Omss Politics: CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Friday, Aug. 20, 2010 — 3 P.M.

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Editor's Note: Because of the congressional recess, Behind the Lines will next publish Tuesday, Sept. 7.
3, 2, 1, blast off: Israel has until this weekend to bomb Iran's first nuclear plant "before the humanitarian risk of an attack becomes too great," John Bolton urges . . . Fahrenheit 451: City of Gainesville denies burn permit, but Florida church says it will barbecue Korans on Sept. 11 anyway . . . Unleash the trolls: Unguarded foot bridges spanning Rio Grande could be a route into United States for illegals and smugglers. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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Israel has until this weekend to launch a military strike on Iran’s first nuclear plant before the “humanitarian risk” of an attack becomes too great, FOX News hears ex-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton vowing — while The New York Times’ Robert Wright dissects the angst surrounding Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic cover story positing an Israeli attack on Iran within a year. “Action is needed,” a Washington Times editorial urges — as WTOP 103.5 FM’s J.J. Green rehearses possible “retaliatory attacks against the United States or its interests in the event Iranian nuclear sites are struck by U.S. or Israeli military forces.

Feds: An HHS report released yesterday proposes creating a federally sponsored venture capital fund to invest in companies investigating defenses against pandemics and bioterror attacks, Bloomberg’s Pat Wechsler and Ellen Gibson report. “Although it is not publicly documented, it appears the United States is increasingly relying on covert actions against the enemy in the War on Terrorism,” Voice of America’s Ira Mellman leads. Thanks to “federal linguistics,” unguarded foot bridges spanning the Rio Grande could be a route across the border for illegals and smugglers, The Associated Press’ Alicia A. Caldwell reports.

Homies: Six U.S. senators yesterday rebuked the Obama administration, saying they were “disturbed” that thousands of full-body scanner images were surreptitiously recorded, CNET News’ Declan McCullagh relates. “Unfortunately, America’s instinctive response to [9/11] was in keeping with its national character, e.g., bureaucratic . . . Eight years later, DHS is still struggling to find its feet and perhaps even divine its mission,” Bruce Hoffman muses in The National Interest. A GAO report rebukes DHS for inconsistency in providing biz with usable, timely and actionable cyberthreat info and alerts, GovInfoSecurity.com’s Eric Chabrow reports. Three Virginia congressmen urge DHS’s Janet Napolitano to grant Gov. Robert McDonnell’s request to allow state troopers to act as ICE agents, The Washington Post’s Anita Kumar recounts.

State and local: Gainesville, Fla., has denied a burn permit to a church seeking to barbecue copies of the Koran on Sept. 11, but it plans to proceed anyway, The Gainesville Sun says — as The Las Vegas Sun has officials yesterday launching a terror-prevention strategy for southern Nevada rooted in community-led “Neighborhood Watch” programs. The Jersey City Office of Emergency Management is inaugurating a notification system to update residents on crises, from terrorist attacks to water main breaks, the Independent informs. More than 80 percent of $19.3 million in Colorado DHS grants will support first responders in 118 local jurisdictions and counties, KUNC Radio News quotes the state homeland czar. The Dem contender for a New Hampshire House seat “says she believes the troop buildup in Afghanistan is having a negative effect on the war on terror,” Manchester’s WMUR 9 News notes.

Chasing the dime: Idaho National Guards deploying to Iraq for a year “are creating temporary job opportunities for others who may be struggling in the difficult economy,” The Idaho Statesman leads. “By refusing to take meaningful steps toward energy independence, Americans have been simultaneously funding both the war on terrorism and the terrorists themselves,” a Waterville (Maine) Morning Sentinel reader writes. Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s order ousting all private security companies within four months roils an international community heavily reliant on hired guns, CNN notes — as the Post hears firms like the Watan Group roundly denouncing the edict. Legally besieged Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, the most notorious such firm, is relocating to Abu Dhabi, The Kuwait Times tells. In Iraq, meantime, when the U.S. military withdraws all forces by the end of next year, State will double its private security force there to 7,000 personnel, The New York Times adds.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Lansing postal workers on Wednesday conducted a bioterror exercise of their response in case they ever come in contact with anthrax, the State Journal spotlights — as The Citizen of Morris County sees New Jersey borough officials learning much from practicing the distribution of vaccines after a bio-attack. With federal funding, Rice University researchers are on a three-year quest to perfect a genomic test of whether a disease outbreak is caused by natural causes or by bioterrorists, Softpedia says. An “industrial nuclear device” seized by South Africa police last month was radioactive cesium destined for a mining company in the Congo, not a terrorist group, a Post blogger learns.

Close air support: A San Francisco-NYC American Airlines flight was halted just before takeoff yesterday after someone called in a threat, and two people were detained, KRON 4 News notes — as The Tulsa World sees an unspecified “novelty item” shuttering a checkpoint at that city’s air hub. A passenger with a three-inch folding knife in his carry-on passed Newark security Wednesday, NBC New York notes — while My FOX New York reports Newark screeners also spotting a smoke bomb resembling a stick of dynamite, but passing it around rather than calling the bomb squad. Some LAX police officers stationed adjacent to TSA checkpoints engage in “unprofessional behavior,” ranging from chatting on cell phones to reading magazines and surfing their laptops, a KNX 10.70 Newsradio investigation shows. “Don’t be shy, travelers. Security officers at Sea-Tac Airport will soon be able to look right through your clothes,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer teases in re: pending full-body scanning.

Coming and going: A team of DHS-sponsored boffins are studying airflow patterns in the Boston subway system today, “with the goal of better protecting it” against terror toxins. The Herald reports. Border tunnels that connect the bad guys on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are a growing national security threat, NBC San Diego leads. (“Al Qaeda realizes how porous the [U.S.-Mexico] border is,” an ex-El Paso Intelligence Center director tells The Daily Caller.) Intent on impeding sea smuggling, agencies including ICE, the Border Patrol and local police meet weekly under aegis of the San Diego Maritime Unified Command, The North County Times spotlights.

Courts and rights: One of the jihadi world’s most famous bloggers could soon face U.S. terrorism charges, NPR learns. Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, “a man who armed so many terrorist networks, could walk free if Obama doesn’t act swiftly,” a House lawmaker warns in a New York Times op-ed. An ACLU lawsuit would force the CIA, the FBI and other federal agencies to tell what they know about the alleged torture and detention of a U.S. citizen held in a secret prison in the UAE for months, America’s ABC News notes. A court Down Under has awarded ex-Guantanamo inmate Mamdouh Habib roughly $4,500 in a defamation case against The Sydney Daily Telegraph, Australia’s ABC News meanwhile relates — as Arab News sees two other Gitmo releasees pondering a plunge into Bahraini electoral politics.

Over there: Human rights activists accuse Kenya of secretly sending four terror suspects to Uganda after the World Cup bomb blasts in Kampala, BBC News notes. Indonesian anti-terror cops are on the lookout for a Frenchman allegedly involved in a terrorist plot foiled in May, CNN says. Two suicide bombings in the violence-plagued North Caucasus region of Russia earlier this week killed one and wounded several dozen more, the Times relates — while the Guardian has a drive-by attacker killing seven “security volunteers” in China’s restive, largely Muslim region of Xinjiang.

Checkpoint Celebs: With Obama’s departure from LAX on Tuesday demanding heightened security measures, Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx missed his usual VIP treatment, The Hill briefs. Novelist Dana Vachon was snapping photos of a JFK security line when a TSAer ordered him to delete the images from his iPhone, NYC The Blog relates. Bollywood starlet and model Celina Jaitly decries at length in The Times of India a traumatic encounter with Kolkata (Calcutta) Airport security screeners (jawans) who scuffed a $3,000-plus bag, forbade her to speak Bengali and were rude and offensive throughout. “What do al Qaeda’s Osama Bin Laden and YellowFever’s Jennifer Moore have in common? Nothing, it turns out,” The Weekly Volcano leads in re: the indie musician’s 24-hour detention at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental after a forgotten 7-inch chef’s knife was found in her carry-on.

Kulture Kanyon: A doc based on Lawrence Wright’s “My Trip to al Qaeda,” a one-man play exploring moral dilemmas encountered while researching his best seller, “The Looming Tower: al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” (Random House), bows Sept. 7 on HBO, TV by the Numbers alerts. Some of the most chilling passages in “The Twilight of the Bombs” (Random House, again) reflect author Richard Rhodes’ “acceptance of analysts’ opinions that nuclear terrorism may be much more technically feasible than generally admitted,” the Los Angeles Times reviews. Two London filmmakers face prison after allegedly breaching court orders by highlighting the case of a terror suspect living under “virtual house arrest,” The London Evening Standard relates. Having converted to Islam, the woman who long played “Miss Fran” on Canada’s version of “Romper Room” tells The Guelph (Ont.) Mercury she’s “saddened by the response of some non-Muslims . . . who have made mention of terrorism to her.”

One and a half cheers: “Addressing troops at Andrews Air Force Base yesterday, President Obama claimed victory in Iraq, saying that formal combat operations in the region would end Aug. 31, and that the United States had emerged from the seven-year war triumphant, kind of,” The Onion reports. “ ‘For nearly a decade, our mission in Iraq has been to root out those who would choose violence over peace, to create a stable Iraqi government, and to transfer power to an incorruptible civilian police force,’ Obama said. ‘And, in a manner of speaking, we sort of did some of that, right? More or less?’ According to the president, the relative victory could be credited to a number of achieved benchmarks, depending upon how strict one’s definition of ‘achieved’ is. Obama pointed to the democratic election of an Iraqi parliament currently being held together by a thread; the streets of Iraq being slightly less hellish than they were in 2006; and the fact that women are now, for the most part, free to move around the country so long as they don’t make a big production out of it.”