NY Times: Terrorist Plots, Hatched by The F.B.I.
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
- By DAVID K. SHIPLER - April 28, 2012 - The New York Times
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.
This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.
Carefully orchestrated sting operations usually hold up in court. Defendants invariably claim entrapment and almost always lose, because the law requires that they show no predisposition to commit the crime, even when induced by government agents. To underscore their predisposition, many suspects are “warned about the seriousness of their plots and given opportunities to back out,” said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. But not always, recorded conversations show. Sometimes they are coaxed to continue.
Undercover operations, long practiced by the F.B.I., have become a mainstay of counterterrorism, and they have changed in response to the post-9/11 focus on prevention. “Prior to 9/11 it would be very unusual for the F.B.I. to present a crime opportunity that wasn’t in the scope of the activities that a person was already involved in,” said Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lawyer and former F.B.I. agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups. An alleged drug dealer would be set up to sell drugs to an undercover agent, an arms trafficker to sell weapons. That still happens routinely, but less so in counterterrorism, and for good reason.
“There isn’t a business of terrorism in the United States, thank God,” a former federal prosecutor, David Raskin, explained.
“You’re not going to be able to go to a street corner and find somebody who’s already blown something up,” he said. Therefore, the usual goal is not “to find somebody who’s already engaged in terrorism but find somebody who would jump at the opportunity if a real terrorist showed up in town.”
And that’s the gray area. Who is susceptible? Anyone who plays along with the agents, apparently. Once the snare is set, law enforcement sees no choice. “Ignoring such threats is not an option,” Mr. Boyd argued, “given the possibility that the suspect could act alone at any time or find someone else willing to help him.”
Typically, the stings initially target suspects for pure speech — comments to an informer outside a mosque, angry postings on Web sites, e-mails with radicals overseas — then woo them into relationships with informers, who are often convicted felons working in exchange for leniency, or with F.B.I. agents posing as members of Al Qaeda or other groups.
Some targets have previous involvement in more than idle talk: for example, Waad Ramadan Alwan, an Iraqi in Kentucky, whose fingerprints were found on an unexploded roadside bomb near Bayji, Iraq, and Raja Khan of Chicago, who had sent funds to an Al Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
But others seem ambivalent, incompetent and adrift, like hapless wannabes looking for a cause that the informer or undercover agent skillfully helps them find. Take the Stinger missile defendant James Cromitie, a low-level drug dealer with a criminal record that included no violence or hate crime, despite his rants against Jews. “He was searching for answers within his Islamic faith,” said his lawyer, Clinton W. Calhoun III, who has appealed his conviction. “And this informant, I think, twisted that search in a really pretty awful way, sort of misdirected Cromitie in his search and turned him towards violence.”
THE informer, Shahed Hussain, had been charged with fraud, but avoided prison and deportation by working undercover in another investigation. He was being paid by the F.B.I. to pose as a wealthy Pakistani with ties to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist group that Mr. Cromitie apparently had never heard of before they met by chance in the parking lot of a mosque.
“Brother, did you ever try to do anything for the cause of Islam?” Mr. Hussain asked at one point.
“O.K., brother,” Mr. Cromitie replied warily, “where you going with this, brother?”
Two days later, the informer told him, “Allah has more work for you to do,” and added, “Revelation is going to come in your dreams that you have to do this thing, O.K.?” About 15 minutes later, Mr. Hussain proposed the idea of using missiles, saying he could get them in a container from China. Mr. Cromitie laughed.
Reading hundreds of pages of transcripts of the recorded conversations is like looking at the inkblots of a Rorschach test. Patterns of willingness and hesitation overlap and merge. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Mr. Cromitie said, and then explained that he meant women and children. “I don’t care if it’s a whole synagogue of men.” It took 11 months of meandering discussion and a promise of $250,000 to lead him, with three co-conspirators he recruited, to plant fake bombs at two Riverdale synagogues.
“Only the government could have made a ‘terrorist’ out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” said Judge Colleen McMahon, sentencing him to 25 years. She branded it a “fantasy terror operation” but called his attempt “beyond despicable” and rejected his claim of entrapment.
The judge’s statement was unusual, but Mr. Cromitie’s characteristics were not. His incompetence and ambivalence could be found among other aspiring terrorists whose grandiose plans were nurtured by law enforcement. They included men who wanted to attack fuel lines at Kennedy International Airport; destroy the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) in Chicago; carry out a suicide bombing near Tampa Bay, Fla., and bomb subways in New York and Washington. Of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.
Another New York City subway plot, which recently went to trial, needed no help from government. Nor did a bombing attempt in Times Square, the abortive underwear bombing in a jetliner over Detroit, a planned attack on Fort Dix, N.J., and several smaller efforts. Some threats are real, others less so. In terrorism, it’s not easy to tell the difference.
U.S. Navy's New Laser Weapon Blasts Good or Bad Guys From Air, Sea - Murder by Laser, our tax dollars at work
- By LUIS MARTINEZ - ABC OTUS News – April 9, 2013
No longer the fantasy weapon of tomorrow, the U.S. Navy is set to field a powerful laser that can protect its ships by blasting targets with high-intensity light beams.
Early next year the Navy will place a laser weapon aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf where it could be used to fend off approaching unmanned aerial vehicles or speedboats.
The Navy calls its futuristic weapon LAWS, which stands for the Laser Weapon System. What looks like a small telescope is actually a weapon that can track a moving target and fire a steady laser beam strong enough to burn a hole through steel.
A Navy video of testing conducted last summer off the coast of California shows how a laser beam fired from a Navy destroyer was able to set aflame an approaching UAV or drone, sending it crashing into the ocean.
"There was not a single miss" during the testing, said Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, chief of Naval Research. The laser was three for three in bringing down an approaching unmanned aerial vehicle and 12 for 12 when previous tests are factored in.
But don't expect in that video to see the firing of colored laser bursts that Hollywood has used for its futuristic laser guns. The Navy's laser ray is not visible to the naked eye because it is in the infrared spectrum.
Many of the details about how the laser works remain secret, such as how far its beam can travel, how powerful it is or how much power is used to generate it.
But Navy officials have provided a few unclassified details. For example, the laser is designed to be a "plug and play" system that integrates into a ship's existing targeting technologies and power grids. Those factors make it a surprisingly cheap weapon.
Klunder says each pulse of energy from the laser "costs under a dollar" and it can be used against weapons systems that are significantly more expensive. The Navy says it has spent about $40 million over the past six years in developing the weapon.
Rear Admiral Thomas Eccles, Navy Sea Systems Command, says the beam can be turned on instantly and that ultimately "the generation of power is essentially your magazine. It's the clip we have" instead of bullets. "We deliver precision with essentially an endless supply of rounds."
Some new technological fixes, what Klunder calls "a secret sauce," have been developed to improve the degrading of lasers over distance as well as maintaining a lock on a target from a moving ship.
The strength of the beam is flexible enough that at a lower intensity level it can be used to warn approaching ships and UAV's not to get too close to a Navy ship. Instead of using machine guns to fire non-lethal warning shots as Navy ships do now, the laser can be aimed to "dazzle" the viewing sensors aboard the craft. That light effect warns the pilot of a small water craft or at the controls of a UAV that they are being targeted by a laser and to turn away. If they don't, the laser's power can be boosted to destroy the approaching craft.
Based on earlier testing the Navy is confident the laser is ready for real-world testing aboard the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf. The ship was selected because of its mission to be an enduring presence in the Gulf to counter Iranian maritime threats in the region. Coincidentally Iran uses small fast boats to harass American warships in the waters of the Persian Gulf.
How might Iran feel about the new weapon? "Frankly I hope it sends a message to some of our potentially threatening adversaries out there to know that we mean business," said Klunder. "This is a system where if you try to harm our vessels that I hope you will take a very, very serious moment of pause to think about that before you do it because this system will destroy your vessel or will destroy your UAV."
The Navy wants the ship's crew to use the same techniques and methods they use with their other defensive weapons systems.
While for now the laser will be used primarily against slow-moving UAV's and fast boats cruising at speeds of 50 knots, the Navy sees the system's capabilities expanding over time to target faster weapons.
"There's absolutely every intention that with the development of this system and follow-on upgraded systems we will eventually be able to take higher speeds in-bound," said Klunder.
* Dr. Judy Wood - Warmongering Weapon Manufacturers Are Able To Disrupt Molecular Bonds Of Matter, Using Directed Energy Weapon
NATO air strike kills 11 Afghan children, officials say
Latest update: 08/04/2013 - © AFP
An air strike in Afghanistan carried out by NATO forces has killed 11 children in the eastern part of the country, officials said on Sunday. Afghanistan’s president condemned the loss of civilian lives.
A NATO air attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed 11 children, officials said Sunday, the latest case of civilian casualties which provoke great anger in the war-torn country.
The children were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province bordering Pakistan late on Saturday.
An Afghan official involved in the operation who did not want to be named said air support was called in after local and coalition forces came under attack, resulting in the death of an American and injuries to several Afghan soldiers.
The official said the force did not know there were women and children in the houses that were hit.
Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces have been one of the most contentious issues in the 11-year campaign against Taliban insurgents, provoking harsh criticism from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and angry public protests.
The president "strongly condemned the ISAF air strike in Kunar that killed 11 children," in a statement issued by his office.
"The president, while condemning the use of civilians as shields by the Taliban, denounced any kind of operations that cause civilian deaths," the statement said.
Local officials including Shigal district governor Abdul Zahir had earlier given a death toll of 10 children killed and six women wounded, while Sayed Rahman, security commander of Shigal, said one woman was also among the dead.
A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the strike and said the coalition was gathering information to determine what happened.
A US civilian died in a militant attack at the scene, ISAF said.
The interior ministry said in a statement the attack by coalition forces killed six Taliban including two senior commanders.
On Thursday a NATO air strike killed four Afghan policemen and two civilians during a pre-dawn clash with Taliban at a police post in eastern Ghazni province.
After an air strike killed 10 civilians, mostly women and children, in February, Karzai banned Afghan security forces from calling in NATO air strikes.
However it is unclear whether the ban has been enforced and many operations are jointly run by NATO and Afghan forces.
The latest strike came a day after at least five Americans, including a young female diplomat, were killed in two Taliban attacks in the country's east and south.
A suicide car bomber struck a NATO convoy in the southern province of Zabul Saturday, killing three US soldiers and two civilians, one of whom was a female US diplomat.
They were travelling with Afghan officials to distribute books to students. The nationality of the second civilian was unclear.
Another US civilian was killed in an attack in the east, making it the deadliest day for the coalition since July 8 last year.
Though the Taliban have not yet announced their "spring offensive", which started last year with a barrage of bloody attacks in early May, the traditional Afghan fighting season is beginning as the cold winter recedes.
US-led coalition forces are winding down their operations before a scheduled withdrawal of the bulk of their 100,000 troops by the end of 2014, and racing to prepare Afghan forces to take over responsibility for security.
But a brazen attack last Wednesday -- when Taliban gunmen killed 46 people at a court in the western city of Farah to try to free insurgents standing trial -- raised further questions about the Afghans' ability to secure the country.
The Farah death toll was the highest in Afghanistan from a single attack since a Shiite Muslim shrine was bombed in Kabul in December 2011, killing 80 people.
IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant
The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications.
- By Declan McCullagh - April 10, 2013
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.
Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers say that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.
That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone's home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.
An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that "emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual's computer." The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said in a blog post that the IRS's view of privacy rights violates the Fourth Amendment:
Let's hope you never end up on the wrong end of an IRS criminal tax investigation. But if you do, you should be able to trust that the IRS will obey the Fourth Amendment when it seeks the contents of your private emails. Until now, that hasn't been the case. The IRS should let the American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people's email. And even more important, the IRS should formally amend its policies to require its agents to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age.
The IRS continued to take the same position, the documents indicate, even after a federal appeals court ruled in the 2010 case U.S. v. Warshak that Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their e-mail. A few e-mail providers, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook, but not all, have taken the position that Warshak mandates warrants for e-mail.
The IRS did not immediately respond to a request from CNET asking whether it is the agency's position that a search warrant is required for e-mail and similar communications.
Before the Warshak decision, the general rule since 1986 had been that police could obtain Americans' e-mail messages that were more than 180 days old with an administrative subpoena or what's known as a 2703(d) order, both of which lack a warrant's probable cause requirement.
The rule was adopted in the era of telephone modems, BBSs, and UUCP links, long before gigabytes of e-mail stored in the cloud was ever envisioned. Since then, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Warshak, technology had changed dramatically: "Since the advent of e-mail, the telephone call and the letter have waned in importance, and an explosion of Internet-based communication has taken place. People are now able to send sensitive and intimate information, instantaneously, to friends, family, and colleagues half a world away... By obtaining access to someone's e-mail, government agents gain the ability to peer deeply into his activities."
A March 2011 update to the IRS manual, published four months after the Warshak decision, says that nothing has changed and that "investigators can obtain everything in an account except for unopened e-mail or voice mail stored with a provider for 180 days or less" without a warrant. An October 2011 memorandum (PDF) from IRS senior counsel William Spatz took a similar position.
A phalanx of companies, including Amazon, Apple, AT&T, eBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Twitter, as well as liberal, conservative, and libertarian advocacy groups, have asked Congress to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to make it clear that law enforcement needs warrants to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices.
In November, a Senate panel approved the e-mail warrant requirement, and last month Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, introduced similar legislation in the House of Representatives. The Justice Department indicated last month it will drop its opposition to an e-mail warrant requirement.
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