Omss Politics: CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010 — 3 P.M.

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Virtual panopticon: Coming soon is "a nationwide database of so-called 'suspicious activity reports' that describe possible evidence of terrorist attack planning" . . . It's about time: Fisk University researchers make it easier for CBP agents "to tell the difference between a dirty bomb and a banana" . . . Between the lines: When Obama says "we can absorb a terrorist attack," is he really lobbying for another 9/11? These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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“Federal officials are closer to establishing what amounts to a nationwide database of so-called ‘suspicious activity reports’ that describe possible evidence of terrorist attack planning,” Elevated Risk’s G.W. Schulz relates. “A controversial and cutting-edge technology at the border . . . could eventually spell doom for personal privacy,” Michael Chen reports for San Diego’s KGTV 10 News, referencing a DHS pilot test of iris scanners.

Feds: “Is Obama right?” Max Fisher inquires of Atlantic readers, in re: the presidential claim found in Bob Woodward’s latest book that “We can absorb a terrorist attack” — as Media Matters’ Adam Shah sees the right fringe reading this as Obama’s fervent wish for another 9/11.“Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Iranian nuclear weapons — they dominated elections in recent years, but they’re nowhere to be found in this year’s broad national campaign debate,” The Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan surveys. Federal attorneys prosecuting a Chicago man arrested Monday in a bomb plot sting “may have to show the suspect wasn’t egged on by an informant into a crime he didn’t initially intend to commit,” The Associated Press’ Michael Tarm relates.

Homies: During Senate Homeland testimony yesterday, DHS’s Janet Napolitano complained to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that Obama administration border policies are being “misconstrued” and “misinterpreted” by critics, FOX News’ Michael Levine relates — while The Washington Post’s Peter Finn hears experts telling solons at that hearing that jihadis “are likely to attempt small-scale, less sophisticated terrorist attacks in the United States.” CBP is still working on a behavioral biometrics monitoring system that gauges small body changes, especially in answer to a question such as “Do you intend to cause harm to America?” Network World’s Ellen Messmer updates. After a tussle with lawmakers, DHS has handed Gotham $18.5 million to keep the city’s prototype dirty-bomb detection system running, The New York Daily News’ Michael McAuliff mentions.

State and local: State and local health agencies have significantly improved their readiness for major public health emergencies, CIDRAP News cites from a CDC annual report. Small towns “get 9/11” much better than do big cities, James Jay Carafano comments in The San Francisco Examiner. Baltimore police and university and hospital security chiefs met Tuesday to review responses to emergencies like the shooting of a doctor last week at Johns Hopkins Hospital, WBAL 11 News notes. The purchase of a $900,000 fireboat with DHS stimulus money has some Salisbury (Md.) City Council members fretting about stressing the city’s emergency staff, the Daily Times tells — as The East Texan sees the Commerce Volunteer Fire Department applying to DHS for a $760,000 SAFER grant.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: Students in a Northeastern State University class are sorted into nine “terrorist cells” to spend a semester acting out an elaborate game to illuminate, the instructor hopes, “how terrorists think and act,” The Tulsa (Okla.) World profiles. The University of Arizona will evaluate Border Patrol checkpoints and their impact on nearby communities under a $500,000 contract, The Arizona Daily Star says. For young college grads who signed up for Army ROTC in response to post-9/11 zeal, “that a war may no longer be waiting for them is causing them to reassess their futures,” The Boston Globe surveys. Canada’s Carleton University last week unveiled a first-of-its-kind degree program: a master’s in International-Critical Infrastructure Protection, The Ottawa Citizen spotlights — as AP spotlights a new Islamic college in California that “plans to educate a new generation of Muslim-American leaders.”

Know nukes: “Fisk University researchers have just made it easier for Homeland Security agents to tell the difference between a dirty bomb and a banana,” The Tennessean leads. The U.K. Ministry of Defence has come under fire from its own experts for failing to consider the risk of terror attack on nuclear submarine bases, The Sunday Herald reports. Turkey has been allowing Iranian banks with suspected links to Tehran’s nuclear program to do business within their borders, frustrating punitive sanctions, Reuters reports — while AP hears U.S. officials in Vienna urging Iran to return to nuclear negotiations, and PressTV has Iran’s foreign minister reiterating the nation’s determination to utilize its just-launched nuke power plant. India’s foreign minister, meantime, said in Boston this week that New Delhi worries about atomic terrorism in the region, The Press Trust of India informs.

Bugs ‘n bombs: A senior anti-terrorism official warns that U.N. member states have well-developed systems for responding to radiological emergencies but lag on addressing biochemical threats, BioPrepWatch.com recounts. State and university boffins have collaborated on a new method to combat arenaviruses and their potential use as bioterror weapons, The Examiner informs. “Devil Pup” robots, super sniper scopes, flying spies and media influence campaigns “are just a few of the tools the Pentagon has turned to, as part of its $17 billion, five-year effort to stop makeshift bombs,” Danger Room spotlights. The nation’s ability to detect tsunamis has improved, but coastal communities remain at risk because the feds are unprepared to quickly warn residents, the Los Angeles Times sees a report to Congress alerting.

Close air support: A Colombian boy traveled from Bogota to Santiago, Chile, without documents last Saturday night, evading airport security, BNO News notes. “There is no room for timidity by frontline screeners in the face of religious objections,” a London (Ont.) Free Press op-ed propounds following a Canadian furor over thorough screening of veiled Muslim women. Tightened scrutiny of faces could “create headaches for people whose appearance have changed significantly, or who have aged noticeably, since they had their photo taken for identification documents,” Postmedia News, relatedly, relates. Security officers at Texas’ McAllen-Miller air hub say the fiber optic Secure Fence installed for perimeter control last year “has performed impressively,” or so the company says, SecurityInfoWatch relays.

Rolling down the track: Some 500 cameras installed in New York City’s busiest transit hubs now feed real-time images to the NYPD’s security network, AP spotlights — while The Wall Street Journal describes the network as an attempt to recreate central London’s “Ring of Steel.” The $200 million subway surveillance program will be monitored around the clock, The New York Daily News adds. “Airport metal detectors have been accepted as a way of life and it is time that Americas trains, including Chicago’s “L” system employs them as well,” an Examiner essayist asserts.

Courts and rights: Jury selection in the Manhattan trial of 1998 U.S. African embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani began yesterday, Bloomberg relates. Lawyers for a Saudi man accused in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole demand that Polish prosecutors investigate his detention and treatment at a CIA prison once housed in Poland, AP reports. A U.K. man who admitted producing a digital terrorist handbook has won the right to change his plea to not guilty, BBC News notes. A Salt Lake City man was arrested Monday for allegedly stealing a young child’s social security number, The Provo Daily Herald records.

Over there: Twelve were killed and dozens more injured yesterday when an annual military parade in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province was bombed, Agence France-Presse reports — which terror attack, The Daily Telegraph adds, Tehran blames on Washington. A would-be suicide bomber accused of trying to blow up a Copenhagen hotel toilet showed “highly professional” tradecraft in concealing his identity and purpose from Danish authorities, The Washington Times relates. In terms of manpower and planning, security planned for the coming 2010 Commonwealth Games “surpass the arrangements during the Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations,” India Today surveys.

Over here: Some Arab-Americans expressed concern about the profiling of Yemeni-Americans at a meeting yesterday in Dearborn with law enforcement officials, The Detroit Free Press reports. “It is easy to believe that hostility toward Muslims is on the rise in America . . . But this narrative of constant conflict doesn’t tell the whole story,” Jim Wallis comments in the Post, as well. Capitol Hill’s Congressional Muslim Staffers Association has a poor history of embracing Islamic radicals and even al Qaeda terrorists, a Human Events contributor contends. The 9/11 Christian Church founded at Ground Zero as Internet pastor Bill Keller’s anti-Muslim, anti-Mormon answer to the planned Park51 Islamic community center is not faring so well, Salon updates.

Holy Wars: “Those who embrace violence, whether in the form of acts of terrorism or acts of war, are necrophiliacs. They worship death,” says a Truthdig profile of the son of El Sayid Nosair who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane twenty years ago. “I am saddened and ashamed that Molly Norris has been threatened by someone claiming an Islamic justification for such a threat of violence,” a columnist for The American Muslim writes concerning death threats against a Mohammed-drawing Seattle cartoonist. Cultural relativism is an impediment to effectively dealing with “Islamic terrorism,” which involves understanding both “terrorism” and “Islam” and their implications when taken together, an Australian Conservative essayist insists.

Home alone, again: “The Intergalactic Play Nice Force has decided to abandon Earth operations,” District Superintendent Greg Gort tells Glossy News. “The IPNF chief detailed the process by which Earth was disqualified from further monitoring. According to his PowerPoint presentation, the Interplanetary Council gets regular reports, from which some monitored planets are placed on ‘Un-watch watch list.’ After so many successive parsecs, planets on the list go to ‘Cease monitoring’ status, where Earth is at this time. ‘Einstein, Newton, that Curie woman, promising stuff there. I could name a handful more. They were just genetic freaks,” Gort said. ‘We know that now. The rest of you are the laughingstock of the galaxy.’ He demonstrated with the joke: ‘How many Earthlings does it take to reverse polarity in anti-matter concentrators?’ The District Superintendent declined to give the punch line, but assured our planet it’s not flattering.”