CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Tuesday, June 14, 2011 — 3 P.M. By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly Bad border apples: Mexican drug lords corrupting CBP agents "at an increasing pace" while soaring Border Patrol numbers impede candidate screening . . . Not everyone hates TSA: At LAX, giddy has-been fitness guru Richard Simmons "slides across the airport floor and seems happy enough to be frisked" . . . Zombie Jihadi Apocalypse: "What's more evil than a terror mastermind? A terror mastermind who won't stay dead." These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- Mexican drug lords are corrupting CBP agents "at an increasing pace" while DHS's inspector general and San Diego FBI officials "feud with each other over how to clean up the mess," The San Diego Reader's Matt Potter spotlights. Mexican drug-traffickers strive to generate "systematic corruption" among the ranks of CBP and Border Patrol agents, the Los Angeles Times' Daniel Hernandez hears DHS bigs testifying last week. The increase in the number of new Border Patrol agents along the southwestern border impedes the screening of job candidates and agents suspected of criminal activity, Scripps Howard's Nadia Tamez-Robledo adds. Feds: The family of the Arkansas Muslim convert accused of killing a Little Rock Army recruiter in 2009 complains that the FBI was long aware that he was a jihadist in training, FOX News's Catherine Herridge and Jason Donner record. The FBI "has undergone a sea change since the Sept. 11 attacks . . . [a] transition is so drastic that half of its 14,000 agents in the field are devoted to counterterrorism work," The Informant's Ali Winston writes. The revamped FBI manual would give agents more latitude to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams, The New York Times' Charlie Savage spotlights. Homies: "Federal government departments, including Homeland Security, are running propaganda movies secretly created and owned by NBC Universal as part of its anti-piracy campaign," TechEye.net's Nick Ferrell alerts. DHS and GSA have reassured private builders that work on a new HQ complex for the department would continue despite budget-driven delays, The Washington Post's Jonathan O'Connell recounts. ICE has joined a federal crackdown on "businesses that take advantage of immigrants to the United States," FOX News Latino's Alicia Acuna relates — while The Detroit Free Press' Cecil Angel sees demonstrators protesting an alleged rise in racial profiling and harassment by ICE agents and Border Patrollers. State and local: As an anti-terror measure, ostensibly, the NYPD is pressuring Manhattan club owners to buy ID scanners that collect the personal info of every patron carded at the door, The New York Post reports. "Gov. Andrew Cuomo's recent decision to suspend New York's participation in [ICE's] Secure Communities program makes no sense . . . and will ultimately make the state less safe," Putnam County's sheriff expostulates in The White Plains Journal News. Wisconsin's Capitol police are cluing in future statehouse visitors on what to expect from security enhancements, Madison's WISC News notes. Bugs 'n bombs: An unemployed software consultant accused of stockpiling explosives in a "bomb factory" in a Southern California rental house was handed 30 years in prison yesterday, The San Diego Union-Tribune updates. "The country is owed a thorough review of the decision" to launch 17 major biowarfare labs in the wake of the 2001 anthrax mailings, one "informed by long-overlooked lessons from the anthrax attacks," a Washington Post op-ed asserts. A little-discussed lab run by Maine Health and Human Services serves assorted law enforcement needs, including an anti-terrorism partnership with the CDC, The Augusta Morning Sentinel spotlights. "Disaster planning tends to focus on responding to the immediate physical needs and injuries of victims. But experts say more must be done to address the mental health impact in the aftermath," American Medical News surveys. Bid-ness: "From a business perspective, no one wants to be connected to terrorism," but an Ohio cupcakery's mojito cupcake may have blocked jihadi access to online bomb-building recipes, The Akron Beacon Journal leads. Thanks to a surge in "wealthy people around the world who like the security — and status — provided by a dog with the right credentials," the tab for Navy SEAL-grade "executive protection dog" can easily run north of $60,000, the Times spotlights. Personal security experts tell FOX News "that a lack of any standards for celebrity bodyguards often leads to the hiring of inappropriate — and sometimes dangerous — protectors." Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., believes that the "long-term fiscal outlook represents a greater threat to the country than terrorism," Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. Close air support: Two F-15 fighters intercepted a small civilian plane Saturday when it flew too close to Camp David, where the president and family passed the weekend, USA Today relates. TSA behavioral detection officers engaged in racial profiling so frequently at Newark Liberty International that resentful colleagues called them "Mexican hunters," the Star-Ledger reveals — and see an L.A. Times timeline of "significant events and policies in the history of U.S. aviation security." A Syracuse bizman is suing a TSA-contracted security firm after $8,000 cash went missing during a Washington Dulles screening, The New York Post reports. Scrutinizing celeb screening at LAX, as is its wont, The Daily Mail espies a giddy has-been fitness guru Richard Simmons, who "slid across the airport floor and seemed happy enough to be frisked." All aboard: A Virginia woman was "involuntarily committed" after allegedly uttering a bomb threat Monday morning aboard the D.C. Metro, panicking fellow riders and causing delays, The Washington Post reports. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation panel is hosting a hearing this afternoon to "examine emerging threats to rail security," The Hill alerts — as Globe Newswire relays a Homeland Security and Defense Business Council monograph on efforts to protect the nation's mass transit systems."Brit spooks have stopped 60 terror plots involving Black Widow bombers," burqa-clad suicide-murderers like those who blew up 38 people on the Moscow subway last year, The Daily Sun blares — while AP sees France charging a Chechen bar bouncer allegedly linked to Muslim separatists behind multiple Russian rail attacks, and KBC News spots Kenya Railways Police popping a perp in an acid attack that injured six commuters. Courts and rights: A Yemeni man has decided not to take a plea deal in a piracy case that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports. Fifteen years after El-Sayyid Nosair was convicted of seditious conspiracy in the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, his lawyers seek a retrial, The New York Times tells. A federal judge has ruled that Israeli victims of Hezbollah rocket strikes in 2006 cannot sue Al Jazeera for supposedly intentionally aiding targeting by reporting the sites of explosions in real-time, Reuters reports. An Iraqi refugee officially considered a terrorist will have to wait until the end of the year to find out whether he can get a green card, Salt Lake City's KSL News hears a judge ruling. Droning on and on: "The Obama administration has escalated the campaign of targeted killings against suspected terrorists worldwide," Jonathan Masters notes, prefacing a CFR Expert Roundup chin-wag on the tactic's utility. "Policymakers must be careful that the allure of lethal targeting operations, especially with high-tech weaponry like aerial drones, does not obscure the collateral damage that sometimes comes with such strikes," Matthew Waxman urges in a similar CNN debate. "What's more evil than a terror mastermind? A terror mastermind who won't stay dead," Danger Room's Adam Rawnsley leads, underscoring official U.S. doubt whether Pakistani terror chieftain llyas Kashmiri was in fact killed in a drone hit earlier this month. "If drone strikes continue we believe many tribesmen will join us because they are killing ordinary people," a Pakistani Taliban leader assures Reuters' Saud Mehsud and Kamran Haider. Talking terror: "The United States has a substantial history of politicizing counterterrorism in the sense of taking a firm line toward some flavors of extremism and a soft or even apologetic line toward others," ex-CIAer Paul Pillar propounds in The National Interest. Today, it is far more likely that an Islamist terrorist attack in the West will be at least partially (and oftentimes entirely) orchestrated by westerners," ISN Insight's Alex Wilner assesses. "How ironic, of all people in the world, Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary defined the goal of terrorism succinctly: 'The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize,'" Wahid Monawar propounds inThe Public Record. "Adam Gadahn, an American who's taken up with al Qaeda and now serves as its multimedia poobah, has the mental and moral firepower of a pop gun," The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot's Daryl Lease slurs. At the heart of the British coalition government's new counterterror strategy "is an illiberal intolerance of ideas that amounts to a new curtailment on freedom of speech," a Guardian editorial growls. Over there: The death in Somalia of the terrorist behind the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings "broadens al Qaeda's power vacuum following bin Laden's death, and will likely disrupt its operations in East Africa," The Christian Science Monitor conjectures. Al Qaeda-linked extremists are taking advantage of expanding chaos in Somalia to create a stronghold near vital oil-shipping lanes, The Washington Post reports. Italy has condemned Brazil's refusal to extradite an ex-Italian left-wing guerrilla wanted for murder, saying the "shameful" decision violated international agreements and "humiliated" victims of terrorism, Business Day reports. Desperate to maintain its image as a tourist paradise, the Maldives is boosting cooperation with regional partners to combat militant Islam, The Diplomat leads. Weather or not: "The National Weather Service issued their prediction for this year's hurricane season, confidently asserting that in all likelihood it will be very different than what they expect," The Spoof spoofs. "A spokesman for NOAA stated that 'If history teaches us anything, it's that we're wrong. From global warming, El Nino, hurricanes, the whole thing. We're basically just flipping through the channels. I mean that literally. I watch all the Weather Channel shows and barely know whether or not to take an umbrella in the morning.' He went on to say 'The whole "partly sunny," "partly cloudy," "variably cloudy," "peeks of sun" thing. What's the difference? What does that all even mean?' When asked what the average person can do about the problem, he said 'Look out the window. What do you see? Congratulations, you're a weatherman!'" 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