Afghanistan and fought the Soviet invasion there in the 1980s. It was Hill who personally met Osama bin Laden. It was Hill who used information from Islamic extremists to warn Rescorla that terrorists would use the underground parking garage for a car bomb attack on the World Trade Center. It was Hill who asked the U.S. government to assist him in an assassination attempt on bin Laden in 1998 (the request was rejected). And it was Hill who warned the FBI just weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, that his Mideast contacts told him "something big" was about to happen in the United States, in New York, Washington, D.C., or Philadelphia — maybe all three.

Through the Internet I managed to contact Hill at his home in Florida. He's 71 now. I asked him if his reputation as a terrorism prognosticator without parallel has changed his life much.

"Oh, that blew over pretty fast," he said. "Most of the people even in my hometown don't know any of that stuff."

He didn't want to talk about the past. He wanted to talk about the future.

The very near future.

The man who predicted 9/11 is worried that its sequel is imminent.
"Muslims that I talk to say things like, 'America thinks they're safe now.
They've forgotten about 9/11. But watch, Daniel. Stay near your TV. It's going to be bigger than 9/11,' " he said.

Hill said the next terrorist attack will involve suitcase nuclear bombs that will be detonated in small, low-flying two-seater private airplanes manned by men hanging onto the belief that, like the 9/11 hijackers, they are about to die as martyrs and enter paradise.

He is not alone in suggesting such a scenario. A 2007 book, "The Day of Islam," spells out the details, as do any number of Internet sites about a plot called "American Hiroshima."

The nukes, he said, will be detonated over New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
I asked Hill, "Why now?"

"Eight years from 1993 to 2001, eight years from that 9/11 to this 9/11," he said. "Symbolism. They're big on symbolism."

"Ramadan started two weeks ago Saturday," he said, referring to the Muslim holy month of fasting. "It always hits around Ramadan."
Eight years ago, Hill predicted the attack would come on Oct. 16 — almost in the middle of that year's Ramadan (the timing of Ramadan varies from year to year). He was about a month off.

"I don't know the second, hour or day. I just know they have the means, will, motivation and desire to do it," he said, noting that it's believed that years ago the suitcase nukes, acquired from former USSR operatives, were smuggled into America across the Mexican border.

Hill said he has warned the FBI, the CIA and others in government. For the past two years, he's sent out proposals for a book on the subject. All he's gotten back are rejections.

"To most people, I am a deviant personality," he said.
But there's no arguing his credentials.

"I'm a Muslim," he says. "I'm a special ops expert, I'm a terrorist and I've lived among Muslims. I fought the Russians with the same guys we're now fighting in Afghanistan. I met Osama. I volunteered to assassinate him. I know (the enemy) so well because I've worked, slept and prayed alongside them for years. I've become one of them. I know their nature, I know their culture, I know how they think. I can quote the Koran like a Southern Baptist minister can quote the New Testament. I know these are people who do not tire, who do not quit. There are odds this won't happen, but they aren't big odds.

"I hope you're wrong," I told him."Yeah. I hope so, too," he said.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705328180/Is-another-911-set-to-unfold.html?pg=2