CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 — 3 P.M. By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly The burden of memory: Small-town Sept. 11 memorials have "turned into an expensive headache as the cost of building them ballooned and the economy deteriorated," AP reports . . . Damn Yankees: "Canadians returning from the United States should be wary and watchful of airport pre-flight security screeners," Toronto Sun warns . . . This week's nightmarish terror concern: Ricin might be used in a subway attack, Daily Beast broods. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- DHS' Secret Service "faces the daunting task of providing security along the presidential campaign trail and for at least six major national security events in the coming year," The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe hears its director telling the House Homeland panel yesterday. Secret Service agents, meantime, have arrested an ex-U.S. Marine over an "expletive-ridden message" sent to the White House in June threatening to kill Veep Joe Biden, Newser's Evann Gastaldo reports — while PCMag.com's David Murphy covers the service's Internet threat department's probing of Sept. 11-related unpleasantries posted on the White House Facebook page on Sept. 11. Feds: At a pretrial hearing yesterday, an FBI agent said that fears over further attacks that may have been under way deterred reading Miranda rights to the "underwear bomber," The Detroit News's Robert Snell relates. A decade after the FBI discovered ties between a Saudi family in Sarasota and the Sept. 11 hijackers, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., wants the House Intel panel to probe whether those findings were revealed to Congress, The Miami Herald's Dan Christensen recounts. Debuting CIA director David H. Petraeus says the agency is internally reviewing the legality of its association with the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims, New York Magazine's Joe Coscarelli reports. Homies: House homeland chairman Peter T. King, R-N.Y., stood by his past support for Irish terrorism during testimony before a British parliamentary inquiry into the roots of Muslim terrorism, Salon's Justin Elliott relates. "The days of free-wheeling spending on homeland security are coming to an end. Washington will now have to decide how to cut back," Heritage's James Jay Carafano counsels in The Washington Examiner. Three TSA officers worked with rogue police from New York and Florida to ship tens of thousands of addictive oxycodone pills to New York and Connecticut, The Hartford Courant's Edmund H. Mahony and Stephen Busemeyer report. State and local: In many small towns, Sept. 11 memorials have "turned into an expensive headache as the cost of building such memorials ballooned and the economy deteriorated," The Associated Press spotlights. During this week's GOP prez debate, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman charged that rival Texas Gov. Rick Perry's comment that it's difficult to secure the U.S.-Mexico border could be "treasonous," The Salt Lake Tribune tells. "There is a greater risk of terrorism in Ocean County from white supremacists and anti-government radicals than Islamic extremists," The Asbury Park Press quotes an ex-top New Jersey homeland official. Gov. Susana Martinez is heading to court over a plan to try to verify whether immigrants with driver's licenses in New Mexico still live in the state, The Farmington Daily Times relays. Bugs 'n bombs: The NYPD has recovered one of two vans stolen from a World Trade Center contractor and discerns no terror link, Bloomberg updates — as The Philadelphia Inquirer sees police recovering four stolen rental trucks that prompted a terror to-do there. "You can't put a cost on securing the nation's capital," NBC Washington quotes D.C.'s police chief, responding to police union complaints, in re: Sept. 11 anniversary alert overtime. The government has spent at least $3.4 billion on food counterterrorism in the last decade, but key programs have been bogged down in "a huge, multi-headed bureaucracy," an AP investigation learns — and check a GAO audit on the same. A foam created at the Sandia National Lab could be used in neutralizing potential bioterrorism agents such as anthrax, Global Security Newswire notes. Ivory (Watch) Towers: Campus Sept. 11 commemorations are conducted "in the ponderous, ambiguity-laden, complexity-generating way that seems to be the hallmark of college professors faced with grim events about which they would rather not think in terms of morality," The Weekly Standard leads.Since the attacks of 10 years ago, the U.S. Army War College had to learn how to make space for the "elephant in the room," The Shippensburg (Pa.) Sentinel spotlights — as The El Paso Times sees Sept. 11 affecting public school curricula generally. Janet Napolitano will speak Sept. 20 at Texas A&M, addressing issues of homeland security, TAMUtimes tells. London's City University, meanwhile has created a dedicated research center "to help tackle the growing cyberterror threat," IT Pro reports. "Professors should support isolated or depressed Muslim students instead of reporting them to counterterrorism agencies as potential radicals," a Guardian op-ed avows. Close air support: An Iowa woman of Saudi-Jewish extraction claims she was racially profiled and detained after F-16s guided Frontier Flight 623 to Detroit's airport, The Des Moines Register reports. "Canadians returning from holidays or business trips in the United States should be wary and watchful of airport preflight security screeners," a Toronto Sun feature on "skiving" TSAers leads. Dallas-Fort Worth International is taking a closer look at security after a rental truck hauling weapons shut down part of the facility on Sunday, KDFW 4 News notes. The Sept. 11 attacks inaugurated "a decade of economic misery" for the nation's air carriers amid increasingly intrusive airport screening, "but profits are rising as fliers grudgingly accept heightened security measures," the Los Angeles Times relates. Security in airports around the subcontinent has been stepped up following a warning that terrorists could target Mumbai's air hub using a small plane or a helicopter, The Times of India informs. Commuter Corner: A California man was arrested after boarding a bus carrying a suitcase dangling exposed wires and menacing the driver, the L.A. Times tells — while Big Government muses whether a deadly Springfield, Mo., Greyhound bus station shooting last week was actually an act of terrorism. With railroad tracks cutting through the city and public buses running on its streets, local authorities this month rolled out a new program to ensure those don't become terrorist targets, The San Juan Capistrano (Calif.) Dispatch spotlights. One among a dozen future terrorism concerns raised by The Daily Beast is "that ricin might be used in a subway attack, combined with an explosion to disperse the deadly toxin through the closed tunnels of a subway system." Courts and rights: The son of the man accused of leading a North Carolina jihadi terror ring pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to wage jihad, The Raleigh News & Observer relates — while United Press International sees three Pakistani citizens pleading similarly in D.C. federal court Tuesday to conspiracy to provide material support to the Taliban there. A Maryland man wanted by Bucks County, Pa., authorities for prison escape caused a terror scare in his home state last weekend, The Courier Times recounts. A legislative analyst suggests it would be "difficult to anticipate" how courts would treat charitable services that religious groups offer under Alabama's strict new immigration law, The Montgomery Advertiser mentions. Over there: A Swedish prosecutor has filed preliminary charges of plotting murder against four men initially suspected of preparing a terror attack in the country's second largest city, CNN notes — as Reuters sees two Ugandans pleading guilty to last year's Kampala soccer bar blasts, which killed 79. Al Qaeda's core leadership has been severely damaged but the network's affiliate in Yemen has exploited unrest there and poses a growing danger, Agence France-Presse hears U.S. intel chiefs testifying. The rebel victory in Libya "is the first time in history that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood welcome what is supposed to be a 'victory' for Western forces," a Hudson New York essayist asserts. Over here: "There's nothing 'grass-roots' about the growing national campaign —some would call it 'hysteria' — focusing on the supposed threat of Islamic Sharia taking hold in America," the ultra-right American Free Press announces. Local and federal authorities last week investigated a bomb threat against the hot-button Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tenn., The Daily News Journal reports. Kids must learn the complex truths about the Sept. 11 attacks "to combat the Islamophobic myths they've grown up with," a Salon essayist insists. "On the list of those deserving credit" for the absence of major post-Sept. 11 terror attacks here, "the first is a group hardly anyone would have predicted: American Muslims," Reason reasons. Holy Wars: "Just as al Qaeda is a very tiny minority that does not represent Islam, [Muslim haters] are a minority that is not representative of America!" Kashif N. Chaudhry exclaims in The Huffington Post. "I do not hate Americans just because of their injustice on me," a University of Houston Muslim student tells The Daily Cougar. "This country fights for my freedoms. This country is fighting a constant jihad to better the lives of its people," Maham Khan editorializes for Chicago's WBEZ 91.5 FM. "Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of the West's unwanted war with Islamic terrorism is its permanent tenor," a Canadian Free Press contributor essays. "Remembering the truth about Sept. 11 isn't Islamophobia," a Washington Examiner op-ed insists. The NYPD will keep security that was tightened for the Sept. 11 anniversary at that level for the Jewish High Holy Days, ending Oct. 8, Bloomberg reports. Moronic divergence: "Reflecting on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, grade-A moron Dennis Lloyd remarked aloud to friends Sunday that the tragedy likely would have been averted had the hijacked airliners been captained that day by Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, the commercial pilot famed for safely landing US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009," The Onion reports. " 'You just know Sully would've had things under control and landed that plane in downtown New York or right on top of the Pentagon if he had to,' said the colossal imbecile, revealing a staggering ignorance of that day's circumstances, the brutal tactics used by the hijackers, and basic physics. The unbelievable idiot also concluded the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented if the Navy's SEAL Team Six had been in charge of the World Trade Center." See, as well, an Onion Slideshow: "Ten Years Later: A Look Back On The World Since Sept. 11," and yet another Onion item: "Aide Interrupts Event to Inform Bush About 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11." 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.