National News

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Architect of 9/11 Confesses to Many Attacks (Washington Post) “Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon” on Wednesday, reports the Washington Post. (See the Quote of the Week.) “… Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict.” [View article] [View transcript]

Coast Guard photo

GAO Considers LNG Tankers as Terrorist Targets An attack on a ship carrying liquefied natural gas could cause a fire that would injure people a mile away, but an explosion would be unlikely, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued Wednesday. Another hazard is “the potential for cascading failure of LNG tanks.” Congress asked the GAO to compare six studies of LNG shipping and terminal hazards by organizations such as the Energy Department and Sandia National Laboratory. [View abstract]

U.S. Not Ready for Nuclear Attack (Seattle Times) “Although the Bush administration has warned repeatedly about the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack and spent more than $300 billion to protect the homeland, the government remains ill-prepared to respond to a nuclear catastrophe,” reports McClatchy Newspapers. “Experts and government documents suggest that, absent a major preparedness push, the U.S. response to a mushroom cloud could be worse than the debacle after Hurricane Katrina, possibly contributing to civil disorder and costing thousands of lives.… The government’s National Planning Scenario, which isn’t public, projects that a relatively small, improvised 10-kiloton bomb could kill hundreds of thousands of people in a medium-sized city and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses.” [View article]

Council on American-Islamic Relations Under Scrutiny (New York Times) “An organization partly financed by donors closely identified with wealthy Persian Gulf governments has emerged as the most vocal advocate for American Muslims—and an object of wide suspicion,” reports the New York Times. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (see the Oct. 6 Site of the Week) “defines its mission as spreading the understanding of Islam and protecting civil liberties. Its officers appear frequently on television and are often quoted in newspapers, and its director has met with President Bush. Some 500,000 people receive the group’s daily e-mail newsletter. Yet a debate rages behind the scenes in Washington … ‘when you ask people for cold hard facts, you get blank stares,’ said Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. official … critics accuse CAIR of pursuing an extreme Islamist political agenda and say at least five figures with ties to the group or its leadership have either been convicted or deported for links to terrorist groups.… There were no charges linked to CAIR.” [View article]

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International News

Terrorists Proving Harder to Profile (Washington Post) “Terrorism suspects from atypical backgrounds are becoming increasingly common in Western Europe,” reports the Washington Post. “With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians—groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism. The demographics of those being arrested are so diverse that many European counterterrorism officials and analysts say they have given up trying to predict what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists. Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and more irrelevant.… there are clear signs that al-Qaeda cells and affiliates are intentionally recruiting supporters from nontraditional backgrounds as a way to avoid detection, according to European intelligence officials and analysts”—who say that “more attention should be devoted to understanding the personal experiences that motivate people to become radicals.” [View article]

OAS Conference Examines Threats From Portable Missiles Experts from national and international institutions talked last week about the dangers posed by portable air-defense missiles and called for the international community to prevent these military defense weapons from illegal transfers and unauthorized use. Discussions at the conference sponsored by the Organization of American States also focused on national and regional approaches, initiatives by the OAS and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, resources available to assist member states, and a General Assembly resolution on guidelines for controlling proliferation of the shoulder-fired missiles. [View press release]

Six Asian Countries Hold Pandemic Preparedness Test (USA Today) “Six Asian nations tested their preparedness Tuesday for a possible outbreak of a pandemic caused by a long-feared mutation of the bird flu virus,” reports the Associated Press. “… China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam … share borders and a history of transmigration [and] face the possibility of a similar outbreak.… In the practice scenario, 18 people and three health care workers tested positive in a Malaysian community for bird flu, and it was then found that the H5N1 virus had mutated into a form easily spread between humans. Two of the biggest challenges the officials discussed were detecting suspected cases and then communicating that information rapidly to each other and the public.” [View article]

Man Sentenced to 9 Years for Australia Terror Plot (Melbourne, Australia, Age) “A French court yesterday sentenced Willie Brigitte to nine years’ jail for plotting to carry out terror attacks, the main one in Australia,” reports the Age. “… Investigators said he trained with terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan” and “was working in co-operation with Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-born architect who was sentenced to 20 years in jail last year for planning to blow up Sydney’s power grid.” Sajid “Mir, Brigitte’s co-defendant in absentia, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on the same charges as Brigitte, with two-thirds of that to be the non-parole period. His whereabouts remain unknown.” [View article]

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United Nations News

Disaster Preparedness Training Saved Lives After Indonesian Quake Disaster preparedness training prepared local communities to minimize casualties following last week’s 6.3-magnitude earthquake on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The UN Technical Working Group, in conjunction with the National Coordinating Board for the Management of Disaster, carried out contingency planning activities in the impacted area last year. [View press release]

UN Suspends 22 Technical Aid Projects in Iran The UN International Atomic Energy Agency last week suspended 22 technical aid projects in Iran in conformity with sanctions imposed by the Security Council over a programme that Tehran says is for producing energy but which critics maintain is for making nuclear weapons. [View press release]

UN Human Rights Council Seeks Identity (Washington Post) “The United Nations’ top human rights body, scorned by the U.S. administration and shunned by the only two countries it has sought to scrutinize, is still trying to set the rules for combatting atrocities a year after its creation by the General Assembly,” reports the Associated Press. “The 47-nation Human Rights Council, which [began] its first three-week session of the year on Monday, has already been widely criticized for its first-year failures over Israel and Sudan and finds itself in a power struggle. Member countries including China, Russia and Cuba object to being examined, while outnumbered Western nations are trying to hold everyone accountable to the highest standards.… The idea behind the council was to replace the highly politicized Human Rights Commission with a new body that could keep some of the worst offenders out of its membership as it extended its work from an annual six-week session to multiple meetings year round.” [View article]

WHO Task Force Will Address Shortage of Health Workers The Global Health Workforce Alliance, set up last year by the United Nations World Health Organization, has established an 11-member task force that will explore how to eliminate the global shortage of doctors, nurses, and other health workers. Another 4.3 million of these professionals are needed, especially in developing countries that are must vulnerable to medical crises. [View press release]

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DHS News

Purchase of Radiation Detectors Not Justified, Says GAO The Homeland Security Department’s “cost-benefit analysis does not provide a sound” basis for its decision to purchase and deploy new radiation-detection portal monitors to address the threat of nuclear smuggling, according to Gene Aloise, Government Accountability Office Director of Natural Resources and Environment, who testified Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology (Committee on Homeland Security). “DHS assumed that the new portal monitor technology would correctly detect and identify highly enriched uranium” 95% “of the time—a performance level that far exceeds the new technology’s current capabilities,” according to the abstract of testimony. Also, DHS “did not fully consider how well the new portal monitor technology could correctly detect or identify other dangerous radiological or nuclear materials.” [View abstract]

Increased TSA Inspections Follow Arrest of 2 Airport Workers (USA Today) “The Transportation Security Administration began intense random inspections of airport workers in Florida and Puerto Rico on Monday after the arrest of two Orlando-based airline employees who allegedly carried 14 guns onto an airplane,” reports USA Today. “Last week’s arrests [see the March 9 newsletter] heightened calls in Congress for the TSA to screen the 900,000 airport workers who can get onto airplanes and into secure airport areas without going through metal detectors.… The TSA sent a total of 160 screeners to Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and San Juan airports where they will spend the week searching employees, checking their ID badges and searching airplanes before passenger boarding … Airport passengers also may face random screening at gates.” [View article]

DHS Awards High-Tech Research Contracts to Small Businesses The Homeland Security Department’s Science and Technology directorate has selected 22 small businesses to participate in technology contracts that will increase innovation and creativity in research and development in homeland security solutions; 23 projects will be funded through the Small Business Innovation Research program with individual companies receiving up to $100,000 in one of five research areas. [View press release]

Coast Guard picture

Coast Guard Opens High-Tech Training Facility The U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday officially dedicated a new high-tech training facility at the training center in Petaluma, CA. Previously the home of the Coast Guard’s communications school, Building 500 now houses classrooms, high-tech shipboard operation simulators, and state-of-the-art radar and electronics systems to train crews of the Coast Guard’s new Legend-class national security cutters. The renovation included space for the training center’s police force and the Coast Guard’s independent-duty health services technician school. [View press release]

NOAA photo

FEMA Seeks Tornado ‘Safe Room’ Reports If your family has built a safe room and used it for shelter during the March 1, 2007, tornadoes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency would like to hear about your experience. Please call FEMA at (334) 274-8819. This phone number is only for reports about safe rooms. [View press release]

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Other Federal News

FBI Abused Patriot Act, Says Justice Dept. (CNN; Los Angeles Times) “The FBI is guilty of ‘serious misuse’ of the power to secretly obtain private information under the Patriot Act,” according to “the Justice Department’s inspector general,” reports CNN. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine “looked at the FBI’s use of national security letters (NSLs), in which agents demand personal and business information about individuals—such as financial, phone, and Internet records—without court orders. The audit found [that] the letters were issued without proper authority, cited incorrect statutes or obtained information they weren’t supposed to.” FBI Director Robert Mueller said “that the FBI often did not have sufficient safeguards in place to prevent abuses,” reports the Los Angeles Times. [View CNN article] [View LA Times article]

Energy Dept. Nonproliferation Work Needs to Focus on Worst Threats, Says GAO The Energy Department “has improved the security of hundreds of sites that contain radiological sources in more than 40 countries,” according to a January Government Accountability Office report (released this week) to the Chairman of 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, many of the highest-risk and most dangerous sources still remain unsecured, particularly in Russia.” [View abstract]

Radiation Diagnostic and Treatment Toolkit for Healthcare Providers The Department of Health and Human Services has developed a new downloadable online diagnostic and treatment toolkit designed for healthcare providers, primarily physicians, who may have to provide medical care during a radiation incident. The information package contains procedures for diagnosis and management of radiation contamination and exposure, guidance for the use of radiation medical countermeasures, and other features to facilitate medical responses. It is available on the Radiation Event Medical Management website. [View press release] [View Radiation Event website]

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State and Local News

Fictional Terror Strike Leads to 15 Years (USA Today) “Two leaders”—Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain—“of an Albany [NY] mosque who were snared in an FBI sting involving a fictional terror strike were sentenced [last] Thursday to 15 years in federal prison,” reports the Associated Press. “… The two were convicted in October for their roles in a money laundering scheme involving an FBI informant who posed as an illegal arms dealer.… Defense attorneys claimed the transactions were innocent, noting that Muslims often lend money to each other with clerics serving as witnesses.… U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy cited the men’s lack of criminal records, their character and a high level of community support in giving them lesser sentences than the maximum 30 years to life in prison.” [View article]

U.S. Officers Outgunned on Mexican Border (Washington Times) “Violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is undergoing what U.S. law-enforcement authorities call ‘an unprecedented surge,’ some of it fueled by weapons and ammunition purchased or stolen in the United States,” reports the Washington Times. “Federal, state and local law-enforcement officials from Texas to California, concerned about the impact of illegally imported weapons into Mexico, say they already are outmanned and outgunned by ruthless gangs that collect millions of dollars in profits by smuggling aliens and drugs into this country.” [View article]

States Disinvest in Companies That Do Business With Terror-Sponsoring Countries (Yahoo! News) “A growing number of states are considering pulling their investments out of companies that conduct business with Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, all of which are on the State Department’s list of terror-sponsoring nations,” reports the Associated Press. “Missouri led the way last year when it became the first state to order its employee pension funds to dump shares of companies that deal with those four countries. At least five other states—California, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey and Texas—have similar legislative proposals pending.” [View article]

FEMA Empties Louisiana Trailer Park (Washington Post) Federal Emergency Management Agency agents earlier this month gave Hammond, LA, “residents of the Yorkshire Mobile Home Park, all of them families displaced by Hurricane Katrina,” 48 hours’ notice to leave the park, offering the “bewildered” residents “answers that were uncertain and sometimes contradictory,” said residents, according to the Washington Post. “… The Yorkshire residents were eventually scattered to other FEMA parks. But their sudden evacuation [March 3-4] illustrates the upheavals that still accompany life in a government trailer park 18 months after the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005. About 12,000 households in Louisiana live in such settlements, temporary arrangements that only out of desperation are being stretched out indefinitely.” [View article]

Washington, DC, Recalls 1977 Hostage Crisis (Washington Post) “For 39 hours in March 1977—before the word ‘terrorism’ entered our daily vocabulary—12 gunmen paralyzed the District [of Columbia] in a three-point siege,” reports the Washington Post. “The group of Hanafi Muslims held about 150 people hostage in three buildings, and before they surrendered, a young reporter was killed and dozens were injured.” [View article]

Coast Guard Holds Security Exercises in Alaska and Georgia Coast Guard Sector Juneau (Alaska) conducted a two-part area maritime security exercise Tuesday and Wednesday to test the capabilities of maritime industry and government to take quick and well-coordinated action in response to a security incident on southeast Alaskan waters. Yesterday, the Coast Guard, the Army National Guard, and the Air National Guard conducted a joint homeland security exercise at the mouth of the Savannah River. [View Alaska press release] [View Savannah press release]

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Private-Sector News

Chiquita Admits Paying Colombian Terror Group for Protection (Yahoo! News) “Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid a Colombian terrorist group for protection in a volatile farming region,” reports the Associated Press. “… several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers at the Cincinnati-based company paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia [which] has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia’s civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country’s cocaine exports.” The U.S. Government designated it a terrorist group in 2001. [View article]

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Dual-Benefit Solutions

Blog System Would Help Disaster Response A team from the Indiana University School of Informatics and the university’s Pervasive Technology Labs has created the Bloomington Emergency Collaborative Information System, a research project in which bloggers monitor communication sources such as the Internet, television, and two-way radio traffic and then contact authorities. [View press release]

Dual-benefit news archive

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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. New education listings are posted for four weeks.

Mirror Image (April 22-27; Moyock, NC) Mirror Image is an intensive 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]

Upcoming Events

New Events (After four weeks, new events will be moved to the list below, in chronological order) (March 27-29; Singapore) This is an opportunity for companies and research institutions to showcase their latest equipment and systems that have been specifically designed and developed to meet the needs of counter-terrorism, special forces, and government security agencies worldwide, and it is an intellectual platform for the world’s experts in security, intelligence, and defense. [View conference website] Defense Industrial Base Critical Infrastructure Program Conference & Exhibition (April 10-12; Miami) At this conference, attendees will hear from senior federal, state, local, private-sector, and defense industry leaders on key critical infrastructure issues and challenges. Exploring public- and private-sector concepts of resiliency from the perspective of intentional redundancy and business continuity planning will advance the national critical infrastructure protection goal and position the public and private sectors to mitigate the effects of deliberate efforts to destroy, incapacitate, or exploit critical infrastructure capabilities. For more information, call Christy Goehner at (703) 247-2586. [View conference website] DHS Science and Technology Stakeholders Conference (May 21-24; Washington, DC) The Homeland Security Department’s Science & Technology Directorate will be the key participant in this conference, presented by the National Defense Industrial Association to inform the private sector, academia, and government at all levels of the direction, emphasis, and scope of the directorate’s research investments. [View conference website] U.S. Disaster Preparedness Conference (Aug. 21-22; New Orleans) Presentations and interactive panel discussions with the nation’s top experts combined with classroom-style training will arm participants with disaster planning and response best practices. Tradeshow exhibits and evening networking events will provide a chance to interact with the people and technologies making a difference in national preparedness. Recent changes in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Response Plan, and the National Incident Management System will be detailed. [View conference website] The Emergency Management and Homeland Security Expo of the International Association of Emergency Managers provides a forum for current trends and topics, along with the latest tools and technology in emergency management and homeland security. Sessions encourage stakeholders at all levels of government, the private sector, public health, and related professions to exchange ideas on collaborating to protect lives and property from disaster. [View conference website]

March 28-29; Arlington, VA: 6th Annual Infrastructure Security Partnership Congress

March 29–April 5; San Diego: SANS 2007

April 11-12; San Pedro, CA: Sayres Response 2 Terrorism

June 2-4; Emmitsburg, MD: Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education Conference

June 10-13; Alexandria, VA: 2007 National Conference on Community Preparedness

September 27-30; Madrid, Spain: Interdisciplinary Analyses of Aggression & Terrorism

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New Calls for Papers Society for Risk Analysis (Dec. 9-12; San Antonio) The Society’s 2007 annual meeting will focus on the theme “Risk 007: Agents of Analysis.” The deadline for online submission of abstracts and proposals for symposia is May 21. [View conference website]

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