FBI = Forever Bustin' Idiots

Foreign Policy's Passport blog asks a good question after this week's arrest of yet another hapless jihobbyist: how many more times can the FBI get would-be terrorists to fall for this?

We may well have an inexhaustible supply of domestic and imported Islamists who are willing, but not quite able all by themselves, to bomb our government buildings, metro stations, and public gathering places. But will they keep relying upon helpful strangers who offer to equip them with inert explosives and non-functional firearms?

I think they will, indeed, keep falling for the FBI's act. First of all, it is a plain statistical fact that fifty percent of every group will be below average. (Try to find an exception to that rule.) And, in the cases we've seen so far, the FBI's stingees seem to have come from somewhere on the left-hand side of the I.Q. curve. But I wonder if it's the best use of USG resources to play out these undercover comedies for months or years before arresting, or even just deporting, the dim bulbs.    

A would-be suicide bomber was arrested on Capitol Hill today after accepting what he thought was an explosive vest from undercover agents.

-- snip --

Roll Call notes that the story is similar to that of Rezwan Ferdaus, who was arrested last September in the midst of a plot to attack the Capitol with a remote-controlled aircraft. Ferdaus was also in communication with FBI agents posing as al Qaeda members.

The case is also similar to that Farooque Ahmed, who thought he was going to blow up the DC Metro system in 2010, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who thought he was going to blow up a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland Oregon in 2010, David Williams, who thought he was going to blow up a Bronx synagogue in 2009, and the "Fort Dix Five," who thought they were going to attack a New Jersey military base in 2006.

 In each case, undercover FBI agents spent months communicating and providing fake resources to the suspects before springing the trap. (This isn't even addressing the numerous sting operations run by the NYPD without the FBI's help, described by Louis Klarevas in his piece, "The Idiot Jihadist Next Door.")

The increasing frequency of these operations is bound to raise some questions about whether law enforcement agencies are pushing along the development of plots that the individuals involved might never have acted on without the longterm encouragement of their "al Qaeda contacts."

The other question is just how many times the FBI can get would-be terrorists to fall for this.

Read the entire Passport post here:

In this week's case, the martyr manqué was a Moroccan who entered the U.S. on a short-term tourist visa in 1999 and never left. Evidently, he is touring still. According to the criminal complaint, he came to the FBI's attention one year ago, at which point he was living in a rented room on a dead-end street in Arlington, Virginia, and probably couldn't have afforded a good meal of kabobs and rice.

It must have become clear to the FBI after just a few weeks that this sad-sack shahid had no intelligence value. If he could have come up with any genuine al Qaeda contacts, he wouldn't have needed to be spoon-fed every part of his planning, targeting, and weapons by his FBI handlers.

As a taxpayer, I say let's stop toying around forever with these guys. Charge them with conspiracy, or crossing a state line with intent to commit mopery, or any of a thousand other potential offenses, and be done with them. The FBI must have better things to do with its time and manpower. 

"Ten Thousand Times Worse Than Attacking Government Buildings"

The State Department has offered its deepest sympathies to the families of the victims of yesterday's attack in Norway.

I'd like to see us do a bit more, and fly the Norwegian flag at half-mast from the Department's headquarters building as a gesture of solidarity, just as we flew the UK flag after the London subway bombings of July 2005. So far as I can find out, we haven't done that yet. If anyone knows differently, I'll be happy to be corrected.

A few thoughts about the attack and the attacker.

The immediate assumption on the part of many commentators that the attack had Islamist origins was, it now appears, completely unwarranted. However, there was some justification for that knee-jerk reaction. Last year, Norwegian police arrested three men of Uighur, Uzbek and Iraqi-Kurdish descent on charges of making explosives and planning to conduct bombings. So there is a real threat from that sector.

The Norwegian authorities seem to have underestimated the threat from domestic extremists. According to their threat assessment for 2011:

As in previous years, the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society in 2011. There was an increase in the activity of far-right extremist groups in 2010, and this activity is expected to continue in 2011. An increased level of activity among some anti-Islamic groups could lead to increased polarisation and unease, especially during, and in connection with, commemorations and demonstrations.

The suspect under arrest, Anders Behring Breivik, is being described as "far-right" by most news media today, but I'm not sure that's accurate. Norwegian news reports say he had been an active member of the Progress Party as far back as 1999. That is the second-most popular party in Norway, holding 41 seats in Parliament, so it isn't out of the political mainstream. Also, it seems to be more what we would call libertarian than right-wing (see this clip).

Assuming Breivik is guilty as charged - and there are plenty of surviving eyewitnesses who can identify him, as well as what appears to be a photo of him walking among the victims on Utøya Island - there is a big reason why he was able to carry out two devastating attacks without being detected and intercepted. Unlike those three plotters who were arrested last year, Breivik acted alone.

Our experience with domestic terrorism in the United States, which probably holds true for other nations as well, has shown that "lone wolf" actors are about twice as likely as others to execute their plots:

More than 40% (35 cases) of terrorist plots from 1999 to 2009 were planned or carried out by single individuals, or “lone wolves” (individuals not directly under the command structure of a group or movement but who sympathize with a particular cause). “Lone wolves” have also been more successful in executing attacks; nearly 30% of plots by single actors reached execution, compared to a 16% average execution rate by small and large groups.

Why are individual terrorists so much more successful than those who work in groups? There are lots of reasons. They have no meaningful associations with suspects known to the police, they neither seek out nor respond to solicitation by undercover agents, they don't go to 'how-to' websites nor make phone calls to Pakistan for help with building bombs, and they don't engage in precursor criminal activity such as stealing explosives. Regarding that last point, Brievik owned a farm and could buy a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer without attracting any attention. In short, they don't do any of the things that foiled the would-be bomber from Denver, and the one from Portland, and the one from the DC Metro area, and all of their hapless jihobyist cohort.

Above all else, the most striking thing about the attack was the choice of a Labor Party youth camp as the main target. Most of the victims were between 14 and 19 years old. It was a choice calculated to cause the greatest possible shock, and one that even terrorist groups almost never commit. It was up there on a par with the Beslan and Maalot school massacres, almost off the scale.

As a witness quoted in the WaPo's story this morning said:

“Attacking the government is one thing, but attacking innocent youth at a political camp, that’s beyond horrible and ten thousand times worse than attacking government buildings, attacking defenseless children.”

"Beyond horrible" indeed.

OBL Validates R Bureau's Counterterrorism Communications Strategy

It seems that the late Osama Bin Laden believed the West had beaten him in the public image battle within the Muslim world, and he was searching for a re-branding strategy when he abruptly assumed room temperature.

Osama wanted new name for al-Qaida to repair image:

As Osama bin Laden watched his terrorist organization get picked apart, he lamented in his final writings that al-Qaida was suffering from a marketing problem. His group was killing too many Muslims and that was bad for business. The West was winning the public relations fight. All his old comrades were dead and he barely knew their replacements.

Faced with these challenges, bin Laden, who hated the United States and decried capitalism, considered a most American of business strategies. Like Blackwater, ValuJet and Philip Morris, perhaps what al-Qaida really needed was a fresh start under a new name.

The problem with the name al-Qaida, bin Laden wrote in a letter recovered from his compound in Pakistan, was that it lacked a religious element, something to convince Muslims worldwide that they are in a holy war with America.

-- snip --

At the White House, the documents were taken as positive reinforcement for President Barack Obama's effort to eliminate religiously charged words from the government's language of terrorism. Words like "jihad," which also has a peaceful religious meaning, are out. "Islamic radical" has been nixed in favor of "terrorist" and "mass murderer." Though former members of President George W. Bush's administration have backed that effort, it also has drawn ridicule from critics who said the president was being too politically correct.

That effort to "eliminate religiously charged words" from the USG's messaging to the Muslim world goes back at least as far as 2008 - remind me, who was President then? - when the leak of an official document from the Counterterrorism Communications Center caused a big internet stir about how the State Department had supposedly banned the word "Jihad" from its lexicon.

At least, that was the internet meme of three years ago. Google "State Department bans the word Jihad" for examples. Typically weasel-wording obscurantist Foggy Bottom political correctness run amok, etc., etc.

But today, it looks like that communications strategy had its intended effect. OBL believed that he and al Qaeda had failed to associate themselves with the Ummah, the commonwealth of Islamic believers, in the eyes of the Muslim world, where they were increasingly seen as merely terrorists rather than noble Jihadis. The fact that the USG refrained from branding them Jihadis may have contributed to the failure of OBL's strategy. Anyway, we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot for a change.

Those guys at the Counterterrorism Communications Center in International Information Programs ought to be taking a bow right now. By the way, does the Counterterrorism Communications Center still exist?

Pakistani Denies Terrorism Charges: "I Don't Have a Beard"

The clean-shaven Muhammed Saif-ur-Rehman Khan (left)







*** Update - My latest news is that the Chilean judge in this case has rejected the prosecutor's request for preventive custody, and has released Mr. Khan pending trial on two counts of illegal association with an indigenous terrorist group and weapons and explosives violations. ***

Last Monday, a Pakistani citizen in Chile was arrested after he entered the U.S. Embassy in Santiago with traces of high explosive on his belongings. Today, he has been charged by local authorities with possession of explosives.

Here's the Reuters story, Chile charges Pakistani man in U.S. embassy case:

The man, identified by the U.S. State Department as 28-year-old Muhammad Saif-ur-Rehman Khan, was taken into custody at the embassy on Monday and held under an anti-terror law.

Police said traces of the explosive Tetryl were found on Khan's documents and mobile telephone. Tetryl is a compound used as a booster to help detonate explosive charges.

"He has been formally charged for illegal possession of explosives under a weapons control law," a court source said after a closed-door hearing in the capital Santiago.

The presiding judge did not invoke the anti-terror law and it was unclear whether Khan would continue to be detained.

A senior State Department official said on Tuesday that Khan, a student who had been in Chile for four months, was invited to the embassy so officials could notify him that his visa for the United States was being revoked.

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was not aware of any link between Khan and the Pakistani-American accused of trying to bomb New York's Times Square on May 1.

Khan has denied any wrongdoing and instead criticized the United States.

"I have nothing to do with bombs. I have nothing to do with terrorists. I don't have a beard," Khan told reporters on Tuesday evening. "They (the United States) just want to cover up their shame and guilt for what they have done or are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Mr. Khan might not know anything about bombs or terrorists, or even about how he came to have traces of explosives on his cell phone and papers, but he does have his suspicions about why he is in custody.

It might all be the doing of "Mr. Bill from the U.S. Consulate" who, without any explanation, terminated an interview about a routine visa matter and locked Khan up in a room.

Hear the beardless Khan protest his innocence in the video clip below.

Another Bumbling Would-Be Terrorist

The Associated Press is reporting that a Pakistani gentleman was arrested by police in Santiago, Chile, after he entered the U.S. Embassy with traces of high explosive on his belongings. (This was not with a bomb, just detectable levels of explosive residue.) According to an unnamed senior State Department official in Washington, the Pakistani had been called to the embassy in order for officials there to inform him that they were revoking a U.S. visa that he held.

This sounds like a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. First, the embassy located a U.S. visa holder about whom it had received adverse information, and managed to yank his visa before he could attempt to enter the country. Second, the putz strolled into the embassy fresh from handling or having been around explosives, and he is now in Chilean custody being interrogated. Sweet!

That's almost as good as the one about the Pakistani immigrant who locked the keys to his get-away car inside the malfunctioning truck bomb he parked in Times Square. What will these guys do for an encore?

Here's the story as carried by National Public Radio, which had the most detail of any news account I saw today. Chilean Police Detain Pakistani In US Embassy:

SANTIAGO, Chile May 11, 2010, 07:47 pm ET

Traces of explosives were found on a Pakistani man who was summoned to the U.S. Embassy because his U.S. visa had been revoked, authorities said Tuesday, and a Chilean judge ordered him held in a high-security prison under anti-terrorism laws.

Mohammed Saif-ur-Rehman Khan, 28, was detained Monday after the embassy's detectors were set off by traces of bomb-making material, said Mario Schilling, a Chilean prosecutor's spokesman. Schilling did not elaborate on what kind of explosives were involved or provide more details about the case.

U.S. Ambassador Paul Simon said there was not any indication that the embassy was a target of a attack.

A judge agreed on Tuesday to keep Khan behind bars for five more days under Chile's anti-terrorism law to give more time for the investigation. Khan has not been charged with any crime.

Before being taken to jail, Khan was driven by police to a hospital for a medical checkup, and was able to briefly speak to reporters from a window of the police vehicle.

"No, I am not a terrorist. I do not have nothing to do with bombs, I am a working man," he said in heavily accented English.

"This represents an attempt by them to cover up their shame for what they have done in Iraq and Pakistan," he added, according to Chile's Radio Cooperativa.

His detention came nine days after Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen, allegedly tried to set off a bomb-laden SUV in New York's Times Square after receiving training from the Taliban in Pakistan.

Chile's interior minister, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, promised a thorough investigation. "We will be relentless in the fight against any form of crime, especially terrorism," he told reporters while touring southern Chile.

In Washington, the State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, said U.S. and Chilean officials would conduct a joint investigation.

Investigators in white hazardous-materials suits searched Khan's apartment in a student residence in downtown Santiago.

A senior State Department official in Washington said U.S. authorities had received information about Khan that led them to revoke his visa and he was asked to visit the embassy in Santiago so diplomats could inform him of the revocation, as required by U.S. law. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Simon, the U.S. ambassador, told The Associated Press the embassy called Chile's government and police after "security procedures detected some traces of explosives during the interview." He said it didn't appear the embassy itself was targeted.

According to the Chilean newspaper La Segunda, the substance detected was Tetryl, a compound used to increase the explosive power of TNT.

TSB note: See here for a description of Tetryl and its use as a booster explosive. It isn't the sort of thing you might pick up innocently by, say, gardening or walking around a farm.

Asked about the report, Schilling, the prosecutor's spokesman, said, "I am not authorized to say that." He also wouldn't comment on a report in the newspaper El Mercurio that the substance was detected on a bag, documents and cellular telephone carried by Khan.

El Mercurio reported that Khan was in Chile legally to study tourism and had a job at a hotel.

Times Square Not-a-Bombing Story, Day 3

The failed car bomb in Times Square has generated more reporting and commentary based on less actual news than any other incident I can think of.

The New York Times was all over the story today, with five sidebars about bombs and security precautions to eke out its insubstantial main story. The WaPo was almost as overheated.

Even the Taliban inserted itself into the media buzz, and made a less than credible claim of responsibility for the would-be attack. Considering how inept the attacker was, the Taliban is really slumming to take credit for that one.

We learned that the stolen SUV had been loaded with three tanks of propane (with their valves safely closed), two jugs of gasoline, and about 30 large firecrackers. I have to say I'm not too impressed by that list. That could describe an SUV being driven by one of my relatives on his way to a cookout at the beach, but only if you added some rifle and pistol ammunition, because we usually like a little celebratory gunfire.

Speaking of guns, the SUV also contained a metal gun locker. Only, instead of guns, it was filled with about 100 pounds of fertilizer. Plain fertilizer, the kind you might put on your lawn. It had not been mixed with fuel oil into an explosive preparation, so it was harmless. Once again, I'm not feeling very threatened.

The only new news today was a 20-second video showing a purported 'person of interest.' The video is remarkably inconclusive, and both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief Kelly immediately hedged as to its significance.

The Mayor said on the Today Show: “the person on the tape may not become a suspect” ... “There are millions of people that come through Times Square” ... “This person happened to be in a position which a camera got a good shot of him, and maybe he had something to do with it, but there’s a very good chance that he did not. We’re exploring a lot of leads.”

Police Chief Kelly told the NYT: “We just felt that person warranted an interview” ... “It could be perfectly innocent.”

Both the news media and the legions of government spokesmen would be well advised to take a deep breath, relax, and wait until there is something new to report.


p.s.

As an aside, the mention of celebratory gunfire at family cookouts made me think of the excellent song Choctaw Bingo by James McMurtry. The lyrics include this hair-raising shopping list for a family reunion:

Bought a SKS rifle and a couple a full cases of that steel core ammo
With the berdan primers from some East bloc nation that no longer needs 'em
And a Desert Eagle that's one great big ol' pistol
I mean .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews
And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton's
Soon as it gets dark we're gonna have us a time

The song's worth a listen. It's a much better way to spend a few minutes than enduring another rehash of fluff and hysteria about the Times Square not-a-bombing.

Hard to Kill (I Mean al-Qaeda, Not the Steven Seagal Movie)

I posted something a few days ago about the apparent futility of leadership decapitation as a strategy against al-Qaeda, or most other kinds of terrorist groups. AQ has experienced a brisk turnover in its middle management ranks - thanks to Predator drones - but those losses have had little evident effect on its organizational coherence.

Along those lines, here's a report from Jane's Strategic Advisory Services about al-Qaeda and the adaptability of its command and control structure.

Whack-a-Mole is a Game With No End

The WaPo is reporting that two top leaders of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq were killed in a raid, which is news that does not cause me any anguish. However, I just finished reading a commentary in the New York Times from last week (The Price of Assassination) by Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, which persuasively argues that whacking out the leaders of terrorist groups is futile and maybe even counterproductive.

Wright links to an academic paper (When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation) - a great read - which he summarizes this way:

There’s no way of answering this question with complete confidence, but it turns out there are some relevant and little-known data. They were compiled by Jenna Jordan of the University of Chicago, who published her findings last year in the journal Security Studies. She studied 298 attempts, from 1945 through 2004, to weaken or eliminate terrorist groups through “leadership decapitation” — eliminating people in senior positions.

Her work suggests that decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups — and, if anything, may have the opposite effect.

That conclusion seems right to me. I've lost track of how many times it was announced that we had just killed the Number Three al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, but it sometimes seemed like we were killing the al-Qaeda S3 (see page 36 of this document if that term is unfamiliar) about every month or two. The Number One guy stays well hidden, of course, and I guess the Number Two is too important to expose himself much, so it's the poor Number Three who has to run operations in the field and ends up catching a missile.

Do all those sudden terminations of senior staff officers degrade al-Qaeda in the end? The numbers seems to say they do not.

Pakistani Cleric Schools the Taliban

After the Taliban attack on the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, I cited some informed speculation that such terrorist attacks might cause a backlash. I didn't know then that such a backlash had already come, and in the form of a fatwa against terrorism by a Pakistani cleric.

Foreign Policy magazine has the story of that fatwa, Sheikh to Terrorists: Go to Hell:

Pakistani newspapers recently picked up an intriguing story from the country's security establishment. Reporters learned that their government had intercepted a secret message circulating within Tehrik-e-Taliban, the most prominent of several militant groups trying to overthrow the government in Islamabad. The jihadists, it seemed, had just added a new target to one of their death lists. His name is Tahir ul-Qadri, and he's no government official. He's one of Pakistan's leading Islamic scholars, an authority on the Quran and Islamic religious law.

It's no wonder the terrorists want to see Qadri dead. Last month he promulgated a 600-page legal ruling, a fatwa, that condemns terrorism as un-Islamic. A few Western media outlets gave the news a nod, but the coverage quickly petered out. And that's a pity, because the story of this fatwa is just beginning to get interesting. "I have declared a jihad against terrorism," says the 59-year-old Qadri in an interview. "I am trying to bring [the terrorists] back towards humanism. This is a jihad against brutality, to bring them back towards normality. This is an intellectual jihad." This isn't empty rhetoric. Last year militants killed one of Qadri's colleagues, a scholar named Sarfraz Ahmed Naeem, for expressing similar positions.

The fatwa was published in London on February 10, 2010. Here's a preface in English which was published on Sheikh Qadri's website. I found Chapter 3 particularly interesting, since it is on "The Forbiddance of the Indiscriminate Killing of Non-Muslims and of Torturing Them." Page 37 of the preface refers specifically to the protection guaranteed to ambassadors from non-Muslim countries and others working on diplomatic assignments.

Foreign Policy's article continues:

So it's not too hard to imagine why the Taliban aren't amused. "Qadri has been very bold in saying that these terrorists are awaited in hell," says Hassan Abbas, a Pakistani scholar at Harvard University's Belfer Center. "He is clearly provocative, in a positive sense, and this courageous act is also noteworthy." He notes that the fatwa includes a number of specific criticisms of the conservative Deoband movement, whose teachings underlie many of the militant Islamic groups in South Asia -- something that has angered many of the Deobandis. (Qadri himself is a prominent representative of the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam -- a Sufi-influenced group that, says Abbas, has historically outnumbered the Deobandis in Pakistan.) But few of the hard-core jihadis are likely to be swayed by Qadri's formidable scholarly credentials. It's a different constituency that Qadri has in mind -- namely the wavering middle.

-- snip --

This is, in a word, pretty strong stuff -- additional evidence, if any were needed, that the so-called "war on terror" pales beside the war within Islam itself, the continuing, subtle, and utterly vital struggle for the soul of the faith. So it will be worth keeping an eye on the impact these 600 pages will have on Islam's restless minds in the years to come. "The real contribution of the fatwa cannot be evident in a matter of a few weeks," argues Abbas. "The message will go out slowly." But go out it will. Stay tuned.

Just wow.

Predator Delivers Karma After 24 Years

A U.S. Predator drone over North Waziristan was the instrument by which Karma was brought to one of the murderers of Indian heroine Neerja Bhanot, the young woman who was the senior flight purser on the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 in 1986, according to the Times of India.

From 24 yrs after Pan Am hijack, Neerja Bhanot killer falls to drone:

Half of India's population today wasn't born when she died in 1986 in a hail of gunfire on a hijacked plane after courageously saving scores of passengers, a feat for which she was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra in India, Tamgha-e-Insaniyat in Pakistan and the Justice for Crimes Award in the US. Earlier this week, some 24 years after her heroism, one of her killers died a dog's death in the badlands of Pakistan, reportedly shot to pieces in a US drone attack.

The saga of Neerja Bhanot transfixed India at a time where there was no 24-hour news television and it had little to do with the fact that her father was a New Delhi journalist. She was a flight attendant on Pan Am Flight 73 as it headed out of Mumbai to Karachi en route to Frankfurt and onward to New York City. Four armed men dressed as airport security guards stormed the plane in Karachi. The cabin crew managed to alert the pilots, who decamped, effectively grounding the flight.

In the hours-long ordeal that followed, Neerja showed exemplary courage, attested by some 350 passengers who survived the nightmare, although some 20 died and 120 were wounded after hijackers opened fire on them when Pakistani commandos prepared to storm the plane. Among her acts of courage was her refusal to collect US passports and hiding some of them as the hijackers sought to isolate Americans and Indians. She knew they meant business when one of the hijackers pulled Rajesh Kumar, a 29-year-old Indian American California resident to the front of the aircraft, asked him to kneel at the door, and shot him in the head when their demand for a new flight crew was not met.

Neerja died shielding three children from gunfire as a bloody massacre erupted on the plane. The hijackers, who were said to be from the Abu Nidal Organisation, were eventually captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 1988. But in a Pakistan that became increasingly permissive about terrorism, the sentences were later commuted to life in prison.

In 2001, Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al Safarini, the hijacker who shot Rajesh Kumar among others, was captured by the FBI in Bangkok after he was released in Pakistan and was on his way back to Jordan. He was taken to the US where he was sentenced to a 160-year prison term he is now serving in Colorado. Four others who were in Pakistan's Adiala jail were freed in January 2008 even as the US fumed about Islamabad's action. The FBI announced a $5 million bounty on their head, pretty much ensuring their days are numbered.

Earlier this week, Pakistani intelligence officials announced that a January 9 missile strike in the North Waziristan tribal region killed Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, one of the hijackers. His affiliation is disputed. The FBI's web site lists him as a Palestinian with possible Lebanese citizenship. The Pakistani officials called him an al-Qaida member, but the FBI site says he was a member of the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist group.

There are no doubts about Neerja's affiliation though. She belongs to India's Hall of Courage.

I've heard the concept of Karma defined as 'justice without the satisfaction,' but it sounds to me like the Indians are pretty satisfied with the "dog's death" that was delivered to Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim.

FBI = Forging Borrowed Images

Last week, the FBI announced that its whiz-bang scientific staff had applied cutting edge technology to produce new age-advanced images of 18 terrorist suspects for the State Department's Rewards for Justice website. [By the way, one of those suspects, Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, won't get any older thanks to Predator drones.] One of the images - the one on the right, above - was purported to be of Public Enemy Number 1, Osama bin Laden. The photos were circulated around the world, and the FBI took a bow for its scientific crime-fighting expertise: "These new images are powerful examples of how advances in technology and science can be used to help find and bring to justice wanted persons," according to the head of the FBI's Science and Technology Branch.

Today, it turns out that Osama's altered image was not entirely the product of new advances in technology and science, but was actually taken from a photo of a shifty-looking character - on the left, above - that an FBI technician found on the internet. Even better, the unwitting stand-in for Osama is a Spanish Communist Party leader. He is not amused, and threatens to sue. See today's WaPo story here.

There is more detail in the UK Telegraph's story (FBI admits Spanish politican was model for 'high-tech' Osama bin Laden photo-fit). A few quotes:

The digitally altered image of an older and greying Bin Laden was meant to show how the world's most wanted terrorist might now look without his trademark turban and long beard. It was released in a renewed effort to locate him, more than eight years after the September 11 attack which he ordered and directed.

But it created an unexpected stir in Madrid when a Spanish MP recognised strong elements of himself in the image and complained to the US.

-- snip --

The FBI claimed to have used "cutting edge" technology to reproduce new images of 18 of the most wanted terrorist suspects for the State Department's Rewards for Justice website.

But yesterday Ken Hoffman, a spokesman the FBI, admitted that a technician "was not satisfied" with the hair features offered by the FBI's software programme and instead used part of a photo of Mr Llamazares, found on the internet. "The technician had no idea whose image he had found and no dark motive for using it," he said.

I don't know whether or not Llamazares is really a dead ringer for bin Laden, but doesn't he resemble a famous dead terrorist by the name of Achmed?

Background Briefing on Christmas Day Terror Plot

Senior State Department officials gave the press a briefing today following the release of the White House review of the Christmas Day terror plot. It shed some light on the question of why the State Department did not immediately know that Abdulmutallab had a U.S. visa, and why the lack of that knowledge wasn't really pertinent to the matter of why the visa wasn't revoked before he got on his flight to the U.S.

Read the entire briefing here. A few quotes:

QUESTION: The one thing that the report says about the State Department is that there was a misspelling of the name. Whose misspelling was that?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Okay. There was --

QUESTION: Where?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Someone checked, and I’m not going to go into who, but some --

QUESTION: No, no, no. I’m asking which agency, not which specific person.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: State Department. State Department checked to see if the person had a visa. There was a dropped letter in that – there was a misspelling. They used a very – they checked the system. It didn’t come back positive. And so for a while, no one knew that this person had a visa.

-- snip --

QUESTION: So, wait, can I just finish my question? So I’m not – so when it went to NCTC, then they spelled it right and you realized that he had a visa?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Yes.

QUESTION: So you’re just saying for like a week or so, or a couple of weeks?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: No – I don’t know if anyone – I don’t think anyone – no one may have checked for a visa until Christmas Day.

-- Snip --

QUESTION: Do you think that the misspelling of the name and not finding the fact that he had a visa had anything to do with whether he would be classified a PB3 [potential terrorist] or a B3 [terrorist]?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: No. Well, P3B was put in because there was a possibility, because he’s –

QUESTION: Right.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: -- the interview. As far as being anything else, no, I don’t think there was – I don’t think the not knowing that he didn’t have a visa, not reporting that – and the report says that. It says: “A determination to revoke his visa, however, would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of the intelligence by the CT community, resulting in his being watch-listed.” So --

QUESTION: So even if he was he was spelled – even if it was spelled right and you knew he had a visa, he still wouldn’t have been – it still wouldn’t have been revoked?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: That’s correct.

-- Snip --

QUESTION: Isn’t – actually, isn’t the visa issue kind of a bit of a red herring here, because –

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: That’s – exactly.

QUESTION: If he had made – if he had gotten onto the 3B list, it doesn’t matter if he had a visa or not; he wouldn’t have been able to get on the plane.

QUESTION: That’s right.

From Bombs to Crayons and Back Again

ABC News is reporting that former Gitmo detainees whom we released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 are believed to have been behind the Northwest Airlines Flight #253 bombing attempt (Former Guantanamo Prisoners Believed Behind Northwest Airlines Bomb Plot).

They quote an unidentified U.S. diplomat who is less than impressed with the Saudi's rehab program for former terrorists:

"The so-called rehabilitation programs are a joke," a U.S. diplomat said in describing the Saudi efforts with released Guantanamo detainees.

Saudi officials concede its program has had its "failures" but insist that, overall, the effort has helped return potential terrorists to a meaningful life.

One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen.

Paints and crayons? That rings a bell. In 2007, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired a short documentary about the Saudi's art therapy program, featuring Canadian journalist Nancy Durham.



Predictably, art therapy is a Western export to Saudi Arabia. Dr. Awad Alyami, Director of Art Therapy at King Fahad Medical City and the main figure in the PBS story, studied art therapy at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Alyami learned about this innovative approach while studying in the United States.

Dr. Alyami: It’s not revolutionary a hundred percent because my colleagues in England, Canada, in the states … they’re doing some art in jail, but not with my type of population.

Nancy Durham: Yeah, this is what’s new. I mean these are guys who couldn’t have cared less about art … (garbled).

Dr. Alyami: Yes, Nancy do you think it was easy for me to start the program with them? No, I was scared to death to start with them. Really … because I had that idea that these are uh … criminals. They blow up buildings and stuff.

Indeed. Some of them still do blow stuff up. Nothing worse than an art therapy drop-out.

The sound is weak on the video clip, but you can read a transcript here.

Pathology and Ideology: Major Nidal Malik Hasan and the Case of Leon Czolgosz

The History News Network has a post about the parallels between Nidal Hasan and Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist assassin of President William McKinley. See Pathology and Ideology: Major Nidal Malik Hasan and the Case of Leon Czolgosz.

A brief quote:

Whether Czolgosz was a member of an anarchist cell dedicated to assassination and terrorism is not in dispute. He was not. However, he was a self-identified anarchist who held a personal identification with the goals of anarchist ideology and a willingness to act based on those ideological assumptions. So was Czolgosz a terrorist? Most historians today agree that he was.

This brings me to Hasan. The intelligence community, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, informs the public there is no evidence that Hasan was assisted in his act nor that he was operating as part of a larger terrorist plot. However, in similarity to Czolgosz, he exhibited an affinity—if no direct affiliation—with a radical ideology that supports the murder of its opponents. Like Czolgosz, he committed a terrorist act promoted by pathology and ideology.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Rap Sheet

Unclassified summaries of the evidence against KSM and his four co-defendants, prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Gitmo, can be viewed here.

Ex-Gitmo Detainee and Rehab Dropout Killed In Saudi Arabia

A Saudi radical and al Qaeda operative whom we released from Gitmo in 2007 was killed last week in a firefight with Saudi security forces, the Christian Science Monitor reported today:

Two Yemen-based militants dressed as women, one of whom was a former Guantánamo prisoner, were intercepted at a Saudi checkpoint last week.

-- snip --

The two fighters discovered last week, Rayed Abdullahi al-Harbi and Yousef Mohammed al-Shihri, were both on a Saudi government most-wanted list issued in February. Al Shihri is a former Guantanamo detainee, and the brother-in-law of Saeed al-Shihri, the Yemen-based deputy commander of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who also was at Guantánamo, spokesman Turki said.

The Long War Journal provided some background on al Shahri:

One of the names on the Saudi most-wanted list that matches the list of Saudis repatriated from Guantánamo is Yousuf Mohammed Mubarak Al Jubairi Al Shahri. In the U.S. government's files, one of the repatriated detainee's names is given as Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri. Yussef allegedly traveled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan using al Qaeda's Mashhad transit hub. Once in Afghanistan, he was allegedly trained at the notorious al Farouq camp and fought against the Northern Alliance. Yussef's brother is a "known al Qaeda operative."

If the Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri identified in the U.S. government's files is the same man who is now one of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted, it is no surprise that he returned to the fight. The U.S. government identified Yussef as a hardcore ideologue who "hates all Americans because they attack his religion." The U.S. government's unclassified files note: "Since Americans are his enemy, he will continue to fight them until he dies."

Yussef al Shihri was one of the "kids of Guantanamo" - teenage battlefield detainees who were held in a separate facility apart from the rest of the Gitmo Gang - and his case received quite a bit of sympathy from the usual quarters.

According to Saudi news accounts:

Al-Shiri was transferred from Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia in 2007. He was immediately put into the Ministry of Interior’s hugely successful rehabilitation program for arrested extremists.

Two years after entering the program, al Shihri had fled to Yemen where he reconnected with his al Qaeda associates, and last week he was sneaking back into the Kingdom bearing four suicide bomb vests when he was intercepted.

That "hugely successful rehabilitation program" still has some kinks to work out, obviously. Perhaps now the Obama administration will have seconds thought about trying to palm off our Yemeni detainees on the Kingdom.

No Death Penalty Sought for Bomber of U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam

Attorney General Eric Holder has decided not to seek the death penalty against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the Tanzanian who was part of the al Qaeda cell that planned and carried out the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998. Eleven people were killed in that attack.

According to Bloomberg.com, which had the most detailed story I've seen so far:

The proceedings in the Ghailani case had been stalled as U.S. prosecutors weighed whether to seek the death penalty. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in New York said in a court filing today that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had instructed him not to do so.

“You are authorized and directed not to seek the death penalty against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani,” Holder wrote in an Oct. 2 letter to Bharara that was included in the filing. Bharara forwarded the Holder letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the case.

“Other defendants in the embassy bombings case have either already either received life sentences or will not be subject to the death penalty because the United States agreed not to seek it as a condition of their extradition,” the Justice Department said today in a statement. “Given those circumstances and other factors in this case, the attorney general authorized the U.S. attorney to seek a life sentence.”

So AG Holder thinks it would be improper to seek the death penalty in Ghailani's case because some of the mutt's co-defendants cannot be subjected to the same penalty? It wouldn't be fair, I suppose is the way Holder sees the situation.

Screw fairness. Fairness is not the same thing as justice. Since when did fairness drive the U.S. criminal justice system? It was Ghailani's own decision to hide out in Pakistan after the bombing, where he was arrested, and where the authorities do not go weak-kneed at the prospect of rendering a foreign terrorist to a death penalty state.

I'm certain that a man who cold-bloodedly participated in an act of mass murder for political and religious motives is willing to accept the full consequences of his actions. Why isn't the U.S. government willing to impose them?

Ghailani did the crime (here's a summary of the evidence presented in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and here's his tribunal transcript), it carries the death penalty under U.S. law, and justice - the kind with a lower-case "J" - demands that he be tried accordingly. But, Justice with a capitol "J" has wimped out.

When Ghailani was transferred from Gitmo to New York last June for prosecution on 286 counts of terror-related charges, I feared that he might escape the hangman, but only because I figured a New York City jury might not pull the trigger. I didn't expect that the U.S. Justice Department would lack the moral fortitude to even seek the death penalty.

Fortress Embassies: Not Just for Americans Anymore

The flag flying at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta after a suicide car-bombing, September 9, 2004







The Australian news media is reporting on plans for the construction of a secure new embassy complex in Jakarta, Indonesia, to replace the chancery office building that was attacked by a terrorist bomber in 2004.

Work on a $415 million high-security Australian embassy in Jakarta will begin late next year, six years after a Jemaah Islamiah terrorist bombing that killed five people and injured more than 150 others.

The new chancery will be “bomb-proofed” and house 14 federal government agencies, 123 Australian and 273 local staff, Defence Secretary Mike Kelly said today.
Mr Kelly today submitted budget plans for the new embassy with a start date for construction next year and completion scheduled for 2014.

The current mission is “overcrowded and dysfunctional”, Mr Kelly told Parliament.

In 2004, a suicide bomber detonated a minivan loaded with more than one tonne of explosives outside the embassy.

"The government approved the relocation of the Jakarta mission on security grounds. The new site will enable appropriate setbacks to buildings for blast mitigation while the buildings themselves will be designed to resist blast,” Mr Kelly said.

"While the new development is driven by the imperative to provide more secure accommodation, a rapid increase of staff in the Jakarta mission over recent years has resulted in the chancery being seriously overcrowded and dysfunctional.”

Construction is expected to start late next year, subject to parliamentary approval.

The project will involve construction of a secure compound, including a chancery of about 20,000 square metres, a head of mission residence, residential accommodation for 32 diplomats and their families, recreational facilities and a medical clinic.

Good for the Aussies. Jakarta is to the Australian Foreign Service what Baghdad is to its U.S. counterpart: the No. #1 critical threat diplomatic post in the world. When a responsible government puts 400 employees in such a car-bomb prone hotspot, it spends the money to provide them with a reasonably secure place to work and live.

Political Violence Against Americans in 2008

U.S. Consul-General Peshawar's vehicle reversing at high speed out of an ambush kill zone, taking along with it a 'tuk-tuk' auto rickshaw that was in the way





"Ninety percent of threat reports are crap" according to a wise Gringa woman who recently gave me an intelligence briefing on overseas terrorism. For the other ten percent, see the U.S. State Department's 2008 report on Political Violence Against Americans overseas, which was released today. The entire series of annual reports can be found here.

There were 44 incidents of targeted violence involving U.S. citizens abroad last year. Bombings, hotel invasions, ambushes, suicide attacks, kidnappings, drive-by shootings, rockets, mortars, grenades and riots. I just hope PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Americans) is paying attention to this.

Not all of the incidents ended badly. See the photo above and the summary of that incident on page 43 of the report, for example. Our security elements, which play defense to the terrorist's offense, often had their successes.

Accused Conspirator in U.S. Embassy Dar es Salam Bombing Brought to Trial in NYC

Here are a few quotes from the U.S. Department of Justice press release (Accused East Africa Embassy Bomber Held at Guantanamo Bay to Be Prosecuted in U.S. Federal Court):

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since September 2006, will be prosecuted in federal court in the United States pursuant to the March 12, 2001 superseding indictment currently pending against him in the Southern District of New York.

-- snip --

Ghailani was first indicted on Dec. 16, 1998, by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York for conspiring with Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda to kill Americans overseas and for his role in the Aug. 7, 1998, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salam, Tanzania, which killed at least eleven people and caused injuries to at least 85 people.

-- snip --

Among other things, the superseding indictment alleges that Ghailani assisted in the purchase of the Nissan truck as well as the oxygen and acetylene tanks that were used in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. He is further alleged to have participated in loading boxes of TNT, cylinder tanks, batteries, detonators, fertilizer and sand bags into the back of the truck in the weeks immediately before the bombing. Ghailani departed Africa for Pakistan the night before the bombing.

-- snip --

Ghailani was charged with the following substantive offenses: murder in violation of the Law of War, murder of protected persons, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, and destruction of property in violation of the Law of War and Terrorism. He was also charged with conspiracy to commit all of the above offenses, as well as providing material support to terrorism. On Oct. 3, 2008, these charges were referred to trial by military commission.

There is some precedent for bringing captured terrorists to trial in the U.S. In 2002, the federal government sought the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui, the "19th hijacker" on 9/11, but a jury voted to give him a sentence of life in prison instead.

I hope Ghailani's jury will be a little more hard-nosed, but, who knows?