First article by New York Times.

The New York Times reports the anonymous source for the Able Danger story is Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer.

Northeast Intelligence Network looks at whether or not DOD attorneys had legal authority to stop the dissemination of the information uncovered by Able Danger.
[Caveat: some good research and more than a handful of personal opinion given as analysis]

This is going to get a lot more interesting before it goes away.

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday.

Today’s Winds of War briefing is brought to you by evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• The main planks of Tony Blair’s antiterrorist platform. Which he’ll need, as his intelligence chiefs are warning him that Britain faces an Islamic insurgency at home, too. Meanwhile, The Sunday Times goes undercover in an academy of hatred.

• California is overhauling its domestic intelligence apparatus, and California’s Office of Homeland Security is training private security guards in counterterrorism. Meanwhile, a top California state National Guard commander is accused of trying to set up a renegade intelligence collection system, drawing much controversy.

• Intelligence, Homeland Security-now the State Department is next in line for a major overhaul as the Bush administration seeks to reshape government for the present and future challenges facing the nation. State will move away from its Cold War obsessions, toward a focus on weapons proliferators and terrorists. Its democracy promotion muscle is also to be beefed up.

• India and China are burying the hatchet: an old border dispute has been resolved and the two countries are looking forward to increased trade and investment, as well as a space exploration partnership. And yet, China is engaging in an unprecedented buildup of its capability to wage war on India at the same time.

Other Topics Today Include:
Ahmadinejad gets snubbed, snubs back; Egyptian torture; AIPAC lobbyists charged; Revolution ain’t coming to Iran; FBI’s translation backlog swells; unwelcome customs laxity; Mauritania coup; Jaish e Mo to hijack jet; India to fence off Banglia; Aus. to join UK, France in terror-preacher eviction measures; Chechnya jihad on Wahhabis; Aus. and Canada want to sell uranium to China; 7 in 10 Guantanamites to be repatriated; Binnie large and in charge sez old pal; the Saudis Knew! and much more…

Read the Rest…

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday.

Today’s Winds of War briefing is brought to you by evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• Musharraf gave Gen. Abizaid something of a tongue-lashing over border incursions.

• Will Al Qaeda attack us with nukes on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9? Probably alarmism, but I guess we’ll see. Tom Tancredo says that if they do, we should nuke Mecca. WorldNetDaily has the nine cities most likely to get hit. Predictably, various people are pissed at Tancredo.

• The DHS is deploying a new top-secret network to transmit classified information to hundreds of state and local officials, its officers told Congress.

• The US has decided to make India a strategic nuclear power partner, offering the world’s largest democracy expedited access to fuel supplies for heavily-guarded facilities in Mumbai and technology sharing. India may even get a role in ITER, the planned nuclear fusion reactor.

• The DoD’s annual report on China’s military is finally out. Required reading. It looks not only at numbers and statistics but tries to divine China’s strategic intentions. Also, Asia Times Online has a report that takes a God’s-eye point of view at the US-China relationship. The verdict? The honeymoon is over. China is making much hay out of the little-known story of a Chinese man who led an armada around the world hundreds of years before Columbus. In other news, China paraded new naval assets that are using AEGIS technology stolen from the United States.

Other Topics Today Include:
Italy to stay in Iraq a spell; Palestinian civil war; PDB to merge with daily terror threat report; nuclear terrorism response simulation; Kenya arrests five; Clinton prods on Mugabe; Pak nuke worries; Euro arrest warrant made toothless; UK to act on imams; Zawahiri a KGB agent and more…

Read the Rest…

An Alitalia jet en route from Milan to Boston was being diverted to Bangor, Maine, on Tuesday because the name of a passenger on board matched that of a person on the U.S. government’s no-fly list, officials said.

Flight 618 was due to arrive in Boston at 1:03 p.m., Alitalia spokeswoman Marta-Marie Lotti said.

It was the second time in less than a week that a Boston-bound European flight was diverted to Bangor. On Thursday, an Air France flight from Paris landed there because someone on board had a same name and birth date nearly the same as a person on the government’s list of suspected terrorists.

Read more…

A blogospheric exercise with direct relevance to the Global War on Terror has started.

From Silent Running :

Bloggers have opinions. It’s what we do. But how many of us have actually wondered what we might do, and how we might respond, in the event of a major terrorist attempt at replicating a 9/11 scale attack? It’s all very well for us to opine to our hearts content about what the West ought to do in the face of a generalised threat from radical Islam, but how would the blogosphere respond in an actual emergency? Can we put ourselves emotionally in that position? It isn’t easy, is it?

Would we fall to pieces? Would we be simply struck dumb? Would we urge massive lashing out in retaliation? Or would blogs become a useful resource of opinions, options, information, argument and debate? Would it become the closest thing this planet has to a gigantic neural network of linked minds, all concentrated on a single issue?

SIMTERROR ‘05 is an experiment designed to help us think about the ways blogs might be able to respond to a sudden crisis using a simulation of real world events, but getting blogs to respond as if the events were real. In a sense, SIMTERROR ‘05 will be the first test of the Emergency Blogger System.

For more details, contact the coordination centre at Silent Running. This is a serious exercise, and for once, you can help make the news, not just read about it.

To distinguish “Exercise” data from “real” data, all posts on blogs should be marked as such.

Please do not use The Command Post for this exercise.

Top intelligence and military officials say the lack of attacks in the United States since 2001 does not mean terrorist groups are not planning new strikes, with weapons of mass destruction if they can get them.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a House hearing on Wednesday that it is reasonable to expect attacks and CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Iraq war was giving terrorists experience and contacts for future attacks.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said a sleeper group may have been in place in the United States for years awaiting orders to attack.

“I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing,” Mueller said.

Read more…

Top intelligence and military officials say the lack of attacks in the United States since 2001 does not mean terrorist groups are not planning new strikes, with weapons of mass destruction if they can get them.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a House hearing on Wednesday that it is reasonable to expect attacks and CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Iraq war was giving terrorists experience and contacts for future attacks.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said a sleeper group may have been in place in the United States for years awaiting orders to attack.

“I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing,” Mueller said.

Read more…

Yep! The US Navy News reports:

The Navy will commission its newest nuclear-powered attack submarine Jimmy Carter on Saturday, Feb. 19, during an 11 a.m. EST ceremony at Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, Conn.

Just another tool in the arsenal protecting our shores.

Read the whole story here.

Now in the ‘sphere: The new Counterterroism Blog. I know I’ll be chekcing daily. Among today’s catch: that the UN may soon announce a new terrorism strategy. (Of course, the bigger headline may be that the UN is going to announce A terrorism strategy.)

Vanity Fair wonders why the cyber-genius who’s data mining ID‘d the 9/11 hijackers isn’t recognized as more of hero.

Asa Hutchinson told a newspaper he plans to resign his post with the Homeland Security Department on Monday after he was passed over twice by the Bush administration to be secretary of the department.

Hutchinson, a former Arkansas congressman and former federal drug czar, is the undersecretary for border and transportation security issues. He said his resignation would be effective March 1 to allow a more seamless transition when secretary-designate Michael Chertoff takes over the department from Tom Ridge ).

“It was just a good time to change for me personally and for the department,” Hutchinson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

More…

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. In addition, we also have our in-depth Iraq Report today.

Today’s Winds of War briefing is brought to you by Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• What foreign nation is a retiring top Indian commander hinting has taken over the Assam insurgency?

• Phantom at The Daily Brief says the real airplane laser threat is target acquisition for MANPADs, not blinded pilots. Defensetech looks at military laser technology. Perhaps the pilots should get some anti-laser contacts lenses soon, or the planes should get some anti-aircraft missile countermeasures installed soon.

• Ariel Sharon’s former National Security Advisor until late 2003 warns that Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt probably received nuclear materials from AQ Khan’s proliferation effort.

Other Topics Today Include:

• Iran Reports; Iraq is Communism’s last stand?; Saudi attackers ID‘ed; Near miss by Israeli SF; Palestinians accept Hezbollah aid; A al Qaeda tape; Venezuela aligns with Communists; Ceasefire in Sudan?; Reforms in North Korea?; Holland ignores Islamic threats; Ignorance protecting us from bioterrorism; A look at Osama’s tape; Tsunamis and the Oil and more….

Read the Rest…

A recently released government intelligence bulletin addresses several Al Qaeda surveillance techniques.

“The focus is on maximizing the destructive and killing power of an attack,” the bulletin says.
…
In one report, an unidentified Al Qaeda operative notes that a building “is almost completely made to resemble a glass house — which could be devastating in an emergency scenario … that is to say, that when shattered, each piece of glass becomes a potential flying piece of cutthroat shrapnel!”
…
The reports note such things as when people take lunch and smoking breaks, where surveillance cameras are positioned, what public events were scheduled near buildings and how many cars and pedestrians typically pass by per minute.
…
In two reports, the Al Qaeda author assumed that undercover security officers are likely to be stationed near possible targets. That shows that security officials must “regularly review, refresh and reinforce” their undercover teams to prevent them from being identified, the bulletin said.
…
“Surveillance of a potential target can occur as little as one week to as much as three years prior to an attack,” the bulletin said.

In CT, as in crime prevention, it is best to present a hard target to potential enemies. Like all wolves, terrorists will go after the weak in the flock first.

From The Australian :

Australia and Indonesia are to jointly host a biological weapons convention (BWC) regional workshop in Australia next year.

Defence Minister Robert Hill said today the aim was to reduce the possibility of bioterrorism in South East Asia.

He said the workshop would be held in Melbourne in February 2005 with representatives from regional countries invited to attend.

“There are increasing concerns about the possibility of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including biological weapons and we see a valuable role for this workshop and follow-up activities in reducing the possibility of bioterrorism in our region,” he said in a statement.

“By holding this workshop, Australia and Indonesia continue to demonstrate their strong commitment to stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and keeping our region free of biological weapons.” Senator Hill said the workshop was intended to assist regional officials in translating the Geneva BWC into appropriate national practices.

I'm not sure if Bernard Kerik knew his housekeeper was an illegal alien or not, but as the Police Commissioner of New York City you figure he'd do his homework. I think the man is qualified for the position of Director of Homeland Security, but I also have a twinge of happiness in this occurring. People care about this illegal alien problem we have and I'm happy to see people paying for their hiring of these individuals.

Now if we could just nail some employers who keep these lawbreakers coming into our country illegally.

Yahoo/AP

In a surprise move, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik abruptly withdrew his nomination as President Bush's choice to be homeland security secretary Friday night, saying questions have arisen about the immigration status of a housekeeper and nanny he employed.

...

In a statement separate from his resignation letter, Kerik said the problematic issue arose as he was completing documents required for Senate confirmation. "I uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny. It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made."

...

Giuliani said in a telephone interview Friday night that he had discussed the immigration issue with Kerik and agreed with his decision.

"I'm disappointed that this had to happen, but I think it's the right decision, the only decision given the kind of issue that's involved here," Giuliani said. "The homeland security secretary has responsibility for immigration services."

Kerik's "nanny problem" recalls the controversies that faced several of former President Clinton (news - web sites)'s candidates to fill prominent positions. Attorney Zoe Baird, who was Clinton's first choice to be attorney general, was forced to withdraw her nomination after the disclosure she had not paid Social Security (news - web sites) taxes for a housekeeper — an illegal immigrant — as required by law.

Lani Guinier, a Clinton classmate at Yale University Law School, was the president's choice to head the Justice Department (news - web sites)'s civil rights division until it was learned that she had not paid taxes for a domestic worker. Similarly, the nomination of federal judge Kimba Wood to be attorney general never went forward after the disclosure that she had hired an illegal immigrant as a baby sitter. She had paid the required Social Security taxes and broke no laws.

Tipped by: Wizbang

Other Commentary:

The Galvin Opinion
PoliBlog
PoliPundit
Blogs For Bush
Slowplay.com

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

From The Australian :

For the past two years, reports have been filtering in from prisons around the world. They started as tantalising glimpses into a world still far removed.

But as more accused terrorists were captured, and started talking, two things became clear: Australia is now not only a pivotal part of al-Qa’ida’s global diaspora, it has also been the subject of sustained attempts by the group’s ruling guard to directly target Australians.

Much of what Australian authorities have learned about the interest of Islamic militants in local targets and the alleged crimes of their acolytes stems from information provided by detainees who have entered the prison system of allied partners in the war against terror.

Earlier this year, Singaporean national Muhamed Arif bin Naharudin agreed to give evidence against the third man charged in Australia with preparing a terror attack, Faheem Khalid Lodhi.

Also lining up against Mr Lodhi, when his committal hearing starts on December 14, will be three US-based prisoners, who will provide evidence by video-link claiming they had met him in training camps run by the outlawed terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

And the interest of Australian Federal Police in American prisoners does not stop there. Around the same time the trio of witnesses against Mr Lodhi were coming forward, AFP agents were receiving information from at least one other detainee about another Australian — Jihad Jack Thomas.

The Melbourne-based convert to Islam on Thursday became the fifth man charged under Australian laws with terrorism offences.

The case against him will depend heavily on what people who claim to have met him, amid the al-Qa’ida milieu in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have told investigators.

Police believe Mr Thomas had spent time with al-Qa’ida operatives throughout 2002 and had received money from them in order to re-establish himself in Australia.

If convicted on the charges — receiving funds from al-Qa’ida and providing assistance of his own to operatives — Mr Thomas will likely become the closest Australian link to the group.

His two rivals for the title are fellow convert David Hicks and Egyptian-born Australian Mamdouh Habib — both being held in US detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hicks is alleged to have spent his time in Afghanistan in late-2001 with the Taliban — the Islamic ideologues who sanctioned and supported al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan until the US-led invasion that year.

According to the US military, Habib is alleged to have forged closer links with al-Qa’ida, and the key splinter group, LET.

Although yet to be formally charged, the case against Habib centres on claims he helped train at least one of the September 11 hijackers, had prior knowledge of the attacks and had helped move chemicals around Afghanistan.

The linchpin of the terror captives is a man allegedly known to all three — al-Qa’ida’s former chief of military operations and the man behind 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

He too has been talking, providing the CIA and America’s allies with a bounty of insights into what he plotted and who he ran as agents until his capture in March last year. As revealed by The Australian in September, Khalid had planned to travel to Australia one month before the 9/11 attacks, when he was granted a multiple-entry Australian visa.

He has confirmed meeting several of the Australian men charged, including the only man so far convicted of terrorism in Australia, Jack Roche, who is now serving a nine-year sentence for plotting to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra and assassinate Jewish businessman Joe Gutnick.

There is a strong element of scepticism among some investigators about why those captured so far have been so willing to divulge their secrets.

However, their co-operation does not surprise all experts.

“These men are jihadis,” said Singapore-based terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna. “When they are captured, their mission is over. They are proud of what they have done and not scared to share it.”

The TSA website has this page with photos of prohibited items found during TSA screening … including the teddy bear concealing a handgun that a 10 year old boy carried into Orlando International (it was given to him by a stranger).

The federal government will lower the terror alert status for financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, The Associated Press learned Wednesday.

The reduction from orange to yellow, the midpoint on the government’s five-level terror warning system, comes three months after the alert was raised amid concerns the institutions could be Al Qaeda (search) targets. Yellow is “elevated,” while orange is considered a “high” threat of attack.

Read more…

The John & Ken show (KFI Los Angeles) is currently discussing two internal memos they’ve obtained regarding gangs and terrorism.

The first memo is from the DHS. It’s a 15 page internal report entitled “Latin American gangs in the Americas”. It provides a background on the gang involved and mentions an increase in terror activity in the Americas, that cooperation between gangs and terrorists has created a great possibility of danger, and that gangs have assets to aid in smuggling terrorists and weapons into the U.S.

The other memo is from Los Angeles County’s Terrorism Working Group/Terrorism Early Warning Group. It’s marked “Do not disseminate to the public” and “For law enforcement use only” and dated October 5, 2004.

That memo discusses the possible threat of terrorist activity by gangs, a rash of recent terrorist warning about gangs and terrorists working together, and that the FBI thinks a large car bomb would be the most likely weapon, but WMDs aren’t ruled out…

There were more things mentioned, but I typed these in live off the radio, so perhaps links will be provided.

See also the earlier report Al-Qaida recruiting local U.S. gang ties.

From the Washington Times:

Yesterday, Tom Ridge said that he’s seen no sign of terrorist efforts to cross the U-S-Mexico border and that nothing from intelligence reports has suggested that terrorists have tried to cross the border.

See also Al-Qaida meets with Central American gang, lawmaker says and the other links in Illegal aliens from terrorist states released into U.S.

UPDATE: The Washington Times report is Al Qaeda seeks tie to local gangs. It has more information on the gang and El Shukrijumah, including his picture and this: [he was] born in Saudi Arabia but [is] thought to be a Yemen national… [he is known] to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada… authorities said [he] was in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called “dirty bomb” and [he] reportedly has family members in Guyana… [he is a] former southern Florida resident and pilot thought to have helped plan the September 11 attacks [and he] was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in plans to strike new targets in the United States…

[I can’t leave a comment apparently because of a TypePad error, so here’s the commentary portion of this post]

Ridge also stated that the U.S. had never put the military on the border, which, as I point out here, is false.

The subject of immigration and our porous border came up in Bill O’Reilly’s interview with president Bush, and I comment on that here.

The post Their money or your safety comments on the Bush plan that allows banks to accept Mexican ID cards that the FBI and the DOJ call unsafe.

UPDATE: It also needs to be pointed out that the chatter about terrorists coming from Mexico could be a dodge designed to deflect our attention from the Canadian border, our sea borders, our airports, or our ports.

From “Illegals detained at border released onto U.S. streets”:

See also A 9/11 Anniversary Primer, Problems on the border, Al-Qaida meets with Central American gang, lawmaker says, and the July 12, 2004 article “D.C. hamstrings border officers: Despite new anti-terrorism demands, DHS freezes payrolls, frees illegals”. The first three have several links and the last discusses internal DHS memos.

From “A 9/11 Anniversary Primer: A neglected report shows how the U.S. government was a travel agency for terrorists:”

This post has a round-up of the chatter concerning terrorists trying to infiltrate via our southern border, as well as news about what and what not is being done to reduce the flow of illegal aliens in general.

I’ve included some excerpts from Chapters 3 and 4 of the Staff Report in the extended entry.

(Cross-posted at Red State)

Chapter 3: Terrorist Entry and Embedding Tactics, 1993 to 2001

(There’s a summary of this chapter in “Al-Qaeda ‘travel agency’ revealed”.)

Quoting from Page 46:

(See also: “Potential terrorists released due to lack of jail space, congressman says” and “Why don’t you let us do our jobs?”)

The sidebar ‘Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists’ (p. 61):

The ‘Ajaj and Yousef: A Case Study in Fraud’ sidebar (p. 47) contains too much to quote:

Ajaj was detained then jailed for six months for using an altered passport. It gets a bit stranger from there…

p. 47:

p. 52:

p. 54:

p. 58-59:

‘Chapter 4: Immigration and Border Security Evolve, 1993 to 2001’

(See this for more information on L.A.’s Special Order 40 and “License Crackdown Stirs Sharp Debate at Hearing” for more information about the 9/11 hijacker’s use of driver’s licenses.)

The Tucson Weekly has a round-up of the chatter about al Qaeda infiltrating the U.S. from Mexico. Other Than Mexicans:

• …In early August, the Washington Times reported that al-Qaeda is allying with Mexican organized crime groups to infiltrate the United States via Mexico.
• In late July, ABC News reported that the Border Patrol had arrested a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. The arrest was made at McAllen-Miller airport in South Texas, where Ahmed was attempting to board a flight to New York. She acknowledged that smugglers brought her across the Rio Grande from Mexico; the FBI declared Ahmed a “person of interest.”
• Congressman Solomon Ortiz, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, was quoted in the Brownsville Herald as saying that Mexicans [I think he meant “Other Than Mexicans” —LW] with possible terrorist ties have been detained after entering the country from Mexico, but are being released for lack of jail space. “It’s very, very scary,” said Ortiz.

[…more examples deleted…]

A couple of days ago, Vice President Dick Cheney said: “we’ve got so many people coming across [the border] illegally — primarily for economic reasons, that want to come to work in the United States. But we have no idea who is here…”

Just today, the Washington Times published an interview with our “Border Czar,” Asa Hutchinson. Rounding up all illegals ‘not realistic’:

[NOTE: Very few people are proposing rounding up all illegal aliens. Rather, most are suggesting simply enforcing the law, especially as it relates to those who employ illegals and thus form as a massive incentive for illegal aliens to come here. See, for instance, Enforcement Blues: Do we want an immigration agency that works, or not? —LW]

From the article Who is really to blame for illegal immigration?

The article Employer fines plummet for hiring illegals has the numbers. Example: in the first five months of this year, just one company in the whole U.S. was fined for immigration violations.

CNN TV has a passenger in LAX on the phone:

• Passengers are in line external to security checkpoint.
• Going to have to evacuate the terminal.
• Initially heard someone in Bradley International terminal jumped past security, and that they closed Bradley and Terms. 4, 5, and 6 as a result.
• Streets around LAX are closed.
• Now being instructed to leave departing level and go to arriving level.

See also “Bonilla demands review of OTM release policy”, “Illegals from terrorist nations are crossing the border into Arizona”, “Potential terrorists released due to lack of jail space, congressman says”, and Hillbangers.

CNN/AP:

A man described as a high-ranking Hamas operative was arrested last week as he videotaped the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and he then was held as a material witness in an unrelated case, authorities said.

Ismael Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, Virginia, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was taken into custody Friday, the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland said Monday. He was held as a material witness in a Chicago terrorism case.

Elbarasse made an initial appearance in Baltimore’s federal courthouse Monday before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm.

A federal grand jury in Chicago, in an indictment unsealed Friday, described Elbarasse as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 15-year racketeering conspiracy in the United States and abroad to illegally finance terrorist activities in Israel.

Court documents allege that he and defendant Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook — considered one of the highest-ranking Hamas leaders internationally — shared a Virginia bank account that was used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hamas….

…Elbarasse was spotted Friday — the same day the Chicago indictment was made public — by two police officers on the Bay Bridge, authorities said. The officers noticed a man in an SUV who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent videotaping the bridge, authorities said.

Authorities said the man, who was with a woman and two children, said they had gone to the beach but could not specify what beach they had visited. They also said the camera had used had recorded close-up images that seemed atypical for a tourist.

Police learned that Elbarasse was wanted as a material witness in connection with the Chicago case, and was on an FBI terrorist watch list, authorities said. But he was not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the videotaping.

Cross-posted: Backcountry Conservative.

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - The Sept. 11 commission’s major recommendation for the creation of a powerful new national intelligence director gained momentum on Monday, with an influential Republican senator suggesting that he was willing to oppose the White House and offer legislation providing the new intelligence director with broad budgetary and personnel authority over the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies.

“That person would be empowered with the authority to really lead the intelligence community,” said the lawmaker, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. “These authorities include the ability to hire and fire, as well as the ability to exercise control over the budgets.”

Mr. Roberts said a draft bill, written with his committee’s ranking Democrat, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, would be presented to Senate colleagues this week and would be built around the recommendations of the final report of the Sept. 11 commission.

The rest follows in the extended entry.

The report, which has created a whirlwind of unusual midsummer activity on Capitol Hill, documented intelligence and law-enforcement failures before the Sept. 11 attacks and called for a shake-up of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. It called for appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee all spy agencies, including those within the Defense Department.

While Senator Roberts did not say so explicitly, his description of the powers of the national intelligence director made clear that his bill would go far beyond what the White House and the Pentagon have said they are ready to accept. A spokesman for the senator, Sarah Little, said later that the bill would definitely “go beyond what the White House is talking about.”

President Bush has said he supports the Sept. 11 panel’s recommendation for a national intelligence director, who would replace the director of central intelligence as the nation’s chief spymaster, but the White House proposal would not provide the post with the broad authority that the bipartisan commission wants.

Pentagon officials have suggested that a more powerful national intelligence director, by taking away power now held by Defense Department intelligence agencies, might interfere with military operations.

The White House proposal has been criticized by members of the commission, who say that the national intelligence director needs full budgetary and personnel control in order to end the turf battles and miscommunication that plague the government’s intelligence agencies.

Mr. Rockefeller, appearing with Mr. Roberts at a hearing of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, praised President Bush’s decision to support the creation of a national intelligence director. But he said the president’s “decision to deviate from the commission’s recommendation to give this director real budget and personnel authority was a bigger step, in my mind, backwards.”

Mr. Rockefeller said Congress would have to “break some china around here” and “invest authority in the national intelligence director for budget and for personnel and the rest of it.”

His remarks came at a hearing at which three former directors of central intelligence testified that if Congress created a national intelligence director, the job must have clear authority, including control over the intelligence community’s estimated $40 billion annual budget.

“The intelligence community does not need a feckless czar with fine surroundings and little authority,” said William H. Webster, who led the C.I.A. during the Reagan and first Bush administrations and is also a former director of the F.B.I. “That is the wrong way to go.”

Mr. Webster testified that “the designated leader must be clearly and unambiguously empowered to act and to decide on issues of great importance to the success of the intelligence community.”

Even as a large bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the House and Senate has made clear that they will support creation of a powerful post of national intelligence director, there was skepticism elsewhere in Congress, notably on Monday in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In the committee’s first hearing on the findings of the Sept. 11 commission, the panel’s chairman and vice chairman joined with Pentagon officials to warn against haste in adopting the commission’s findings, especially where they might interfere with the ability of troops on the battlefield to obtain intelligence.

“We have responsibility to ensure that our actions are prudent, carefully analyzed and thoroughly debated,” said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, the panel’s chairman. “We simply must not make any changes which could, despite the best of intentions, hinder the ability of our troops successfully to fulfill their missions.”

All of the following reports relate to this Washington Times article.

Drudge

U.S. intelligence officials say a high-profile political assassination, triggered by the public release of a new message from Osama bin Laden, will lead off the next major al Qaeda terrorist attack, the WASHINGTON TIMES has learned.

The assassination plan is among new details of al Qaeda plots disclosed by U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports who, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the killing could be carried out against a U.S. or foreign leader either in the United States or abroad.

The new details of al Qaeda’s plans were found on a laptop computer belonging to arrested al Qaeda operative Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan of Pakistan, Bill Gertz is set to report in a page one blockbuster.

‘We’re talking about planning at the screwdriver level,’ one official said. ‘It is very detailed.’

Via Rusty Shackelford

UPDATE
Reuters:

high-profile political assassination, triggered by a new message from Osama bin Laden, will lead off the next major al Qaeda attack, The Washington Times reported in Wednesday editions, citing U.S. intelligence officials.

U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports, speaking on condition of anonymity, disclosed that the assassination plan was among new details of al Qaeda plots and would target a U.S. or foreign leader either in the United States or abroad, according to the newspaper.

Planning for the attacks to follow involves “multiple targets in multiple venues” across the United States, one official was quoted as saying.

“The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the U.S. economy and to undermine the U.S. election,” the official told the newspaper.

The officials said there are intelligence reports, some of them sketchy, that a new tape from bin Laden would surface soon, the newspaper reported.

“The message likely will be the signal for the attack to be launched,” one official said.

A second U.S. official was cited as saying that one intelligence agency was aware of unconfirmed reports of a new bin Laden tape.

“There may be such a tape, but it hasn’t surfaced and we haven’t seen it,” the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

The view from DU. [Note: I changed this line … editorializing in the comments or op/ed, please. Alan]

Other blogging:
Kevin Aylward
Blogs of War—more
Speed of Thought

Cross-posted at Backcountry Conservative

Charlotte Observer

Federal authorities are holding a Pakistani foreign national in Charlotte this morning who is suspected of videotaping landmark buildings, dams and transit systems throughout the Southeast - including the Bank of America and Wachovia buildings in uptown Charlotte.

A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer stopped and questioned Kamran Akhtar, also known as Kamran Shaikh, of Elmhurst, N.Y., on July 20 while he was videotaping near the intersection of South Tryon Street and Stonewall Avenue.

Authorities have charged him with immigration violations. Videotapes found in his possession include footage of buildings in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Dallas and New Orleans, as well as transit systems in those cities and a dam in Texas, according to a federal criminal complaint filed last week. The suspect appeared in federal court in Charlotte this morning. The city has scheduled a news conference for 11:45 a.m.

Shaikh, as he is referred to in the complaint, left Pakistan in 1991 and was found in violation of U.S. immigration laws and ordered to leave the country by a New York City immigration court in 1998, according to an affidavit.

Shaikh’s arrest led federal authorities to issue a bulletin late last week to police officers in the cities where he had videotaped landmarks. It urges police to remain vigilant and instructs commanders to tell patrol officers to be on the lookout for suspicious activity.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Anthony Maglione spotted Shaikh videotaping downtown Charlotte on July 20 and asked what he was doing, according to the affidavit. When he acted suspiciously, officers asked him to accompany them to the Charlotte FBI office a few blocks away….

Authorities say they reviewed the tapes in his camera and ones Shaikh was carrying. The one of Charlotte included the Wachovia Building where the FBI is located, as well as the city’s tallest landmark, the Bank of America building.

He also had footage of the Texas governor’s mansion and what appeared to be the Mansfield Dam in Austin, as well as transit centers in several Southeastern cities.

A review of Shaikh’s immigration file found he did not have a green card and was in the country illegally. He applied for political asylum in 1992 but was denied in 1997.

4:45 Update: Petrified Truth has a link to the criminal complaint filed in Charlotte.

Other blogging:
Rusty Shackelford (who’s using GMT on his blog now or he moved)
Dean Esmay
Right on Red
Steven Taylor
Blogs of War
In the Bullpen

Cross-posted at Backcountry Conservative

From the AP via the New York Times

WELLSVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Federal agents investigating the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks searched homes Thursday belonging to the founder of an organization that trains medical professionals to respond to chemical and biological attacks.
More than three dozen agents, some in protective suits, combed through two homes in this upstate New York village at the same time as similar search occurred in New Jersey.
Property records list the New York homes as the past and present addresses of Dr. Kenneth Berry, 48, who founded PREEMPT Medical Counter-Terrorism in 1997. It was not immediately known why the agents searched the homes. Berry is a bioterrorism expert who once advocated the distribution of anthrax vaccine.

Read the rest here.

New York’s WCBS News 88 reports that last night federal agents raid mosque in Albany. The radio stations’s broadcast stated the raid involved a sting operation concerning the purchase of shoulder fired missiles. The written reports don’t mention that but News 88 said their reporter had exclusive information.

According tio the Associated Press:

Federal agents and city police raided a Muslim mosque overnight Wednesday, with armed officers sealing off a block in downtown Albany for several hours.

Authorities declined to immediately discuss the raid at Masjid As-Salam mosque. An FBI spokesman said a press conference was tentatively set Thursday afternoon in Washington.

Some mosque members held morning prayers Thursday on a nearby sidewalk. WTEN-TV reported two men were arrested and are suspected of providing material support for terrorism.

UPDATE: CBS News reports:

Two men were arrested in Albany, N.Y. early Thursday on suspicion of planning to buy shoulder-launched missiles, CBS News has learned.

[. . .]

The men, Yassim Muhhidin Aref, 34 yr, Imam of the Majid Al Salam mosque; and Mohammed Mosharref Hoosain, 49, founder of the mosque, are suspected of ties to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports.

From California Yankee.

Two members of the Sept. 11 commission criticized President Bush’s proposal to create a national intelligence director, telling Congress on Tuesday that the White House plan fails to give the new spy chief the executive powers needed to revamp the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Without the power to set budgets and hire and fire senior managers, the new intelligence czar will lack the clout to make major changes at the nation’s 15 spy agencies, the commissioners told lawmakers at the first House hearing prompted by the panel’s 567-page report on the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
…
Republican commissioner John Lehman, a former Navy secretary who has been seen as a possible replacement for retiring CIA Director George Tenet, also urged the president to reconsider his proposal to base the director outside the White House. The commission recommended establishing the position within the White House to keep the director from being overshadowed by powerful Cabinet members, such as the defense secretary.

“Our recommendations are not a Chinese menu,” Lehman said. “They are a whole system. If all of the i