National News

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Rice and Tenet Dispute Pre-9/11 Message (Washington Post) “Former CIA director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that he had warned of an imminent threat from al-Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice, adding that he believed Rice took the warning seriously,” reports the Washington Post. “… Rice angrily rejected those assertions [on Monday], saying that it was ‘incomprehensible’ that she would have ignored such explicit intelligence from senior CIA officials and that she received no warning at the meeting of an attack within the United States.… Members of the commission” had said they didn’t know about the meeting, but “it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who sat in on the interview with Tenet.” At first, Rice said “that the meeting may never have occurred at all … A State Department spokesman said later that while the meeting definitely happened, Rice and Tenet disputed” Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward’s characterization of her response in his new book, Plan of Attack. However, the White House says that “the information Rice received at the July 10 briefing was ‘not new’ and not an urgent warning.” The White House also takes issue with parts of Woodward’s book. [View article] [View White House statement on the Rice-Tenet meeting] [View White House statement on Plan of Attack]

Secret Pentagon Iraq Assessment Contradicted Report to Congress (Washington Post) On May 24 “the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence assessment to the White House,” foretelling “a more violent 2007: ‘Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase [the] current level of violence through the next year,’” according to the Washington Post. “A graph included in the assessment measured attacks from May 2003 to May 2006. It showed some significant dips, but the current number of attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces and Iraqi authorities was as high as it had ever been—exceeding 3,500 a month. [In July the number would be over 4,500.].… On May 26, the Pentagon released an unclassified report to Congress, required by law, that contradicted the Joint Chiefs’ secret assessment. The public report sent to Congress said [that] the ‘appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007.’” [View article]

Terror Inmates’ Mail Unscreened (Washington Times) “The Federal Bureau of Prisons does not read all the mail from and to terrorists and other high-risk inmates on current monitoring lists and does not have enough proficient translators for foreign-language mail,” according to the Justice Department’s Inspector General, reports the Washington Times. The “Inspector General said the bureau’s mail-monitoring program is ‘deficient in several respects,’ including staff trained to analyze whether terrorists’ communications contain suspicious content.” The bureau “is unable to monitor effectively high-risk inmates’ oral communications, which include telephone calls, visits with family and friends and cellblock conversations.” [View article]

Court Lets Warrantless Spying Continue Pending Appeal (MSNBC) “The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge’s ruling that the program is unconstitutional,” the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday, reports the Associated Press. “The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism … U.S. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program was unconstitutional because it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers.” [View article]

Passports Required for Air Passengers From Canada and Mexico in January (New York Times) “Because of stricter national security rules going into effect” on January 8, Americans “will have to produce passports, not just birth certificates and driver’s licenses, to get back into the United States” if they return by air from outside the country, reports the New York Times. “… For years, an American adult needed only a valid driver’s license and birth certificate to go back and forth between the States and Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, Panama and most Caribbean islands. Children needed just birth certificates.” A passport costs “$97 for adults and $82 for children under 16.” The wait time is usually 6 weeks or less, but “an extra $60 for expedited service … typically cuts [the] wait time to two weeks.… With tourism dollars at stake, some Caribbean resorts are offering to foot some of the bill for customers who need passports.… changes in the rules for travel by land or sea have been delayed until June 1, 2009.” [View article]

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International News

Iraq Terrorist Calls Scientists to Jihad (Yahoo! News) An audiotape released on September 28 and attributed to the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq—Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, or Abu Ayyub al-Masri as he is also known—“called for nuclear scientists to join his group’s holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison,” reports the Associated Press. Al-Masri “said experts in the fields of ‘chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences—especially nuclear scientists and explosives experts’ should join his group’s jihad, or holy war, against the West.” [View article]

Iraqi Hospitals Run by Death Squads (CBS News) “The U.S. military has documented how Sadr’s Mahdi Army has turned morgues and hospitals into places where death squads operate freely,” reports CBS News. “… an intelligence report seen by CBS News” includes these “details …

• Hospitals have become command and control centers for the Mahdi Army militia.
• Sunni patients are being murdered; some are dragged from their beds.
• The militia is keeping hostages inside some hospitals, where they are tortured and executed.
• They’re using ambulances to transport hostages and illegal weapons, and even to help their fighters escape from U.S. forces.

Iraqi Peace Plan Places Responsibility on Citizens (DefenseLink) “The reconciliation plan announced by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Oct. 2 enables Iraqi citizens from all political groups to hold their security forces responsible and to take responsibility for creating peace and tolerance within their own neighborhoods,” reports American Forces Press Service. The plan “calls for the creation of joint committees throughout Baghdad made up of clerics, tribal sheiks, representatives from all political blocs, and the armed forces, is aimed at ending internal battles that were preventing the unity Iraq so desperately needs, Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell” said. [View article]

Pakistan Accused of Hundreds of Terror Abductions (Reuters AlertNet) “Pakistan has abducted hundreds of people as part of the [U.S.-led] war on terror, often secretly holding them for months while they are interrogated, the human rights group Amnesty International said on” September 29, reports Reuters. “Some suspects were held in Pakistani interrogation centres, but many were handed over to U.S. custody and held in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Airbase or other secret detention facilities, the group said … In many cases, U.S. agents paid a bounty of $5,000 to those, usually intelligence agents, who simply declared people terrorists, seized them and handed them over for interrogation with no legal process, Amnesty said.… The rights group said [that] the clandestine nature of the war on terror made it impossible to know exactly how many people had been forcibly ‘disappeared’ and tortured or illegally executed, but the number must run into hundreds.” [View article]

Belgium Rules Sifting of Bank Data Illegal (Washington Post) “A secret U.S. program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links [see the June 30 newsletter] violated Belgian and European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said” on September 28, reports the Washington Post. “The decision, announced by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, came as the country’s Data Privacy Commission released a 20-page report finding that the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, had improperly turned over data from millions of global financial transactions to U.S. anti-terrorism investigators.” [View article]

Convicted U.S. Freelance Terrorist Hunter Leaves Afghan Jail (CNN) “An American convicted of running a prison in Afghanistan as part of a private hunt for terrorists left the country late Saturday following his release from an Afghan jail,” reports the Associated Press. “… U.S. officials planned to help Brent Bennett secure a passport and a ticket out of the country … Bennett, former U.S. soldier Jonathan ‘Jack’ Idema, and Edward Carabello were arrested in July 2004 and convicted of running a private prison in Kabul after Afghan security forces raided a house and discovered eight Afghan men who said they had been abused.” Idema is still in jail, and Carabello “was released in April.” [View article]

India Court Convicts One, Acquits Five Over ’93 Mumbai Bombings (Yahoo! News) “An Indian court convicted another man accused of involvement in a series of bomb blasts across India’s financial capital Mumbai 13 years ago that killed 257 people,” reports Agence France-Presse. (See last week’s newsletter.) “Sarfaraz Dawood Phanse was found guilty of conspiracy for handling rifles and explosives. Five others were acquitted by the court.… Phanse is the 20th person to be convicted … Eleven people have so far been acquitted.” [View article]

Independent Commission Says IRA Has Quit Terrorism (Washington Times) “The Irish Republican Army is no longer engaged in terrorist activity and has shut down key units for weapons making, arms smuggling and training,” according to the Independent Monitoring Commission, reports the Associated Press. The panel reported that the “IRA ‘has disbanded “military” structures,’ including its headquarters units that direct weapons smuggling, bomb making, training and recruitment. They said IRA commanders also had begun cutting their rank-and-file membership and had stopped making payments to them.” [View article]

Canada–United States Coast Guard Summit George Da Pont, Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard, and Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, met in Halifax, Nova Scotia, this week to continue formally building on the long-standing partnership between their two agencies. The delegations met over three days to discuss shared interest such as challenges and opportunities surrounding maritime safety and security matters. [View press release]

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State and Local News

New York’s Grand Central and Penn Station Get Better Chemical Detectors (New York Times) “Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority” in New York City “have decided to spend $3.9 million to further upgrade the network of sensors at Grand Central Terminal and install a similar system in Pennsylvania Station,” reports the New York Times. “… Amtrak said it also had plans to place monitors in the portion of Penn Station it controls, and to put chemical-detection systems in place in three other stations, in Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago.… At Grand Central, the system is one of several safeguards, including radiation monitors and sensors that detect biological or germ warfare agents.” [View article]

Washington, DC, Unveils Regional Communication Center (Government Computer News) “The grand opening [last] week of” Washington’s “new 127,000-square-foot Unified Communications Center represented the culmination of an eight-year journey to create a state-of-the-art communications and emergency command center for the greater Washington region,” reports Government Computer News. “Billed as one of the premier facilities of its kind in the nation, the [center] brings together for the first time, the city’s emergency, nonemergency and public-service call-taking and dispatch functions in a single location, using a unified voice and data communications system. It will also house the city’s regional interoperable wireless communications and control infrastructure.… it will serve as the regional command and control center, supporting federal agencies and 18 Virginia and Maryland municipalities, in the event of a regional emergency.” [View article]

DHS Strategic Plan for the National Capital Region The plan for the Washington, DC, area has all the characteristics the Government Accountability Office considers desirable in a regional homeland security strategy, according to William O. Jenkins, Jr., GAO Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, testifying on September 28 before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia (Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs). However, “the plan does not reflect a comprehensive risk assessment,” and “many objectives include language such as ‘strengthen,’ ‘enhance,’ ‘increase,’ ‘improve,’ and ‘expand’”—not measurable, although the plan itself says the objectives should be. [View abstract]

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DHS News

DHS Laptops Still Vulnerable (Federal Computer Week) “Laptop computers used by the Homeland Security Department’s Office of the Inspector General … are still susceptible to cyberattacks despite several recent steps taken to harden security,” reports Federal Computer Week. A report by the Inspector General’s Office of Information Technology found that the Inspector General’s Office “has not plugged some critical vulnerabilities in its sensitive-but-unclassified … laptop computers, even though the office had successfully designed a standard software installation based on National Security Agency and DHS guidelines. The list of specific vulnerabilities was redacted from the [Inspector General’s] unclassified report.” [View article]

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Other Federal News

Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill (Yahoo! News) “President Bush on Wednesday signed a homeland security bill that includes an overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $1.2 billion for fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border to stem illegal immigration,” reports the Associated Press. “… Among other things, Bush said the homeland security funding bill deploys nuclear detection equipment to points of entry, raises safety security standards at chemical plants, provides better tools to enforce immigration laws and provides vehicle barriers, lighting and infrared cameras to help catch illegals trying to cross the border.” [View article]

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Private-Sector News

Bird Flu Vaccine for Humans Looks Promising (MSNBC) “Preliminary results from an early clinical trial of a vaccine for pandemic bird flu suggest the vaccine is safe and well tolerated and may prove effective against divergent strains of the disease,” reports Reuters. “‘This is the first clinical demonstration that a candidate H5N1 (bird flu virus) vaccine can induce antibodies that neutralize widely divergent strains of H5N1,’ said Noel Barrett, vice president of Global research and development for [Baxter International Inc.’s] vaccines business.” [View article]

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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.

Terrorism: Threats, Training, Tactics and Technology (October 23-25, Tacoma, WA) Nationally renowned experts will discuss terrorism, emerging threats, training, tactics, and technology issues. Participants will have the opportunity to explore some of the challenges and gain a comprehensive understanding of issues related to terrorism. [View conference website] Medical Management of Chemical and Biological Casualties (October 29–November 3; Aberdeen and Fort Detrick, MD) The course is conducted jointly by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases; it is designed for physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals. Classroom, laboratory, and field instruction focuses on pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of chemical and biological casualties. [View conference website] Mirror Image (November 12-17; 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. Participants will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands-on experience with the methods and means they use, plus education about the ideologies that motivate them and cultural dimensions that influence their decision making. [View course website] Hospital Management of Chemical, Biological, Radiological/Nuclear and Explosive Incidents (January 8-12, 2007; Aberdeen, MD) The course, hosted by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, instructs civilian healthcare professionals in planning for and managing multicasualty incidents resulting from such terrorist attacks. [View conference website]

Upcoming Events

October 25-27; New York: Environmental Sampling and Detection for Bio-Threat Agents

October 26; London: Global Security Challenge

November 21-23, Helsinki, Finland: Information Society Technologies 2006

December 3-6; Baltimore: Society for Risk Analysis

February 6-7; Washington, DC: Homeland Security: The Ripple Effect

June 5-8, 2007; Trogir, Croatia: The 14th TIEMS (International Emergency Management Society) International Conference

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