| Behind the Lines for Friday, Sept. 10, 2010 — 3 P.M. Sept. 11 fatigue: Americans approach tomorrow's anniversary "with a lower-than-usual sense that the country is safer today than it was before [9/11]," poll shows . . . Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: Much-expanded Border Patrol "grappling with a spate of misconduct cases in its ranks," including five sex crimes in past 18 months . . . A new broom: Retired Army colonel running as Republican for New York House seat wants to downsize DHS. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- The Border Patrol is grappling with a spate of misconduct cases in its ranks, which have mushroomed from 4,000 agents in the early 1990s to 21,000 today, including five sex crimes in just the past 18 months, The Chicago Tribune’s Ken Dilanian relates. “Friends family and colleagues gathered in Casa Grande to remember a smart, loving Border Patrol agent who ‘died far too young,’” The Arizona Daily Star’s Brady McCombs leads. “To get a better idea of what their world is like,” The Green Valley (Ariz.) News sends reporter Alex Dalenberg “to where it all begins: the U.S. Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, N.M.” Feds: It’s “not unusual” for suspected illegal aliens to wander, even as DHS scrambles to send them packing, The Boston Herald’s Laurel J. Sweet is told. Five years after Katrina, the Heritage Foundation is “attacking the Obama administration for . . . no, I’m not kidding . . . using FEMA too much,” Bill Scher huffs in The Huffington Post. New York lawmakers say the House is expected to reconsider a bill to provide up to $7.4 billion to workers sickened during the Ground Zero clean up, The New York Daily News’ Barry Paddock and Samuel Goldsmith note. DHS’s Janet Napolitano will spend today and Saturday in the Big Apple commemorating the 9/11 attacks, FOX News’ Arun Kristian Das records. Persistence of Memory: Americans approach tomorrow’s 9/11 anniversary, a poll shows, “with a lower-than-usual sense that the country is safer today than it was before the terrorist attacks, with the drop-off sharply partisan in nature,” ABC News’ Gary Langer spotlights.“Mention Sept. 11 these days and you certainly won’t be feeling the love,” 9/11 widow Nikki Stern relatedly rues in USA Today. “Controversies over calls to burn the Koran and over a proposed mosque in New York are sparking questions about how Sept. 11 became so politicized,” The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and Jon Cohen further survey — as Reuters’ Ben Gruber has an obscure Florida pastor finally cancelling much-decried plans to incinerate Islamic scripture on Saturday. State and local: “At a secret location in an industrial no-man’s-land in Brooklyn is the nerve center for the NYPD’s war on terrorism,” a WCBS 880 profile leads. A retired Army colonel running as a Republican in New York’s 20th Congressional District race wants to downsize DHS, North Country Public Radio reports. Jewish groups in Maryland received more than $1 million in DHS grants this year, while Baltimore-area Muslim organizations, which had gotten grants before, did not even apply, The Maryland Reporter reports — as The Knoxville News Sentinel notes that the University of Tennessee has won a $196,000 DHS grant to install and upgrade a closed-circuit camera system at Neyland Stadium. Meantime, Urbandale, Iowa, will spend approximately $54,000 each year for the next three years for the protection of Des Moines’ Homeland Security services, the Register recounts. Ivory (Watch) Towers: Northeastern University has received a $12 million gift from an alum to build a secure, state-of-the-art homeland security research facility, The Boston Herald relays. If graduates of Misericordia University’s new homeland security degree program can’t find a job or gain admission to a grad school within six months, the Pennsylvania school will fund internships in their field of choice, The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader relates. Law school students, prosecutors and homeland securers can learn about cybersecurity law and “online terrorism” from the Bergen County (N.J.) Prosecutor’s Office, the Record records. “Homeland Security” education deserves its own curriculum and career path distinct from what is called “Emergency Management,” an Emergency Management op-ed adjures. Notre Dame University will host “A Conversation with Tom Ridge” today, and the ex-DHS chief will be recognized during tomorrow’s Sept. 11 Notre Dame-Michigan showdown, Inside INdiana Business relays. Bugs ‘n bombs: For the past two years, Islamic extremists’ online forums have been subjected to a series of attacks around the 9/11 anniversary, and this year may prove no different, Danger Room remarks. Buildings, car parks and roads can be designed in such a way that they can protect the urban area behind them from flooding, The Netherlands’ TU Delta discusses. Rescue robots programmed to understand “the changing and unpredictable environment of disaster scenarios” may one day be deployed to search for survivors trapped in rubble, The Engineer informs. Close air support: “Now that there are nearly 200 body scanning machines in about 50 domestic airports, with 800 more on the way, passengers are facing real-life decisions about what to do,” a New York Times tutorial leads. Scanner manufacturers, meanwhile, are delivering software upgrades that show a generic figure rather than an actual image of a passenger’s body parts, Bloomberg adds. TSA screeners once caught a man carrying on “a can of Mace up where the sun don’t shine,” The Minneapolis Star Tribune tells — while a Seattle Post-Intelligencer blogger exhorts TSA: “Taking photos of aircraft is not suspicious.” Coming and going: NYPD commish Raymond Kelly wants something done about lax security at a New Jersey Trailways depot from which a serial compulsive bus thief has stolen more than a hundred buses, Homeland Security Newswire notes. In Corpus Christi this week, CBP inaugurated the nation’s fourth base for operating Predator border surveillance drones, The San Antonio Express-News recounts. U.S. Marines stormed a pirate-held ship off the coast of Somalia yesterday, liberating the vessel and taking nine prisoners without firing a shot, Voice of America relates. Courts and rights: In a video shown in a Manhattan courtroom, the alleged mastermind of a plot to attack New York synagogues practices shooting down military aircraft with a missile launcher, CBS New York relays — while United Press International hears an informant in the case testifying that FBI agents too obviously trailing the suspects almost gave the sting operation away. A Saudi once held at Guantanamo was picked up during a Yemeni roundup of al-Qaeda-in-the-Arabian-Peninsula operatives, FOX News notes — and recall The Long War Journal’s recent take on “Saudi Gitmo recidivists.” Over there: Fears that terrorists might attack the 2010 Winter Olympics with a nuclear device in a shipping container led Canadian authorities to beef up radiation testing at Vancouver’s port, the Sun learns. U.S. special ops forces are expanding their training of the Yemeni military as the Obama administration broadens counterterror assistance in countries reluctant to harbor a visible American military presence, The Associated Press reports. Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar proclaimed this week that his fighters are close to victory over U.S. and allied forces, Reuters reports. Holy Wars: “Integration has always been the American body politic’s best antibody against the virus of radical political ideology,” Adam Serwer asserts in an American Prospect op-ed urging: “Build more mosques.” Rather than public service spots proclaiming “I am a Muslim, I am against terrorism,” the phrase promoted on Arabic-language TV should be “I am a Muslim, I am a victim of terrorism,” an Asharq Alawsat op-ed argues. “The more one looks for the larger Muslim community to denounce [terrorist] violence, the more ‘moderate Islam’ seems to vanish like a mirage in the desert,” complains a National Review review of Robert Reilly’s “The Closing of the Muslim Mind” — while The Christian Science Monitor explores how “anti-Muslim sentiment is different in European countries than in America.” Kulture Kanyon: The bioterrorism in Sheila Callaghan’s play, “Roadkill Confidential,” now on stage in Manhattan, specifically, is “tularemia, or rabbit fever — a devastating all-embracing killer purportedly first tried out by the Russians against the Germans at Stalingrad,” Downtown Express reviews — while D.C.’s Metro Weekly spotlights Theater J’s production of Willy Holtzman’s political drama “Something You Did,” termed “a fresh way to discuss modern terrorism.” Role-playing video games that have young players “committing heinous acts of terrorism . . . not only desensitize and reward players for acts of extreme violence, but are highly addictive,” Phyllis Schlafly frowns on WorldNetDaily. “Terrorism itself isn’t funny, but this ‘Punk’d’-style show is. I have never heard of this type of humor coming out of the Middle East, but I truly wish there was more of it,” a Daily 49er contributor enthuses, in re: “Put Him in [Camp] Bucca,” an Iraqi reality show. Film Forum: “My Trip to al Qaeda,” which launched on HBO this week, “combines footage from Lawrence Wright’s interviews with his sources, many of whom have ties to al Qaeda, with scenes from his play — and raises several questions about the U.S. role in the ‘war on terror,’” NPR curtain-raises. Hindu documentary filmmaker Vijay Kumar, in detention since his Aug. 20 arrest at Houston Intercontinental, pleaded guilty Wednesday to carrying brass knuckles in his carry-on, the Chronicle recounts. Some wonder whether Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” (20th Century Fox), a “trashy” and “goofily violent” parody playing off of the overheated immigration issue “will only add flames to the fire,” The Christian Science Monitor muses. In which film, The Tulsa World adds, “Robert De Niro is horribly miscast as a Texas state senator running for re-election on a platform of illegals-equal-terrorists.” Tribute to truthiness: “On a remote patch of Kansas prairie believed to fall outside the range of U.N. spy satellites, construction is finally complete on the long-awaited 9/11 Truther Memorial,” The Onion hears sources confirming. “Funded by donations from dozens of websites and fringe publishers, and dedicated to ‘the fearless amateur research and bold guesswork’ of those seeking to ‘expose the secret machinations of the world’s true puppet masters,’ the 7,000-square-foot monument has already attracted hundreds of visitors . . . Created by a design team who chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from the Bilderberg Group, the memorial has as its centerpiece the ‘Truth Towers,’ a 60-foot-tall replica of the World Trade Center that houses a museum devoted to unanswered questions surrounding the attacks. Below it lies a pentagonal reflecting pool from which emerge 18 steps leading to the base of the monument, with each stair intended to symbolize one of the 18 Great Lies of the 9/11 conspiracy.” |
CQ Behind the Lines
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