From the Guardian (UK)

A plot to launch “commando-style” attacks on Britain, France, and Germany has been intercepted and foiled by drone attacks on militants based in Pakistan, security and intelligence sources said last night. The plan for suicidal onslaughts similar to the 2008 atrocity in Mumbai – where 166 people were killed in a series of gun and grenade assaults – was disrupted after a combined operation involving US, UK, French and German intelligence agencies, officials said. British security and intelligence sources, who have been concerned for some time about the possibility of a Mumbai-style attack in Europe, confirmed that they believed a plot was being hatched from Pakistan. MORE

From Deutsche Welle (Germany)

An Islamist plot to launch simultaneous armed raids in major cities in Britain, France and Germany has been uncovered, media reports said on Wednesday. The attacks – planned from Pakistan and being tracked by anti-terrorism agencies – are said to have advanced to a planning stage… MORE

From Dawn (Pakistan)

Pakistan is investigating reports that a CIA missile strike killed a senior al-Qaeda commander as he traveled in a tribal region near the Afghan border, security officials said Wednesday.  If confirmed, Sheikh Fateh al-Misri’s death would be the covert US missile program’s latest blow to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. Al-Misri is believed to have replaced Mustafa al-Yazid, who was killed in a missile strike in May and characterized by the group as its No. 3 commander. MORE

Tuesday the Wall Street Journal’s lead story was focused on similar reports (andthe WSJ  is, in fact, quoted by European media).  But the Journal seems to be an outlier among its US peers.

UPDATE: Since  this post appeared very early this morning the New York Times has published an online piece that will also appear in tomorrow’s print edition: Al Qaeda is plotting attacks on European cities.  Some other related stories since this morning:

The Coming Terror War (Newsweek)

How European terror plot came to light (CNN International)

Terror Plot Foiled (SkyNews)

I am not really seeing much new (It is now about 1630 Eastern).  All the stories seem similar, but there is some additional background being reported.   It is difficult to from this angle to differentiate between original sources and the media echo-effect.  I think it is a tad interesting that the Pakistani army spokesman thought it would be helpful to dismiss the stories as “speculative” according to DAWN.

It’s nearly dawn in London and some “new” news is beginning to emerge, a couple of interesting bits:

According to the Telegraph:

At least 20 Britons are undergoing terrorist training in Pakistan to launch Mumbai-style shootings and suicide attacks in Britain, intelligence sources have told The Daily Telegraph. MORE

According to The Sun:

Prime Minister David Cameron utilized the threat of a Mumbai-style attack on London to conduct a full-scale execise of response capabilities to such an attack.  MORE

The lead editorial in the September 30 edition of the Daily Times (Pakistan) offers an alternative to the effort (above) by the Pakistani army to discredit “speculative” reports about Mumbai-style attacks originating in Pakistan.  In part the editorial reads:

North Waziristan has been a hot issue for quite some time now for the western forces. The notorious Haqqani network is accused of providing safe havens to foreign terrorist networks. It has also been alleged that the Haqqani network has the covert support of Pakistan’s military establishment. With endgame in Afghanistan approaching, the military establishment thinks that it can pursue its ‘strategic depth’ policy without any repercussions. What it does not envisage is any international terror plots emanating from our soil. The Haqqani network itself may not be involved in pursuing such attacks outside the region, but its affiliates like al Qaeda are being provided with shelter and training in North Waziristan. Now that such plots are being uncovered, it is time to scrap this deadly foreign policy. A recent drone attack killed al Qaeda’s operational chief, Sheikh Fateh, in North Waziristan. It shows that the al Qaeda leadership is indeed hiding inside Pakistani territory. It is time that the Pakistan Army stops giving a free rein to the Haqqani network and launches a crackdown against all such elements that can lead to the destabilisation of the country, the region and the world at large.  MORE

The reflective practitioner is the man or woman with the guts and skill to use power, and the contemplative patience to wait for opportunity.

The reflective practitioner in homeland security combines the insight to know what should be done, with the genius to know he or she is not the only one in the arena with insight.

The reflective practitioner is someone who knows many things, the first of which is how much more there is to learn.

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On Friday, the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security — sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security — will graduate another cohort of reflective practitioners. I am posting the titles of their master’s degree theses to illustrate the range of topics covered by their reflective interest. Many of the theses — adding to what we know, think, and believe about homeland security — will be available through the NPS Dudley Knox library in a few weeks.

The Naval Postgraduate School is not the only place homeland security professionals systematically reflect on their practice. There are hundreds of other academic programs — some small, some quite large — that encourage reflection about homeland security.

One need not be a registered student to be a reflective homeland security practitioner.  Reflection also takes place in scholarship, at conferences, on blogs, and (I am informed by mostly reliable sources) in bars.

I am further informed that reflecting is bars is a long honored tradition among practitioners.

Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote about council meetings where the participants drank massive quantities of wine, believing one could not lie very well if one were drunk. Hence the doctrine: in vino veritas.

A few years after Tacitus, another reflective practitioner, Marcus Aurelius, said “‘Wrestle to be the man philosophy wished to make you.”

The authors of the works described below each wrestled — with ideas, work pressures, family pressures, and life — to add light to the still forming world of homeland security. Their efforts hint at how much more there remains to learn.

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• Prostitution as a Possible Funding Mechanism for Terrorism
• Interagency Modeling Atmospheric Assessment Center: Operations Framework Model
• An Epidemiological Approach to the Radicalization Process
• Enhancing Unity of Effort in Homeland Defense, Homeland Security and Civil Support Through Interdisciplinary Education
• The Contribution of Police and Fire Consolidation to the Homeland Security Mission
• Applying a Community Policing Strategy to the Aviation Domain
• Achieving Shared Situational Awareness During Steady-State Operations in New York State: A Model for Success
• Ensuring the Endgame: Facilitating the Use of Classified Evidence in the Prosecution of Terrorist Subjects
• Synchronizing Federal Operational Planning for National Catastrophes
• Homeland Security Advisory System: An Assessment of its Ability to Communicate A Risk Message
• Are the Means of the Next Terrorist Attack Already in the Country? An Analytical Examination of Cargo Containers That Have Entered the United States
• Validation of Rational Deterrence Theory: Analysis of U.S. Government and Adversary Risk Propensity and Relative Emphasis on Gain or Loss
• Fusion 2.0: The Next Generation of Fusion in California: Aligning State and Regional Fusion Centers
• Effective State, Local, and Tribal Police Intelligence: The New York City Police Department’s Intelligence Enterprise — A Smart Practice
• Collaboration in the Metropolitan Medical Response System
• Should Cops be Spies? Evaluating the Collection of National Security Intelligence by State, Local and Tribal Law Enforcement
• Arizona Law Enforcement Biometrics Identification and Information Sharing Technology Framework
• Leveraging Rural America in the Fight Against Terrorism in America through the use of Conservation Districts
• Improbable Success: Risk Communication and the Terrorism Hazard
• Homeland Security: The President Has No Clothes — The Case for Broader Application of Redteaming within DHS.
• Succession Planning in Homeland Security — How Can We Ensure the Effective Transfer of Knowledge to a New Generation of Employees?
• Leveraging Successful Collaborative Processes to Improve Performance Outcomes in Large-Scale Event Planning: Superbowl — A Planned Homeland Security Event
• Defining the Role and Responsibility of the Fire Service within the Homeland Security Discipline
• The Collaborative Capacity of the NYPD, FDNY and EMS in New York City: A Focus on the First Line Officer
• Community Preparedness: Creating a Model for Change

ENDGAME: Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003 – 2012

The document is unclassified and fairly banal, so I have a hard time believing that this was removed for security reasons. A likelier explanation is that it was removed because it was outdated, a lot of the content in it having been superceded by strategic work under the auspices of the Secure Border Initiative over the last 1+ years.

Congress still has done nothing to protect Americans from a terrorist attack on chemical plants. Republican leaders want to give the impression that that has changed. But voters should not fall for the spin. If the leadership goes through with the strategy it seems to have adopted last week to secure these highly vulnerable targets, national security will be the loser.

The federal government is spending extraordinary amounts of money and time protecting air travel from terrorist attacks. But Congress has not yet passed a law to secure the nation’s chemical plants, even though an attack on just one plant could kill or injure as many as 100,000 people. The sticking point has been the chemical industry, a heavy contributor to political campaigns, which does not want to pay the cost of reasonable safety measures.

The Senate and the House spent many months carefully developing bipartisan chemical plant security bills. Both measures were far too weak, but they would have finally imposed real safety requirements on the chemical industry. The Republican leadership in Congress blocked both bills from moving forward. Instead, whatever gets done about chemical plant security will apparently be decided behind closed doors, and inserted as a rider to a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

It is outrageous that something as important as chemical plant security is being decided in a back-room deal. It is regrettable that Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, the chairwoman of the committee that produced the Senate bill, does not carry enough influence with her own party’s leadership to get a strong chemical plant security bill passed. The deal itself, the likely details of which have emerged in recent days, is a near-complete cave-in to industry, and yet more proof that when it comes to a choice between homeland security and the desires of corporate America, the Republican leadership always goes with big business.

I disagree with the point that the Senate HSGAC and House HSC were too weak – I thought that they were within the target zone – but other than, that is fair critique of what we’ve seen emerge over the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, Reuters provides additional details on the Republican-led deal on this issue in a story tonight, noting that there has been moderate pushback on some of the worst provisions of the industry language (e.g. giving DHS the authority to shutdown plants) – but is still quite weak, essentially codifying the dangerous laissez faire attitude that has prevailed since 9/11 on chemical plant security.

I’ve offered periodic predictions as to the likely outcome of this debate on border security legislation. It’s still difficult to forecast the endgame with any certainty, but one way to predict the outcome is to ask: who needs to compromise? And who can afford not to compromise? For example:

• Will compromise with the Senate and the White House help or hurt the ability of the House Republicans to retain control of the House in the November elections?
• Will the supporters of Specter’s bill be tarred with the charge of “amnesty” to their political detriment?
• Will Sen. Frist jeopardize his ability to attract Hispanic voters in a Presidential run by putting forward this alternative bill?
• How strongly will Bush insist on a guest-worker program at the end of the day – would he sign a bill without one as a political necessity in September or October?
• Will the rallies and protests against punitive legislation build support for a more lenient bill, or will they instead backfire?

The debate on the Senate floor in the next couple of weeks about this legislation should be interesting. Stay tuned.

From the Post’s piece:

Before leaving town the House of Representatives passed a terrible bill designed to shore up American border security — or, at least, to appear to do so. The bill, sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), is dangerous because of what it does and what it doesn’t do. It contains any number of mindless criminal penalties for immigration violations, and it would make both detention and deportation of illegal immigrants easier. But it would do nothing to rationalize U.S. immigration policy. The Bush administration, which has rightly argued for a more sensible approach, disgracefully got behind the bill. And House members, many of whom know better, passed it 239 to 182.

I think the “many of whom know better” comment is exactly right. As I argued earlier here and here, we’re still in the early innings on this legislation, and for many members of Congress this was a consequence-free vote.

The Wall Street Journal is even harsher on the bill:

Tom Tancredo has done everyone a favor by stating plainly the immigration rejectionists’ endgame–turn the United States into the world’s largest gated community. The House took a step in that direction this month by passing another immigration “reform” bill heavy with border control and business harassment and light on anything that will work in the real world.

…The legislation is aimed at placating a small but vocal constituency that wants the borders somehow sealed, come what may to the economy, American traditions of liberty or the Republican Party’s relationship with the increasingly important Latino vote.

Clearly the business community is going to be more engaged in the next stages of border legislation and will try to moderate its contents.

At the end of the day, I think the most likely outcome is a relatively modest bill that strengthens border staffing and technology, improves the detention and removal process, and makes modest improvements to workplace enforcement, but doesn’t include a Southern border fence or a guest worker program. There’s a chance that these latter two items could be packaged together as part of a grand compromise between the key factions on this issue, but there is a rhetorical chasm between these factions right now, so compromise will not be easy.