Terrorism in the USA:threat & response

[carl]

This is a report done by the NYPD in 2007 that seems to cover the Boston Marathon killers quite nicely.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/nyp...megrown-threat

I heard about yesterday on the radio and read it last night. It is extremely good. To do the report no justice it says these guys go through four stages, pre-radicaliztion, self-identification, indoctrination and jihadiztion. Those four stages also involve some generally common patterns, like getting thrown out or leaving a mosque. From the little I know of older brother, things seem to fit.

[davidbfpo]

Moderator's Note

There is a thread 'Explosion at Boston Marathon', with 149 posts and 4,798 views to date; it remains separate at the moment:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=17930

[davidbfpo]

I always wonder about the contribution of WaPo's David Ignatius, who appears to be very close to parts of the US government and this RCP article is no exception.

It starts with a commentary on the DNI's testimony on Boston and he writes that:

Given the limits on government surveillance of homegrown extremists, what's the strategy for preventing domestic terror? Basically, it focuses on outreach to Muslim and other communities to get their help in monitoring and disrupting mobilization for terrorist activities.

(He ends with) Analysts say talking to Muslim communities -- through Community Awareness Briefings at mosques, community centers and other meeting places -- is the most effective tool for preventing home-grown Islamist extremism. If Muslim families feel part of a larger American community, they have a greater stake in monitoring and preventing violence. That's not Dr. Phil talking, but some of the nation's hard-nosed counterterrorism specialists.

Clapper and his analysts have concluded that the right answer to home-grown plots isn't police-state surveillance but good community policing. This won't stop the occasional plot by people who get radicalized, like the Tsarnaevs, but as one analyst noted, "it's not likely to spike into a mass phenomenon."

Link:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ce_118241.html

I suspect a few interested parties, notably the IT providers and other contractors, will wonder if their hi-tech approach will be so generously funded.

[Dayuhan]

Interesting, given the upthread speculation on the selection of the target and the date...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...d84_story.html

Officials: Boston suspect says bombings were initially planned for 4th of July

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing told the FBI he and his brother initially considered committing suicide bombings and planned attacking on the Fourth of July at Boston’s large celebration along the Charles River, according to two law enforcement officials.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, said that he and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, decided to launch their attack earlier because they completed building the pressure-cooker bombs more quickly than they expected, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Tsarnaev said they constructed the bombs in his brother’s Cambridge, Mass., apartment and considered several targets after driving around Boston in a car.

Lesson being that the selection of a target and a date can easily be over-analyzed and assigned significance that it doesn't actually have.

[Stan]

This is a report done by the NYPD in 2007 that seems to cover the Boston Marathon killers quite nicely.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/nyp...megrown-threat

I heard about yesterday on the radio and read it last night. It is extremely good. To do the report no justice it says these guys go through four stages, pre-radicaliztion, self-identification, indoctrination and jihadiztion. Those four stages also involve some generally common patterns, like getting thrown out or leaving a mosque. From the little I know of older brother, things seem to fit.

Carl,
We were taught there are three stages:

The weakened stage
The preparation stage
The violent stage

On the other hand, earlier last month we had Topless Jihad

... Lesson being that the selection of a target and a date can easily be over-analyzed and assigned significance that it doesn't actually have.

Good that ! A wise old NCO in the early 70s told me strange people can't keep schedules

[davidbfpo]

One of the better comments on the, assumed, radicalization of the two suspects by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross:http://thewasat.wordpress.com/2013/0...adicalization/

Why this was written:

I wanted to introduce these radicalization models because they will help us to think about the points that follow. But my goal in this entry is not to discuss the merits or shortcomings of existing radicalization models. Rather, I want to outline some aspects of this case that strike me as significant.

This point is often lost in post-attack discussions:

.. it is worth noting that there is a difference between someone holding extremist views and someone being likely to undertake violence.

The author's own website:http://www.daveedgr.com/ and on Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daveed_Gartenstein-Ross

[jcustis]

Stan, it is funny that you had that book-marked...

[slapout9]

On the other hand, earlier last month we had Topless Jihad

You done good Stan!!!!!!That is fantastic.....I am serious!!!!!That is exactly what needs to happen. Jihad Jane against these fanatic sexually repressed bastards. Remember a long time ago I said we need the equivalent of an Islamic Joan of Arc...may just have found it.

[Stan]

Stan, it is funny that you had that book-marked...

Geez, Jon ! I just surfed on in Bro

[carl]

Slap and David:

Did you guys ever get to work a protest like that? I never did. Life ain't fair.

If the photos were representative of the women taking part in those protests, I noticed that it was mostly just women who looked good topless that participated. Female vanity trumps conviction I guess...and I approve.

[slapout9]

Slap and David:

Did you guys ever get to work a protest like that? I never did. Life ain't fair.

If the photos were representative of the women taking part in those protests, I noticed that it was mostly just women who looked good topless that participated. Female vanity trumps conviction I guess...and I approve.

carl, no I never did get to do anything like that.

But I am deadly serious about this being an excellent way to fight the Jihad, it is an excellent example of what I mean by SBW (slapout based warfare, oooops! I mean systems based warfare) This group of ladies is attacking the entire system, they are attacking the fundamental belief systems that binds the whole enemy system together.

It SUBVERTS it destroys loyalty to the primary systems of belief and that is what we have to do at the highest level if we ever want to win. We should make a million copies of this film and distribute it world wide. The President should invite them to the WH and give the medal of freedom to each of these brave soldiers and then he should disband the department of homeland silliness and give the entire budget to this Joan Allah Brigade. They would win in 6 months!

[davidbfpo]

Slap and David: Did you guys ever get to work a protest like that? I never did. Life ain't fair. If the photos were representative of the women taking part in those protests, I noticed that it was mostly just women who looked good topless that participated. Female vanity trumps conviction I guess...and I approve.

Carl,

No, a few naked people encountered usually drunk or in stress. A friend did put his helmet across an infamous streaker's chest many years ago:http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xht...erica-roe_sexy

[Dayuhan]

Ongoing discussion of what the Russians did or didn't provide. Have to wonder if the omissions and failures to respond were deliberate or simply a lethargic bureaucracy dealing with what would have seemed a fairly minor matter:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...856008018.html

I also wonder how people would have reacted prior to the bombings if they'd discovered that US agencies were investigating people purely on the basis of information provided by the Russians. Russian actions in Chechnya have been perceived in the US as fairly heavy handed, with some reason; would Americans have been entirely happy to see what could have been perceived as US support for Russian pursuit of individuals supporting Chechen nationalist causes?

[davidbfpo]

A somewhat different viewpoint, by a American anthropology academic:http://www.opendemocracy.net/david-w...rathon-bombing

A couple of passages:

Lost in the move to connect Islam and the Tsarnaev’s Chechen heritage with terrorism is the role of schools and communities in the United States in addressing the alienation that led the brothers to committing such acts of violence.

All too easily forgotten:

There were, after all, three days of the city functioning between the Monday bombing and the Friday lockdown.

[davidbfpo]

In a surprising move, Texas House and Senate budget negotiators have agreed to wipe out funding for the Department of Public Safety’s fusion center (one of seven in Texas), part of a nationwide intelligence gathering initiative that has generated controversy in Washington.

If the House and Senate affirm the change, it could make Texas the first state to pull the rug from under one of the statewide fusion operations that began under a Department of Homeland Security offensive that has been criticized for wasting taxpayers’ money.

Link:http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news...atesman_launch

Responses via Twitter by an ex-FBI agent:

Absent access to classified USIC intel, or dedicated intel collectors, Fusion Centers are just crime data and lead aggregators.....Lack of clearance to the intel data is a big issue with Fusion Centers. Without clearance, there is no real fusion

For reference there is a seperate, historical thread on fusion centers, which is closed now this thread covers more than fusion:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...read.php?t=277

[davidbfpo]

I thought this academic paper in International Security (Autumn 2012) had appeared on SWC before, but a search just suggests not. 'The Terrorism Delusion: America’s Overwrought Response to September 11 by John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart:http://politicalscience.osu.edu/facu...//absisfin.pdf

It is worth reading.

[davidbfpo]

A FP 'Argument' on the Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, a retired agent; sub-titled:

How Robert Mueller transformed -- for better and for worse -- the FBI into a counterterrorism agency.

Interesting to note the critique that the FBI (and others) looked away from 'white collar' crime, in particular mortgage fraud, which damaged the USA more than terrorism. A theme IIRC we have touched before, although maybe not so explicitly.

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...rism?page=full

[davidbfpo]

The work of NYPD has appeared here before, especially its intelligence gathering activities. Now the New Yorker Magazine adds a report, which ends with:

Regardless of the outcome, the NYPD’s programs are likely to join waterboarding, secret prisons, and NSA wiretapping as emblems of post-9/11 America, when security justified many practices that would not have been tolerated before.

Link:http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-...-9/index6.html

Curious that one insider began to wonder why the best restaurants featured all too often on expense forms, then the Zavi plot found the programme had nothing to offer.

[AdamG]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

More than 10,000 people in Arkansas were dumped into a blackout Sunday following an attack on that state’s electric grid, the FBI said today, the third such attack in recent weeks. In August, a major transmission line in the region, around Cabot, Ark., was deliberately cut.

The FBI said that two power poles had been intentionally cut in Lonoke County on Sunday, resulting in the outage.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williamp...-expected-u-s/

[AdamG]

Kid stuff. Nothing to see here.

LOS ANGELES -- Three more dry ice bombs were found near a plane at the international terminal of Los Angeles International Airport late Monday, prompting a major search by airport police, the LAPD bomb squad and the FBI.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...ed-by-fbi?lite

Nervous passengers, nothing more.

The pilots say the most recent dry-run occurred on Flight 1880 on September 2. The flight left Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. and headed to Orlando International.
Crew members say that shortly after takeoff, a group of four “Middle Eastern” men caused a commotion.
The witnesses claim one of the men ran from his seat in coach, toward the flight deck door. He made a hard left and entered the forward bathroom “for a considerable length of time.”
While he was in there, the other three men proceeded to move about the cabin, changing seats, opening overhead bins, and “generally making a scene.” They appeared to be trying to occupy and distract the flight attendants.
The 10 News Investigators contacted both US Airways and the Transportation Security Administration both confirmed the incident. US Airways says it won’t discuss the details of security measures, but that it works closely with authorities.
The TSA told us it takes all reports of suspicious activity aboard aircraft seriously, and the matter requires no further investigation at this time.
However, a current Federal Air Marshal who works flights every week says of the TSA, “They’re liars. They’re flat out liars.”

http://dcclothesline.com/2013/10/11/...-atlas-shrugs/