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International News
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Al-Zarqawi Killed by U.S. Air Strike (MSNBC) “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages, has been killed in a precision airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday,” reports the Associated Press. “… Al-Qaida in Iraq confirmed al-Zarqawi’s death and vowed to continue its ‘holy war.’”
[View article] [View Focus on al-Zarqawi]
Canada Arrests 17 Terror Suspects After Multinational Inquiry
(Washington Post; London Times; Los Angeles Times)
“Seventeen Canadian residents arrested on terrorism charges were inspired by al Qaeda, had amassed enough explosives to build huge bombs and were planning to blow up targets in densely populated Ontario,” reports Reuters. “… The group possessed three tons of ammonium nitrate—or three times the amount used in the 1995 federal building bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168—and were preparing to make bombs.” Some of the suspects were accused “of plotting to storm Parliament, take hostages and behead the prime minister unless Canada withdrew its troops from Afghanistan,” reports the Associated Press. “Hours later police in West Yorkshire [England] arrested a 16-year-old youth after documents and mobile phone records seized in Canada revealed a British link to the alleged gang of Muslim militants operating from their homes in the Toronto suburbs,” reports the London Times. The arrests were “part of a continuing, multinational inquiry into suspected terrorist cells in at least seven countries,” reports the Los Angeles Times. [View Post article] [View AP article] [View London Times article] [View LA Times article]
Canadian Mounties Foiled a Dozen Plots in Past Two Years
(Toronto Globe and Mail)
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have “quietly broken up at least a dozen terrorist groups in the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail. ‘We have completed 12 disruptions of national-level terrorist groups across the country,’ the Mounties say … Disruptive tactics—sometimes as simple as letting targets know they are under close surveillance—are used to prevent a terrorist attack when the police do not have enough evidence to lay criminal charges.”
[View article]
Canada Faces ‘Jihad Generation’
(Christian Science Monitor)
“Canadians are struggling to understand the threat of ‘home-grown’ terrorism after the arrest of 17 Toronto-area young men in connection with what investigators said were plans to commit massive terrorist attacks in Canada,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. Fifteen of
the men were aged 25 or younger, many of them “longtime residents and citizens” of Canada. The “paths to radicalism … include parental influence, the efforts of charismatic spiritual leaders with extremist views, and a general sense of anger at what is seen as Muslim oppression.” And increasingly, “young Canadians are becoming radicalized through the Internet.”
[View article]
Briton Exports Terror Via Internet
(London Times)
“There is a far greater number of terror networks operating in Britain than had been thought, all using the internet to plot attacks [in Britain] and abroad,” reports the London Times. And “an Internet trail left by” Swedish-born Briton Mirsad Bektasevic, who was arrested in Bosnia in October 2005, “has led investigators to an intricate terror network spreading from the backstreets of Baghdad through cells of young militants living in European capitals to Islamic extremists plotting car-bomb attacks in North America. For nine months police and intelligence agents in eight countries have patiently worked through a forest of e-mails and intercepted telephone calls that have so far led to the arrest of up to 30 men”—“recruited, groomed by skilled propagandists and schooled in bombmaking via the internet.” These “cells had no need to visit one another and risk being shadowed” but “reportedly kept in touch with each other’s progress and synchronised their attacks.”
[View article]
British Police Shoot Man in Counterterror Raid
(New York Times; London Guardian; MSNBC)
“British police officers shot, wounded and arrested a … man before dawn” on June 2 “in a counterterrorism raid on a home in east London,” reports the New York Times. A second man “was also detained.” About “250 officers encircled the Forest Gate house” and “authorities later ordered an air exclusion zone around the house to keep airplanes and helicopters away, and they built a tent-like structure around the house to prevent evidence from being tainted.” The two “were arrested on suspicion of being involved in a terrorist chemical plot,” reports the Guardian. “… However, the Guardian has learned that senior counter-terrorism officials now believe the intelligence that led to the raid was wrong.” Now, “British anti-terrorist police are hunting for a ‘dirty’ chemical bomb that could be used in an attack in Britain after [the June 2] raid failed to uncover a device they believe exists,” reports Reuters.
[View Times article] [View Guardian article] [View Reuters article]
British July 7 Rescuers Relied Too Much on Lessons of 9/11
(London Times)
“The emergency planners charged with protecting London from a terrorist attack may have drawn the wrong lessons from 9/11 and failed, as a result, to pay enough attention to the likely needs of survivors, according to an official report published” June 5, reports the London Times. “The London Assembly report on the response to the July 7 suicide bomb attacks finds that the city’s emergency services were ill prepared for a major terrorist incident, prone to communication failures and lacking sufficient medical supplies.” But “the ‘most striking failure’ of the emergency response was a lack of planning for the care of victims, who were allowed to wander off from the scene of the bombings and then left to cope by themselves with their trauma.”
[View article]
[View report]
Proposal Would Let Iran Enrich Uranium
(Washington Post)
“The confidential diplomatic package backed by Washington and formally presented to Iran on Tuesday leaves open the possibility that Tehran will be able to enrich uranium on its own soil, U.S. and European officials said,” according to the Washington Post. “That concession, along with a promise of U.S. assistance for an Iranian civilian nuclear energy program, is conditioned on Tehran suspending its current nuclear work until the” United Nations’ “International Atomic Energy Agency determines with confidence that the program is peaceful. U.S. officials said Iran would also need to satisfy the U.N. Security Council that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon.”
[View article]
Former British Foreign Office Minister Says CIA Rendition Damages Counterterror Effort
(London Guardian)
Former British Foreign Office minister “Tony Lloyd demanded [Wednesday] that the Bush administration give ‘proper and definitive’ answers to allegations that it has been kidnapping terrorist suspects and transferring them to countries where they could be tortured,” reports the Guardian. “The Council of Europe human rights’ committee named Britain among 14 countries that had colluded with the CIA practice.” “Swiss senator Dick Marty,” who headed the investigation, “provided no direct evidence” but “‘coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centers did indeed exist in Europe,’ he wrote.” Lloyd said that “the British government’s apparent support of CIA rendition flights is ‘massively damaging’ in the battle against international terrorism.”
[View article on Lloyd] [View article on rendition report]
Hamas Has Till Today to Accept Proposed Borders (International Herald Tribune) “The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has extended the ultimatum he had issued to the Hamas government till [today], threatening that if the Islamic movement rejects the document drafted by Palestinian leaders held in Israeli jails, calling for an establishment of a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders next to Israel, he would take the issue to the Palestinian people, in a referendum,” reports the International Herald Tribune. [View article]
Efforts by CIA Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge (New York Times) “A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize,” reports the New York Times. “The criticism was expressed privately by United States government officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke the warlords’ hold on the capital, Mogadishu.”
[View article]
Swiss Foil Attack on Israeli Jet (BBC) “Swiss intelligence agents have foiled a plot to attack an Israeli El Al airliner,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “… seven people of North African origin” were arrested; they had “planned to use a rocket to bring down an El Al plane in Geneva last December.”
[View article]
Human Bird Flu Transmission May Be Under-Reported
(New York Times)
“In the wake of a cluster of avian flu cases that killed seven members of a rural Indonesian family, it appears likely that there have been many more human-to-human infections than the authorities have previously acknowledged,” reports the New York Times. And “the clusters—in Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Vietnam—paint a grimmer picture of the virus’s potential to pass from human to human than is normally described by public health officials, who usually say such cases are ‘rare.’” The World Health Organization “is generally conservative in its announcements and, as a United Nations agency, is sometimes limited by member states in what it is permitted to say about them.”
Biochemist Dr. Henry L. Niman in Pittsburgh “has argued for weeks that there have been 20 to 30 human-to-human infections” and that “clusters were becoming more frequent, especially in Indonesia.”
[View article]
Nations Not Meeting Bird Flu Commitments
(Yahoo! News)
“Only a small number of the countries that pledged nearly $2 billion in January to fight bird flu have paid out their full commitments, a World Bank draft report says. About $286 million of the $1.9 billion in pledges has been disbursed, according to a draft of the report … obtained Sunday by The Associated Press. Of the 34 donors that gathered in Beijing in January to find ways to fight the virus that has killed at least 127 people since late 2003, Japan, Switzerland, Finland and the Czech Republic have met their commitments … The United States has disbursed about $71 million out of a pledge of $334 million.”
[View article]
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National News
Bird Flu Vaccine May Be Scarce in Pandemic
(MSNBC)
“States will get to decide how to ration scarce vaccine if bird flu triggers a worldwide epidemic, [Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt] said Tuesday”—meaning that “where people live could determine their protection,” reports the Associated Press. “‘Let’s acknowledge the fact that for the first six months of any pandemic, we’re not going to have a vaccine,’ … Leavitt said.”
[View article]
DHS Doesn’t Take Cyberattack Threats Seriously, Says Former Inspector General
(Federal Computer Week)
“The United States and the Homeland Security Department are ‘manifestly and woefully unprepared’ for a cyberattack,” said former DHS inspector general Clark Ervin, according to Federal Computer Week. Ervin, speaking at the American Council for Technology’s Management of Change conference, said “al Qaeda is training people and focusing on launching cyberattacks, but DHS has ‘failed to make this a priority.’”
[View article]
Border Patrol Draws Scrutiny as Its Role Grows
(New York Times)
The Border Patrol “has swelled to more than 11,000 agents from 4,000 15 years ago, with 6,000 more proposed by President Bush by 2008,” reports the New York Times. To deal with the coming influx, the agency’s “training academy in Artesia, N.M., needs expansion … ‘This is not something where you can snap your fingers and have thousands go on the job,’ said Deborah W. Meyers, an analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. ‘It is a demanding job, and training is important and intense.’” [View article]
Fake Immigration ID Sellers Unfazed by Threats
(MSNBC)
“The fake document business has become increasingly difficult to stop,” reports the Associated Press. “In the past, authorities could often break up a network by raiding a central ‘document mill’ where Social Security cards, passports and licenses might be drying on a large printing press … Now documents are made with illegal software on laptop computers.… Authorities can also be stymied by complex delivery networks.”
[View article]
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State and Local News
DHS Cuts Funds to New York and Washington, DC; Says Washington Is at Low Risk of an Attack
(Denver Post;
Washington Post; New York Times)
“The two cities targeted in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks”—Washington and New York—“will receive far less counterterrorism money this year in what the Homeland Security Department described [on May 31] as an effort to spread funding to other communities facing threats,” reports the Associated Press. The total funds were cut $119 million from last year. “In all, 46 cities will share $710 million in Homeland Security grants to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks and, to a lesser extent, other catastrophic disasters, such as hurricanes.” DHS “has ranked” Washington, DC, “in a low-risk category of terrorist attack or catastrophe, putting it in the bottom 25 percent of U.S. states and territories,” reports the Washington Post. But despite the cuts, New York City is still number one in federal urban preparedness funding, said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. [View AP article]
[View Washington Post article] [View Chertoff commentary]
California Guard Will Go to the Mexican Border (MSNBC) “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed [on June 1] to send the California National Guard to the Mexican border, ending a 17-day standoff with the Bush administration,” reports the Associated Press. “… The two sides had been at odds over whether California Guardsmen would join the effort to bolster the Border Patrol and who would pay for it. They reached an agreement under which California will contribute about 1,000 Guardsmen and the federal government will pick up the full cost.”
[View article]
State CIOs Skeptical of Hurricane Readiness
(Federal Computer Week)
When chief information officers “and other top technology leaders from 38 states, Guam, and the District of Columbia … were asked if they felt that state and local governments are more prepared for major disasters since Hurricane Katrina,” almost seven of ten “who responded to [a] spot survey … disagreed or strongly disagreed,” reports Federal Computer Week. “… Almost 80 percent of participants in the survey disagreed or strongly disagreed with the suggestion of improved readiness” by the federal government.
[View article]
Texans Dispute Storm Evacuation Plans
(Fort Worth, TX, Star-Telegram)
Houston Mayor Bill White claims that his is the best-prepared major city, reports the Star-Telegram. Galveston’s mayor, Lyda Ann Thomas, says they’ll have to experience another wave of hurricanes before they know whether the plans are any good. “When it comes to running from hurricanes, the mayor [Henry Garrett] said, in Corpus Christi ‘we have it down to an art.… And we don’t need someone messing with it.’” Gov. Rick Perry says “‘it makes sense for the state to coordinate the evacuation.’” The state’s plans include using Trinity Railway Express commuter trains from the inland cities of Dallas and Fort Worth to help evacuate residents from the path of a hurricane. But “Cameron County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa said it would be a ‘harebrained’ move to put Perry in charge of all hurricane evacuations. State and local emergency management ‘professionals,’ not politicians, should be running the show, Hinojosa said.”
[View article]
Prosecutors Hail Virginia Jihad Paintball Case (Washington Post) “The government’s prosecution of the ‘Virginia jihad network’ has produced more guilty verdicts than any domestic terrorism case since Sept. 11 and symbolizes a new direction in the legal war on terrorism, government officials and experts said” Wednesday, reports the Washington Post. “Some Muslims and lawyers” deride the probe “as the ‘paintball case,’ saying” that the Muslim men did nothing more than “play paintball in the woods and … never intended attacks inside the United States.” But “federal officials point to the Virginia case as a prime example of their post–Sept. 11 mandate to focus on preventing attacks.”
[View article]
New Orleans Tests Evacuation by Bus (Metro magazine) Federal Emergency Management Agency “officials and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff participated in an evacuation drill in New Orleans on” 30 May, reports Metro magazine. They rode a Regional Transit Authority bus and wore “plastic bar code bracelets.… 3,000 RTA buses, additional Amtrak trains and possibly airplanes will be used to pick up evacuees from staging areas throughout the city and surrounding parishes ahead of a major storm. National Guard troops will be on standby to drive buses in case RTA employees flee from an approaching storm along with other frightened residents.”
[View article]
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Dual-Benefit Solutions
National Geographic’s Topo! Pro Uses GIS-Based Mapping National Geographic Maps has developed a line
of Topo! Pro products that provide simple, effective geographic information system–based mapping, enabling emergency response teams, city planners, firefighters, civil engineers, health professionals, National Parks and forest managers, utility managers, transportation managers, and municipal, county, state, and federal governments to make decisions based on graphical descriptions of precise points in time and space. The Topo! Pro series combines maps, data sets, and GIS technologies to create interactive mapping tools that can be used in the field, in the air, or in the office, in real time.
[View website]
Virtual Earth Can Quickly Shift Into Crisis Mode (Federal Computer Week) The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has “developed a customized version of Virtual Earth, Microsoft’s online mapping service, to aid disaster recovery efforts,” reports Federal Computer Week. “During Katrina and Rita, NGA used Virtual Earth to create a portal that provided citizens, government users and partner organizations with maps and satellite imagery of the disaster area.” Bruce Harris, NGA Director of IT solutions, “intends for NGA Earth to expand beyond crisis support and provide everyday, worldwide assistance to the military and intelligence communities.”
[View article]
Federal Center Hosts Art Studios (Seattle Stranger) “Seattle’s largest—and growing—artist colony is at the heart of a gated federal compound, in a place where having a glass of wine requires written permission and on-site photography is discouraged for national-security reasons,” reports the Stranger. In Federal Center South, “at the local headquarters for the secretive activities of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the ATF, FEMA, customs, and border enforcement,” the General Services Administration “provides studios, at half market rate, to almost 50 artists.”
[View article]
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Federal News
HHS Announces $1.2 Billion to States for Bioterrorism Preparedness
The Department of Health and Human Services is giving $1.2 billion to states, territories, and four metropolitan areas to combat terrorism and other public health emergencies. The funding is through two cooperative agreements. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is providing $776 million to develop emergency-ready public health departments by upgrading, improving, and sustaining preparedness and response capabilities for all-hazards public health emergencies, including terrorism and naturally occurring public health emergencies.
Included in the CDC awards is targeted funding to expand the Cities Readiness Initiative from 36 metropolitan areas to 72, representing all 50 states.
[View press release]
U.S. Not Well Prepared for Tsunamis, Says GAO
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “has determined that the Pacific coast states of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, face the greatest tsunami hazard,” reports the Government Accountability Office. But “limited information exists on the likely impacts of a tsunami,” and “some coastal areas lack inundation maps showing the potential extent of tsunami flooding.” Furthermore, there are “concerns about false alarms—the 16 warnings issued since 1982 were not followed by destructive tsunamis.” [View abstract]
Common Federal ID Must Overcome Mistrust (Government Computer News) “As agencies await approved products and services under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12,” which mandates a common identification standard for federal employees and contractors, “another significant barrier to completing the administration’s mandate remains: establishing a trust among agencies to accept each other’s cards …” reports Government Computer News. “‘You hope no one is cutting corners, but there is need for oversight,’ said Patrick Howard, the Housing and Urban Development Department’s chief information security officer.… Another barrier, Howard said, is whether agencies can agree to accept each other’s risk assessments.”
[View article]
President Establishes Task Force on New Americans President Bush on Wednesday ordered the creation of a cabinet-level task force to “provide direction to executive departments and agencies (agencies) concerning the integration into American society of America’s legal immigrants, particularly through instruction in English, civics, and history,” “promote public-private partnerships that will encourage businesses to offer English and civics education to workers,” “identify ways to expand English and civics instruction for legal immigrants,” and “make recommendations to the President.”
[View announcement]
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| Coast Guard photo | New Coast Guard Chief Discusses Lessons Learned From Katrina
(Government Executive)
“The operational genius of the Coast Guard is still that we give our field commanders a mission, an area of responsibility, and their own resources and assets, such as cutters and aircraft, and then we leave it up to them,” Adm. Thad Allen, the new U.S. Coast Guard commandant, told National Journal. “Our field commanders are responsible for assessing the threats in their regions and reacting accordingly, and they don’t require any higher approval to do so. Of course, if an operation goes south because of their judgments, we also hold them accountable.” But “in a speech at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s higher education conference in Emmitsburg, Md.,” he noted a shortcoming in national disaster readiness: “Allen said the 17 critical ‘emergency support functions’ outlined in the National Response Plan fail to fully cover the possibility of a pandemic flu outbreak.”
[View interview] [View article]
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Private-Sector News
Businesses Are Behind on Planning Continuity of Operations (Federal Computer Week) “Organizations need to improve the management of their business continuity-of-operations plans, a Gartner analyst,” Roberta Witty, says, according to Federal Computer Week. “Regional planning continues to be weak … Organizations must also plan for a potential pandemic, Witty said.”
[View article]
HHS Orders 200,000 Doses of Botulism Antitoxin for BioShield The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded a contract to the Cangene Corporation of Winnipeg, Canada, for 200,000 doses of heptavalent botulism antitoxin for $1,813 per dose. Delivery is scheduled to begin next year.
[View press release]
UpSnap Offers Bird Flu Alert Service (Mobile Magazine) UpSnap, a startup “company based in Davidson, N.C., … has come up with what it claims to be the first bird flu alert service,” according to Mobile Magazine, citing a Yahoo! News report. “As soon as bird flu appears in your state or region, you’ll receive a text message alerting you so you can climb into your bunker and hide.… The $3.99 per month service will also alert you about major terror incidents, travel advisories, public health warnings and natural disaster updates.”
[View article]
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Please submit events and educational programs by noon Wednesdays for consideration as items in that week’s newsletter.
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Education
The Homeland Security Institute lists these education programs as a service to readers who may be interested; it does not endorse them or
their courses.
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New
Mirror Image: Training to Combat Terrorism (June 18-23; Moyock, NC) Mirror Image is an intensive, one-week classroom and field training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques, and operational tactics. During the course, military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security professionals will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands-on experience with the methods and means they use and education about the ideologies that motivate them and cultural dimensions that influence their decision making. [View conference website]
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Terrorism: Threats, Training, Tactics and Technology (August 7-9; Los Angeles) Nationally renowned experts will explore terrorism, emerging threats, training, tactics, and technology issues. Military, law enforcement, intelligence, security professionals, first responders, emergency managers, government leaders, and academics can explore some of the challenges and gain a comprehensive understanding of issues related to terrorism.
[View conference website]
Hospital Management of Chemical, Biological, Radiological/Nuclear and Explosive Incidents (August 14-18; Aberdeen, MD) This course, hosted by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, provides civilian healthcare professionals with state-of-the art instruction in planning for and managing multi-casualty incidents resulting from CBRNE terrorist attacks. For more information, visit the course website or call (410) 436-2230 or (410) 436-3393. [View course website]
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Upcoming Events
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New Events (After four weeks, new events will be moved to the list below, in chronological order)
U.S. Coast Guard Innovation Expo (June 26-28; Tampa, FL) The theme of this year’s conference is “Preparedness: International, Federal, State, Local and Private Partnerships to Achieve Domain Integration.” Senior Coast Guard leaders, including many flag officers, will attend. Keynote speakers include Admiral Thad Allen, Coast Guard Commandant; Michael P. Jackson, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security; and Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Members of government, academia, and the National Defense Industrial Association are expected to attend. The Coast Guard is soliciting exhibitors and sponsors. [View conference website] [Apply to exhibit]
Government Conference on Information Sharing and Homeland Security (July 18-19; Washington, DC) This 5th annual conference will bring together more than 400 leaders in the national security community and private sector to address critical topics confronting intelligence, law enforcement, and national security. The conference will focus on the gathering, sharing, and interpreting of information across intelligence, law enforcement, and first responder organizations, as well as the enabling technologies that provide the information backbone.
[View conference website]
Homeland Defense Symposium (October 2-5; Colorado Springs) This fourth annual symposium brings the Defense and Homeland Security departments together with academia, corporate America, and the media.
[View conference website]
Environmental Sampling and Detection for Bio-Threat Agents (October 25-27; New York) This second national conference will be a forum for dialog among government, industry, academia, and first responders to address environmental sampling and bio-detection with presentations, discussions, and exhibits to identify gaps and define next steps for sampling and detection. Guest speakers will discuss their vision for environmental sampling and detection and for coordinating and documenting first responder needs.
[View conference website]
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June 12-13; Denver: Terrorism Research Symposium
June 12-16; Miami:
Explosives Detection Conference (enter code TSW73414)
June 13-14; Hong Kong: Air & Port Security Expo
Asia
June 25-30; Quincy, MA:
6th International Conference on Complex Systems
July 5-13; Washington, DC: SANSFire
July 11-13; Richmond, VA:
4th TICs and TIMs Symposium
July 24-26; Mystic, CT: INFORMS Military Applications Society
September 6-8; Atlanta: Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference & Expo
September 13-14; Brussels, Belgium: Air & Port Security Expo Europe
September 19-20; New York: U.S. Maritime Security Expo
September 19-21; Baltimore: Biometric Consortium Conference
December 3-6; Baltimore: Society for Risk Analysis
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