Terrorism in the USA:threat & response

[Ponce]

Ron? you should know by now that Bush stole the election..... and like he said "The Contitution is nothing but a piece of paper" that in itself voided him as MY president........ my president is by the people and for the people according to the US constitution.

[Ken White]

NYPD Intelligence Division: The Homegrown Threat.

Let's try to stay on topic. I'll also point out that this in not a political weblog; for anyone who wishes to make political commentary, there are plenty of weblogs out there that welcome such comments. Here, we avoid it and try to stick to the subject of threads.

Thanks, Guys.

[Ron Humphrey]

NYPD Intelligence Division: The Homegrown Threat.

Let's try to stay on topic. I'll also point out that this in not a political weblog; for anyone who wishes to make political commentary, there are plenty of weblogs out there that welcome such comments. Here, we avoid it and try to stick to the subject of threads.

Thanks, Guys.

I probably should have just left that one alone

Although in my own defense, since my crack team of defense lawyers are on vacation; I did try to make the answer as apolitical as possible

[bourbon]

Ponce,

I may just happen to share some of your sentiment, I've even mistakenly crossed the apolitical line here in some posts. We both may even agree that the term 'terrorist' is malleable and oft bastardized. That said, I think we can delineate between Guy Fawkes and say; a Mohamed Atta, Mohammad Sidique Khan, or Adam Gadhan. The NYPD article - which is excellent btw - illustrates the 'homegrown threat' as far more than "someone who has decided to do something against the dictators that are at this time running the government."


Thread Related:
The Fort Dix Conspiracy, By Amanda Ripley. Time, Dec. 06, 2007.

A TIME investigation of the Fort Dix case shows that it is indeed an important prototype. Six years after 9/11, the U.S. government has begun to settle on a strategy for finding and stopping potential homegrown terrorists before they strike. Fort Dix offers a case study of this new and sometimes precarious method. The model is called pre-emptive prosecution, and like other pre-emptive strikes of late, it is risky. It means relying on often unreliable informants to infiltrate insular communities, and it means making arrests before anything close to a terrorist attack actually happens. The process sometimes ends with a trial but not necessarily a conviction, and that may be beside the point. It is, in all, a messy and unsatisfying ordeal, and possibly the best available option.

Decent article on the NYPD's intel division:
The Terrorism Beat: How is the N.Y.P.D. defending the city?, by William Finnegan. The New Yorker, July 25, 2005.

[Schmedlap]

... my president is by the people and for the people according to the US constitution.

Is that a recent amendment?

[Bob's World]

For the U.S. the real key will be coming to grips with the difference between those who threaten us and those who are a threat to us.

AQ, for example, threatens us. As does a handful minor knuckleheads such as Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong il.

None of these, however, are truly a threat to us. Not in a significant way.

Yet we go chasing after these minor annoyances in a very reactive and predictable way. People will say crazy things. Small attacks, and likely even some fairly large attacks will happen. These are symptoms of discontent and there will always be discontent. By chasing symptoms of discontent and making that our focus we end up engaging in overblown antics that make the underlying reasons for discontent worse in many ways

Better to learn to ignore minor irritants, ignore the minor threats; and focus more on the big picture and how we best achieve big picture goals in a manner that deters those things that truly threaten US in significant ways while consciously seeking to not inflame discontent unnecessarily.

Its really a simple matter of discipline and perspective. Americans as a culture tend to be undisciplined and fairly short and narrowly focused in terms of perspective.

Oh, and for my money, Islamist ideology driven terrorism has little to nothing to do with evangelizing Islam any more that the wars of reformation were about spreading Protestantism. Both are tools to mobilize bold and broad action among the people to challenge powerful political constructs. Sure, some of the individual actors I am sure truly believe they are doing God's work, but at the end of the day they are victims also, manipulated to conduct a violent political act that is actually in violation of the very religion they are so committed to. The men they have placed their greatest faith in betray them for their own selfish desires for personal power and also to take down the current political structure they find so offensive.

[davidbfpo]

A long article on an American Muslim who now prefers the label orthodox; it is a good illustration of the difficulties such individuals and wider society face when talk turns to the 'J word'. Not surprisingly it reflects the dilemma for the state in can we talk to such people, who are often now labelled non-violent extremists?

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/ma...&_r=1&emc=eta1

A short UK comment on this dilemma in the UK:http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourking...utm_campaign=0

[AdamG]

More importantly, based on the Defendant’s recorded statements and admissions made to law enforcement agents, the Defendant was a former member, or at the very least, associated with [Al-Ittihad al-Islami] AIAI, an SDGT, and that he believed that there was no separation of personnel between AIAI, the Council of Islamic Courts, and Al-Shabbab, a designated [Foreign Terrorist Organization] FTO.

He admits that he knowingly believed he was smuggling violent jihadists into the United States with the full knowledge that if the decision was made by the SDGT, for which he was associated with in the past, to commit terrorist acts in the United States, these jihadists would commit violent acts in and against the United States. Because the law enforcement authorities are constantly trying to investigate, detect, and prevent the infiltration of potentially violent jihadists, the Defendant’s lies hid critical information from the United States authorities regarding his successful smuggling activities. Thus, the preponderance of the evidence proves that the other obvious motivation for him to lie on his asylum application was to cover up and obstruct the fact from United States authorities that he facilitated the smuggling of violent jihadists who are now present into the United States. (pp. 10-11)

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/doj-mem...inglepage=true

And for sheer comedic face-palming,

In what appears to be a major security breach, components for a live bomb were allowed to remain in the federal building in Detroit for three weeks before the bomb squad was called in to remove it.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/activ...ry?id=13202135

[AdamG]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When an admitted al-Qaida operative planned his itinerary for a Christmas 2009 airline bombing, he considered launching the strike in the skies above Houston or Chicago, The Associated Press has learned. But tickets were too expensive, so he refocused the mission on a cheaper destination: Detroit.

The decision is among new details emerging about one of the most sensational terrorism plots to unfold since President Barack Obama took office. It shows that al-Qaida's Yemen branch does not share Osama bin Laden's desire to attack symbolic targets, preferring instead to strike at targets of opportunity. Like the plot that nearly blew up U.S.-bound cargo planes last year, the cities themselves didn't matter. It's a strategy that has helped the relatively new group quickly become the No. 1 threat to the United States.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...TAM&SECTION=US

[davidbfpo]

From the consistently good daily email news round-up from the NY-based Center for Law & Security, available via:

A comment on this US practice:

Reuters cites data from the Center on Law and Security to illustrate that entrapment defenses in terrorism prosecutions have not been successful over the past decade. The Reuters report states that “[s]ince 2009, the FBI has arrested 41 people on terrorism charges through sting operations — where law enforcement posed as extremist militants — the Center said. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, 10 suspects in six trials have formally used entrapment as a defense and none were successful.

Link:http://centerlineblog.org/2011/03/25...rism-news-204/

[jmm99]

From 2005 Michigan Law Review, Psychology, factfinding, and entrapment:

Although accurate statistical evidence of the frequency with which the entrapment defense succeeds is difficult to come by, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is seldom successful. One survey of practicing criminal defense attorneys described it as "judicially unpopular," (17) best used only "in desperate circumstances," (18) or "in a few cases with ideal facts," where "plea bargaining has proved unsuccessful," (19) and "no other defense is possible." (20) Another survey of State's Attorneys in Chicago reveals a perception that in narcotics sales cases where the defendant pleads entrapment, "the jury will convict almost every time." (21) The author of one police manual on the execution of sting operations states that he has "never, in hundreds of cases, ever lost one to entrapment," and that in all the sting operations he has studied, he has "not heard of a single case being lost to a defense of entrapment." (22)

Still, this "defense" is a favorite of the pro-defendant chattering class.

Regards

Mike