Terrorism in the USA:threat & response

[davidbfpo]

From another website:http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009..._lashkar-e.php

The US investigating agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have so far neutralized what is now dubbed as LeT’s ‘Chicago Terror Plot’.

Note the potential targets were outside the USA; some of those involved in Pakistan were supposedly killed in drone attacks and speculation abounds on what comes next.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

An odd story in the UK on the Zazi case:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...t-network.html

The arrest of an alleged al-Qaeda gang in Manchester and Liverpool said to be planning an Easter bombing campaign earlier this year led investigators to Najibullah Zazi in New York....Security sources have told the Daily Telegraph that Zazi and the men arrested in Manchester were part of a complex network directed from Pakistan.

Sounds like an odd variation, nay spin, on our special relationship.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

A more unusual review of the Zazi case:http://www.juancole.com/2009/11/muel...his-is-it.html

Zazi allegedly spent the better part of a year trying to concoct the bomb he had supposedly learned how to make.

Mueller also cites an academic whose work I recommend:

It follows that any terrorism problem within the United States principally derives from homegrown people like Zazi, often isolated from each other, who fantasize about performing dire deeds. Penn State’s Michael Kenney has interviewed dozens of officials and intelligence agents and analyzed court documents, and finds homegrown Islamic militants to be operationally unsophisticated, short on know-how, prone to make mistakes, poor at planning, and severely hampered by a limited capacity to learn.

The cited work of Kenney's is around a hundred pages, so yet to read fully: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/226808.pdf

Yes, I know Juan Cole and Mueller are not universally loved.

From one of my favourite blogsites:http://www.schneier.com/blog/

(Note written in 2007)Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots -- and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse -- is wrong.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the facts in any of these cases. None of us do. So let's have some healthy skepticism. Skepticism when we read about these terrorist masterminds who were poised to kill thousands of people and do incalculable damage. Skepticism when we're told that their arrest proves that we need to give away our own freedoms and liberties. And skepticism that those arrested are even guilty in the first place.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

From this across the water vantage point the tiny exodus of US born Somali male youths to Somalia appears to have "fallen off the radar", although I know Bruce Hoffman reminds audiences here the exodus is part of a worrying trend in the USA.

On November 23, federal prosecutors in the United States unsealed indictments against members of a group of Minneapolis natives accused of being at the heart of a cell sending men and boys to fight with al-Shabaab, a radical Islamist movement in Somalia with close ties to al-Qaeda.

...the role of a former fighter in the recruitment of others highlights the risk of such individuals returning home.

Using that and other open sources Raffaello Pantucci has added a commentary:
http://raffaellopantucci.wordpress.c...ihad/#more-181

[jmm99]

The court documents are linked at this post, Multiple Minneapolis indictments unsealed.

Given the situation in Somalia (3 cabinet ministers KIA in last blast), the presence of jihadists among its diaspora should not cause surprise.

Cheers

Mike

[europhobe]

An interesting addenda to this is why is it that there are so many foreigners who appear to get involved in suicide attacks in Somalia? Are they simply more zealous? or is this some tactic?

[Schmedlap]

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

Is that a recent amendment?

[davidbfpo]

An interesting addenda to this is why is it that there are so many foreigners who appear to get involved in suicide attacks in Somalia? Are they simply more zealous? or is this some tactic?

I am sure the motivation aspect of suicide bombing was covered on the main, if not only thread on that topic: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2304

Have a look there and give a thought to providing some introductory remarks, within privacy and OPSEC; many here like to know what lies behind the posts and it can be on your profile or in the 'Hail & Farewell' thread.

IIRC in Iraq at one point many suicide bombers were not Iraqis and in the Lebanon it was inter-denominational locals.

[davidbfpo]

An interesting assembly of the plots or the 'Home grown Threat' in the USA, via 'Free Radicals' website: http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/w...in/ARI171-2009

This paper analyses the five concurring reasons traditionally used to explain the divergence between the levels of radicalisation in Europe and the US: better economic conditions, lack of urban ghettoes, lower presence of recruiting networks, different demographics and a more inclusive sense of citizenship.

The article is in English and maybe balanced by one on Al-Jazeera:http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2...234277996.html

[davidbfpo]

Two articles by the IPT on the flow of Somali youths to Somalia to join Al-Shabab, from Minneapolis and Canada. They do add new aspects, like the effect on the families and a Canadian reaction: http://www.investigativeproject.org/...-western-youth and http://www.investigativeproject.org/...l-one-american

Placed here as this thread contains earlier references, although there is another 'live' thread on radicalisation.

[davidbfpo]

On Feb. 22, Afghan native Najibullah Zazi pled guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiring to commit murder in a foreign country, and providing material support to a terrorist organization. Arrested in September, he now faces life in prison. Zazi and his associates -- two of whom were charged on Feb. 25 -- had allegedly planned to bomb targets in New York City.

The plea deal marks a victory for Attorney General Holder, who said that "the criminal justice system has proved to be an invaluable weapon for disrupting plots and incapacitating terrorists, one that works in concert with the intelligence community and our military".

From:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...02/25/the_lwot

[OfTheTroops]

I suppose we are pretty sensitive about HUAC and PATRIOT and government information gathering not related to criminal activities. Can hardly repeal that pesky posse comitatus either? jk

It is good to be an American at times.

Information gathering in Iraq shocked me as well the police could inquire into pretty much anything that they wanted to with out basis.

My shortage of understanding is how do American rights get transferred to anyone that we interact with. I kinda get it but would like to be smarter. Whats the point of being a citizen if you dont get special treatment?

[John T. Fishel]

2 quick points (for his consideration): (1) Frank Keating, formerGov of OK and former DOJ official argued in an op ed that the arrest of Abdulmutallab took place in the air before he entered the US and therefore he was not entitled to Miranda rights. (2) The SCOTUS just accepted a case based on a provision of the Patriot Act which makes material aid (including advice on now to negotiate peace) to any DOS designated terrorist org a crime.
On #2 I have to problems with the law as currently interpreted: How can we define material assistance so broadly? And, the DOS designation has no appeal nor does it only affect terrorist orgs. Caught up in that was the denial of a visa to the US to one of the key FMLN leaders who negotiated peace with the GOES just because State had once designated the FMLN a terrorist org.

Cheers

JohnT

[jmm99]

mummy told me never to leap from the frying pan into the fire. Who should take the leap are the executive and legislative branches. We need clear legislation dealing with all facets of "terrorist" detentions and prosecutions under both Military Law and Civilian Law.

I'd agree with Keating where the detention is of a non-citizen under Military Law, following this flow chart which sums the situation for most of the Bush II administration.

TVNSA Flow Chart.jpg

The position of the Obama administration has been somewhat variable. Congress has shown no inclination to tackle these issues.

As to "material support", all of the briefs are linked here in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project; as well as the transcript of this Tuesday's oral argument.

These areas (HUAC, PATRIOT, government information gathering, Miranda and search & seizure, support to violent non-state actors, posse comitatus) are a mishmash of constitutional and legislative expansions and limitations. E.g., an FBI agent may be required to give Miranda to a detainee not because the 5th & 6th Amendments require that, but because his administrative handbook requires it.

[davidbfpo]

A BBC TV report on the five US-Pakistanis who left for the Jihad and were arrested in Pakistan, under the title 'The rising threat of home grown extremism in US' and a chunky quote:

Five US citizens accused of plotting jihad, attempting to join Al-Qaeda and planning terrorist attacks are due to appear in court in Pakistan's Punjab province on Tuesday. Peter Marshall considers whether a lack of opportunity for open debate in the US might have led these young Muslims to extremism.

When five US students were reported missing in November last year, their relatives had no inkling they had left the country. Yet nine days later the young men had turned up on the other side of the world in deep trouble.
So how did these young men go from quiet lives in a Virginia suburb to terrorism charges and a prison cell in Pakistan in little more than a week?

Link:

[Jedburgh]

CSIS, 8 Mar 10: A Growing Terrorist Threat? Assessing "Homegrown" Extremism in the United States

The five “cases” discussed in this paper—which were part of a larger trend of heightened domestic extremism during 2009—proved so unsettling, in part, because they seemed to contradict much of the recent thinking concerning radicalization and terrorism in the United States. Both policymakers and the public have tended to classify extremist violence as a problem with origins outside the United States. This trend gained momentum after the September 11, 2001, attacks, when President George W. Bush invoked the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars as part and parcel of the United States’ counterterrorism strategy. As the president said in a June 2005 speech, we were focused on “taking the fight to the terrorists abroad, so we don’t have to face them here at home.”

But what if the terrorists we face already live here at home? As this report shows, the acceleration of domestic extremism poses a number of serious considerations for U.S. policymakers and officials in charge of counterterrorism and homeland security. Had they successfully linked up with militants in Afghanistan, for instance, the “Northern Virginia Five” could have used their fluency in English and understanding of American culture to aid Taliban attacks on U.S. troops. David Coleman Headley appears to have utilized his U.S. passport to gain access to India to undertake preparations for the Mumbai attacks; his alleged coconspirators, operating with Pakistani documentation, faced far more significant barriers to entry.

Najibullah Zazi offers the clearest example of an oft-discussed hypothetical—namely, that U.S. legal residents and citizens might travel abroad to receive explosives or weapons training in terrorist camps, then return here to plan and execute attacks. Given the United States’ largely effective post-9/11 efforts to prevent foreign terrorist infiltration, these sorts of homegrown recruits may represent the best chance for al Qaeda and other global terrorist organizations to launch a major attack in the United States. Of course, would-be domestic extremists need not acquire training abroad to inflict substantial harm at home, as the Fort Hood shootings revealed. The threats posed by homegrown extremism, then—even if not widespread—demand a close examination....

[davidbfpo]

Jedburgh,

A good catch the CSIS paper, although I note many of the cited examples have featured here - in other threads. Descriptive part aside tackling the Jihadist narrative is acknowledged to be key and then IMHO is not grasped.

I do wonder if the 'home grown threat' has just become more visible. IIRC there was a period when this threat was far greater, during the Vietnam War era with almost daily bombings and the militia movement's antics (including Oklahoma City '95).

[davidbfpo]

Refer to Post No.12 for the original report of a link between the Zazi plot and arrests in the Manchester & Liverpool.

Those arrested and none were charged with terrorism offences, bar one who is a UK citizen, are now subject of proceedings before an immigration tribunal (SIAC):
With the headline:

Al-Qaeda came within days of terror attack on Britain last year, court hears. An alleged al-Qaeda terrorist cell arrested in the North West was within days of launching an attack on Britain a senior officer in MI5 has told a tribunal.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...urt-hears.html

[Firn]

Militia Charged With Plotting to Murder Officers

In an indictment against the nine unsealed on Monday, the Justice Department said they were part of a group of apocalyptic Christian militants who were plotting to kill law enforcement officers in hopes of inciting an antigovernment uprising, the latest in a recent surge in right-wing militia activity.

The court filing said the group, which called itself the Hutaree, planned to kill an unidentified law enforcement officer and then bomb the funeral caravan using improvised explosive devices based on designs used against American troops by insurgents in Iraq.

I have a hard time to fit this in, but it sounds rather dangerous than mere idiotic. Any thoughts on that matter?


Firn

[davidbfpo]

Firn,

This reported plot does fit in with open source comments, some of which are on the Law Enforcement thread.

It will be interesting when in the court documents are in the public domain how the plot was discovered, especially if the group were infiltrated by law enforcement.

In contrast most extreme right wing plots here are discovered by chance encounters with the police, along some investigations, although there is a history of infiltration years ago.