| Behind the Lines for Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 — 3 P.M. Master of his domain: House homeland honcho Peter T. King, R-N.Y., "already making it a 'major priority' to steer as much federal cash as possible to New York City's anti-terror operations" . . . Making boom-boom: Security staff at Ugandan hotels directed to "thoroughly screen women's bras" following threats by terrorists to use "bra bombs" . . . Copping some Zs: Nine JFK airport security guards fired in 2010 for dozing on the job. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- By discouraging nearby retail development, the National Capital Planning Commission “apparently wants to ensure that the enormous DHS headquarters [now being built] is little more than a Pentagon II: a heartless, soulless monument to government confidentiality,” DCist’s Aaron Morrisey maintains. More prosaically, DHSers “who go out to lunch should pack a good pair of walking shoes when the massive agency relocates to St. Elizabeths Hospital’s west campus,” The Washington Examiner’s Liz Farmer adds. Feds: The Pentagon has opened a top-secret command center to oversee the growing use of special operations to target suspected militants in the world’s hot spots, The Associated Press’ Kimberly Dozier reveals — even as a NORAD official tells AP’s Dan Elliott that a first-of-its-kind U.S.-Canadian-Russian hijacking exercise went so well a similar drill is planned for 2011. Incoming House homeland honcho Peter T. King, R-N.Y., “is already making it a ‘major priority’ to steer as much federal cash as possible to the city’s anti-terror operations,” The New York Daily News’ Michael McAuliff leads. Talking to The Hill’s Susan Crabtree, meantime, King also lambastes The New York Times while defending planned hearings on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims. Not close enough for gov’t work: Having thus far failed to control even half the nearly 2,000-mile Mexican border, DHS “is now sending personnel to Afghanistan to help that country secure its border with Pakistan,” Cybercast News Service’s Penny Starr assails. FEMA has yet to recoup some $643 million in disaster relief funds wrongly disbursed to 160,000 natural disaster victims, The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe quotes from an I.G. report. “The highest federal court in New England has said it’s okay for officials to single out dark-skinned people for searches,as long as they can concoct some cover rationale, ginned up with vague allusions to terrorism,” The Boston Phoenix’s Harvey Silverglate snarls. State and local: Pima County is moving to fingerprint more employees who deal with vulnerable clients or sensitive critical infrastructure data, The Arizona Daily Star says. Pennsylvania’s Vandergrift Fire Department is directing an $82,400 DHS grant towards a firefighter health-and-wellness program, The Valley News Dispatch notes — as The Romeo (Mich.) Observer credits DHS for going halfsies on Washington Township F.D.’s new station, and The New Canaan (Conn.) Patch sees that town in receipt of a DHS-funded mass-care shelter trailer. The North Dakota National Guard, meanwhile, says only a dozen members remain in overseas deployments, the lowest number since 9/11, The Fargo Forum relays. Follow the money: “Money laundering and terrorist financing are serious problems, but there are several troubling aspects in the new rules proposed by [Treasury’s] FinCen,” Computerworld contends. Despite some success disrupting al Qaeda funding, Saudi authorities face major challenges regulating the kingdom’s sprawling charitable sector, The Washington Times learns. A French Algerian terror fugitive put up “many British brothers” in a safe house while plotting robberies to finance Euro-jihad, The Daily Express hears in a Paris courtroom. Pope Benedict XVI has taken steps to ensure that the scandal-ridden Vatican bank can’t be exploited to launder money or finance terrorist activity, Catholic News Service says — while The Ottawa Citizen observes that last week’s bank heist, in which a man disguised himself in female Muslim religious garb. is not the first such hijab-robbery there. Bugs ‘n bombs: A Connecticut man faces sentencing tomorrow for illegally possessing automatic machine guns, silencers, grenades and IEDs at his booby-trapped house, The New Haven Register relays — as The Express-News sees a homemade security system setting off a major bomb scare at a San Antonio business. Public health authorities warn that food-borne outbreaks “should be a wake-up call” to what could happen if terrorists were able to attack our food supplies with pathogenic bacteria, Homeland Security Today alerts. Security staff at Ugandan hotels are being asked to thoroughly screen women’s bras after recent threats by terrorists to use “bra bombs,” The Johannesburg Times tells — and see Kampala’s New Vision for an urgent clarification. Coming and going: Law enforcers want to know more about a proposed South Carolina immigration law, saying they are unsure they have the enforcement resources, The Columbia State recounts. Cargo and vehicle screening is on the rise in Latin America amid security fears over the narcotics trade and large-scale economic migration, United Press International informs. Yemen’s coast guard is renting out servicemen and patrol boats — including U.S.-donated vessels — to commercial ships seeking armed escorts against pirates, The Wall Street Journal relates. Hoping to fend off terror suspects, CBP seeks access to the records of all passengers flying from Pakistan’s airports, Reuters reports. Close air support: A pilot’s spilled coffee triggered a hijacking alert, forcing a United Airlines Chicago-Frankfurt flight into an emergency landing in Toronto late Monday, AOL Travel News notes. A “furtive” Floridian was busted at Logan airport after allegedly growing unruly on a just-boarded US Airways flight to D.C. National, The Boston Globe relates. “It appears that the acceptance rate . . . is very high,” a Richmond airport spokesman tells the Time-Dispatch, in re: passenger response to enhanced screening — as The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal urges TSA not to “buckle” on enhanced screening, and see “Brian Williams: TSA Groped Me” at Politico. A Yankee Stadium security guard claimed he was carrying a “cooked rabbit” in his luggage, but CBP officers found three bricks of cocaine, The New York Daily News notes — as The New York Post learns that nine JFK security guards were fired in 2010 for sleeping on the job. Terror tech: Boffins question AIT scanners’ ability to detect odorless, compact chemical explosives easily molded to fool scanners and screeners, The Washington Post spotlights. Decisions made in the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation case “created a calculus in which selling the means to wipe out a city carried less risk of severe punishment than robbing the neighborhood convenience store,” a Los Angeles Times op-ed asserts. Cables aired by WikiLeaks show U.S. officials quietly pushing expanded cell phone service along the Af-Pak border to “disrupt cross-border attacks and improve intelligence capabilities,” The N.Y. Daily News notes. Another WikiLeaks release reveals Israel figuring it would have 10-12 minutes’ warning of an Iranian rocket launch, Voice of America mentions. Courts and rights: An Arlington man was indicted in federal court yesterday for making threats on Facebook to blow up D.C. Metro stations and sidewalks, WUSA 9 News notes. “Indefinite detention of post-Sept. 11 detainees without charge or trial is not the American way,” an L.A. Times op-ed adjures. Yemeni captives at Guantanamo “just received a new perk: Video conferencing back to family via a new link set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross,” American Thinker grumbles. A Pakistani terror suspect’s family is still trying to recover his remains, months after learning that he was stripped naked, doused in cold water and then left to die in a CIA-run Afghan prison, AP updates. Over there: The Taliban and al Qaeda have established female suicide bombing cells in remote areas of northwestern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan, The Long War Journal relates. The U.K. government would jettison its measures to detain terror suspects only “at its peril,” Agence France-Presse hears Britain’s independent reviewer of anti-terror laws warning. Al-Qaeda-in-the-Arabian-Peninsula, meanwhile, has claimed credit for dozens of attacks in Yemen over the six past months, The Yemen Observer observes — as Reuters sees Morocco swooping up an alleged a cell of 27 militants, including a member of al-Qaeda-in-the-Islamic-Maghreb. Over here: “To use terrorism prevention as the basis for the further tarring of an entire religion, one that’s been under siege [since 9/11], is more than counterproductive: it’s xenophobic,” The Albany Times Union editorializes as to House homelander King’s planned hearings on Muslim radicalization. “The majority of Americans don’t hate Islam and Muslims. But you have a sizable minority, and a very vocal minority pushing . . . bigoted views,” the Council of American-Islamic Relations’ Ibrahim Hooper tells Arab News. A series of recent speeches shows why Michigan chapter exec Dawud Walid may be “CAIR’s most irresponsible official,” IPT News insists. Holy Wars: “It seems as if al Qaeda is trying to drive non-Muslims from Arab countries,” Associated Content accuses — as The Christian Science Monitor hears the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq repeatedly threatening to attack Coptic Christians. Following a bloody assault in Egypt, Canada’s Coptic Christians hired private security to protect churchgoers during their Christmas week, AFP reports. The right wing “has turned a fringe obsession with Muslim influence in American life into an Islamophobic campaign that has become a major factor in the United States’ political life,” Alternet assesses. See, also, Commentary on how anti-Jewish hate crimes far outnumber those against Muslims, while checking “Judaeophobia vs. Islamophobia” in FrontPage Magazine, and Mother Jones for “The Year in Islamophobia.” Control Alt Delete: “A spokesperson for DHS secretary Janet Napolitano has announced that after a two-year, $6 billion study, ‘We think there might be a risk to using those computer thingies to store and transmit secret information,’” The Spoof spoofs. “In a press release written in crayon, Napolitano stated: ‘This is our job, and we are taking over for the NSA, CIA, DIA and anyone else who gets funding for computer security. This is too important to leave to amateurs like the FBI and the Secret Service.’ We reached one of Napolitano’s inner circle by telephone and were reassured that ‘We have everything under control.’ Napolitano has an ace in the hole: a 9-year-old prodigy who really knows his stuff. That kid has programmed his own video games! We’re confident that good old American know-how will prevail. Napolitano has requested a hard copy of the Internet, and once she applies her brilliance to analyzing that, with the help of that kid, we should have no problems. Our computer infrastructure will be just as secure as our borders!” |
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