| Behind the Lines for Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010 — 3 P.M. Stop the world, we want to get off: International institutions "almost completely unprepared for the likely emergence of so-called convergent crises" . . . Untouchables: FBI agents cheated on tests of their understanding of procedures to be pursued when conducting domestic terror probes . . . War of the Worlds: Aliens -- meaning UFOs, not immigrants -- have monitored and possibly tampered with American nuclear weapons, ex-Air Forcer claims. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- Specialists in disaster response say international institutions “are almost completely unprepared for the likely emergence of so-called convergent crises with the potential to plunge markets and regions into prolonged turmoil,” Reuters’ William Maclean relates. “I cannot measure my success by a reduction of terrorism itself,” the director of the U.N.’s Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force, frankly enough, tells New Europe’s Andy Carling. G-men: FBI agents cheated on tests of their understanding of mandatory procedures when conducting domestic terror probes, The Washington Times’ Jerry Seper sees a Justice IG report finding. Another Justice audit on FBI surveillance of peaceful protesters “is a reminder of how easily civil liberties can be cast aside during suspicious frenzies, such as that unleashed after the 9/11 terror attacks,” a New York Times editorial chides — while The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro terms an administration push to wiretap the Internet for terror plots another stride down a slippery slope. Four months after Bay State cab driver Pir D. Khan was swept up in dramatic raids by Feebs investigating the failed Times Square car bombing, “he is quietly trying to rebuild his life — with the help of the feds,” The Boston Globe’s Shelley Murphy updates. Homies: Since Ontario has reneged on an accord to reduce shipments of household trash to Michigan landfills, it’s time to implement threats to have DHS treat Canadian waste haulers the same as any other commercial vehicle, The Port Huron Times Herald editorializes. DHS’s Janet Napolitano and TSA chief John Pistole are in Montreal today seeking a global aviation security resolution from the U.N.’s civil aviation agency, Homeland Security Today’s Mickey McCarter curtain-raises. A $7 million CBP surveillance plane was flown from the Canadian border to Colorado Springs in April to assist in an investigation of pot-growing operations, the Gazette’s Joel Millman is startled to learn. State and local: Pennsylvania homeland chief James Powers “sincerely apologized” to a state Senate panel yesterday for umbrage caused by overzealous terror bulletins issued by a firm he contracted, The Allentown Morning Call recounts — while The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review hears a state police official testifying that the bulletins prompted wild goose chases, and The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader sees one of the wrongly labeled protest groups suing Powers for $125,000 in damages. “When illegal immigrants break the law, ICE officials are hoping local police agencies like the Charleston County (S.C.) Sheriff’s Office can . . . set the wheels in motion for their removal,” WISTV 10 News spotlights. Bid-ness: The FBI last week awarded a $40 million contract to U.K.-based BAE Systems “to provide security risk assessments, certification, and accreditation to agency IT systems,” InformationWeek informs — while another InfoWeek item sees Northrop Grumman winning a $2.63 billion contract to build the IT and comm infrastructure for DHS’s consolidated HQ going up on the grounds of a D.C. mental hospital. CBP agents have seized nearly 1,500 cartons of counterfeit laundry detergent that arrived in Seattle by ship from China, BusinessWeek relays. “A reduction in terrorist activity helps the business climate,” Expatica quotes a Spanish professor of terror economics in re: Basque terrorists’ supposed ceasefire — and check a related Forbes video report: “Business in Terror Hotspots.” Bugs ‘n bombs: “The greater the powers unleashed by technology, the bigger the disasters get,” the Los Angeles Times sees Unabomber Ted Kaczynski writing from prison in an I-told-you-so letter pegged to the BP oil rig disaster. West Virginia’s homeland security office has been notified of a soda ash spill by DuPont’s Belle Plant in the Kanawha River, The Charleston Daily Mail recounts. Though Taliban insurgents are planting more IEDs, fewer U.S. troops are dying from attacks, the Post spotlights. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, will chair a hearing tomorrow examining HHS development of medicines for use against public health threats, such as pandemic flu or bioterrorism, IowaPolitics.com relays. Know nukes: Due to U.S. use of depleted uranium munitions to capture Fallujah in 2004, “cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and sexual mutation rates” in the Iraqi city “are higher than those reported in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations,” Raw Story sees a study reporting. According to Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” (Simon & Schuster) “the United States is not prepared for a nuclear terrorist attack,” an American Thinker essay irately leads. Amidst mounting international worry over nuclear terrorism, Japan is investing in nuclear forensics to ID the origin of nuclear materials, Japan Times tells. Aliens, meaning ETs aboard UFOs, have monitored and possibly tampered with American nuclear weapons, Arms Control Wonk hears ex-Air Force officers claiming. Close air support: “Regulators keep piling on more and more airport screening tools . . . without any evidence that what we’re doing will stop anything dangerous from happening,” a National Post poster protests. By not checking his wrist brace for removable metal stiffeners, “airport security [opened] a potential security gap that I have tried to notify [TSA] about on multiple occasions,” an eTurboNews poster chides. To test screeners, a member of the Washoe County (Nev.) Sheriff’s Citizen Corps routinely attempts to sneak parts of guns or bombs through Reno airport checkpoints, The Gazette-Journal relates. After a six-month test, Italy is giving up full-body scanners for airport security purposes, terming them slow and ineffective, euronews notes. Waterworld: Sydney Ferries has scrapped its entire security and anti-terror planning group as part of massive staff cuts to ward off privatization, Australia’s Daily Telegraph tells. A “high-tech, anti-terrorism” catamaran now patrolling the Chesapeake “can detect a bioterrorist attack, fight flames with 1,250 gallons of water per minute and cruise waterways as shallow as four feet,” The Annapolis (Md.) Capital recounts. Some six months after requesting a $600,000 port security grant to buy the exact same class of civil defense vessel, “Greenwich’s application is still tied up in government red tape,” The Connecticut Post reports — as The New Baltimore Voice seesMichigan’s Clay Township gaining access to two airboats acquired by the port authority that oversees Detroit River security under DHS aegis. Terror memes: “Without the Soviets around, the American left needed new anti-western totalitarians to mollify, and the leaders of militant Islam satisfied that itch,” George Neymayr maintains in The American Spectator. The Islamist threat “is an insidious, violent movement that respects nothing but its own revolutionary ideology of world domination. This threat is not unlike communism,” rocker-cum-political scientist Ted Nugent propounds in The Washington Times. “Analogies between World War II and ‘the war on terror’ are jarring. They can also be illuminating,” Glenn C. Altschuler assesses in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “One of the sadder consequences of the near decade of war and violence that has followed [9/11] is that so many people are convinced that we are in a clash of civilizations divided along religious fault lines,” Zachary Karabell leads in an L.A. Times book review. “I don’t subscribe to the notion that the West is at war with Islam. Rather, I remain convinced that the problem lies among Muslims — as of course, does the solution,” Claude Salhani sighs in The Globalist. Talking terror: “ “If al Qaeda is defined as only Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and their immediate followers in northern Pakistan, then the threat they pose would still be worrisome but not nearly a global menace,” The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn analyzes. If you have not read “Assessing the Terrorist Threat” by Peter Bergen and Bruce Hoffman, “stop, read no further,download, and carefully consume the 43 concise yet comprehensive pages,” Philip J. Palin prods for Homeland Security Watch. (See also Jerome P. Bjelopera’s penetrating CRS analysis: “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat.”) The dangers of turning Africa into a front in the “war on terror” — much as it was a front in two world wars and the Cold War — were starkly revealed in Uganda by the July 11 World Cup bombings, Nicholas Young argues in The Guardian. Over there: One of the final men convicted in the Toronto 18 terrorist plot is set to become an officially free man next week, The National Post reports. “Bosnia Herzegovina is presently one of the epicenters of extremist Islamic circles in Europe, as it represents a hub for potential Islamic terrorists — the so-called ‘white’ or ‘European’ al Qaeda,” The International Analyst Network informs — and check The New York Review of Books: “Yemen, al Qaeda and the U.S.” Newly released budget documents reveal how Canadian policy agencies managed to rack up a $1 billion bill securing back-to-back summit meetings on a weekend in June, The New York Times tells. New Zealand has shrugged off an Australian security consultant’s warning to fans not to fly the national flag or otherwise stand out during the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi for fear of attracting terrorists, TVNZ notes. Secret sharers: “A secret undercover study shows that over 97 percent of U.S. government employees are willing to reveal classified, secret and even top secret information if the price is right, Unconfirmed Sources confirms. “ ‘I don’t make much in my job as a nuclear scientist,’ says a nuclear scientist we shall refer to as ‘Bob.’ ‘The Iraqis are offering me a million bucks in secret offshore accounts to share information about our nuclear stockpiles. Who could turn down an offer like that?’ He also revealed that scientists are seldom if ever reprimanded for revealing secrets. A homeland security guard says he is being paid to allow illegal Mexicans to travel freely across the border. ‘I get $1,000 for each guy I turn a blind eye to. That can add up to a few grand a day!’ Tens of thousands of scientists, military personnel, soldiers, aircraft manufacturing employees and other government contract workers have admitted, secretly of course, to selling out the country in the name of money. Some people with security clearance are actually competing with each other to see who can leak the most information the fastest without getting caught.” |
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