CQ Behind the Lines

From CQ Homeland Security

Behind the Lines for Wednesday, July 6, 2011 — 3 P.M. By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly U.S.S. Secret CIA Prison: Somali citizen interrogated aboard a U.S. warship for two months now in New York facing terrorism charges . . . Worst case scenario: "There will soon be no place safe from the TSA's groping searches" . . . Light sleeper: "The threat of a bioterrorism attack is real. The threat of a bioterrorism attack keeps me up at night," Senate homeland chairman says. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- A member of an al Qaeda-linked Somalia group was interrogated for two months on a Navy ship off the Horn of Africa, before being flown to New York City over the July 4 holiday to face terrorism charges in a civilian court, FOX News' Mike Levine and Justin Fishel relate — while Salon's Spencer Ackerman airs the existence of the CIA's so-called "Hotel California" somewhere in the undisclosed Middle East, "an unacknowledged prison beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law." Feds: An unnamed intel analyst's contribution to the elimination of Osama bin Laden is "a story of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the greatest counterterrorism success in the history of the CIA," The Associated Press' Matt Apuzzo profiles. The little-known Pentagon Force Protection Agency safeguards more than 50,000 people working at or visiting the huge complex and some 100 other Defense facilities in the D.C. area, The Washington Post spotlights. A Georgia DHS agent lost five firearms, including his service weapon, in a possibly targeted home burglary, Atlanta's WSBTV 2 News notes. Homies: "Thanks to TSA chief John Pistole's determination to 'take the TSA to the next level,' there will soon be no place safe from the TSA's groping searches," John W. Whitehead jabs in a Rutherford Institute commentary. DHS is hosting its annual chemical industry security summit in Baltimore today and tomorrow, in an "environment wherein there is widespread agreement that [the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards are] working," Homeland Security Today's Mickey McCarter relates. DHS's Janet Napolitano was sighted around lunchtime Sunday at D.C.'s Columbia Heights Target, accompanied by two Secret Service agents, The Washington Examiner's Nikki Schwab and Katy Adams rather idly dish. State and local: Cook County (Ill.) officials last week pulled the plug on a troubled $44 million effort that put faulty cameras in police cars and which has been judged "ill-conceived, poorly designed and badly executed," The Chicago Tribune updates. "So, is South Texas being terrorized by Mexican drug gangs, or is [Gov. Rick] Perry trying to score political points against a president he may face in a run for the White House?" NPR asks and tries to answer. Next summer, the Oroville (Wash.) CBP Station will shift into a new $15 million complex on 22 acres built to accommodate 60 officers, The Wenatchee World relates. As the 9/11 tenth anniversary nears, "I can't help seeing the city as a kaleidoscope of now and then, jagged images of molten steel and lost ones alternating with scenes of careless summer laughter," a New York Times columnist morbidly muses. Bugs 'n bombs: "The threat of a bioterrorism attack is real. The threat of a bioterrorism attack keeps me up at night," Security Director hears Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., lamenting at a recent conference — as Global Security Newswire reports Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., fretting about the fate in Congress of legislation he's cosponsoring to boost the public health response to bioterror incidents. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center last week ended efforts to build a facility for producing vaccines to counter bioterrorism threats and other diseases, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review relates. "Product tampering and small-scale terrorism weren't new phenomena; we've worried about these sorts of things since at least 1917," a Motherboard reappraisal of the 1982 Tylenol poisonings reminds. "Food is a soft target for terrorism. And even the best of companies can have unexpected problems," Packaging Digest spotlights. Follow the money: E-mail recovered from bin Laden's compound reveal the al Qaeda leader's worries about the terrorist organization's financial future in the months before he was killed by Navy SEALs, The Daily Caller recounts — and see The Daily Mail, too, on "al Qaeda's credit crunch." Seized messages from the head of al Qaeda's security unit thus complained "about having a very low budget, a few thousand dollars," First Post adds. A Guantanamo detainee IDed as a "primary financier for al Qaeda and the Taliban" worked with Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency to purchase arms for South Asian jihadists, The Long War Journal learns from leaked memos. A Swiss couple kidnapped on holiday in Pakistan have been smuggled into the lawless border tribal belt, a notorious haven for Taliban and al Qaeda, Agence France-Presse reports. Close air support: In his latest Texas Straight Talk column, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a libertarian wanna-be presidential candidate, terms the airport security status quo a "sorry situation" and urges privatization of TSA's functions, The State Column recounts — as Business Insider applauds: "It's refreshing to see someone in power questioning the Idiocracy-style absurdity of the TSA airport screening process." A Miami photographer was reportedly escorted off a US Airways flight out of Philadelphia International after using her iPhone to photograph a rude employee's name tag, MSNBC mentions — while a Minneapolis Star Tribune travel columnist details the many checkpoint changes at the Twin Cities' air hub, and The Syracuse (N.Y.) Post-Standard previews a "new look" now greeting passengers joining screening queues at that airport. On track: "I think there are both economic and security implications to rail security, and I also believe that these issues are directly linked to our current global security situation," a CSO Magazine essayist assesses. Given Jerusalem's history of suicide bus bombings, misgivings about security aboard the city's much-delayed light rail system have been brewing, Reuters reports. A lot of sweat has gone into securing downtown Phoenix for Major League Baseball All-Star activities starting Friday, with a concentration on the 19-mile Metro light-rail line, The Arizona Republic reports. Local police minimize the consequence of Maoists having once again blown up railway track in eastern India, stranding thousands of commuters, The Express News Service notes. Talking terror: The reluctance of a Seattle man recently arrested for plotting against a recruit processing site "to attack civilians may be a reflection of the debate we are seeing among jihadists [elsewhere] over the killing of those they consider innocents," Stratfor's Scott Stewart assesses. "Terrorism is scarier than heart disease, and nuclear radiation is scarier than coal, whether we use it to make energy or sanitize our food. But those fears are all contributing to policies that leave us at greater risk," David Ropeik comments in Psychology Today. A new study by Brown University's Catherine Lutz pegs the costs of the counterterror military campaign thus far at a minimum of $3.2 trillion and 225,000 lives lost, 24/7 Wall St.'s Douglas A. McIntyre and Charles B. Stockdale relate. "In the end, the 'War on Terror' has morphed into a form of psychopathic capitalism run amok," Brennan Browne blames for Indybay. Stratergizing: If Washington's new terror tack "reduces the number of U.S. soldiers placed overseas, if it reduces the number of civilian casualties in other countries, and if it really prevents terrorist attacks inside the United States, [the changes] can be only welcomed," Boris Volkhonsky avers in The Voice of Russia. "The Obama administration's shift in counterterrorism strategy from land wars to precision strikes and raids is raising concerns that the White House has adopted a policy of targeting killings for terror suspects," FOX News' Catherine Herridge comments. "The current U.S. strategy in the war against al Qaeda is like a fireman turning his hose on the flames, but never hitting the embers," The Aspen Times' Paul Andersen leads. "Effective counterterrorism doesn't depend on nation building [and] the killing of Osama bin Laden undermines the nation-builders' claims yet again," Christopher A. Preble pronounces in The National Interest. Courts and rights: Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., yesterday again asked Justice to reconsider trying two Iraqi terror suspects in the city of Bowling Green, The Louisville Courier-Journal recounts. In a ruling Friday, Southwest Airlines lost a court challenge claiming that TSA is overcharging airlines for post-9/11 passenger screening, Bloomberg relates. Unlike other recent New York terror cases, Betim Kaziu's "suspected exploits have gotten little attention, in part because the plot didn't get far. But his case carries many of the same themes of homegrown terrorism," AP profiles. Over there: Al Qaeda is facing a "crisis of credibility" and so has a "pressing need to pull off a spectacular," The Guardian hears a former head of MI6, Britain's secret intelligence service, asserting. "Because of the overwhelming conventional military superiority of Europe," Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi's threats of retribution "can only be interpreted as acts of terrorism, if they were to be taken seriously at all," International Business Times analyzes. The Canadian government has, belatedly, it might seem, blacklisted the Pakistani Taliban, initially linked to last year's alleged jihadist scheme to bomb Ottawa, Postmedia News reports. An appendix to a DHS report, listing "specially designated countries" whose detained nationals are to be more closely examined, categorizes the state of Israel as a 'Promoter, Producer, or Protector of Terrorists," The Algemeiner mentions. Crap shoot: "According to a new report from the National Institute for Safety Management, on any given day, the average American's life is entrusted to more than 2,000 different people who are complete strangers," The Onion passes along. "The report, which shows how any one of these anonymous individuals making a single mistake can easily cause another person's death, concluded that it is only through sheer luck that anyone ever makes it through a 24-hour period alive. 'People you don't know and will never even meet — food-safety regulators, bridge inspectors, whoever installed the gas lines in your home — ultimately have the power to decide whether you live or die,' the report read in part. 'We have no choice but to trust that these individuals are always being very careful and know exactly what they're doing.' Which, of course, 'is something we have no way of actually knowing,' the report added." 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