Video: Newark Airport Security Breach Caught on Tape

Man Arrested at Big U.S. Mosque With Explosives - CBS News

via cbsnews.com

- We are beginning to look like Iraq or Pakistan.

YouTube removes 'al-Qaeda videos'

 YouTube removes 'al-Qaeda videos' 

FBI Warns of Terror Plot Against NYC Subways During Holidays

The FBI is warning law enforcement authorities of a possible terror plot by al Qaeda directed against the New York City subways (which I ride every day) during the Christmas Holiday season. You can't dismiss this as another Bush scaremongering. The election is over and the Republicans lost. So maybe we should be concerned. And the administration wouldn't want to frighten shoppers during the holiday season. It could be just an al Qaeda scare tactic to hurt an already damaged economy. Then again we had plenty of warnings prior to 9-11. They just weren't made public or taken seriously. Bin Laden's organization would like to make itself relevant at a time when they are on the defensive.

Federal authorities are warning law enforcement personnel of a possible terror plot against the New York City subway system during the holiday season.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press says the FBI has received a "plausible but unsubstantiated" report that al-Qaida terrorists in late September may have discussed attacking the subway system.

Anti-terror agencies say they have no specific details to confirm the plot has moved "beyond aspirational planning," but are issuing the alert out of concern that an attack could come during the holiday season," warns the memo, which is dated Tuesday.

While federal agencies often issue all sorts of advisory warnings, the language of this one is particularly forceful.

al Qaeda Behind Rising Threat to China, Olympics

It isn't just the West that needs to fear from Islamic Jihadists. Unfortunately silence from World over human rights abuses by the Communist Chinese rulers has opened the door for extremists.

Police shut down the bustling International Bazaar in the capital of China's restive Muslim region of Xinjiang on Friday amid threats from an Islamic group that attackers might target buses, trains and planes during the Olympics.

A sign at the entrance of the bazaar in Urumqi did not explain why the area, surrounded by mosques with minarets, was off limits as the country prepared to kick off the Summer Games thousands of miles (kilometers) away in Beijing.

But one of the many security guards in the bazaar's plaza, which was marked off with crime scene tape, told an AP reporter, "The area is closed because of a possible terrorist attack. It's just a defensive measure."

Even a KFC restaurant in the shopping area -- filled with touristy shops selling carpets and jade -- was closed, and a guard sitting on the steps shooed people away. A few Chinese tourists lingered in the area, snapping photos.

The sprawling, far-flung western region of Xinjiang has long been a source of trouble for China's communist government. The rugged, mineral-rich territory is populated by the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority that has had tense relations with the Chinese. Many Uighurs favor independence or greater autonomy for Xinjiang, which takes up one-sixth of China's land mass and borders eight Central Asian countries.

On Thursday, a videotape purportedly made by the Turkistan Islamic Party -- a militant group seeking Xinjiang independence -- was released with threats to launch attacks during the Olympics.

"Choose your side," says the videotape's speaker, grasping a rifle and dressed in a black turban and camouflage with his face masked. "Do not stay on the same bus, on the same train, on the same plane, in the same buildings or any place the Chinese are," he warns Muslims, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. operation that monitors militant organizations.

The Turkistan Islamic Party is believed to be based across the border in Pakistan, where security experts say core members have received training from al-Qaeda.

Another threat being ignored by the West is China's spying.

U.S. intelligence officials issued a strong warning Thursday that Americans traveling overseas, particularly visitors to the Olympics in China, face a serious risk of having sensitive information stolen, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

The travel alert is blunt:

"All information you send electronically - by fax machine, personal digital assistant (PDA), computer or telephone - can be intercepted."

"Somebody with a wirless device in China should expect it to be compromised while he's there," Brenner said.

And those who must take phones and BlackBerries with them should remove the batteries.

"The public security services in China can turn your telephone on and activate its microphone when you think it's off," said Brenner.

China is one of a number of countries pushing active cyber-espionage programs aimed primarily at cracking U.S. national security computers and stealing corporate trade secrets. Billions have already been lost.

In addition, cyber-gangs and criminals, many based in Asia, have stolen bank accounts and credit card numbers from an untold number of Americans.

And Bush just pretends he gives a damn.

George Bush kept human rights high on the Olympic agenda today by calling for freedom of expression and religion just hours before he was to attend the opening ceremony.

The US president, who has irked the host nation all week by raising human rights issues, continued to press his message after arriving in Beijing.

"We strongly believe societies which allow the free expression of ideas tend to be the most prosperous and the most peaceful," he declared at a ceremony to open a new American embassy.

"We continue to be candid about our belief that all people should have the freedom to say what they think and worship as they choose."

The Chinese government has rejected what officials and the state media described as an attempt to use human rights to meddle in its internal affairs and ruin the mood of the Olympic festival.

A foreign ministry spokesman said their country has made progress in opening the media, reducing executions and widening freedoms of religion.

Bush is the first sitting president to attend an Olympic opening ceremony outside America. His presence has been criticised by US politicians and human rights groups as an endorsement of the one-party state.

FBI Tried Coercing Ivins' Children into Accusing Their Father in Anthrax Attacks

The more we learn about the Ivins Anthrax investigation the more we see an attempt by the feds railroad an innocent man. In this case the NY Times questions the dubious tactics employed used by the FBI:

After four years of painstaking scientific research, the F.B.I. by 2005 had traced the anthrax in the poisoned letters of 2001 to a single flask of the bacteria at the Army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., according to government scientists and bureau officials.

But at least 10 scientists had regular access to the laboratory and its anthrax stock — and possibly quite a few more, counting visitors from other institutions, and workers at laboratories in Ohio and New Mexico that had received anthrax samples from the flask at the Army laboratory.

Does sound like a man who would murder people in order to make money. Certainly not the homicidal maniac he's made out to be:

Dr. Ivins had been a respected microbiologist for three decades at the United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. He was a popular neighbor in Frederick, Md., a Red Cross volunteer and an amateur juggler who played keyboards for Sunday services at his church.

These are tactics used by totalitarian governments. The FBI is desperate and will apparently do anything to find someone to blame for an investigation they've botched from day one. It is a classic case of prosecutorial misconduct. It reminds me of the 1996 Olympics bombing case in where the FBI also falsely accused a totally innocent man of the crime, Richard Jewel. This is just as outrageous and frightening.

They had even intensively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, “Your father did this,” according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend.

As the investigation wore on, some colleagues thought the F.B.I.’s methods were increasingly coercive, as the agency tried to turn Army scientists against one another and reinterviewed family members.

One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Dr. Ivins’s daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks.

“It was not an interview,” Dr. Byrne said. “It was a frank attempt at intimidation.”

Dr. Byrne said he believed Dr. Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. “They figured he was the weakest link,” Dr. Byrne said. “If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?”

Another former co-worker, Dr. Kenneth W. Hedlund, who collaborated on anthrax research with Dr. Ivins in the 1980s, had a similar theory.

“The investigators looked around, they decided they had to find somebody. They went after all of them but he looked the most susceptible to pressure,” Dr. Hedlund said. “It is like prisoners of war: if they are harassed enough, they will be driven to do anything. But I don’t believe he would have done what they say he did.”

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Bruce Ivins was a Scapegoat in the FBI Anthrax Investigation

Bruce Ivins was a Scapegoat in the FBI Anthrax Investigation

The Feds have failed from the beginning to find those responsible for the anthrax attacks. One of the main reasons being their penchant for using profiles that were intended for common criminals. The problem is profiling does not work with international terrorism. That anthrax attacks was committed by al Qaeda. That simple. The failure of the FBI in finding the truth behind the anthrax terror is the same reason they failed in preventing 9-11 in the first place. The FBI is not equipped to investigate or prevent international terrorism.

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick's Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects.

They hounded Ivins to death:

[...]colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.

"I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, 'Show me your evidence,' " said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. "A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons."

Congress needs to investigate this matter. Don't let the FBI get away with closing the case without proving they had one:

Once the case is closed, the FBI and Justice Department will face questions -- and possibly public hearings -- from congressional oversight committees, which have been largely shut out of the case the past five years. The investigators have cited the ongoing nature of the case, as well as accusations of leaks to the media, for the information blackout to Capitol Hill.

Ivins did not have the wherewithal to make airborne anthrax:

[...]others, including former colleagues and scientists with backgrounds in biological weapons defense, disagreed that Ivins could have created the anthrax powder, even if he were motivated to do so.

"USAMRIID doesn't deal with powdered anthrax," said Richard O. Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins at the Army lab. "I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it. You would need to have the opportunity, the capability and the motivation, and he didn't possess any of those."

Then there is the nonsense about Ivins profiting from an anthrax attack:

[...]sources familiar with details of the Army's patent process said it was unlikely that Ivins or the other scientists would reap a big financial windfall from VaxGen's vaccine production. They say the government restricts income from inventions produced in its laboratories to no more than $150,000 per year, but the amount is often considerably less.

Ivins erratic bahaviour during his final days can be directly attributed to the strain of having the government hounding him for months for something he hadn't done.

Court records obtained yesterday shed further light on the concerns of a mental health professional who met Ivins during his final months -- a period when, friends say, he fell into depression under the strain of constant FBI scrutiny. The records also suggest that a Frederick social worker, Jean Duley, passed on her concerns to the FBI after receiving death threats from Ivins.

Let's have the press interview this woman and have explain her charges. Her description of Ivins sounds very suspicious to me.

Duley became so worried that she petitioned a local judge for a protective order against Ivins. According to an audio recording of the hearing, she said she had seen Ivins as a therapist for six months, and thought he had tried to kill people in the past.

"As far back as the year 2000, [Ivins] has actually attempted to murder several other people, [including] through poisoning," she said "He is a revenge killer, when he feels that he's been slighted . . . especially towards women. He plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings," she told a judge.

And if Ivins was the culprit why didn't the government focus on him first. They instead hounded another scientist, Steven Hatfill. Hatfill sued the government for defamation and won.

He accused investigators of alerting the news media in advance to the search of his home, and later of conducting constant surveillance of him. His home phone was wiretapped, he said, and agents followed him wherever he went.

Five years ago in the Georgetown section of Washington, he approached the car of an F.B.I. agent who had been trailing him, wanting to take the agent’s picture. The agent drove off, and his car ran over Dr. Hatfill’s foot. The police later issued a ticket to Dr. Hatfill for “walking to create a hazard,” and he was fined $5. No ticket was given the agent.

Declaring that his life was being destroyed by harassment, Dr. Hatfill went to court to try to clear his name.

The NY Times understood back in November of 2001 that the FBI was screwing-up the investigation into who was behind the anthrax attacks. Ever since then they've been desperate to find anyone to blame:

WRONG TURNS -- The federal inquiry into the anthrax attacks has stumbled in several key areas and may have missed opportunities to gather valuable evidence as investigators have been unable to fully grasp the scientific complexities of the case.

There are some prominent figures involved in the case who also doubt the FBI's case:

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whose office was a target of the anthrax attacks in 2001, said Sunday the suicide of the government's main suspect does not mean the case is over.

Daschle said the FBI has not given him any new updates. He also raised questions about the quality of the investigation, noting that the government recently paid out almost $6 million to a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who accused authorities of unfairly targeting him in the anthrax case.

"From the very beginning I've had real concerns about the quality of the investigation," Daschle said in a broadcast interview. "Given the fact that they already paid somebody else $5 million for the mistakes they must have made gives you some indication of the overall caliber and quality of the investigation."

Update:
This comes from Salon/Glenn Greenwald:

The unanswered questions in the anthrax case are literally too numerous to chronicle. It is so vital to emphasize that not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks, let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit. Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media (with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this case as though the matter is resolved.

Given the significance of the anthrax attacks, it would be unconscionable for there to be anything other than a full-scale Congressional or independent investigation -- with a full airing of all the facts -- regarding everything that happened here. Those issues should include exploration of the following questions, many of which might well have perfectly reasonable and benign explanations, and some of which may not, but until there is a full airing, it will necessarily be the case -- and it should be the case -- that this episode will only serve to further erode whatever lingering trust there is in media and government institutions

Pentagon: The War on Terror will Last for Decades

The administration is doing it's usual scaremongering in time for the elections. But they are right about terror staying with us indefinitely - thanks to Bush.

"Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is crucial to winning this conflict, but it alone will not bring victory."

You can't win the war on terror if you can't even win wars unrelated to terrorism and only make it worse.

"The use of force plays a role, yet military efforts to capture or kill terrorists are likely to be subordinate to measures to promote local participation in government and economic programs to spur development, as well as efforts to understand and address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies," the document said. "For these reasons, arguably the most important military component of the struggle against violent extremists is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves."

Like what isn't being done in Afghanistan.

Defense sources said Gates's strategy met resistance among the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of its focus on irregular warfare. Gates met with the Joint Chiefs to present the rationale behind his strategy, and they expressed concerns over the long-term risks of shifting the focus too far from conventional threats. The service chiefs have worried publicly about shunning preparation for conventional warfare because it could give adversaries a competitive advantage in key arenas, such as in the skies or in space.

Sounds to me like Gates is not much different from Rumsfeld. They still miss the point.

James Jay Carafano, a military expert at the Heritage Foundation, said he finds it refreshing that the Defense Department acknowledges that China and Russia are potential adversaries, but he said he believes the strategy is too heavy on battling extremism.

I got news for you - China and Russia are adversaries. Once again, Bush has made it worse.

Lieberman: U.S. May Be Attacked In 2009

This is wishful thinking on the part of the neocon leader from Connecticut.

In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans' presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats' to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

Lieberman nonetheless distanced himself from remarks by McCain chief strategist Charlie Black, who came under criticism for suggesting in an interview that McCain's election chances would be improved if a terrorist attack occurred before November.

"Sometimes even the best of them say things that are not what they intended to say," Lieberman said. "Certainly the implications there I know were not what Charlie intended. And he apologized for it. Senator McCain said he didn't agree. And, of course, I feel the same way.

"But here's the point. We're in a war against Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11. They've been trying to attack us in many, many ways since then."

A former Democratic nominee for vice president, Lieberman endorsed McCain for president because, he says, the Democratic Party he joined in the early 1960s is not reflected by the party's current leadership.

He also said that he feels McCain is better prepared to be commander in chief than Barack Obama. "[McCain] knows the world," Lieberman said. "He's been tested. He's ready to protect the security of the American people."

Lieberman also assailed Obama and fellow Senators who called for a timetable of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and opposed the "surge" of additional U.S. forces pushed forth by President Bush.

"It's now working," Lieberman told Schieffer. "If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we've got a country that's defending itself, that's growing economically, where there's been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that's the way it ought to be."

However, McCain's readiness was disputed by retired General Wesley Clark, who is backing Obama for president, despite McCain's storied military experience in Vietnam. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he said.

"I think Joe has it exactly backwards here," Clark told Schieffer. "I think being president is about having good judgment. It's about the ability to communicate. And what Barack Obama brings is incredible communication skills, proven judgment. You look at his meteoric rise in politics and you see a guy who deals with people well, who understands issues, who brings people together, and who has good judgment in moving forward.

Intelligence Officials: Dozens of Europeans Have Trained in Terror Camps in Pakistan

From ABC News:

Dozens of white Europeans have trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan's tribal regions in recent months, U.S. intelligence sources tell ABC News, in what officials fear may be the beginnings of a new breed of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorism.

Government officials suspect the terrorists, recruited in Europe, have been dispatched to plan attacks against Europe and possibly the United States. The alleged terrorists hail from Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Romania and Estonia, sources said.

There is growing evidence that some European recruits may have already gone operational. Two of the suspects arrested in a September 2007 plot to kill American soldiers in Germany were native Germans, and U.S. officials say they are investigating whether they were trained in Pakistan.

Pakistan is the new Afghanistan:

Terrorist attacks against noncombatants more than doubled in Pakistan from 2006 to 2007, reflecting the growing violence in the country's turbulent tribal areas and new bombings against Pakistani government officials and security services, according to a report released Wednesday by the State Department.

The report also said the number of deaths from the attacks in Pakistan quadrupled in that time period, to 1,335 fatalities, casting doubt on the American-backed counterterrorism policies of President Pervez Musharraf that the new government in Islamabad is now reshaping.

The new statistics show that terrorist strikes against nonmilitary targets worldwide remained virtually unchanged in 2007 from 2006, at roughly 14,500 attacks, but the number of deaths from those attacks increased to 22,685 from 20,872, according to statistics compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center.

War Strains U.S. Military in Tackling new Crises

Forget about taking on Iran. It is criminal that our government (i.e.,Bush) has put our nation in this position. I guess we'll realize it when a new military crisis arises. For now the problem is ignored. Including by the Presidential candidates:

A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis, The Associated Press has learned.

Despite security gains in Iraq, the military was not able to reduce the response risk level, which was raised from moderate to significant last year, according to the report.