CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Tuesday, June 21, 2011 — 3 P.M. By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly Today's nagging concern: "Tunnels dug by Mexican drug cartels to traffic illicit goods into the country could be used to smuggle terrorists or WMDs" . . . Grave reservations: Al Qaeda threat to hotels means that "frontline staff must be on the watch and sound the alarm when things are not as they should be" . . . WWJD: United States still lacks effective strategy to address loss or diversion of WMDs overseas. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- There is a growing Senate concern that tunnels dug by Mexican drug cartels to traffic illicit goods into the United States could be used to smuggle terrorists or WMDs, The Hill's Jordy Yager reports. "Arizona has had more than 90 illegal tunnels under its border with Mexico, the most discovered in any state in the Southwest," Cronkite News Service's Maggie Pingolt adds. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., meantime, is sponsoring a bill giving law enforcers and prosecutors new tools to find and punish tunnel builders, The Houston Chronicle's Jeanna Smialek mentions. Feds: A.G. Eric Holder pledged to punish those recruiting young Somali-Americans to fight for Al Shabaab, yet the FBI appear no closer to unmasking a leader of the nebulous Twin Cities network, The Minneapolis Star Tribune's Allie Shah and James Walsh update. "The Obama administration and Congress have interpreted the killing of al Qaeda's leader as a virtual license to double down on every 'front' in the war on terror, Karen Greenberg condemns in Salon — as "Middle East analyst" Maidhc 'O Cathail tells Iran's PressTV the FBI has had to "manufacture terrorist plots" in order "to justify all the money being spent on Homeland Security." ICE ICE Baby: The changes ICE announced last week to its much maligned Security Communities initiative are "simply window dressing," a California assemblyman who's pressing opt-out legislation tells The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko. ICE's new guidelines could spare some undocumented immigrants from deportation, The Houston Chronicle's Susan Carroll recounts. A federal crackdown in eastern Michigan that has seen nearly 150 illegal immigrants prosecuted since January 2010 "has sparked criticism from those who say it's a waste of money," The Detroit Free Press' David Ashenfelter reports — while The Detroit News' Michael Wayland asks readers if this really is a squandering of DHS resources. Bugs 'n bombs: The United States still lacks an effective strategy to address the potential loss or diversion of a WMD somewhere in the world, a senior Pentagon official tells National Journal. A federal panel has identified 11 microorganisms designated as Tier 1 select agents, "a new category of bioagents subject to the highest possible security standards," BioPrepWatch reports — while WICB 93.1 FM sees an Indiana county health department conducting a dry run of emergency drive-thru medication dispensing. In at least 80 percent of U.S. chemical suicides — in which pooled household products produce hydrogen sulfide — first responders or civilians were injured by exposure to the deadly gas, The New York Time spotlights. Bid-ness: A House GOP overseer tells CNBC News he wants to know if political considerations steered a multibillion-dollar federal smallpox contract to a company in which financier Ron Perelman has a significant stake. Employers and workplace lawyers are sizing up the effects of Alabama's tough new immigration law, and one question is its impact on who gets jobs, The Birmingham News notes. At the center of a U.K. bomb incident last year, UPS has been barred from screening air cargo at some Brit air hubs for security reasons, The Daily Telegraph tells — as The Times of India sees a Mumbai in-flight caterer losing its appeal of an Intelligence Bureau assessment questioning its security bona fides, effectively shutting it down. The recent warning of an al Qaeda threat to hotels emphasizes the need for hoteliers "to empower frontline staff . . . to be on the watch and to sound the alarm when things are not as they should be," Hospitality Net notes. State and local: A new state law directing Alabama's Department of Homeland Security to enroll some 90 percent of businesses in an E-Verify compliance scheme will badly strain an agency with a $400,000 budget, The Montgomery Advertiser advises — as Reuters sees North Carolina solons enacting a similar law affecting 40 percent of bizzes in that state. An Advertiser columnist, meantime, compares the new Alabama statute to segregationist Gov. George Wallace standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama. Americans have yet to deal with a suicide bombing on United States soil, but an Israeli adviser tells Kansas City law enforcers that "advance preparation is the best preparation," KCTV 5 News notes — as The El Dorado Times sees local cops in Kansas learning more about TSA security procedures during first-ever training offered by the state at the El Dorado Municipal Airport. Close air support: A Michigan state solon wants to make it a misdemeanor for screeners to "conduct an intrusive, personal search on citizens without reasonable cause," The Oakland Press reports. A Boston Logan spokesman tells The Associated Press that the airport values clammers pulling mollusks from the tidal flats near its runways as another "set of eyes and ears" to boost security. A man was arrested at LAX attempting to board with a small derringer and ammo in his carry-on, the Los Angeles Times tells. "America needs to follow the Israeli example by discarding its politically correct inhibition against criminal profiling, stop harassing law-abiding citizens . . . and start looking for terrorists for a change," The Moral Liberal inveighs — while Haaretz documents a Ben Gurion Airport screener's abusive treatment of two Barcelona gay leaders invited to Israel by the state. Waterworld: Long Beach deploys the only municipal port security diving unit in the United States certified to dive with hard hats, which installs pipelines, inspects bridges and responds to security risks, the L.A. Times profiles. Minor ports such as Port Kembla are exposed to organized crime activity and risk becoming the "weakest link" in Australia's maritime security, The Illawara Mercury sees a major report finding. Like Real ID, TSA's Transportation Worker Identification Card is a credentialing system "in deep trouble. It is possible that political pressure will build to either kill the program all together or significantly modify the implementation," Emergency Management mulls. Courts and rights: Eleven companies, including Iran's state-sponsored shipping line, were indicted yesterday for allegedly conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions, ABC News notes. "Eight law firms are placing blame for the Sept. 11 attacks on the Iranian regime. If successful, the lawsuit will put to rest the notion that a nuclear Iran can be lived with," FrontPage Magazine maintains. Austria yesterday extradited to Germany a man accused of recruiting radicalized Muslims to join an armed Taliban affiliate, Deutsche Presse Agentur reports. Just days after terror-inciting imam Abu Bakar Bashir was given 15 years in prison, another Indonesian rebel leader accused of training jihadists went on trial in Jakarta yesterday, United Press International informs. Talking terror: "It's tempting to believe that we live in a special time . . . but it's hard to compare even today's menaces to the rise of the Third Reich, the fall of the Roman Empire or the Black Death. At least not yet," Christopher Mims muses in a Technology Review take on apocalyptic thinking. In Yemen, "American aerial attacks . . . always risk killing civilians too, bolstering the jihadist cause. The rise of militant Islam in Yemen is not precisely the same as the rise of al Qaeda — but its result may be just as worrying," The Economist concludes. Relying on special ops and drone attacks, "but no boots on the ground," the American counter-al Qaeda drive in Yemen suggests "we're not going to do counterinsurgency anymore; from now on it's counterterrorism," Lawrence Korb tells The Christian Science Monitor's Howard LaFranchi. Al Qaeda Today: Speaking of strategic shifts, "new al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wants to wage jihad against apostate regimes in the Muslim world, unlike Osama bin Laden's focus on the 'far enemy' of the West," Murad Batal al-Shishani essays in Asia Times — as Agence France-Presse hears outgoing Pentagon chief Robert Gates predicting that al Qaeda could split into a set of regional terror groups now that Osama bin Laden is no more. FOX News' description of an al Qaeda-linked website's "hit list" of 179 American luminaries seems "less like a concerted strategy session and more like a bunch of Internet commenters mouthing off in an exercise of crowd-sourced terrorism," The Atlantic Wire's John Hudson jabs. "When there is hope for a better life, radical ideas vanish on their own. This applies to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and all other regions infested with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups," Igor Khokhlov tells The Voice of Russia's Alexander Vatutin. Over there: For the second time this month, bomb-making factories in Pakistan were evacuated shortly after U.S. intelligence officers notified Pakistani security forces of their existence, The New York Times tells. "I look around the world and nowhere are there exercises of this scope," Israel's Homeland Security minister, Matan Vilna'i, tells The Jerusalem Post, in re: this week's Turning Point 5 nationwide civil-defense drill. Nigerian Islamist fighters have returned from training in Somalia with the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group "vowing to wage jihad soon," IPT News notes. May the farce be with you: "WikiLeaks, the organization that anonymously publishes submissions of secret documents, has posted the full schematics of the Galactic Empire's most enormous weapons station, the Death Star," The Spoof spoofs. "Publicly, the Emperor is downplaying the impact of the leaks. 'Any attack made by the rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they've obtained,' his press secretary stated. 'This station is now the ultimate power in the universe! Also, we regret any civilian casualties that may have been incurred during the granularization of the planet Alderaan.' But internally, the Empire leadership is desperate to stop the leaks from reaching the rebel headquarters. The crisis is of such high priority that it is being managed by the Emperor's number-two man, the ruthless, universally feared, part-man part-machine Sith Master of Evil, the Dark Lord Dick Cheney." Source: CQ Homeland Security --------------------------------- Other CQ Roll Call Products CQ Floor Video CQ.com CQ Weekly CQ Today CQ Amendment Text CQ BillTrack CQ Budget Tracker CQ Energy & Climate CQ HealthBeat CQ Homeland Security CQ Hot Docs CQ House Action Reports CQ LawTrack CQ MoneyLine CQ StateTrack CQ Politics Roll Call See all CQ Roll Call products Rob Margetta, CQ Homeland Security Editor Arwen Bicknell, Behind the Lines Editor Published by CQ Roll Call To sign up for CQ Roll Call's free newsletters, click here. Source: CQ Homeland Security Copyright © 2011 CQ Roll Call. All rights reserved.