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 Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• The director of the CIA is no longer automatically present at the President’s National Security Council and Homeland Security Council meetings. Instead, the director is present at the President’s pleasure. The new director of National Intelligence, who is also now responsible for compiling the Presidential Daily Briefing, takes his place.

• The current ground-based interceptor system is inadequate to provide ballistic missile defense to the US, and a boost-phase defense capability would likely prove far more effective, according to an expert at a space-defense conference.

• JK: James Pinkerton looks at the logic of proliferation vs. non-proliferation, and sees The Rumblings of an Atomic Avalanche. See also Winds’ coverage in Intelligence, WMDs and the Future, Armed Liberal’s Thresholds and our look at the problems re: the ex-Soviet states at DEF. Is a “3 Conjectures” future on the way? And what about current U.S. non-proliferation policy, and how it fits with The Bush Doctrine?

• Arthur Chrenkoff’s latest Good News from Afghanistan report is up!

Other Topics Today Include: Iranians smuggled into US; Iran keen on acquiring The Bomb, Iraq; Syria test-fires SCUDs; Zarqawi may not have held meetings in Syria; NCTC needs a boss; ports get radiation scanners; Mugabe stimulates housing market; CIA cosies up with Sudanese intelligence; Sri Lankan terrorists have an air force; Rummy criticises China; Aum Shinrikyo set to expand; law enforcement doings at the G8 summit; a new terror network in Europe; Al Qaeda has Waziristan camps; new anti-terror search engine and much more…

Read the Rest…

Still early on this breaking story, and it’s probably nothing, but:

Three people were treated on Thursday for possible contamination by an unidentified white powder, New York police said.
The three walked into a Brooklyn hospital about 9 p.m. with an envelope containing the substance and told hospital staff they feared they had been exposed, police said.

The substance was unidentified and under investigation, police said.

The patients were being treated at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, police said.

Police sources said doctors at the hospital emergency room reported the people showed no signs of anthrax contamination, which can be deadly, and that they were expected to be released.

WNBC-TV just showed the HazMat crews, which are investigating the substance. The woman who brought in the envelope is still under quarantine. The other two do not appear to have been exposed to anything.

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 Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• US intelligence keeps saying Zarqawi has nuclear material.

• Israel is telling Washington it expects a full-scale Arab-Iranian war against it to be waged as early as 2006. Colt has more.

• The insurgency with the funnest name may be coming to a negotiated end. MILF and the Phillippines reentered peace talks at a secret location in Malaysia. They reached a breakthrough agreement over disputed ancestral lands, leading to the probability of wider full peace talks in the coming months.

Other Topics Today Include:

Iran Reports; Zarqawi on trial; Troubles in Yemen; Alien terrorist mechanics; FBI’s terror caseload; EMP attacks ignored; Death in Darfur revisited; More Bali-styled attacks; Musharraf the traitor; Swinging in Scotland; Fears in Sweden and Britain; Libya centrifuges gone astray; Moussaoui pleads; The Voice Shairat; and much much more….

Read the Rest…

Three individuals face charges in relation to a terrorism threat last summer to financial institutions in New York, northern New Jersey and Washington, D.C., the Justice Department said.

The charges against the suspects, who were detained in London, were under seal but would likely be announced during a press conference on Tuesday.

- A tense situation Monday inside Skyline Towers near Baileys Crossroads.

Hazardous materials teams are in an office building that handles the mail for the Department of Defense inside Five Skyline Drive.

An alarm that indicates a biological or chemical agent went off inside the mailroom.

The ventilation system has been shut down, and everyone has been told to stay in the building while the Fairfax County Fire Department conducts air tests.

A Fairfax County Fire Department spokesman says no one is hurt. But as a precaution, no one is being allowed to leave the facility.

A similar alarm went off this morning inside a Pentagon mailroom, but it’s unclear whether the incidents are connected.

FOX News is reporting (no link yet) that the material tested positive for Anthrax.

From DoD News:

During routine mail operations the Pentagon had a positive detection for the presence of anthrax bacteria at the Remote Delivery Facility (RDF). The RDF was evacuated while tests were conducted to determine if anthrax was present. Subsequent tests have proven negative, however, the Department is taking precautionary measures while further testing is conducted.

Cultures are being taken from all personnel who may have had contact with deliveries. Those personnel have also been given the option to begin antibiotic treatment if desired.

The RDF will resume normal operations upon the conclusion of all testing. DoD personnel can obtain additional information in the attached document at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/d20050314anthrax.pdf.

Fox has more..

From the March 21 issue of Time:

Two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that Osama bin Laden had sent a message to Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, urging him to plan attacks on U.S. soil, details are emerging from one of al-Zarqawi’s lieutenants about what the man behnd many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq could have in mind. Intelligence officials tell TIME that interrogation of a member of al-Zarqawi’s organization, who was taken into U.S. custody last year and has been described as a top aide, indicates that al-Zarqawi has given ample consideration to assaults on the American homeland. According to a restricted bulletin that circulated among U.S. security agencies last week, the interrogated aide said al-Zarqawi has talked about hitting “soft targets” in the U.S., which could include “movie theaters, restaurants and schools.”

The bulletin also notes the Iraq-based master terrorist’s apparent belief that “if an individual has enough money, he can bribe his way into the U.S.,” specifically by obtaining a “visa to Honduras” and then traveling across Mexico and the southern U.S. border. Al-Zarqawi’s aide also revealed that his boss, after pondering the absence of attacks in the U.S. in recent years, concluded that a lack of “willing martyrs” was to blame. Al-Zarqawi believes, according to his lieutenant, that “if an individual is willing to die, there was nothing that could be done to stop him,” even in the U.S.
There is no evidence, say intelligence agencies, that al-Zarqawi’s agents have infiltrated the U.S. But authorities remain vigilant. Security sources tell TIME that just last week FBI sent out two nationwide bulletins warning of a nonspecific threat to railroads in Detroit and Los Angeles. On her visit to Mexico last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued her own reminder of the border’s vulnerability. “There’s no secret,” Rice told reporters, “that al-Qaeda will try to get into this country … by any means they possibly can.”

Recent communications between Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicated that bin Laden has “encouraged Zarqawi and his group to focus on attacks inside the United State, multiple U.S. officials told FOX News on Monday.

The sources would not get into detail about how the communication was made or how it was intercepted by the United States and they pointed out that there is nothing specific in the message — such as maps, specific cities, or buildings — just a message encouraging a “focus” on attacks inside U.S. borders.

Read more…

FOX

Al-Jazeera television aired a videotape Sunday purporting to show Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri denouncing U.S. calls for reform in the region and urging the West to respect the Islamic world.

Al-Zawahri, who appeared sitting on the ground and in front of a brown background, said the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “explains the truth about reforms and democracy that America is allegedly trying to impose in our countries.”

“Reform is based on American detention camps like Bagram, Kandahar, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, it will be based on cluster bombs and imposition of people like Karzai and Allawi,” he said, referring to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

“Real security is based on mutual cooperation with the Islamic nation on the basis of mutual respect and the stopping of aggression.”

Two incoming Delta flights declared in-flight emergencies.

A senior government official tells NBC Flight 119 from Amsterdam received phoned-in hijack threat and was being taken to an isolated location at JFK, being met by Port Authority Police, using the same procedures as hijacking.

Flight 81, coming from Paris, has also landed, after a phoned-in hijack threat.

Cockpits are secure, and operations are normal on the airplanes.

Officials are not sure if this was two threats from one phone call.

More as we get it…

Update:

Two Delta Airlines flights received hijacking threats on Friday, but both landed in New York without incident, federal authorities said.

Delta Flight 119 from Paris and Delta Flight 81 from Amsterdam were both bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport, said spokesmen for the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

At least one of the threats was called into an embassy, the Homeland Security official said, and the caller claimed there were hijackers on board.

It was unclear how the other threat was made.

Port Authority police and the FBI met the planes in New York.

No arrests were immediate, but no one was being allowed off the planes until everyone could be questioned, authorities said.

Update to this post.

A Chinese woman wanted in connection with an alleged terror plot against Boston has been in U.S. custody since mid-November and has no known ties to terrorism, the FBI said Saturday.

Mei Xia Dong, one of 14 people being sought by the agency, was arrested November 11 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on a suspected immigration violation, the FBI said in a statement posted on its Web site.

She is being held at a facility in San Diego, California, the release said.

A federal investigation “has determined that Mei Xia Dong paid an undisclosed sum to human smugglers to be brought into the United States through Mexico. It appears at this time that Mei Xia Dong’s motives for entering the U.S. may have been for economic reasons. The investigation thus far does not tie her to any terrorist group.”

She had been identified originally by the FBI as a man.

More…

Just breaking on Fox, no link yet

Previous story about Boston terror plot….

Although, this story says that the terror plot was a hoax set up for revenge.

Fox now has the story:

One of the 13 Chinese nationals allegedly involved in a terror plot against Boston was in custody and being questioned by authorities on Saturday, FBI sources told FOX News.

Authorities were interrogating Mei Xia Dong about her involvement in a possible terrorist plot against Boston that was made public in an FBI report Friday. Airport and transit authorities responded to the report by boosting security — adding patrols, activating radiation detectors and posting pictures of some of the suspects.

Jeffrey Imm is kind enought to send this along, which I’ve augmented with information from the page at FBI.

The FBI today is alerting the public to new persons of interest in the unspecified potential threat to the City of Boston , beyond the names and photographs of four Chinese nationals released in a January 19, 2005 , press release in Boston.

The names of these new persons, identified through our ongoing investigation, are:

1. Yu Xian Weng , female, possible date of birth (DOB) 4/5/64 and Chinese passport #P5997636 or DOB 10/4/63 and Chinese passport #G07457027
2. Qinquan Lin , or Qiquan Lin, male, possible DOB 3/6/83 and Chinese passport #G04152197
3. Liqiang Liang, male, possible DOB 9/1/76 and Chinese passport #G07074257
4. Min Xiu Xie, male, possible DOB 11/21/77 and Chinese passport #G08386268
5. Xiang Wei Liu, or Xing Wei Liu, male, possible DOB 5/30/82 and Chinese passport #G053490L8
6. Mei Xia Dong, male, possible DOB 10/25/83
7. Xiuming Chen, male
8. Cheng Yin Liu, male
9. Zao Yun Wang, male
10. Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, male

Photographs of these individuals are not available. None of the names has been validated as a “person of interest” on any previously existing “watch list”.

We ask that members of the public, if they have any information about these individuals, bring it to the attention of the FBI at (617) 742-5533; to their closest FBI office (contact information for field offices is located at http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm ); or to the FBI tipline at http://tips.fbi.gov.

Although the FBI and White House continue to downplay rumors concerning a "dirty bomb" in Boston, additional information indicates that state agencies and officials are taking it quite seriously. New Hampshire's Seacoast Online reports:

Authorities insisted there was no confirmed threat, but Massachusetts officials asked New Hampshire to put its radiological response teams on standby. Those are the people who would respond to nuclear incidents, such as a "dirty" bomb that releases radioactive material. The FBI tip mentioned a dirty bomb attack. Bruce Cheney, director of New Hampshire Emergency Services, said Massachusetts authorities asked his agency to be ready with radiological testing technicians. Emergency Management spokesman Jim Van Dongen said New Hampshire is ready to respond with specific equipment that could be used in a nuclear incident. "The reason they called New Hampshire, besides being next door, is because of the nuclear plants," Van Dongen said, referring to the plant at Seabrook and in Vernon, Vt., just over the New Hampshire border. "We have radiological equipment that could be used. They wanted to give us a heads up."

Investigators are also continuing their efforts to corroborate the anonymous caller's tip about the two Iraqis and four Chinese nationals allegedly smuggled across the U.S.-Mexican border.

In attempts to determine the caller's credibility, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego was trying to locate a tunnel in Imperial County identified by the smuggler as a route for either the Chinese nationals or for the nuclear material, San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne said yesterday. Other agencies declined to comment on the possibility of a tunnel. (From SignOn San Diego)

J. Quinton blogs the rumours and updates re: a dirty bomb search underway in Boston. There are a couple things about this story that don’t quite add, and our advice in these cases is always to treat such reports with extreme caution and skepticism… having said that, something is clearly up.

If you want to know more about the subject in general, Winds of Change.NET has a detailed briefing re: “dirty” bombs contaminated with radioactive material or chemical/biological agents. It deals with past experiences, the limitations of these weapons, and the potential damage. The BBC later ran a short bit in February 2003 called What If a Dirty Bomb Hit London? The extremely brief summary: the public reaction to a radioactive dirty bomb is probably a bigger danger than the weapon.

In Feb. 2004, Trent Telenko offered evidence that key U.S. cities may be difficult targets for radioactive dirty bombs. But if you ever do face this kind of emergency, you’ll wish you had listened to Armed Liberal and assembled a Bug Out/Get Home kit. Got yours yet?

UPDATE: This article offers some mug shots, and also puts the current goings-on in context. Good journalism. Martinipundit has better pictures.

The original Drudge headline said “search on for dirty bomb.” It’s since changed and this story appears above the fold:

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has partially activated its emergency response team this afternoon after the FBI triggered a massive manhunt yesterday for six people who may pose a terrorist threat to the city of Boston. Public safety officials are now holed up in the emergency bunker in Framingham until the threat has passed…. Developing.

The linked story says this:

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has been placed on standby, and public safety officials are meeting at the bunker, according to a published report Wednesday.

There have been reports that the FBI office in Boston received a call from an FBI office in California warning officials about a suspicious person that may be in the area, according to the Boston Herald’s Web site.

No specific threats have been confirmed, but FBI agents in Boston have been put on alert, and officials started to gather at MEMA at about 1:30 p.m.

NewsCenter 5 and TheBostonChannel.com will have more information as it becomes available.

This one is a bit more specific:

Boston terror threat probed

Federal and state authorities are investigating a nuclear terrorist threat against Boston after a man calling from Mexico told California police that he smuggled two Iraqis and four Chinese over the border, the Boston Herald has learned.
“They got a call from across the border in Mexico to the California Highway Patrol and he said he brought two Iraqis and four Chineses (individuals)across the border and according to him, they stated soon to follow behind them would be some sort of material,” said a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.

“He refers to some sort of nuclear material that will follow them through New York up into Boston.”
According to the source, the caller has not identified himself and did not show up for a meeting with federal investigators in California but he did leave pictures of four Chinese men and some names at a “drop” site at the Mexico-California border.
“They were dropped by the source at a location. He literally threw them over a fence from Mexico to the U.S. side,” said the source. “There are pictures of the four Chinese and some names but just how accurate they are remains a question”

More here:

“There is no specific threat or target indicated.”

More at Boston.com

Update: Fox has finally picked up the story:

Boston on Alert for Four Terror Suspects

The FBI notified area law enforcement Wednesday to be on the lookout for four possible terror suspects who may be headed to Boston.

A federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation, told The Associated Press that the FBI’s joint terrorism task force has not yet corroborated a tip that the suspects entered the United States through Mexico in recent days, possibly bound for Boston.

Update: This story says they are searching for six men, not four.

What if “Gulf War Syndrome” is real (contrary view here), and it and other degenerative diseases showing up in U.S. veterans were the result of a “second generation” U.S. government vaccine against anthrax administered to troops without informed consent in 1991?

What if the U.S. military was about to restart that vaccine program (see also this oficial .MIL site), despite that experience and despite a long history of medical understanding that a key vaccine component called squalene was a dangerous catalyst for degenerative auto-immune diseases?

What if these aren’t just idle “what-ifs”?

Read the Rest…

From The Australian :

A Terrorism expert has warned Australia of a new, global generation of Islamist terrorists “armed, trained financed and ideologicised” to use chemical and biological weapons.

In declaring that part of this new global terror wave would come out of Southeast Asia, Singapore-based Rohan Gunaratna said he found the Jemaah Islamiah group had come extremely close to developing “chem-bio” weapons last year, recounting his alarming analysis of a Jemaah Islamiah bio-terror training manual that was taken from a Philippines safe house in late 2003.

The manual gave incorrect manufacturing instructions and lacked safeguards, Dr Gunaratna told an emergency medicine conference in Adelaide yesterday.

Any JI members who had used the methods in the manual would have died or become sick, he said.

“But it is only a question of time that a group that has these intentions will have the capability to develop them,” he said.

Dr Gunaratna, who heads the terror unit at Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said terror groups showed “repeated expressions of interest” in moving in the “biochem” direction.

“We are seeing a new generation of terrorists being trained in the use of chem-bio weapons,” he said.

“We rarely saw this in the 1990s but today we are seeing increasingly this kind of training.

“Groups are being trained to use these agents,” he added, but the “probability of attack is still low”.

Terrorists had attemped in 2002, last year and this year to use “chem-bio” weapons and “this is the best indication of the next attacks”.

“I believe they will try again next year,” Dr Gunaratna said.

He has also analysed videotapes showing al-Qa’ida testing of cyanide gas to kill dogs in the Afghanistan desert, using crudely manufactured gas chambers.

And he found al-Qa’ida cells uncovered in Jordan this year and London last year were “quite close” to targeting sites using chemical or biological weapons.

Feds conduct raids; 13 suspects charged

Federal counter-terrorism agents swept down on homes and businesses in Seattle yesterday, conducting searches and charging 13 men with gun, immigration and bank-fraud violations.

The FBI said it searched 19 Seattle-area homes, businesses and vehicles. Federal agents detained five other people on immigration charges, said FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs.

None of the men targeted in the raids is accused under terrorism statutes. However, the federal charges unsealed yesterday allege the ringleader of the bank-fraud case told a paid FBI informant that his “whole Muslim crew” was involved in stealing money because “you can’t go to war broke.”

According to the complaint, the purported ringleader, a drug felon named Karim Abdullah Assalaam, told an acquaintance that the money obtained through the fraud “goes to help our Muslim brothers and sisters. … It goes to the cause, not like it goes to me and you.”

However, the complaint alleges that his half-brother, Attawwaab Muhammad Fard, who is also charged, used some of the money to buy a used Lexus. “There was a lot of jihad talk,” said one highly placed federal law-enforcement official familiar with the case. “But most of the money went into their pockets.”

(Sounds like Yasser Arafat and his stolen billions.)

Following up on the post prior, AV Web has a post on the crop duster aircraft stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on Nov. 1. The stolen aircraft, a Piper PA 25 Pawnee, is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If you see the aircraft, the TSA says you should immediately contact the TSA General Aviation Hotline at (866) 427-3287.

You may read the TSA Advisory, which includes a photo of a similar aircraft, here.

I’m a bit surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be?) at the total lack of reporting on this item, even among the SoCal press. A Google News search turns up the AV Web and TIME items, and nothing else.

This from a TIME email:

An al-Qaeda operative has told interrogators of a plan to smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, and then into the U.S., TIME reports in Monday’s edition. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met publicly with top Mexican officials last week to discuss border security and smuggling rings that could be used to slip al-Qaeda terrorists into the country. TIME also reports that senior U.S. officials are worried a crop-duster aircraft stolen at night two weeks ago south of San Diego has not been recovered.

Here’s the story online.

Now, about that crop duster … off to find some news; if you have any, post it in the comments.