Terrorism in the USA:threat & response

[Jedburgh]

CQ Politics, 2 Nov 07: FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.

A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails......

[Jedburgh]

The Investigative Project on Terrorism, 7 Nov 07: The FBI's Latest Outreach Outrage

Much has been written about the U.S. government's current bout of schizophrenia in its outreach to the American Muslim community, specifically related to the Department of Justice. While federal prosecutors in Dallas have labeled several Islamist organizations as unindicted co-conspirators – describing them as front groups for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood - in the terrorist financing trial against the Holy Land for Relief and Development (HLF), the FBI is meeting with the very same groups to hold outreach events and the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is setting up booths at their conferences.

As wrongheaded and shortsighted as these policies are, they do not hold a candle to a recent outreach event held by the FBI's Detroit field office at the end of last month.....

...follow-up on the Counterterrorism Blog: FBI's New Friends Were Kicked Out of UAE For "Talibanization"

As a follow-up to Steve Emerson's post about the FBI's meeting with Tanzeem-e-Islami, I want to suggest to the FBI that they use a website named "Google" to comprehensively search the groups and individuals with which they are planning to meet. If they had done that search well, they would have found that the UAE government kicked Ahmad's supporters out of the country back in May, fearing "the spread of Talibanization.".....

[slapout9]

Hi Jed, This really is pretty funny.

CQ Politics, 2 Nov 07: FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

[Rifleman]

Maybe an FBI special agent should sit down and have coffee with a CIA case officer.

Who knows, something positive and productive might happen for both sides.

[bourbon]

Maybe an FBI special agent should sit down and have coffee with a CIA case officer.

Who knows, something positive and productive might happen for both sides.

Phil Mudd had 20 years at CIA and was the deputy director of CIA's Counterterrorism Center. My understanding is that was the whole point of putting him at FBI's National Security Service, to have someone who knows the difference between the West Bank and the West Side. I hope there is another angle to this story.

[Jedburgh]

Robert S. Mueller, FBI Director, 7 Apr 08:

From 9/11 to 7/7: Global Terrorism Today and the Challenges of Tomorrow

.....We in the FBI are panning for gold. First, we have to determine in which streams we are likely to find gold. Which suspected networks? Which human sources? Which websites? Then, agents and analysts must take their pans and wade through the waters of intelligence, carefully searching for nuggets of gold amid streams of repetitive or irrelevant information.

The gold might be a phone number, or a name, or a receipt from a bank transaction. It will likely be hidden among thousands of other scraps of information. With deft, methodical sifting, we can separate the gold from the dross, as Dame Eliza would say. But as she also points out, gathering the intelligence is just the start. It then must be verified and connected to other intelligence. And even then we are only seeing part of the picture.

Our goal is to get as close as possible to having the complete picture. For the FBI, this means we often continue to collect information long after we have gathered enough evidence for prosecution. Once we have the threat under control, we use these cases as intelligence collection platforms. Our mission is not just to disrupt an isolated plot, but to thoroughly dismantle the entire network that supports it.....

[jcustis]

I have a very close friend who just graduated the academy, career pathed to CT. I'll have to remember to refer his butt to this thread.

[bourbon]

FBI planning a bigger role in terrorism fight, by Josh Meyer. Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2009.

The FBI and Justice Department are significantly expanding their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been quietly in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will question suspects and gather evidence to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.