National News

TSA Says It Checks All Foreigners Before Flight Training; Congress Promises Investigation (ABC News) “ABC News reported last week that thousands of non-U.S. citizens had attended flight schools and received FAA pilot licenses without going through new requirements specified in post-9/11 laws …” (See last week’s newsletter.) “Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,” has “set hearings for next week.” The Transportation Security Administration maintains that “each and every foreign national that applies for flight training at any [Federal Aviation Administration]-certified school anywhere in the world is checked by TSA prior to beginning that training.” [View article] [View TSA statement]

Taxi to the Dark Side Wins Oscar (Santa Fe [NM] Reporter) “In Taxi to the Dark Side”—which on February 24 won an Academy Award for best documentary—“we meet the ‘few bad apples’ who killed” Afghan taxi driver Dilawar, writes reviewer Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff in the Santa Fe Reporter. “In their own words these interrogators describe the fog of ambiguity (and therefore deniability) that exists about what procedures are to be employed. The wink-and-nod suggestions that ‘the gloves are off’ percolate down the chain of military command and this, combined with extreme pressure to produce information, produces the context for torture and, thus, for Dilawar’s death.” The film is “a painstaking compendium of how and why we got where we are”—to a state of “collective willful ignorance and lack of outrage.” [View article]

Law Enforcement Agencies Create National Intelligence System (Washington Post) “Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots,” reports the Washington Post. “… Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange … Federal authorities hope” it will be a single source for “federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.” [View article]

U.S. Seeks Terrorists in Web Worlds (BBC) “The US government has begun a project to develop ways to spot terrorists who are using virtual worlds,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. (See the Feb. 8 newsletter.) “Codenamed Reynard it aims to recognise ‘normal’ behaviour in online worlds and home in on anomalous activity.” [View article]

U.S. Students Help Encourage Arabs to Enroll in U.S. Colleges (Christian Science Monitor) “The College Admissions Arab Mentorship Program (CAAMP), whose members have just returned from their annual tour of Middle Eastern schools, aims to ensure that myths about American colleges and life in the US don’t deter Arabs from studying here,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. “The group encourages Middle Eastern students to take advantage of US universities so they can become more effective leaders in their homeland, as well as agents of cross-cultural exchange.” [View article]

International News

17 Charged in Canadian Plot (San Diego Union-Tribune) Some of the “17 suspects” arrested “in June 2006 after they allegedly tried to obtain three tons of ammonium nitrate … were charged with plotting to attack Parliament, take hostages and possibly behead the prime minister if their demands for the release of Muslim prisoners were not met,” reports the Associated Press. “… A judge in 2006 imposed” a news blackout on coverage of the trial, but one defense attorney spoke with the press. [View article]

Colombia Says FARC Wanted to Make Radioactive Bomb (Reuters AlertNet) At the Conference on Disarmament, sponsored by the United Nations, Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos “said on Tuesday that FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] rebels had been planning to make a ‘dirty bomb’ with radioactive material, threatening the entire Latin American region,” according to Reuters. “… a regional crisis … has seen Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia,” which “has already accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of funding the” guerrillas. [View article]

Bombs Targeting Police Kill Over 40 in Pakistan (Washington Post) “A suicide bomber blew himself up among mourners at a police funeral, killing at least 38 people in northwest Pakistan on” February 29, reports Reuters. “The attack in Swat district came days after the military said it had cleared most areas in the mountainous region of Islamist militants.” Another bombing in “Bannu, a town at the gateway to North Waziristan, a tribal region where al Qaeda cells have become entrenched,” targeted a police van, “‘killing three people and critically wounding two,’ said Hamza Mehsud, chief of police in Bannu district.” [View article]

Tunisia Jails 17 for al-Qaeda Links (Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Khaleej Times) “A Tunisian court has jailed 17 men for up to 12 years for creating a Jihadist cell linked to Al Qaeda’s North African wing,” reports Reuters. “… The defendants, arrested in 2006, had pleaded not guilty.” [View article]

Spain Won’t Prosecute Ex-Detainees Too Damaged for Trial (Miami Herald) “Spanish judge [Baltasar Garzon] dropped terror charges [yesterday] against two former Guantánamo Bay detainees”—Jamil el Banna and Omar Deghayes—“who recently returned home to Britain, saying their mental health had deteriorated so badly they were suicidal and it would be cruel to prosecute them,” reports the Associated Press. “… Garzon said he was abandoning an extradition request and the original indictment he issued in 2003.” Palestinian-Jordanian el Banna, 45, and Libyan-born Deghayes, 38, “spent more than four years at the U.S. camp for terror suspects in Cuba without being charged or tried.… Garzon said Banna spent more than five years in secret prisons … and had undergone torture and mistreatment that led to ‘progressive deterioration of his mental health.’ Deghayes met a similar fate.” [View article]

Intl. Databases Could Fight Nuclear Proliferation (MSNBC) “International databases to share information about nuclear and radioactive materials are urgently needed to help deter potential nuclear threats,” reports Reuters. “… More than 70 experts from Britain, the United States, Russia, Israel and the rest of Europe said in a report published by Britain’s Royal Society that such databases would make it easier to track and determine the source of these materials.… this could present a powerful deterrent to would-be suppliers of illicit nuclear goods knowing that they could more easily be found out, said Roger Cashmore of the University of Oxford … The databases should come as part of a two-step process that includes improved systems to detect nuclear and radioactive materials on the move, he added.” [View article]

Egypt Builds Wall on Gaza Border (Reuters AlertNet) “Egypt is building a stone and cement wall on its sensitive frontier with the Gaza Strip to block Palestinians from again breaching the border to circumvent an Israeli-led blockade,” reports Reuters. “… Egyptian workers were removing a barbed wire barrier and replacing it with a 3 metre [about 10 feet] high wall along the frontier with Hamas-run Gaza … Three kilometres [almost two miles] of the new wall was already complete.” [View article]

Al Qaeda’s Third Front: Saudi Arabia (Washington [DC] Quarterly) Besides Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden in 2003 “had a third front in mind: his own homeland in Saudi Arabia,” write Bruce Riedel and Bilal Y. Saab in Washington Quarterly. There “he would wage a terrorist campaign with the intention of driving the United States and its British allies out of Islam’s holy land and of toppling the ‘apostate’ Saudi monarchy.” Since 2003, al-Qaeda has carried out a “well organized and widespread” insurgency. “Saudi authorities have so far successfully countered al Qaeda’s offensive, but the war inside the kingdom is anything but over.” [View article]

Britain Scales Back ID Card Plan (BBC) The British “government has set out changes to its planned identity scheme—including allowing people to use passports or driving licences instead of ID cards,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “Most people will not now have to give their fingerprints when getting a passport until 2011/12—three years later than had previously been planned. And plans to force passport applicants to get an ID card have been dropped. The exception will be airport and other workers in security-sensitive jobs who will need an ID card.” [View article]

British Police Program Aims to Block Terrorist Recruiting (London Guardian) “Senior police officers have drawn up a radical strategy to stop British Muslims turning to violence which will see every area of the country mapped for its potential to produce extremists and supporters for al-Qaida,” reports the Guardian. The police hope “to stop al-Qaida’s ideas gaining hold in primary schools, colleges, the internet and prisons.” [View article]

China Learned From Disasters, Says Premier (China View) In “the past five years … China suffered great life and economic losses” from “the SARS outbreak, fatal typhoons, floods and recent snow and ice storms” but learned from the disasters, reports the Xinhua News Agency. “Premier Wen Jiabao … vowed to accelerate the development of infrastructure, including electricity, transportation and telecommunications, to improve the capacity to resist disasters and maintain normal operations.” [View article]

Is a Food Crisis Coming? (London Times) “The doubling of wheat prices, the mounting cost of bread, the steepest increases at the supermarkets for 14 years, demonstrations on the streets by pig farmers threatened with bankruptcy, ‘tortilla riots’ in Mexico, the drying up of aid to the Third World”—“this is only the start of it,” writes columnist Magnus Linklater in the London Times. He cites a growing Asian appetite for beef, diversion of grain to biofuel, and reduction in acreage devoted to agriculture as factors in a coming crisis. [View article]

United Nations News

UN Approves New Sanctions on Iran (BBC) The United Nations “Security Council has voted in favour of new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favour of measures including asset freezes and travel bans for Iranian officials. Indonesia abstained.” [View article]

DHS News

DHS Tests of Radiation Detectors Were Inconclusive (Washington Post) “Department of Homeland Security tests of new radiation detection machines last year did not show whether the costly devices performed well enough to be used as planned at ports and borders to protect the country against nuclear attacks or dirty bombs, according to a new report about the process” by the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal Independent Review Team, reports the Washington Post. “The performance tests were organized by the department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which has been trying to deploy the machines along the borders and at ports in a $1.2 billion project, despite allegations from government auditors that the office misled Congress about their effectiveness and later conducted flawed tests to show they worked well.… The review team’s report discounted the auditor’s findings that the tests were biased. The team also said it found no evidence the test data were manipulated.” On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee held a hearing about the new report. [View article] [View hearing website]

DHS photo

State and Local News

Seattle Home Fires Appear to Be Eco-Terrorism (Seattle Times) “Federal arson investigators say that a banner left behind at the Street of Dreams arsons near Maltby on Monday has some resemblance to one left at a 2006 Camano Island house arson under investigation as a possible Earth Liberation Front attack,” reports the Seattle Times. “… Three multimillion-dollar homes on a cul-de-sac in the Maltby area were destroyed in the arsons and attempts were made to burn two other homes. Damage is estimated at $7 million.” “The FBI is investigating the fires as possible ‘domestic terrorism,’” stated the Times in an editorial. [View article] [View editorial]

In Queens, NY: Send Fire Engines First, Ask Questions Later (New York Times) Dispatching “difficulties in Queens, the largest [New York City] borough by land area, have long been reflected in slower fire response,” reports the New York Times. The New York Fire Department “is trying to speed response times in the borough by shortening the time dispatchers spend on the phone before they send firefighters out the door. Rather than waiting to elicit such details as the nearest cross street, the room or floor where a fire is located, and the phone number of the 911 caller, the dispatchers have been told to find out what is on fire, get the address, repeat the address and immediately send firefighters.… But the union, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, maintains that the new policy has been proven disastrously flawed and has hampered the response to three Queens fires, two of them involving fatalities.” [View article]

EPA Holds Water Contamination Drill in Massachusetts The Environmental Protection Agency’s New England Regional Laboratory in Chelmsford, MA, hosted the first water contamination exercise last month. New England’s state and federal laboratories and a regional water utility participated. The exercise simulated a response to both biological and chemical threat agents. It exhaustively tested the New England laboratory response plan and a coordinated laboratory response to water contamination. The participating labs and water utility were asked to identify the contaminants and then handle the surge of samples required to ascertain the extent of contamination. The event included a simultaneous biomonitoring exercise developed by the six New England state public health laboratories with support from the Centers for Disease Control. This adjunct exercise included analysis of clinical specimens simulating human exposure to contaminated drinking water. [View press release]

Private-Sector News

Yemen’s Tourist Sector Hit by al-Qaeda Attacks (Melbourne, Australia, Age) “In Yemen al-Qaeda attacks have damaged a fledgling tourism industry already hurt by tribal kidnappings,” reports Reuters. “The government, which hopes tourism earnings can help offset flagging oil revenues, is struggling to shore up security by providing armed police escorts for travel to certain areas. It even plans a satellite system to track tourist vehicles.” But “last month’s killing of two Belgian tourists and two Yemenis by gunmen” occurring “only six months after a suicide car bomb killed eight Spanish tourists and two Yemenis … is bad news for the tourism sector and chances of foreign investment in the Middle East’s poorest country, where infrastructure is ramshackle and quality hotels are few.” And “Yemen, where Osama bin Laden’s family originated, is viewed in the West as a haven for militants and a ‘pipeline’ for those bent on fighting US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.” [View article]

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. Hospital Security Preparedness Course (March 31–April 3; June 2-5; Washington, DC) The ER One Institute at Washington Hospital Center is holding a course for hospital protective services and law enforcement. The goal is to achieve competency in handling all hazards to hospital security, from routine situations to mass-casualty incidents and terrorist attacks against the facility. Students will experience comprehensive hands-on training, live drills, and classroom instruction from faculty with extensive security and counterterrorism experience. Contact Lisa Rizzolo at (202) 364-5180, ext 115. [View course website] Hospital Disaster Life Support Course (March 12-13; May 14-15; Washington, DC) This course by the ER One Institute at the Washington Hospital Center teaches hospital disaster management response principles for physicians, critical care and emergency nurses, physician extenders, paramedics, hospital administrators, protective services, and emergency preparedness staff. The course combines classroom discussion of all-hazards response issues with hands-on exercise simulation for conventional, chemical, and biological mass-casualty incidents. For those who have already taken the course, ER One has a Hospital Disaster Life Support II update course. Contact Rick Tappan at (202) 877-4468. [View course website] Georgetown U. Microbiology & Immunology Open House (April 2; Washington, DC) Georgetown University’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology, which offers master of science degrees in microbiology & immunology, biomedical science policy & advocacy, and biohazardous threat agents & emerging infectious diseases, will hold an open house for anyone interested in its degree or certificate programs. [View open house website] Medical Response in a Hostile Environment (May 30–June 1; Caldwell, OH) The Medical Corps Combat/Field Medicine School prepares civilians, with or without medical background, as well as military and government personnel, to rapidly and effectively respond to both major and minor personal injuries sustained far from medical care. [View course website]

New Upcoming Events (After four weeks, events are moved to the Upcoming Events page) 2nd Annual Homeland Defense and Security Education Summit (March 18-19; Adelphi, MD) This year’s theme is “Innovation in Education and Training”; the summit will focus on innovation in program development, technology, research, and academics. It will be an opportunity for educators and trainers to exchange and compare best practices, improve leadership and workforce development, and network with colleagues from more than 150 learning institutions nationwide. The summit is hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, the North American Aerospace Defense Command–U.S. Northern Command Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium, the DHS Office of the Chief Learning Officer, and the University of Maryland University College. [View conference website] Terrorism: Training, Threats, Tactics and Technology (April 1-3; Albuquerque, NM) At this conference, sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories’ Security Systems and Technology Center and by the Terrorism Research Center, participants will explore some of the challenges and gain a comprehensive understanding of issues related to terrorism. [View conference website] 2008 Defense Industrial Base/Critical Infrastructure Protection Conference and Technology Exhibition (April 7-9; Miami) This conference and exhibition is designed to facilitate public-private partnerships for improving preparedness and response and will focus on cyber-security and information assurance, supply chain and response management, and intelligence and threat warning. [View conference website] Fire Dept. Instructors Conference (April 7-12; Indianapolis) This conference features courses and training options to improve the safety and effectiveness of the way fire department instructors do their job, in areas such as live burn, collapse rescue, leadership training, and recruitment. [View conference website] Chemical and Biological Medical Treatment Symposia (April 13-18; Spiez, Switzerland) These symposia will explore the scientific, medical, and policy aspects of chemical, biological, and radiological warfare and terrorism, including accidents and incidents across the spectrum. They will consider the effects of chemical, biological, and radiological agents wrongly used or abused, intentional or accidental, on the community and individuals, military and civilian, and on the infrastructure at each echelon of government. The symposia will further build on an area still not adequately addressed by convention, agreement, or treaty: the terrorist or combat threat to the chemical, petrochemical, oil, pharmaceutical, biochemical, and other industries, along with agro-terrorism. [View conference website] Fire-Rescue Med (April 21-23; Las Vegas, NV) This conference for fire-based emergency medical services personnel offers 35 education sessions taught by industry leaders, along with networking sessions. [View conference website] GovSec, U.S. Law, and Ready 2008 (April 23-24; Washington, DC) This forum fosters communication and cooperation between industry and government security, law enforcement, and emergency responders at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels to protect America’s citizens and critical assets. It features speakers from Estonia, the FBI, the U.S. Fire Administration, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, plus exhibits of “cutting edge technology and hot new products, tools and vehicles.” [View conference website] 2008 IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security (May 12-13; Waltham, MA) This conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, with technical assistance from the DHS Science & Technology Directorate, will focus on novel and innovative technologies that address the most pressing national security problems. It will provide a forum for innovators to discuss ideas, concepts, and findings and will bring together innovators from leading universities, research laboratories, Homeland Security Centers of Excellence, small businesses, system integrators, and the end user community. New this year, the conference will feature parallel tracks with invited talks in non-overlapping technical sessions. Also, the conference will contain a planned session on detecting and protecting against terrorist surveillance. [View conference website] IED 2008 Symposium and Expo (May 13-15; Fayetteville, NC) IED 2008 will feature expert speakers on improvised explosive devices and the challenges and threats they pose internationally and domestically. It will explore and identify new technologies, methods, and tactics for eliminating the IED threat and protecting personnel from the hazards of explosives. IED 2008 will bring military, government, law enforcement, security, and industry leaders together with end users and operators. [View conference website] (May 19-23; Pala, CA) California’s fire, emergency medical services, and disaster conference and expo provides an empirical educational offering that includes all first responders: firefighters, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, nurses, physician assistants, disaster managers, and physicians. It features speakers, preconference meetings, and opportunities for continuing education credits. [View conference website] Fostering Public-Private Partnerships (May 22; Washington, DC) The 2008 Homeland Security Symposium illuminates successful public-private partnerships at the local, regional, and national levels as models and considers steps to develop and improve future public-private partnerships. [View conference website] (June 10-11; Ljubljana, Slovenia) The forum focuses on global convergence of the requirements of users, industry, standard design organizations, and research and on seeking agreements on information and communication technology issues related to public protection and disaster relief. [View conference website] TIEMS 2008 (June 17-19; Prague, Czech Republic) The theme of the International Emergency Management Society’s 2008 conference is “Global Cooperation in Emergency Management.” [View conference website] Environmental Sampling and Detection for Bio-Threat Agents (December 2-4; Las Vegas, NV) This third national conference will provide a forum discussion among government, industry, academia, and first responders to address critical issues in environmental sampling and bio-detection. [View conference website]