Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - Homeland security officials in the Washington area plan to dramatically expand the use of automated license plate readers to prevent possible terrorist attacks. Officials from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia have agreed to install 200 license plate readers on police vehicles, at airports and along roads. The plan announced Friday will be funded by federal homeland security grants for the area. Britain used the readers in the 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks. But in the United States, the devices have mostly been used to regulate parking or catch car thieves. [snip]

More Federal Intelligence Changes Planned The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of...

NYPD's 'Operation Sentinel' To Track EVERYTHING Radiation Censors, Surveillance Cameras Used To Screen & Follow Every Vehicle Entering Lower Manhattan Plan Aims To Provide Security Blanket Against Terrorist Attack Reporting Deborah Garcia NEW YORK (CBS) ― The NYPD is working on a plan to track every single vehicle that enters Manhattan. The initiative, called "Operation Sentinel," is aimed at preventing terror attacks. With the use of cameras and radiation censors, police plan to track anything and everything that enters the Big Apple. The New York Police Department wants to photograph the license plates of every vehicle coming into Manhattan and...

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001. After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we...

A new program by the U.S. Department of Justice targeting Muslim men of Arab descent for surveillance is unconstitutional, civil rights groups say. The new terrorist profile, set to be unveiled as early as this week, is meant to keep tabs on such men who frequently travel abroad and maintain extensive international contacts, the Detroit News reported Monday. Under the measure, the men may be subject not only to stops at the U.S.-Canadian border, but also to wider investigations that could include electronic surveillance and detentions, whether or not they are suspected of wrongdoing, the newspaper said. What is dangerous...

Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri is rumored to have been killed in a July 28 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan

U.S. counterterrorism officials said Friday they have seen no evidence to support a media report that al Qaeda's No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be critically wounded or dead. A $25 million reward has been offered for Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command. A $25 million reward has been offered for Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command. A senior intelligence official told CNN there is no evidence to support a CBS News report on al-Zawahiri, and no reason to believe it is true. "This is utterly uncorroborated, and at this point there is no reason to believe that al-Zawahiri has been injured...

WASHINGTON, July 25, 2008 – An Iraqi organization tasked with consolidating and coordinating that country’s counterterrorism effort is now capable of conducting unilateral missions, a U.S. military official said yesterday. “[The Iraqi National Counterterrorism Force’s] primary mission is to synchronize and focus all elements of Iraqi national power to defeat terrorism here in Iraq,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Simeon Trombitas, director of the Iraqi National Counterterrorism Force Transition Team, told online journalist and bloggers. The Iraqi unit was formed in 2003 and has since been trained by U.S. Special Forces soldiers, Trombitas said. While U.S. forces still train with the...

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post this past weekend, and should make it abundantly clear to our nation's leaders as well as to our citizens, that our nation has serious reasons to be concerned about terror cells operating in the United States. After the attacks of September 11, the President kept repeating the mantra that "We are fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here!" As I often pointed out, I believe that we already have them "over here!" The report notes that terror suspects arrested in the far-flung corners of the world...

Senate passes Electronic Surveillance Bill 69-28

WASHINGTON — More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President’s Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government’s spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program. The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had urged Democratic leaders...

Getting FISA Wrong . . . Again By Andrew C. McCarthy National Review Online July 5, 2008 Originally published at web site: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWFmYTZmNzYyNDhlN2ZjMDVlZGFjODdlYzRiOWZjNzY= A federal court in California has dismissed a civil lawsuit that alleged surveillance violations against a Muslim charity the government has formally designated as supporter of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Nevertheless, in his ill-conceived 56-page opinion, Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, of the district court in San Francisco, gets to the right result only after concluding that Congress has the power to preempt the president’s constitutional authority. Judge Walker found that the 1978 FISA statute (the...

Police sniffer dogs will have to wear bootees when searching the homes of Muslims so as not to cause offence. Guidelines being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) urge awareness of religious sensitivities when using dogs to search for drugs and explosives. The guidelines, to be published this year, were designed to cover mosques but have been extended to include other buildings. Where Muslims object, officers will be obliged to use sniffer dogs only in exceptional cases. Where dogs are used, they will have to wear bootees with rubber soles. “We are trying to ensure that...

What I am talking about is stopping and then reversing the Islamicization of America. Here are five steps by which this can be accomplished: 1. End all mass immigration of Moslems into the United States, whether from Moslem countries or elsewhere. Moslems would only be admitted on a selective, individual basis, not on the basis of being part of a national quota, and not on the basis of having extended family members already in the U.S., as is now the case. Rather than admitting mass numbers of Moslems every year for no reason except their wish to come here, we...

(CBS/AP) - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., issued a statement in support of the House's update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but said he would try to strip a provision granting immunity to telecommunication companies when the bill comes to a vote in the Senate next week. The House approved a compromise bill Friday that would set new electronic surveillance rules that would also shield telecoms from lawsuits arising from their participation in the government's warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and computer lines in the United States. The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after...

A Good Deal On Surveillance Reform By Andrew C. McCarthy National Review Online June 20, 2008 Original Web site: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTM1MjU4NjI0M2JiMjg2YmYxNGYwN2FiODg4NmZiOTg= Politics, it is often said, is the art of the possible. By that measure, national security has been served by the compromise finally struck Thursday to overhaul our outdated surveillance laws. The measure should be approved by both houses of Congress in the coming days. President Bush will sign it. Here is the bottom line: Our intelligence agencies will once again have authority to conduct aggressive monitoring of foreign powers, including terrorist organizations, which threaten the United States. In particular,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that could shield phone companies from billions of dollars in lawsuits for their participation in the warrantless surveillance program begun by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks. The White House-backed, compromise measure -- which triggered a firestorm of opposition from civil liberties groups -- would also overhaul U.S. spy powers and replace a temporary surveillance law that expired in February. Democrats faced election-year pressure to pass the bill, fearing failure to do so would let Republicans paint them as weak on security and...

Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats find themselves in a no-win situation. We awoke this morning to the reports that a compromise has been reached between the Bush Administration and Congress on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The best reporting that I've seen on this so far is from the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman (Deal Set on Domestic Spy Powers). The best (and most humorous) analysis that I've see is at RedState by Moe Lane (The FISA Controversy, in tedious Question and Answer form). It really is a win for the Bush Administration, and a loss for the Democrats,...

Weak, timid, spineless. Those are a few words to describe Congress as it prepares to back President Bush's plans to justify his warrantless spying on Americans. What's billed as a compromise measure to codify rules on antiterrorist surveillance is too tame by half. The agreement kowtows in important ways to Bush's overwrought view that the war of terror cannot be bound by judicial oversight or the Bill of Rights. At issue is a bid by the White House to legitimize its covert eavesdropping on communications between this country and overseas. Under a 1978 law, such surveillance needed the approval a...

U.S. President George Bush has praised Congress for its bipartisan cooperation on domestic surveillance and new war funding. At the White House Friday, Mr. Bush called on the House of Representatives to pass the domestic surveillance legislation Friday. He urged the Senate to take it up quickly. House and Senate leaders agreed on a compromise bill Thursday. The measure, which permits the government to eavesdrop on the communications of suspected terrorists without first obtaining a court's permission, could also protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits stemming from their involvement in the controversial warrantless surveillance. Federal judges could dismiss lawsuits if companies...

Congress will pass long-delayed FISA reform legislation as early as tomorrow after key members of the House reached a compromise on a series of issues. The compromise has the backing of House leadership, the White House, and the telecommunications companies fearful of an endless series of lawsuits from their earlier cooperation with the NSA. This bill will permanently update FISA legislation to encompass what became known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, as well as modernize it to eliminate the archaic language that required warrants for international communications: After more than a year of partisan acrimony over government surveillance powers, Democratic...

Over the last seven years, some countries have become particularly difficult for Islamic terrorists to operate in. Pro-terrorist message boards and listservs (mailing lists) get into heated discussions about these places, and how to overcome the obstacles found there. The ten worst countries for Islamic terrorists operations (in no particular order) are; The United States- A very hostile environment, especially among the Moslem population. The police follow up on any tips, and those Islamic terrorists caught are quickly prosecuted and, if convicted, put away for long periods. Algeria- There are still Islamic terrorists operating here, but after over a decade...

The west needs a more comprehensive strategy to counter al-Qaeda propaganda and the US should stop using the term “war on terror”, according to a top intelligence official. Charles Allen, the senior intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, says the phrase is counter-productive because it creates “animus” in Islamic countries.

CIA director Michael Hayden came under stiff challenge for portraying Al-Qaeda as on the defensive after global setbacks, even in its safe havens along the Afghan-Pakistani border.Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Jay Rockefeller, said Hayden's upbeat appraisal was not consistent with intelligence assessments provided his committee over the past year."In fact, I have seen nothing, including classified intelligence reporting, that would lead me to this conclusion," Rockefeller said in a scathing letter to the Central Intelligence Agency director.Hayden's assessment -- one of the most positive since the September 11, 2001 attacks -- comes less than a year after US intelligence warnings...

One of Britain’s most senior policemen has said that the Government should negotiate with al-Qaeda in a strategy to end its campaign of violence. In an interview with The Guardian, Sir Hugh Orde, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said that he could not think of a single terrorism campaign in history that ended without negotiation. Sir Hugh, reportedly a front-runner to be the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that 30 years of tackling the IRA convinced him that policing - detecting plots and arresting people - was not enough alone to defeat terrorists. He told...

Chapter One: The Buried Bodies 0500 February 10, 1986 Bethesda, Maryland On my morning run through February’s chilly darkness, my chocolate Lab, Tyler Beauregard, sets the pace. This is our routine together, though we always vary our route now. At agent training, which I just completed, they drilled into us the notion that in our new lives, routines will get us killed. When you join the Dark World, you must become unpredictable. Erratic. We must strip away all the conventions of our old lives and fade into the background. We’ve been trained. We’ve practiced. Today, I begin my life as...

Republicans Making Concessions on FISA Surveillance RulesBy Pamela Hess, Associated Press May 23, 2008 Washington (AP) - A months-long logjam over a new government surveillance bill may be coming to an end, with Republicans offering a compromise that would let people who think they were illegally spied on by the government have their day in court -- albeit a secret one. House and Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled their latest proposal aimed at resolving the roughly 40 civil lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies that allegedly cooperated in the so-called warrantless wiretapping program. The Republican proposal makes other concessions. It would:...

In Seattle, the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations is doing what it always does—sabotaging efforts to educate law enforcers about Islamic terrorism: Does course on Islam give law enforcers wrong idea? And again, the Seattle Times quotes representatives of CAIR without a single word about their ties to terrorist groups or their status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial. Some local Muslim community members are upset about a training course for local law enforcement, saying it could promote stereotypes and ethnic and religious profiling. The program, called “The Threat of Islamic Jihadists to...

An order by FBI executives requiring senior supervisors to move to the bureau's Washington headquarters after five years in the field or step down has led to a critical shortage of qualified managers in key investigative posts, including those who supervise an FBI division that tracks down al Qaeda terrorists, say veteran FBI supervisors and rank-and-file agents. The four-year-old order, known to the agents as "five years up or out," has been met with widespread criticism. Field supervisors and agents say the order has reduced the FBI's ability to target, arrest and prosecute criminals, including terrorists. "The fact that everything...

Crush the Cell by: Ben Giles, May 23, 2008 Michael Sheehan served tours of duty in Panama and El Salvador. He worked in the U.S. government and the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Throughout his career, he fought on the frontlines of the war on terror. Just don’t tell him that’s what it is. “I don’t consider it a war,” said Sheehan. “It’s counter-terrorism.” Sheehan, former NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Counter-Terrorism, argues that a war isn’t going to suppress terrorist cells linked to al Qaeda. The strategic intelligence and counter-terrorism efforts can accomplish U.S. goals. Sheehan is the author...

Jihad and U.S. Intelligence Resources By Jeffrey Imm How could the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence authorize "the largest funding increase in the base Intelligence Budget in history", but refuse to include an amendment that calls for identifying the Jihadist enemy we fight? But that is precisely what happened on May 8. On May 8, Congressman Peter Hoekstra attempted to strike a blow for reason and sanity in the war against global jihadism, by making the rational and consistent definition of our enemy a priority in allocating budget resources for U.S. intelligence programs. Specifically, Congressman Hoekstra was seeking an...

Professors Against the War on Terror by: Bethany Stotts, May 09, 2008 The complaint that the Iraq War is the result of a neoconservative conspiracy to unduly expanded U.S. interests abroad has become popular among professors and antiwar activists, as is the assertion that the War on Terror has undermined American civil liberties and destroyed America’s reputation abroad. A new policy report by Politics professor Ian Lustick, published by the Independent Institute, is no different. However, the University of Pennsylvania professor’s report is unique in that he derives most of his inflammatory material from news outlets, including ABC News, the...

The American people have heard President George W. Bush and his spokespersons say many times that the U.S. government does not engage in torture. Whether Bush was believed or not is another story -- especially in light of the photographic evidence of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the prison near Baghdad. It’s understood that many of the photos are too sadistically graphic to be made public. Still, the official U.S. denials of torture continued until earlier this month when Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC-TV that he knew about and approved “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, including “waterboarding”...

TOMAHAWK MISSILES fired by a U.S. Navy ship demolished a house in central Somalia on Thursday and killed a vicious militia leader and al-Qaeda operative. It was a victory for the Bush administration's counterterrorism operations in Africa -- and a demonstration of the limits of a strategy based almost entirely on "over the horizon" military strikes. Aden Hashi Ayro, the man who was killed, deserved the label of "evildoer." As chief of the extremist al-Shabab militia, he supervised and probably participated in the murder of foreign aid workers, teachers, an Italian nun and a British journalist while directing al-Shabab's insurgency...

FrontPageMag.com April 24, 2008 Virginia Muslim police sergeant who tipped off jihadist gets probation Let's see. He hindered a counter terrorism case, may have tipped off the jihadist more than once, and checked to see if his own name was on the terror watch list. For that he gets six months probation, from a judge who clearly has no idea whatsoever of the larger issues involved in the case. Will he retain his job with the police? Is anyone concerned that he may again aid jihadists who are waging war against the United States? Is anyone with any influence asking...

Lopez: “Militant Islam may actually pose an existential threat to the United States…” you write. What must be done? McCarthy: The first step is to recognize the threat and its source. If, as I contend, the doctrine is the source, then security policy has to direct itself to the doctrine. We can’t change the doctrine ourselves. But we can protect ourselves, and increase the pressure for reform, by refusing to tolerate terrorist safe-havens; punishing regimes that facilitate jihadist organizations, particularly by giving them safe-haven; imposing restrictions on business with and immigration from Islamic countries unless they reform; punishing regimes that...

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps. Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said...

FBI head predicts al-Qaeda defeat By Frank Gardner Security correspondent, BBC News Robert Mueller outlined what he sees as a three-tiered threat from al-Qaeda The head of the FBI has said he believes the West can achieve victory over al-Qaeda within three-and-a-half years. Robert Mueller described how his organisation is working closely with British intelligence to confront ever-more-complex plots. Flanked by broad-shouldered security men with tell-tale bulges beneath their suits, the director of the FBI gave a rare public address in London. As head of one of 16 US intelligence agencies, Mr Mueller is at the forefront of preventing a...

By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER, Ph.D.,author of “On Killing.” Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? - William J. Bennett - in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997 One Vietnam veteran, an...

CIA director Michael Hayden said today al-Qaeda was training operatives who "look western" and could enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks. General Hayden said the terror network over the past 18 months has established a safe haven in tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan where they are preparing militants for attacks against the West. "They are bringing operatives into that region for training - operatives that, a phrase I would use, wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport near Washington DC) with you," Gen Hayden told NBC television. The new...

LONDON (Reuters) - In a school in south London, women in headscarves are learning English, childcare skills and citizenship, to smooth their integration into British life. The courses are encouraged under a new government policy to "empower" Muslim women, ultimately to combat the threat from Islamist violence, a threat made brutally clear when four homegrown suicide bombers killed 52 people in London in 2005. Triggered by events from racial violence in northern England in 2001 to the London bombings, British policy on ethnic minorities has shifted from a "laissez-faire" approach to encouraging integration or "community cohesion," said Rick Muir, research...

ATLANTA: Investigators initially thought a terrorism suspect may have been using his wedding plans to cloak the real purpose of his overseas travel, an FBI agent testified Friday. . . . Inside the lining of the bag, agents found two CDs, maps of Washington, D.C., and Fairfax, Virginia, and some scraps of paper with writing on them.Previously, prosecutors have alleged that "casing videos" of the Capitol building, the World Bank and a fuel tank farm were sent by computer from a nonprofit where Sadequee worked in Atlanta to a counterpart in London.

When Congress passed the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, law-enforcement agencies hailed it as a powerful tool to help track down the confederates of Osama bin Laden. No one expected it would end up helping to snag the likes of Eliot Spitzer. The odd connection between the antiterror law and Spitzer's trysts with call girls illustrates how laws enacted for one purpose often end up being used very differently once they're on the books. The Patriot Act gave the FBI new powers to snoop on suspected terrorists. In the fine print were provisions that gave the...

"One man went into a Glen Burnie, Md., Toyota dealership to buy a car, only to be told that a name check revealed he was on a U.S. Treasury Department watchlist of suspected terrorists and drug dealers. He had to be "checked for tattoos," he said, to make sure he wasn't the suspect. An 18-year-old found he could not open an account to accept credit card payments for his fledgling technology consulting business because his name was similar to that of a Libyan official on the watchlist. A former U.S. Navy officer who served in the Persian Gulf and whose...

Published: March 19, 2008   Jihad, Islamism, and Non-Interventionism                                                                Part Part One of Three     Jeffrey ImmAs seen in two recent books by counterterrorism analysts, the ideology of Non-Interventionism is gaining popularity with a segment of the American public. While Non-Interventionist ideology plays off the frustrations of some of the American public with America's handling of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the wrong answer to the confusion over global Jihad and Islamism. Two recently-released books by counterterrorism analysts offer a panacea of Non-Interventionism ideology: Michael Scheuer's "Marching Toward Hell - America and Islam After Iraq", and Marc Sageman's "Leaderless...

The Fear Factory The FBI now has more than 100 task forces devoted exclusively to fighting terrorism. But is the government manufacturing ghosts?It was late November 2006, and twenty-two-year-old Derrick Shareef and his friend Jameel were hanging out in Rockford, Illinois, dreaming about staging a terrorist attack on America. The two men weren't sure what kind of assault they could pull off. All Shareef knew was that he wanted to cause major damage, to wreak vengeance on the country he held responsible for oppressing Muslims worldwide. "Smoke a judge," Shareef said. Maybe firebomb a government building....For all his bluster, Shareef...

Counterterrorism, like espionage and covert action, isn’t a spectator sport. The more a country practices, the better it gets. France has become the most accomplished counterterrorist practitioner in Europe. Whereas September 11, 2001, was a shock to the American counterterrorist establishment, it wasn’t a révolution des mentalités in Paris. Two waves of terrorist attacks, the first in the mid-1980s and the second in the mid-1990s, have made France acutely aware of both state-supported Middle Eastern terrorism and freelancing but organized Islamic extremists. In comparison, the security services in Great Britain and Germany were slow to awaken to the threat from...

Now The Fun Begins With Russia Over Bout's Arrest By Douglas Farah It did not take the Russian government long to the Russian government friends and lawyers for the recently-arrested Viktor Boutto begin working to protect him again. The tactic now is to seek the extradition of Bout, arrested in Thailand in an elaborate sting operation run by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), back to Russia, rather than the United States. Of course, Bout, who has armed rebels, criminals and terrorists from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the RUF in Sierra Leone to the FARC in Colombia, has always...

[Snip] Homeland Security Issues Warning on Sports Arenas As the spring sports season moves into high gear, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI today issued an assessment, called "Potential Threats to Popular Sports and Entertainment Venues," that said arenas and stadiums are attractive "potential targets during events." …..[Snip]   

This is a report to share with fellow FReepers concerning the Patriot Act. Has anyone heard the name Randy Dees? Randy came to my attention, just recently, via information from a family member, who has known Randy (played music with him) approximately fifteen plus years ago. My family member informed me, one thinks there is nothing that can happen to them under the Patriot Act, but now there is the fate of Randy. My family member thought the Patriot Act was written to protect Americans from terrorists. Now, by the actions taken against Randy, my family member can only shake...