Omss Politics: CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010 — 3 P.M.

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Unfinished business: Supremes to consider anew whether ex-A.G. John Ashcroft can be sued by U.S. citizen for post-9/11 treatment as a terrorist . . . What's your bag: "I was shaking so badly I barely made it to my gate," ostomy patient recalls of rude and ignorant TSA handling . . . Those were the days: "Terrorist as playboy" a common theme pre-9/11, when people "saw terrorism not just as a way to further a political cause but to live in luxury doing it." These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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Four men snared in an FBI sting were convicted yesterday of planning to bomb a Bronx synagogue and shoot down military planes, The New York Daily News’s Scott Shifrel and Helen Kennedy recount. The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to once again consider whether ex-A.G. John Ashcroft can be sued by a U.S. citizen who claims he was detained and treated as a terrorist immediately after 9/11, The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes reports. With a Georgia prostitute as informant, Justice seeks to reimprison a reformed Algerian terrorist who cooperated in the Millennium Bomb Plot prosecutions, The New York Times’ Benjamin Weiser relates.

Spooky: “How could the same officials charged with securing the nation against the very terrorism Kifah Mustapha’s activities supported . . . have possibly invited him into the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center?” Diana West demands in a Hattiesburg (Miss.) American op-ed. Last July’s unauthorized WikiLeaks release of tens of thousands of classified U.S. Afghan war documents disclosed no sensitive intel sources, Secrecy News’s Steven Aftergood hears the Pentagon assessing. “If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering,” ex-feds Coleen Rowley and Bogdan Dzakovic suggest in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.

Feds: “It’s frustrating when government at any level keeps its work hidden from public scrutiny,” but it’s “ridiculous” when DHS “won’t even share information with local law enforcement,” The Manassas (Va.) News & Messenger editorializes. After an Arab-American college student in California posted about a GPS tracker found on his car, FBI agents swarmed his house to recover the device, TMCnet’s Ed Silverstein surveys. A Coast Guard petty officer from NYC fell overboard to his death during a nighttime anti-terror training exercise, The New York Daily News’s Alison Gendar relates. Delaware Tea Partier Christine O’Donnell effusively praises President Obama’s terrorism and foreign policies in the Muslim world, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald takes note.

Bid-ness: The Army Corps of Engineers awarded Satterfield & Pontikes Construction $15.3 million to build a CBP training facility, The San Antonio Business Journal notes. A research institute involved in a controversy over terror bulletins for Pennsylvania officials is a subcontractor for a Philly-area regional security task force, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports. The Michigan Homeland Security Consortium, a nonprofit “dedicated to statewide growth of the homeland security industry,” has launched a new logo and corporate ID, The Examiner explains. Travel agents “are in a dither” after Texas homeland czar Steve McCraw reportedly issued an alert warning against visiting Mexico, The Austin American-Statesman recounts.

State and local: A Dem contender for the Cascade County Commission says his experience as a DHS agent makes him the best candidate, The Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune leads. “Our homeland security should be beefed up. We should have our borders closed so we know who’s coming and going across our borders,” a Florida Republican seeking a House seat tells The Daytona Beach News-Journal. The Eddy County (N.M.) Commission will be asked today to approve a regional hazardous materials team, The Carlsbad Current Argus recounts. Some 200 responders participated last weekend in a homeland drill involving shootings and hostages at the Delaware County Courthouse, The Delco (Pa.) Times tells.

Threat matrices: An unknown assailant shot at least five bullets into upper level windows of the National Museum of the Marine Corps over the weekend, the Post reports. The FBI and Postal Inspection Service have put up a $100,000 reward for leads to those behind the 17 white powder envelopes mailed to Houston public schools, The West University Examiner relates. Two groups of U.C. San Diego anthrax experts have discovered how two separate toxins function to disrupt critical cell mechanisms, BioPrepWatch relays. “The specter of a uniformed ‘maintenance person’ . . . showing up at the hospital in the middle of the night to fix a disabled air conditioning unit [with] a couple of cylinders of ‘weaponized bio-agent,’ is thought provoking,” a Family Security Matters essay understates.

Ka-boom: Lynn, Mass., authorities say a suspicious device found attached to a backyard gas grill is the third suspected pipe bomb discovered this past week, The Boston Globe reports. “Does it seem like there are lot more bomb scares around Albuquerque than there used to be? Well, there are,” KRQE 13 News asks and answers — as The Fresno Bee sees a bomb call last week emptying the Tulare County Courthouse, and The Fort Myers News-Press reports a Floridian’s arrest in a Home Depot bomb hoax. Since the Bristol, Tenn., P.D. bought a $122,000 bomb robot with DHS bucks two years ago, “Frank the Tank” has responded to about a call a week — usually old World War II grenades or “suspicious packages,” The Bristol News profiles.

Close air support: A judge yesterday dismissed misdemeanor battery charges against the woman accused of assaulting a TSA agent during a tussle over carry-on applesauce for her 93-year-old mother, The Contra Costa (Calif.) Times recounts. A Pinnacle Airlines flight was diverted to Fargo’s airport by “suspicious circumstances in the bathroom of the plane,” Minneapolis’ KARE 11 News notes. Grand Forks International Airport, meantime, seeks TSA approval for a restaurant capable of serving both sides of the security cordon, a “holy grail for small airports,” the Herald relates. “I had to explain the purpose of an ostomy. It was embarrassing. I was shaking so badly I barely made it to my gate,” an elderly passenger with a urostomy tells The New Bern (N.C.) Sun Journal of an encounter with rude and clueless screeners.

Coming and going: A planned Hudson River rail tunnel whose future now is in jeopardy is vital to the security of the surrounding area’s 12 million residents, Reuters hears Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., arguing — as a Camden Courier-Post op-ed insists the good senator is “full of it.” Many illegal aliens pass through Mexico by hopping freight trains on which they are routinely robbed, raped, kidnapped and murdered, especially the so-called “train of death” which crosses Mexico from south to north, VDARE.com recounts. Milwaukee’s newly elected harbor master will also serve as the port’s facilities security officer for DHS, the Business Journal relates.

Courts and rights: A second week of wrenching testimony in the Fort Hood shooter’s Article 32 hearing resumed yesterday, The Austin American-Statesman updates. A woman whose conviction for abetting a 2001 Seattle ecoterror attack was overturned by a federal appeals court has returned home, KIRO Radio News notes. An Iranian-American released from a Tehran prison “says he will take legal action against a top figure of a U.S.-based terrorist group,” i.e., the L.A.-centered Royalist Association of Iran, Tehran’s Press TV tells. A Boston-area Pakistani immigrant swept up in the investigation into the failed plot to car-bomb Times Square tells The Associated Press “he just wants his life to return to normal.”

Talking terror: “After the countless errors and abuses of the last decade, it is surely obvious that no president should have the unreviewable power to kill anyone, anywhere, whom he deems to be an enemy of the state,” Jameel Jaffer and Pardiss Kebriaei write The New York Times.“The ‘terrorist as playboy’ was a common theme in the decades before [9/11, when people] saw terrorism not just as a way to further a political cause but to live in luxury doing it,” a Washington Times editorial asserts, in re: Carlos the Jackal. “Does it not embolden terrorists when the U.S. military is bogged down in a Muslim country where we (unintentionally) kill civilians, raid homes and detain often-innocent people under military conditions?” Time Magazine’s Michael Crowley questions.

Ways and means: “It is fair to ask whether Obama’s use of language regarding terrorism has proven effective,” Stuart Gottlieb opines in The Christian Science Monitor, adding that starkly negative new polls “suggest the limited utility of language in fighting terrorism.” Problems with potential Western recruits is evident when al Qaeda’s online journal calls on would-be terrorists “to carry out ‘lone wolf’ attacks in the United States instead of traveling abroad to join extremist groups,” The Washington Times’s Shaun Waterman writes. Although his death by U.S. drone was unintended “collateral damage,” Mohammad Usman was “an example of al Qaeda’s new generation of jihadis born in Pakistan” and considered “irreplaceable,” Asia Times eulogizes.

Over there: While the Saudis may be correct in asserting that al-Qaeda-in-the-Arabian-Peninsula aspires to attack France, “it’s worth keeping in mind that the group hasn’t yet successfully organized an attack anywhere in Europe,” The Christian Science Monitor, again, cautions. Bombay High Court has been completely fortified to hear arguments on the confirmation of death sentence handed the sole surviving Mumbai assaulter, Express News Service says. “Increasingly deadly bomb attacks across Bangkok have plunged this Buddhist-majority country into confusion, despair and fear,” Scoop News leads.

The Great Game: “Parts of the country known as Terrorism’s Disneyland — Afghanistan — will soon look much different, when the U.K. avenges the death of kidnapped humanitarian Linda Norgrove, who was killed at the hand of her Taliban captors [sic] during a failed NATO-organized raid to free her,” The Spoof spoofs. “‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky,’ said the British P.M., ‘that would be like the splendor of the bomb we’re dropping on the Taliban. I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.’ Linda Norgrove, 36, who was kidnapped in Afghanistan last month was killed by her Taliban captors, after NATO forces decided to try to rescue her in a secret raid. ‘Today, her murderers, their neighbors, everyone they ever met, and every living creature within five miles of their base, will be killed at our hands,’ British Foreign Secretary William Hague said. The U.K. has been estimated to have a stockpile of approximately 160 active nuclear warheads. 159, after tonight.”