What & Who discovers terrorist plots?

[davidbfpo]

Found on a previously unheard of blogsite:

...there were 161,948 suspicious activity files in the classified Guardian database, mostly leads from FBI headquarters and state field offices. Two years ago, the bureau set up an unclassified section of the database so state and local agencies could send in suspicious incident reports and review those submitted by their counterparts in other states. Some 890 state and local agencies have sent in 7,197 reports so far. And the results? Five arrests and NO convictions.

“Ninety-nine percent doesn’t pan out or lead to anything” said Richard Lambert Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Knoxville office. “But we’re happy to wade through these things.”

No, it’s not 99% doesn’t pan out…It’s 99.99997% that doesn’t pan out

Link:http://twshiloh.com/?p=4574 and originally in the WaPo 'Top Secret America' articles.

[davidbfpo]

From a longer article on a current UK terrorism trial; which covers other points, notably being self-radicalised:

Police were called to their marital home in Foster Street, Oldham, but as officers dealt with the domestic dispute and with Shasta still upset and worked up, a "wholly unexpected turn of events occurred", Miss Cheema said.

"A member of her family, one of her brothers, told the police, in Shasta Khan's presence, 'We have something that I think might be interesting to you, I think he's a home-grown terrorist'."

The wife then took the opportunity to "spill the beans" and cause "serious trouble" for her husband - but left out her own alleged involvement in any terror offences.

Link:http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/977...rror_offences/

It's a classic, imagine the attending officer calling back "Can I have the CT police here".

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to Stratfor giving a hint to the role of the public in the case of Naser Jason Abdo:

planning to attack a restaurant frequented by soldiers from Fort Hood (in July 2011)

The public's role:

On July 27, 2011, Abdo raised the suspicion of the staff of "Guns Galore" in Killeen Texas by buying an unusually large amount of smokeless gunpowder, three boxes of shotgun ammunition and a magazine for a pistol. A clerk notified the Killeen Police Department who, in turn, tracked Abdo to the America's Best Value Inn and Suites via the taxi that he had taken to make his purchase. Guns Galore was the store in which Nidal Malik Hasan bought a pistol used in the Fort Hood shootings.

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naser_Jason_Abdo

I expect the Guns Galore staff and management were all too aware of the purchases being suspicious, even allowing for a two year gap. Would another local gun store have done the same thing?

[davidbfpo]

Within a far wider report by Clints Watts, aka CWOT on SWC, there is this passage, with my emphasis:

U.S. law enforcement has dramatically increased its community-oriented policing strategies with the Muslim community leading to increased detection and preemption of extremism. However, as noted by Kurzman and Jenkins, the past decade’s incidents of MuslimAmerican extremism provide no particular profile and provide no basis to conclude that extremists will reside in Muslim communities. In addition, if an extremist does reside in a Muslim community, there is no reason to assume that the Muslim community will be aware of potential extremists in their midst.

Link and the passage is on pg. 11:http://www.fpri.org/pubs/2012/201208...calization.pdf

[davidbfpo]

The reverse of public sources and my error in not posting before today.

Nigel Inkster, ex-No.2 at SIS, in an article in 'Survival' a year ago made an interesting comment on the role of US intelligence in all UK CT investigations:

Referring to the USA acting as 'counter-terrorism collector of first resort to the international community. Of the many plots that Western European services disrupted between 2001 and the present, there was none which did not benefit from game-changing US intelligence....there is no doubt that the US did more to make Europe safe from terrorism that Europe was able to do for itself'.

From: 'In 9/11/11: A Decade of Intelligence', Survival December 2011-January 2012, pgs. 5-12 (quote pg.10).

[davidbfpo]

I refer to the recent trial and convictions of three main plotters in the UK, for some background:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21414518

...it has emerged that, at no point during the 18-month investigation, did anyone in Birmingham’s Muslim community inform on the behaviour of the three...This comes despite the families of the four other men – who later pleaded guilty – intervening early themselves to bring their sons back from Pakistan....the four families “had become aware” the men had travelled for terrorism training ...None of the men received any training as they left the camps after just a day....Three of the four came back almost immediately, while the fourth stayed with his family in Pakistan.

The senior police officer, for CT stated:

I agree it would have been really good if more could have been shared with us, and we could have dealt with it in a different way. In terms of community engagement, would I like them to come forward more? Yes, I would. Do I think they (the Muslim community) were being disruptive – no, I do not....For the evidential journey .. there was some reporting of (relatively minor - including fake charity collections on the streets of Birmingham) concerns of these people over the years and that was properly followed through.

Link:http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Cri...ive_61495.html

Some of the reporting here differs on the four young men travelling to a terror training camp in Pakistan; the common features are that family pressure turned them round and no-one in the UK told the authorities.

I will try to get a community activist to explain what happened.

[davidbfpo]

Maybe a rather slanted claim in Canada, regarding the recent arrests of two plotting an attack on the Canada-US VIA rail link, as the author is the lawyer who handled the initial information on the plotters:

A tipoff from a prominent Toronto imam through our law office (Kutty, Syed and Mohamed) more than a year ago appears to be at the heart of the arrests this week in the alleged VIA Rail terror plot. In fact, counterterrorism police began their press briefing by thanking Muslim leaders.

Link:http://www.thestar.com/opinion/comme...ng_terror.html