Homeland Security Watch

Suspected terrorists have recently been tracking airplane crew members of the Israeli national airline, El Al, in Toronto, purportedly in preparation for an attack on airline personnel. Al Haaretz reports today that Israeli intelligence thinks Hezbollah seeks to attack Israeli targets abroad to avenge the February assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s number two and suspected of being involved in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. barracks in Beirut. Hezbollah blames Mossad for the assasination.

I wouldn’t exactly call this alarmist either:
• July 2002: Two people are killed by a gunman firing on El Al passengers at LAX before an Israeli security official shot and killed the gunman.

• May 2003: EL Al canceled a flight to Kenya after receiving an intelligence warning of a planned attack.

• September 2003: An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles diverts to Montreal because of a warning of a terror attack planned for its layover in Toronto.

• November 2005: Seven Dutch youths arrested for planning to attack an El Al plane.

• June 2006: Swiss authorities uncover an attempt by a Muslim terror cell to attack an El Al plane in Germany.

• November 2006: Germany arrests six on suspicion of planning to blow up an El Al plane leaving from Frankfurt.

• Summer 2008: Hezbollah cell caught collecting against Israeli targets in Canada, including the Israeli Embassy in Ottawa.

According to a new report by the Coordinator of the Al- Qaeda/ Taliban Monitoring Team of the United Nations Security Council, al- Qaeda is enduring a difficult period of weakness. They would be vanquished, in fact, if it were not for the one geographical area where Al- Qaeda has retained influence and consolidated or increased its standing over the last three years: the Afghan-Pakistan border region.

After the 2008 International Terrorism and Intelligence Conference on 9-10 June in London, a group of security experts started publishing a series of papers to address key long-term challenges posed by counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization. The authors of these papers take an integrated approach that considers the diplomatic, military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, as well as cooperation between the public and private sectors.

This latest report is by Richard Barrett, Coordinator of the Al- Qaeda/ Taliban Monitoring Team of the UN Security Council, who serves on the UN Secretary-General’s Task Force implementing the United Nations Global Counter- Terrorism Strategy. Barrett has a particular responsibility for addressing radicalization and extremism that lead to terrorism, terrorist use of the Internet, and terrorist financing.

Barrett explains in this new report that Al- Qaeda’s future largely depends on the safety of the Afghan-Pakistan border region and whether it can maintain its relationship with the Taliban there. The same Taliban that harbored al- Qaeda during the lead up to 9/11 remains the lifeline for al- Qaeda today and it is located right where we left if in 2003: just beyond the Tora Bora.

There is now a Pakistan and Afghan Taliban that are, according to the new report, becoming increasingly distinct. The report’s author suggests that “the most promising option from Al Qaeda’s perspective is to foster and deepen its relationship with the Pakistani rather than the Afghan Taliban.” Good thing the Pakistani government finally outlawed al- Qaeda.

The international community has a role to serve in eliminating al- Qaeda’s most promising option and finishing the job in Afghanistan. However, and the report notes this in detail, the international community must tread lightly. (Not particularly our strong suit these past years.) The experts warn that Al- Qaeda will “fight hard to obstruct the influence of” the central governments in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and will “try to discredit it by arguing that it acts on behalf of external interests; it will aim to provoke further intervention by foreign forces, knowing that this is the one thing all the tribes will unite against.”

After last night’s Democratic convention, I am tempted to round this out with a quote from a speech that Barack Obama gave on August 1, 2007:

“It is time to write a new chapter in our response to 9/11. . . . When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world’s most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”

Last week the FBI outlined its new “theory of the case” regarding the 2001 anthrax attack. So far, almost all of the focus has remained on the whodunit, a scientist named Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, who committed suicide late last month as the FBI was closing in on him. Far less attention has been given to whatdunit, the United States Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases or USAMRIID, and whether sufficient institutional security measures have been developed within government laboratories and government-sponsored research programs to ensure that we can detect the next bio-bomber.

Lingering questions from the Ivins case, particularly the reaction of his co-workers at Fort Detrick, suggest that we have a lot of work to do to build an effective security system to monitor the potential misuse of the world’s most deadly substances. And it is possible that our actions since 2001 have expanded the danger.

Based on new scientific tools used in the investigation, the FBI is certain that the agent used in the attack came from a specific flask used in research at the Army lab. That flask was “effectively the murder weapon” according to U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor. So, whether or not Dr. Ivins did it, the FBI is convinced that someone at USAMRIID did. At least one government scientist weaponized an agent, removed it from the facility and used it to kill five people without being detected. The combination of background checks, peer observation and physical security at Fort Detrick in place in 2001 was inadequate.

Even now, many of Dr. Ivins’ co-workers are not convinced he did it because they believe they would have seen him do it. These doubts should sound an alarm about the state of bio-security today. Seven years after the incident, no one associated with Fort Detrick has yet explained what has been done to make a repeat incident less likely.

Let’s compare aviation and bio-security. Aviation security is far from perfect, but we have responded aggressively and systematically to the 9/11 failure. We know a lot more about passengers before they arrive at the airport. We inspect them and their baggage thoroughly before they are allowed to board an airplane. Once on board, a potential hijacker faces a locked cockpit door, an air marshal, a better trained crew and a plane-full of inquisitive eyes. There remains a residual threat to aviation, most likely from air cargo, but at least we have done as much as we can to prevent another suicide hijacking.

Unfortunately, it is possible our response to the other 2001 terror attack has been backwards. We have spent many billions of dollars developing vaccines and deploying detection equipment based on the belief that the threat was external – a terrorist organization would develop and deploy a biological weapon against the United States.

That danger certainly exists, but we now know that this was an insider job. Someone working for a secretive agency and in control of the most dangerous technologies that exist used them against the society they were charged to protect. And, because the scope of research on bio-defenses has expanded exponentially since 2001, the insider threat now could be even greater.

In the coming days, it will be imperative for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to come forward and tell us what has been done at government labs across the country and within government-sponsored research programs in light of the USAMRIID case to strengthen bio-security. What new research protocols have been established? What kind of peer review system is now in place? What kind of detection equipment has been installed as workers exit labs? How have background checks been strengthened? If Dr. Ivins was suffering from declining mental health, to what extent are labs monitoring scientists and looking for danger signs?

We now know that in 2001 we were attacked not just by al Qaeda but also by a government agency. Significant questions linger as to whether the government’s biological security is keeping pace with biological research. The government cannot retreat behind a veil of secrecy. The American people deserve to know that government bio-defense programs now have more effective security measures in place so that we are sufficiently protected from both internal and external threats.

The case should be far from closed.

P.J. Crowley is a Senior Fellow and Director of Homeland Security at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. He served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and then as Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs, serving as Senior Director of Public Affairs for the National Security Council.

The presidential campaigns are being fought on several fronts. This week, energy policy is the most visible front line, but terrorism and the imperative to keep Americans safe at home will return to the front page soon. In that process, we’ll hear about why staying the course in Iraq is desirable as a means of “winning it the right way by winning it” as Senator McCain asserted yesterday at a celebtrity appearance before a crowd of bikers waiting to see Kid Rock perform. We’ll also hear from Senator Obama that the logic of staying in Iraq is based on a wish that America continue to vindicate bad decisions made ever since we invaded, to include the decision to invade in the first place.

All of this is important, but it is a secondary argument to the important question of determining what has worked and what hasn’t in achieving the indisputable success that no attack has been successfully carried out on the U.S. since 9/11. Depending on our answer to that question, we can focus on continuing those efforts that are constructive and promptly end those efforts that are ineffective or counterproductive, or both.

It is hard to make the case that the invasion of Iraq has allowed the U.S. to fight terrorists overseas rather than here on the CONUS. If anything, that war has made the U.S. less secure by a number of measures (overstretched military, denuded international legitimacy, skyrocketing national debt, inflamed rather than defanged terrorist adversaries, etc.). However, by taking a comprehensive assessment of efforts we as a nation have undertaken, those developments that are reasonably out of our control but still relevant, and the indirect consequences of a combination of the two trends, we can gain a useful understanding of what has worked and what hasn’t.

Fortunately, national security analysts at SAIC and professional staff from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Advanced Systems and Concepts Office conducted an open-source literature review to identify hypotheses explaining why the United States has not been attacked successfully by terrorists since 9/11. This two hundred page study organized the reasons why we’ve not yet been attacked successfully into two categories:

Capabilities – Terrorists have been unable to succeed in conducting another large-scale attack on the homeland due to the effectiveness of U.S. defenses or because of the terrorists’ limited capabilities. The authors further address this thesis as part of two different “baskets” of issues:

• U.S. and Allied Counterterrorism Efforts: U.S. and allied initiatives have decisively limited terrorists’ capabilities to conduct attacks on the homeland by driving al-Qaeda’s leaders from their Afghanistan sanctuary, disrupting several terrorist plots, and forcing operatives to focus on preserving their own security rather than training for and carrying out new attacks. At home, potential targets have been hardened, coordination between government agencies has improved, and public awareness has increased scrutiny of suspicious behavior.

• Terrorist Attack Capabilities: Limitations on terrorist capabilities that are less dependent on U.S. and allied counterterrorism activities have prevented terrorist attacks on the U.S. This treatment suggests that a number factors independent of our anti-and counter-terrorism efforts are to credit. Examples of such factors include the time needed to recover from damage done to al-Qaeda and the requirements necessary for deploying terrorist veterans of the Iraq war, the challenged of acquiring WMD capabilities, and the broad assimilation of U.S. Muslims limiting the pool of potential “homegrown” jihadists.

Motivations – While a number of terrorist groups possess the ability to attack the United States, they have chosen not to do so for a variety of reasons. These categories are further subdivided into the following four baskets:

• Another Attack is a Bad Idea: Terrorists have concluded that another strike on the United States is ill-advised. This category suggests that al-Qaeda’s leaders prefer to wait until they can perpetrate an attack that surpasses 9/11 in terms of destruction and symbolism or that terrorists are concerned that another attack on the homeland would be counterproductive/ineffective in achieving their objectives.

• These Are Busy Times: Various groups maintain a significant attack capability, but other targets (i.e. n Europe, Middle East, and apparently China) are more attractive than the U.S. homeland due to operational challenges or political inclinations.

Two presumed terrorists crashed a truck bomb into a state police station Monday and threw two grenades, killing 16 policemen and wounding 16 others. It wasn’t in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor was the attack even in the Middle East. This was in China.

Chinese officials have warned that Uighur extremists with links to foreign-based Islamist extremist organizations pose the greatest security threat to the Beijing Olympic Games.

The attack killed patrol troops from the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force responsible for putting down riots, guarding embassies and safeguarding the border. Last month, police in the regional capital killed five Uighurs in a raid on an apartment. Authorities accused them of preparing a holy war against Chinese rule.

Chinese authorities have identified the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a key terrorist group in this situation. The Washington Post reports in its coverage of today’s bombing that China executed three people in the restive Xinjiang region July 9 convicted of being East Turkestan Islamic Movement members. The Uighur population is overwhelmingly Muslim seeks to break away from Chinese rule.

In April China announced that it had broken up two Uighur terrorist cells plotting to kidnap foreigners and bomb hotels during the Olympics. 45 people were arrested and accused of ties to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

The LA Times is reporting the suicide death of the bioweapons scientist employed at Ft. Detrick who was considered by the FBI to be the suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and severely sickened 17 others. Steven Hatfill? Nope.

The LA Times report said the Feds ruled out Hatfill and settled on Bruce E. Ivins, a different bioweapons expert at Ft. Detrick, as the culprit. Hatfill had been under investigation for years and publicly proclaimed “a person of interest” by then Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In June, the Justice Department reached a settlement valued at $5.85 million with Steven Hatfill, who sued them for trashing his name in the media.

The Washington Post tells that FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the anthrax investigation in 2006, instructing the new investigators to re-examine leads and reconsider potential suspects. Turns out that Ivins had an impressive record for his research on behalf of the Defense Department in the area of anthrax decontamination. Ivins also is reported to have conducted extra-curricular research that tipped the investigation in his direction. What is odd is that the following information was public for years:

Ivins was one of the nation’s leading biodefense researchers, according to the Times report, and co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

In the six months following the anthrax mailings, Ivins conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at USAMRIID and found some, according to an internal report by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, which oversees the lab.

In December 2001, after conducting tests triggered by a technician’s fears that she had been exposed, Ivins found evidence of anthrax and decontaminated the woman’s desk, computer, keypad and monitor, but didn’t notify his superiors, the Times reported. The report says Ivins performed more unauthorized sampling on April 15, 2002.

This information was reported by USAToday in 2004.

“I swabbed approximately 20 areas of (her) desk, including the telephone computer and desktop,” Ivins told Army investigators. Half of the samples, he found, “were suspicious for anthrax.”

Rather than report the contamination, Ivins said, he disinfected the desk. “I had no desire to cry wolf.”

Ivins also helped the FBI analyze one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to Senator Daschle’s Washington office.

It is unclear if anything Ivins did before the attacks in September and October 2001 was suspicious. We’ll never know whether Bruce Ivins was indeed the perpetrator among the 20-30 scientists at Ft. Detrick under investigation. Ivins had been told about the impending prosecution and apparently committed suicide by overdosing on Tylenol with Codeine.

Reader Arnold asked whether we can expect a public report on the lessons learned from the TOPOFF 4 exercise, which took place October 15-19, 2007, with thousands of federal, state, and local officials responding to a full scale response to a simulated dirty bomb attack in Oregon and Arizona. The Secretary explained that the TOPOFF lessons learned are under review now and being circulated for sign off.
Two things to consider:

1. The Secretary also said that planning for TOPOFF 5 is underway. It would be important for the lessons from TOPOFF 4 to inform that design.

2. Its unclear if the lessons from TOPOFF 4 are being drafted as a deliverable to the public, including state and local officials, who clearly drew their own lessons that should probably have a hand in crafting the review.

Look for a public version no sooner than summer.

Perhaps the way we’ve arrived at considering spending billions on missile defense for commercial airliners and monitoring paintball games for signs of extremism is along the appealing path of “it could happen.” In the early days following 9/11, many of us in the policy community worried about the nature of follow-on attacks, which gave way to defensive measures based on scenarios, which led to ever more ominous scenarios, and ever more expensive countermeasures. Is this serving us well as an approach to Homeland Security?

To be sure, we have a lot of work to do and a lot of worthy work is underway at DHS, State, and Defense that is critical to combating terrorism. However, we should beware the tendency to shape our strategy based on the theory that “it could happen.” Could terrorists fire surface to air missiles at airplanes leaving LaGuardia? Yes. Likely? Hard to say. Worth $10 billion to reduce but not eliminate the possibility? Hardly.

So it bothered me when Paul J. Browne, an NYPD police spokesman told the New York Times this week, “One call one day may be the one that stops an attempt to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.” He was justifying the ubiquitous ad campaign across the City’s subway system urging riders to “say something” if they “see something.” The motive initially makes sense: A complacent ridership risks missing indications of a conspiracy to bomb the subway trains. I suppose the assumption is that had the other riders on Spain’s train to Madrid on the morning of March 11, 2004, noticed the terrorists leaving their bomb-rigged bags, the concerned commuter would have alerted others and possibly avoided the carnage.

Last year, according to NYPD, 1,944 subway riders “said something.” By calling 1-800-NYC-SAFE, subway riders warned of “people seen counting in the subway.” Callers worried this was an antecedent to something nefarious and deadly. In all, the hotline received 13,473 calls in 2007, with 644 of those triggering investigations. (Of these calls, 45 were transit related.)

While some crimes were inadvertently uncovered by the callers “ranging from selling false IDs to illegal fireworks peddling” none of the calls resulted from or discovered actual terrorism threats. NYC’s subway riders were applying their own “no-fly list” to other riders. 13,373 callers would have sent fellow riders to secondary, but would have found no terrorists. This is the trickle down effect of “it could happen.”

The “it could happen” approach results from a steep national learning curve about terrorism that persists more than six years after 9/11. Terrorism is a complicated issue, and one that continually evolves. No doubt the general public has little time to read up on radicalism or studied analyses of terrorist behavior. But if our homeland is secured by an “anything’s possible” strategy, we’ll wind up doing at least one of three things:
• Going broke
• Tying up anti-terrorism assets with non-threats
• Eroding our sense of community and eventually our ability to be resilient if we are attacked again

None of these outcomes will happen quickly. However, the prospect does force a cost-benefit analysis of a new kind. Is it worth $10 billion to reduce the chance of a successful MANPAD launch against an airliner? Does a terrorism hotline make us safer if we don’t know what to look for?

National strategies – from Homeland Security to housing programs – require tradeoffs. But assessing the costs and benefits accurately requires balancing near-term and long-term needs with a sober assessment of the strategic threat. Seven years into the national effort to secure the homeland, we still seem to be struggling to understand this equation.

UPDATE: I will concede this: the terrorism hotline serves another potential benefit beyond empowering subway riders. The notion of an overly alert ridership has the potential to introduce enough uncertainty on the part of a perpetrator to second guess the viability of an operation. The flipside is that terrorists become more covert to further lower their profiles. The most effective measure would force a would-be terrorist to take more steps to avoid detection, thereby providing more indicators of a planned attack.

Not much time to write these days, so this will be quick.  These two reports were sent in to the Watch yesterday.  While they were issued to the Department earlier in the year, they were just made public.

Both of these are by the Homeland Security Institute, the FFRDC set up for DHS.  HSI primarily serves the S&T Directorate, but they are a resource for the entire Department.  More on HSI here.

The first report is a study of the factors that contribute to the success or failure of a terrorist attack, as well as measures taken to counter those attacks.  Click here to download the pdf.

The second is a revealing report on the process of strategic planning for DHS.  The report asks a basic question: If the mission is to protect the homeland, how should the mission space really be defined?  The authors take on the scope of sub-missions and begin to identify actionable objectives for each of them.

The Pelindaba nuclear facility in South Africa was the target of an armed assault yesterday. Nevermind the talk of flying airplanes into reactors, this is a real world case wherein armed men were able to penetrate a series of security measures and actually enter the control room. This article was sent in by reader Steve Bogden.

A CRS study in 2005 entitled “Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack,” argues that despite the heightened security measures imposed on nuclear facilities in the U.S. by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, industry has been slow to implement them.

The NRC explains its position on protecting nuclear facilities here with its three phase plan that was to be completed by now. I do not know where this effort stands.

In the past, security measures known as “buffers” or “layers” were considered the best way to restrict unauthorized access to such crucial infrastructure as a nuclear power plant’s control panel. Earlier this month, a man was discovered to be bringing a pipe bomb into a nuclear plant in Arizona – the largest one in the country in fact.  If the perpetrators of the break-in at Pelindaba had been armed with such a bomb, it is doubtful that any existing buffers would have stopped a terrible outcome.

Here is the article:

Attack at Pelindaba nuclear facility
By Graeme Hosken
The Pretoria News
November 09, 2007

A brazen attack by four gunmen on the Pelindaba nuclear facility has left a senior emergency officer seriously injured.

Anton Gerber, Necsa emergency services operational officer spoke to the Pretoria News from his hospital bed hours after the attack.

He was shot in the chest when the gunmen stormed the facility’s emergency response control room in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The shooting comes four months after Necsa’s newly appointed services general manager Eric Lerata, 43, was gunned down in front of his Montana home after returning from a business trip in France.

‘one of them attacked me with a screwdriver’
Pelindaba is regarded as one of the country’s most secure national key points.

It is surrounded by electric fencing, has 24-hour CCTV surveillance, security guards and security controls and checkpoints.

The attack comes as the country prepares to preside over an International Atomic Energy Agency convention on nuclear safety.

The convention is aimed at achieving a high level of global nuclear safety via safety related technical co-operation; establishing and maintaining effective defences in nuclear installations against potential radiological hazards and preventing accidents with radiological consequences.

A visibly shaken Gerber, who was rushed to Eugene Marais hospital, on Thursday said that he was sitting in the control room with his fiancée Ria Meiring when he heard a loud bang.

‘I could not let anything like that happen’
Meiring, who was working nightshift, is the supervisor of the control room.

Gerber said he kept Meiring company. “I do not like it when she is at work at night and I go with her to keep her company and ensure that she is safe,” he said.

Describing the attack Gerber said they were inside the electronically sealed control room when they heard a loud bang.

They then spotted the gunmen coming into the facility’s eastern block.

It is believed that the attackers gained access to the building by using a ladder from Pelindaba’s fire brigade and scaling a wall.

The men are thought to have forced open a window by pulling out several louvers.

Pushing Meiring underneath a desk, Gerber attacked two of the gunmen as they forced their way into the control room and ran straight for the control panel.

“I did not know what they were going to do. I just kept on hitting them even when one of them attacked me with a screwdriver.

“I knew that if I stopped they would attack Ria or do something to the panel.

“I could not let anything like that happen,” he said.

Unbeknownst to Gerber one of the robbers had shot him in the chest as he fought them off.

The bullet narrowly missed his heart breaking a rib before puncturing his lung. Doctors said the bullet missed his spine by 2cm.

Gerber, who at one stage thought he was going to die, said he had been very scared.

“The facility is meant to be safe. There are security guards, electric fences and security control points. These things are not meant to happen,” he said.

Necsa spokesperson Chantal Janneker confirmed the attack.

She declined to say how the gunmen had gained access to the facility or whether they had stolen anything.

Janneker said Necsa was conducting an internal investigation into the attack.

Once the police investigation was complete Necsa would divulge what happened, she said.

Later in the afternoon, Pretoria News was phoned by a man identifying himself as a Necsa legal adviser, saying the newspaper will be breaching the National Keypoints Act by publishing the story.

He said that Necsa may seek a court order preventing dissemination of the story.

He claimed that the interview with Gerber was “unethical” as “he was under sedation and thus incoherent” when it was conducted.

Pretoria News sought and was granted permission to interview Gerber, by hospital management, and Gerber himself. While he was obviously in pain, he appeared coherent and made sense throughout the interview.

His recall of the events was sequential and to the point. He also agreed to have his picture taken in his hospital bed.

North West police spokesperson Superintendent Louis Jacobs said that no arrests had been made.

“A case of armed robbery and attempted murder are being investigated,” he said.

Conflicting opinions emerging these days about the state of our homeland security.  Walter Pincus and Joby Warrick noted in their coverage of official statements yesterday that while Secretary Chertoff was explaining to the Senate how the threat of terrorism is as bad as it was six years ago, the President’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, Fran Townsend, struck a different chord in an interview with Wolf Blitzer by calling al Qaeda’s leader an “impotent… man on the run from a cave.”  Where to go from here with a threat assessment like this?

In addition to invoking the need for greater investments in HLS capabilities, intelligence gathering resources, and a general sense of resolve, the recently foiled attacks in Germany came to be useful fodder for assessing the risk today.  The DNI suggested that the plans of those aspiring terrorists in North Rhine-Westphalia were uncovered due to warrantless surveillance of communications traveling through the U.S.  (The Senate Committee pointed out that the German cell was located almost ten months prior to that surveillance law being passed.) 

So what can we learn about the recently disrupted cell in Germany on this sixth anniversary of 9/11?  What materiel was too easy for them to procure in preparation for their plans?  How were they able to coordinate and communicate without notice until the late stages as it were?  Could we see the same trend emerge here in the U.S., and would we be able to detect it early enough?  How well could we manage the aftermath of an attack with 700kg of hydrogen peroxide were we not to stop it beforehand? 

I’ve noted the work of a London-based group here before named Exclusive Analysis.  They are kind enough to send me their proprietary products and I’m, as they say over there, keen on sharing it here on occasion.  They recently assessed the terrorist threat in light of the foiled Germany plot.  The main findings, backed up by proper British prose, are as follows: 

The intercepted plot does not demonstrate an evolution in capability of European jihadi networks. 

Currently the risk of attack is moderated by flaws in leadership within jihadi networks.  

European jihadi networks will likely evolve better organisational leadership in a gradual ’survival of the fittest’ fashion; attack targets are likely to be chosen in order to maximise human fatalities. 

According to this, we’re lucky that the terrorists are unlucky — or at least unsophisticated.  Both of these mitigating factors are due to change, and so is the venue.  This places the “fight’em over there so we don’t have to fight’em here” mantra into a different perspective.  Note how rarerly this rationale is invoked on this anniversary of 9/11.

Yesterday included a post here highlighting a number of critical questions posed by the GAO in a wide ranging study of national challenges that will take about 100 years to address.  Among them was a set of questions dealing with homeland security that I believe would be excellent fodder for a presidential debate leading up to 2008.  The Center for American Progress decided not to wait for the politicians.  They ran their third annual Terrorism Survey of policy wonks earlier this summer and released the findings yesterday. 

By querying 108 experts (representing a weighted breakdown of an equal number of conservatives and liberals, as well as a bulk identifying themselves as moderate), CAP – in partnership with Foreign Policy – gives us a stark assessment of where we stand in terms of combating terrorism and generally keeping America safe from deadly adversaries.  The survey asks 30 direct questions (and a number of questions about the participants themselves).  The results are insightful and the authors provide their own analysis here. 

A few specific questions are worth noting: 

The single greatest threat as “Nuclear materials/weapons” shows the only perfectly even breakdown that I could find so far.  28 Conservatives and 28 Liberals considered this the singled greatest threat.  Its unclear if they meant nuc weapons generally or in the possession of someone or some country in particular.  Perhaps another line in this answer set sheds light on this: Iran ranks as dangerously as climate change according to the weighted totals. 

No one strongly believes that we are winning a war on terror.  Judging by the totals, this one isn’t even remotely close.  The survey’s methodology shows the cross-section of participants.  This is a group representing an even spread across the political spectrum.

The following is the fifth question with only the top two options listed.  They are the most surprising of the answers: 

Not a single conservative chose a stable and secure Iraq as the most important U.S. policy objective.  But 26 liberals did.  At least the so-called “hearts and minds” issue remains in the top slot.  Just how we pursue that objective would take another survey entirely.

The eighth question in the survey gets down to judging the institutions responsible for improving the picture:

Below are departments and agencies involved in protecting the American people from global terrorist networks and in advancing U.S. national security goals. Thinking about the period from 9/11 to the present day and recognizing that different offices within U.S. government agencies/ departments perform at different levels, please rate each agency /department overall on a scale of 0 to 10.

 Survey says:

No HSC?  The Department of Homeland Security is ranked slightly below average across the board.  It is helpful that the surveyors included the National Security Council, which fared worse than any of the other eight agencies on the list.  But no mention of the White House Homeland Security Council?  Perhaps that’s a worse fate. 

The following question helps to convey the political balance that the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy strove for.  The former is not known for doing this, but its not their role anyway.  This topic, however, is too important to represent only half of the political spectrum. 

According to this response, the breakdown between conservative and liberal gradients is almost perfectly equal.

The NYPD released a study created by their Intelligence Division that analyzes the nature and evolution of terrorism radicalization and recruitment.  Entitled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, the report presents a “conceptual framework for understanding the process of radicalization in the West,” which is based on an analysis of five U.S.-based incidents: 

Lackawana, New York
Portland, Oregon
Northern Virginia
New York City - Herald Square Subway
New York City – The Al Muhajiroun Two (see page 66 of the report)

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly introduces this new study by explaining that “understanding this [terrorist recruitment] trend and the radicalization process in the West that drives it is vital for developing effective counterstrategies.”  This is why, Kelly continues, the “NYPD places a priority on understanding what drives and defines the radicalization process.” 

The NYPD suggests that a prime differentiator in the cases of the five incidents studied is that the perpetrators are “unremarkable.”  The authors of the report, Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt of the NYPD Intelligence Division, apply the term about a dozen times in the report to suggest a new evolution of the terrorist threat in the U.S.: It could be anybody.

By this the report intends to explain that the traditional antecedents to an attack – perpetrators with criminal records, a presence on watchlists, observable anti-American behavior, travel to certain overseas locations – no longer necessarily present themselves even when a terrorist plan has become operational.  The report explains that the process of radicalization and recruitment can be characterized as follows: 

 

Each of the four stages is treated with detail.  In addition to a serious, if somewhat academic, definition of radicalization, the report provides an in-depth threat assessment from the perspective of the NYPD as informed by such well known experts as RAND’s Brian Jenkins.  In the end, the treatment given by this report may do well to highlight the interconnected nature of this threat across national boundaries and thereby give better impetus to a collaborative approach with allies and friends.  This is something the NYPD is known for doing well.  Another byproduct could be a more intentional assessment of drivers, which we called “root causes” years ago before the use of that phrase fell out of popular favor. 

This vitally important subject is covered in other posts here with links to related content from across the policy community.

I couldn’t resist.  While the press and the public try to divine what Secretary Chertoff might have meant when he described a “gut feeling” that indicated a heightened threat to the U.S., but not one that registered on the color scale, most responded with more questions.  No surprise there.  We have trouble nowadays really defining what the threat is to the U.S. Is it a terrorist or a tornado?  Nuclear weapons or naturalized immigrants? 

Its all under the purview of DHS to some extent, and that’s probably why the Secretary of Homeland Security has that feeling: It is hard to rule anything out when the threat is so difficult to define.  As I’m often inclined to do, I looked overseas for some guidance on how to define the threat posed by terrorism in a general sense.  It seems the UK is always said to have recent experience in terrorism plots and attacks, and their stiff upper lip often lends itself to a level of candor uncommon on this side of the Pond.  Here is what MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre explains might be behind that feeling: 

The US, UK and Israel, and their representatives overseas, remain the prime targets for international terrorist networks, particularly Al Qaida. However, Usama bin Laden has variously identified a number of other countries as allies of the US which should also be targeted. 

[snip] 

Countries that are participating in the reconstruction efforts in Iraq have also been identified as targets.  On 18 April 2005, a statement claiming to be from Abu Musab Al Zarqawi’s terrorist network in Iraq, linked to Al Qaida, appeared on several websites, threatening attacks against British forces in Iraq and “all the agents, spies offering them protection and their human shields”. …  While some countries’ interests may be singled out, however, attacks on generic “Western” interests, irrespective of the specific nationalities of the likely victims, are seen as equally valid. 

Locations

Official personnel and property, such as diplomatic missions and military forces, are still seen as priority targets for attack, as shown by the attacks on the British Consulate in Istanbul in November 2003, the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in September 2004 and the US Consulate in Jeddah in December 2004. 

However, terrorist cells are increasingly looking at less well-protected “soft” targets where Westerners can be found, such as social and retail venues, tourist sites and transport networks (rail, road and airports), as illustrated by the attacks in Bali in October 2002, Madrid in March 2004 and Egypt in July 2005.

I have to give Eileen Sullivan of CQ Homeland Security credit for the title here.  It was her article on this subject that first invoked the song by Boston. 

Eight people are under arrest for the attempted car bombings in London’s West End on June 29, 2007, and the bizarre attack on Glasgow Airport’s main terminal building the following day.  All of them worked for the UKs National Health Services.  Hippocrates is spinning in his grave. 

The names of the suspects:

·        Dr. Mohammed Asha and his wife Marwah Dana Asha (Jordan)

·        Dr. Bilal Abdulla (Iraqi, but British born)

·        Dr. Sabeel Ahmed and his brother Dr Kafeel Ahmed (both from India)

·        Dr. Mohammed Haneef was arrested by Australian authorities on July 2 and is the cousin of the Ahmed brothers.

·        Two unnamed medical students are also under arrest.  

Exclusive Analysis reports in an analysis today that up to four of the suspects were previously known to British intelligence services.   

I referred to these incidents in another post as evidence of an evolving adversary.  While that does oversimplify things a bit, we are seeing new characteristics in these cases.  EA identifies three main findings that support the point:

·        The social and familial ties of the suspects were likely invaluable for increasing mutual trust and avoiding detection.

·        The connections to Iraq are likely to have played an inspirational role rather than a technical one.

·        This case indicates groups are increasingly learning from the mistakes and attack styles from one another; this case in particular will inform future terrorists plotting attacks in the UK. 

Sound familiar?  It’s the stuff academics and others have said for a few years would be the likely result of the current tempo and style of the war on terror.  As we continue to fight them there rather than fight them here, ahem, its worth noting some of the more interesting work on domestic radicalization, which was published by the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University and by the DHS’s own Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Not a lot of detail in the public statement today from the Secratary about the foiled bombing in central London last night.  You can view the statement at the bottom of this post.  Following is a summary and analysis from London-based Exclusive Analysis.  They gave me permission to share this proprietary document here on HLSWatch.com.  It beats any newspaper update at this point and I’m grateful to them for allowing our readers to get this kind of detail.

At approximately 2am GMT, officers defused a bomb on The Haymarket in the Piccadilly Circus area of central London. Police responded to reports of a Mercedes driving erratically; the driver was reported to have crashed the car near Tiger Tiger nightclub before fleeing the scene. The device found in the car is so far reported to have utilised gas canisters, petrol and nails.

Analysis and Forecasts

The level of sophistication of the device has yet to be determined; evidence revealed in the investigation will be a key indicator of the level of capability of the bomber.

Police reports so far suggest that the vehicle contained canisters of gas and petrol and that there were nails found in the car. The intended method of initiation of the device is as yet unverified. For instance, whether explosives were to be used to initiate the device with a timer, or whether the petrol was to be set on fire to trigger the gas canisters to explode, will be an important indication of the potential scale of damage. An ambulance that arrived on the scene early reported that the car was full of smoke. The presence of smoke means that it is possible that the device was scheduled to detonate on a timer and that it had gone off early or malfunctioned. Indeed, it may have been the smoke that caused the driver to begin driving erratically and flee the scene.

Though a densely populated nightclub in central London would certainly be a prime target, this also suggests that the car might not have been left at its intended destination (i.e. that the would-be bomber stopped the car and fled prematurely). The nails do suggest that civilian casualties were a goal; exploding canisters would also produce shrapnel. Gas cylinders have been used frequently by terrorist groups, particularly the IRA within the
UK in the past and FARC in Colombia more recently, because they are simple to use and easy to obtain. However, the blast area would not be of the same radius as a large fertiliser bomb.

Both the method and the target of this incident suggest that home-grown terrorists are learning from and influenced by one another.

Our analysis suggests that home-grown European networks are making contact with one another for the purpose of learning from one another and coordinating attacks. Moreover, would-be attackers learn from remotely observing the plots and mistakes of others. For instance, Dhiron Barot, who was imprisoned in the UK in November 2006 for plotting attacks, planned to detonate limousines wired with gas canisters outside the London Stock Exchange. The members of the group arrested for a “fertiliser bomb” plot in 2004 had discussed targeting nightclubs, and nightclubs also feature as a target on extremist websites. Increased collaboration will at first expose individuals to detection, but over time learning will occur, and through social connections knowledge will be passed on, increasing capability over the one- to two-year period.

In this case, the police have stated that there was no specific intelligence about an upcoming attack and that this was a reactive operation, not intelligence-led, showing that the bomber had at least managed to evade surveillance. It is possible that the individual(s) involved were known to intelligence services, but that they, like the 7/7 bombers, had not been prioritised for surveillance out of the large volume of information and leads the security services are grappling with (information overload has become a problem following the expanded definition of ‘terrorism’ under the Terrorism Act 2006).

The target set for UK attacks is likely to focus on large capacity venues in order to maximise casualties and media attention.

Though it is not yet confirmed that any of the bars or clubs in the area of the incident were specific targets, such a target set is certainly consistent with past plots and threats. Sunni extremist groups wanting to carry out terrorist attacks in the UK are likely to choose targets that will maximise casualties. Whilst economic disruption is a desirable side effect of an attack, killing large numbers of people is likely to be the priority. The death toll of an attack, as well as being a gauge of how successful it has been, would also be viewed as justified revenge for those Muslims killed in the War on Terror. Evidence given during the trial of the 21/7 suspected bombers claimed that several of the bombers had repeatedly talked about wanting to pay back the UK for the deaths caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Venues that represent perceived ‘ills’ of Western society, such as bars, clubs and concerts are also likely to be appealing to extremist groups. The ‘fertiliser plot’ bombers, who had talked about targeting the Ministry of Sound nightclub, were recorded saying that none of the casualties in an attack on a London nightclub would be ‘innocent’ as they would all be ’slags’. Although it is clear that terrorists in the UK are prepared to carry out suicide bombings, it is not necessarily the only tactic that terrorists would use. Venues that have large capacities, such as transportation hubs, airport check-ins, nightclubs and bars, or those with both large capacities and that are accessible by car (e.g. city-based skyscrapers or Canary Wharf) will all be at heightened risk.

 And now the press release: 

From: DHS Employee Communications
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 10:46 AM
To: ^DHS-HQ-ALL-QB
Subject: STATEMENT BY SECRETARY CHERTOFF: LONDON INCIDENT

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY CHERTOFF ON LONDON INCIDENT

We have been in close contact with our counterparts in the U.K. regarding the suspected explosive device discovered in a vehicle in the London Haymarket area.  Our law enforcement and intelligence officials are closely monitoring the ongoing investigation.

At this point, I have seen no specific, credible information suggesting that this incident is connected to a threat to the homeland.  We have no plans at this time to change the U.S. threat level.  DHS and the FBI have been in touch with our state and local homeland security and law enforcement partners to convey available information.

We encourage the public to enjoy the upcoming holiday but ask, as always, that they be vigilant and report any suspicious activities to authorities.

The University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) made its terrorism attack database publicly available.  It provides a unique service for understanding the big picture, but other uses may include adding depth to the challenge of understanding risk in the context of terrorism threats. With content covering about 80,000 incidents between 1970 and 2004 (details on the period through 2007 forthcoming), it provides one of the few data sources for risk analysis of this scope and detail.  Intentional attacks disallow a conventional approach to gauging risk because data points (incidents) are the result of adaptive causes (perpetrators). 

Because factors other than frequency and severity should inform assessments of terrorism risk, it is noteworthy that the START database includes 45 factors (~140 in the next version) that can be used to determine antecedent markers, common vulnerabilities, and other trends of that emerge from a deep look at past cases. The Congressional Research Service waded into the subject of risk as outlined in this post.

Other helpful resources for understanding trends and historical data in terrorism include an excellent visual representation by Claire Rubin and William Cumming found here.  Their terrorism timeline provides a useful and evolving snapshot of terrorism and other “major incidents” since the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The juxtaposition of these events with corresponding or concidental policy outcomes that include federal policies, exercises, plans, and statute is of particular value.

While trend setting is one way of judging risk, another is just plain insight and anticipation of likely events, outcomes, and relevant impact based on good information.  Exclusive Analysis, a London-based firm with staff scattered around the globe, produces what might be among the best ongoing risk analysis out there serving everything from governments to private sector clients of a range of sizes.  They publish a subscription-only “Intelligence Bulletin” focused on regions and/or industry sectors.  Its a pithy yet detailed distillation that publishes daily.  The value here is a targeted concept of risk (i.e. inclusive, but not anything and everything) that nevertheless rules in just about every factor from local changes in laws pertaining to chemical stewardship or privacy practices to consequential government deliberations about planned interventions and interests overseas.  Worth looking into at this site.

Last month Ohio State University professor John Mueller published the book “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them.” The book expands upon his article in Foreign Affairs earlier this fall entitled “Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?” (which I reviewed in this post). Mueller has taken these arguments on the road recently, with an appearance on The Daily Show (Part 1, Part 2) in October and a policy event at the Cato Institute earlier this week.

The book makes three main arguments: (a) the terrorist threat is overstated today, (b) we’re exacerbating the threat by believing that it’s serious, and (c) there is now a “terrorism industry” that has a vested interest in maintaining public alarm.

These are all topics that are worthy of debate. You can read my earlier critique of (a) in this post on his Foreign Affairs piece. I partially agree partially with (b); it is imperative that our leaders avoid fearmongering, and that we take steps to make our society more resilient to avoid adverse secondary effects from disruption. And I think (c) uses a cheap epithet to make a blanket ad hominem criticism of anyone who believes that the terrorist threat is serious and consequential.

But unfortunately, Mueller undermines the basis for this debate by using false and misleading examples and statistics in numerous places in the book. For starters, take the opening paragraphs of his Introduction:

Upon discovering that Weeki Wachee Springs, his Florida roadside water park, had been included on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of over 80,000 potential terrorist targets, its marketing and promotion manager, John Athanason, turned reflective. “I can’t imagine bin Laden trying to blow up the mermaids,” he mused, “but with terrorists, who knows what they’re thinking. I don’t want to think like a terrorist, but what if the terrorists try to poison the water at Weeki Wachee Springs?”

Whatever his imaginings, however, he went on to report that his enterprise had quickly and creatively risen to the occasion - or seized the opportunity. They were working to get a chunk of the counterterrorism funds allocated to the region by the well-endowed, anxiety-provoking, ever-watchful Department of Homeland Security.

Which is the greater threat: terrorism, or our reaction against it? The Weeki Wachee experience illustrates the problem.

This sounds terrible, right? Another example of people being opportunistic and unjustly trying to grab that homeland security cash?

Not really. Unlike John Mueller, I wrote earlier this week to John Athanason, the manager of Weeki Wachee who is quoted in the passage above. This was the first that he had heard about his inclusion in this book. Athanason quickly wrote back to me and clarified the story (emphasis his):

You don’t see anywhere in the press about the park getting money for the “terrorism threat”, because the attraction was never intended to get any money.

In the state of Florida, each and every county had one request given to them by Homeland Security. Within your county, where would the most likely target occur in the event of a terrorist attack? Within Hernando County, our attraction was listed by our local authorities because we have a venue that attracts a large number of people at any given time. We did not pursue any money, nor did we ever apply for any money. All communication went directly to the local authorities to see what supplies they would need to assist them in any crisis, if one were to happen. We have never received any amount of money from Homeland Security.

The reality is the exact opposite of what Mueller reports in his book. The actions of Athanason and the Florida officials were appropriate across the board. I’m surprised that Mueller or someone from Simon & Schuster didn’t double-check this story, especially given the fact that it kicks off the book, and is mentioned repeatedly later in the book and in his remarks as the paragon of homeland security waste. This is just plain shoddy.

And so it goes throughout the book and in his public remarks. For example:

• The end of my earlier blog post mentions one such statistical miscalculation, in his comparison of bathtub deaths to deaths by acts of terrorism.
• He miscalculates aviation security spending on page 31 of the book, suggesting that TSA spends $4 billion on airline passenger screening, another $4.7 billion on “zapping checked baggage”, and another half-billion on air marshals. That adds up to $9.2 billion, but the actual entire TSA budget in FY2007 is $6.4 billion - he’s clearly double-counting somehow.
• In his remarks at Cato on Wednesday, he noted that federal law enforcement prosecutions have suffered because of attention to terrorism - a statement that this chart seems to contradict.
• He suggested in those same remarks that zero people have been killed by acts of terrorism within the United States since 9/11 - an untrue statement, and one that is disrespectful to the families of the victims of the anthrax attacks.
• Also in those remarks, he dismissed the relevance of the UK aviation plot to the U.S. aviation system because it was “on a different continent.” Does he not realize that the plotters were intending to fly to the United States? And that our aviation system is inherently global in scope?

I could go on, but you get the point. This book is wrong in its key points and misleading in its details. It paints a falsely benign picture of the terrorism threat - a viewpoint which could lull us into a dangerous sense of complacency were it to be increasingly accepted. We need to overcome our fears, live resolutely, and build a culture of preparedness and resilience into our societies, but we should not for a minute become complacent about the real and persistent threats that we face.

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a report entitled “The Militant Ideology Atlas” this week, a report that is billed as “in-depth study of the Jihadi Movement’s top thinkers.” The study employs social network analysis of citations in numerous jihadi tracts to show the ideological relationships among the various influential people in this area, as shown on page 12 of the executive report. The authors also released a 360-page supplemental compendium that details the works cited and analyzed in the report.

The lead story in the UK today was a speech by the Director General of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, on the terrorist threat in the UK. Her full remarks are available here, and are worth taking the time to read in full. Some key excerpts:

On recent plots in the UK:

In the years after 9/11, with atrocities taking place in Madrid, Casablanca, Bali, Istanbul and elsewhere, terrorists plotted to mount a string of attacks in the UK, but were disrupted. This run of domestic success was interrupted tragically in London in July 2005. Since then, the combined efforts of my Service, the police, SIS and GCHQ have thwarted a further five major conspiracies in the UK, saving many hundreds (possibly even thousands) of lives.

On the scope of current surveillance activities in the UK:

What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don’t know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas.

On the nature of the current threat:

What we see at the extreme end of the spectrum are resilient networks, some directed from Al-Qaida in Pakistan, some more loosely inspired by it, planning attacks including mass casualty suicide attacks in the UK. Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices; tomorrow’s threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the speech is a passage where Dame Manningham-Buller address the frequently-aired critique regarding the proportionality of the government’s response to the terrorist threat:

A word on proportionality. My Service and the police have occasionally been accused of hype and lack of perspective or worse, of deliberately stirring up fear. It is difficult to argue that there are not worse problems facing us, for example climate change… and of course far more people are killed each year on the roads than die through terrorism. It is understandable that people are reluctant to accept assertions that do not always appear to be substantiated. It is right to be sceptical about intelligence. I shall say more about that later.

But just consider this. A terrorist spectacular would cost potentially thousands of lives and do major damage to the world economy. Imagine if a plot to bring down several passenger aircraft succeeded. Thousands dead, major economic damage, disruption across the globe. And Al-Qaida is an organisation without restraint.

In the latter part of the speech, Dame Manningham-Buller describes the internal changes to MI5 after 9/11, as it has added staff and enhanced its ability to discern and uncover intelligence about the new types of terrorist networks. Overall, a very interesting speech, and a somber reminder of the continued need for vigilance, not just in the UK but all over the world.

A story in today’s Washington Post adds a new twist to the UK aviation plot from August:

A group of alleged terrorists arrested in London in August planned to blow up airliners over U.S. cities to maximize casualties, rather than over the Atlantic Ocean as many intelligence officials originally thought, according to recent remarks by a senior FBI official.

The comments by Mark Mershon, head of the FBI’s New York field office, indicate that U.S. and British intelligence officials now think that the airliner plot was aimed at maximizing the potential loss of life and economic impact.

“The plan was bring them down over U.S. cities, not over the ocean,” Mershon said Oct. 24 at the Infosecurity 2006 conference in New York, according to Government Security News, which first reported the remarks this week.

This could have perhaps been the plotters’ intention, but it seems like an odd choice, given the fact that most inbound flights to the U.S. from the UK spend little or no time flying over heavily-populated parts of U.S. cities during the last part of their routes; or if they do, it’s not something that a terrorist group could accurately predict in advance, since the exact routes typically vary.

The PBS show Frontline had an excellent episode tonight looking at the threat of homegrown terrorism in the United States since 9/11, analyzing the extent of this threat, how the FBI has evolved to respond to it, and the particulars of several notable cases over the past few years, most notably the investigation and trial of a potential terrorist cell in Lodi, California.

The episode raised a number of serious questions about the nation’s efforts to detect and investigate homegrown terrorism in the United States:

• At what point in an investigation should the FBI wrap up and arrest a potential cell, instead of continuing to monitor it? (This issue has been discussed frequently in recent months as it concerns the Miami “Seas of David” plot and the UK aviation plot)
• If the FBI continues to make arrests that lead to little or no evidence of terrorist activity, at what point does that become “crying wolf” - such that the public no longer trusts serious government efforts to prevent terrorist activities?
• At what point do the FBI’s efforts to develop informants and penetrate the U.S. Muslim community become overly aggressive and backfire, leading to distrust and resentment that create a more permissive environment for terrorist activity?

These are not easy questions to answer, and the government officials who are interviewed for this piece seem to generally grasp the complexities of the environment in which they operate, and struggle from day-to-day to strike the right balances in addressing these questions. There have been clearly been examples of overzealous arrests, as the report points out - the Miami plot is probably the best example of this in recent years. And there are clearly gaps in the FBI’s abilities to carry out this mission, as the Washington Post points out in a story today that notes that only 33 out of 12,000 FBI agents have even basic Arabic language skills. But I think it would be false to say that the homegrown terror threat does not exist or can be dismissed, as some might incorrectly take away from the Frontline report.

If you want to view the full Frontline episode, it will be available at this link later today. And also check out this New York Times story which provides an overview of the episode.

The George Washington University’s National Security Archive posted earlier this monththe full transcripts of the 9-11 air traffic control recordings, as well as detailed flight paths for three of the four hijacked airplanes. The documents, released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on a FOIA request, were previously summarized in the 9/11 Commission Report. However, there are some minor differences–and certainly additional detail–to be found in the text:

For example, the NTSB transcript differs slightly from the Commission’s text of the warning that United Airlines Flight 93 received only minutes before the hijackers attacked. At 9:23am, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) shows a text message to Flight 93 reading: “BEWARE OF ANY COCKPIT INTROUSION [sic]. TWO AIRCRAFT IN NY, HIT TRADE CNTER BUILDS [sic].” Five minutes later at 9:28am Flight 93 was sending the message “***(mayday)*** (hey get out of here) ***” as it was being hijacked.

The Flight Path Studies reconstruct the routes of American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175. Complied from recorded radar data and information from the Flight Data Recorders, the studies’ illustrations of radar ground tracks, maps and altitude profiles provide graphic guides to each hijacking and were used by the NTSB to determine the takeover points where the hijackers gained control of the planes.

For a reference point, you can access the first chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report here.

Had the recent bomb plot against U.S.-bound flights from the U.K succeeded, it would have been the most spectacular terrorist attack since 9/11. It also would have been a brazen taunt to U.S. authorities: No matter what you do to protect airplanes, they are still not safe. Thwarting this latest attack was a huge law enforcement and intelligence success. But five years after 9/11, the plot also confirms that we have moved into a new stage in the war on terrorism, one that will require more tools than the military, law enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security solutions that have dominated our efforts to-date.

Islamic extremists’ fascination with airplanes has not abated, despite the nearly $20 billion we’ve spent since 9/11 to make them harder targets. Airplanes are ready-made for human casualties. They fit the bill for spectacular theater. And, Al Qaeda also places a premium on inflicting significant economic damage.

The often overlooked aspect of terrorists’ aviation fascination is that intercontinental air travel is a shining symbol of globalization. While many view the forces or modernization, mobility, and interdependence as forces of positive change, reaction against those forces feeds Bin Laden’s radicalism as well as the growing disaffection of segments of Europe’s indigenous Muslim youth, the young men behind the London transit bombings and this latest plot. In the reactionary worldview, globalization is an engine of western imperialism and injustice.

Arguably though, Bin Laden himself is a product of the globalizing trend, the son of a wealthy Saudi businessman and educated in engineering and business. Similarly, many of the 9/11 bombers were western-educated with technical and law degrees. As with the London transit bombings, many of these most-recent plotters were second-generation Pakistanis born and raised in UK. The westernized children are more radical than their first-generation immigrant parents. No irony is lost on the fact that the intended bombing paraphernalia included i-Pods and Gatorade bottles – two other icons of global capitalism.

The susceptibility of indigenous Muslim communities in Europe to terrorist radicalization is a vexing problem that will last for more than a generation. How do you prevent the alienation of young men from societies into which they were born? How do you counter or defuse the deep antipathy toward the U.S. that results from our foreign policy in the Arabic and Muslim world? How do you increase intelligence and law enforcement scrutiny of Muslims in Europe without fueling radicalism or alienating the overwhelming majority of law-abiding Muslim citizens?

Solutions will require patience and perseverance from societies that want security now. They will also require a greater engagement by “white” Europe of a “brown” Europe that it has traditionally tolerated but which it has never integrated. Policies must obviously include improving education, increasing economic opportunities, and bettering relations with police. At the same time, Muslims themselves must do more to turn their own against extremism. This is harder said than done, though: European Muslims who have cooperated with their governments have often lost credibility in their communities.

America’s war on terrorism has resorted to military solutions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Away from the hot wars, the counter-terrorism fight is banking on law enforcement, intelligence, and technology for its success: detect and prevent plots before they happen. As terrorist cells increasingly reflect autonomous and home-grown risks, however, it is unrealistic to think that detection and prevention will always succeed.

As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the United States and its allies must develop a strategy to defuse the threat of a “Eurabian” fifth column, extremists within European immigrant communities bent on attacking their own countrymen.

The military, intelligence, technology, and aggressive police work are the right tools against the symptoms of terrorism, but do little to address terrorism’s root causes. While tough-on-terror politicians scoff at “softer” tools, education, outreach, and better economic opportunities are the right counterweight to radicalizing influences. If we are serious about waging and winning the long war on terrorism we must bring every possible tool to bear. Our political leaders need to realize that while hammers are essential, all problems are not nails.

Daniel B. Prieto is Senior Fellow and Director of the Homeland Security Center at the Reform Institute. Previously, he was Research Director of the Homeland Security Partnership Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.