Survival And Prosperity

WikiLeaks: Al-Qaeda Preparing New Attacks

“Al-Qaeda’s steady decline”
-Boston Herald, June 8, 2008

“The Decline Of Al Qaida”
-TIME, January 9, 2010

“Al Qaeda ‘On the Run,’ CIA Chief Says”
-Washington Post, March 17, 2010

Yesterday morning, I picked up my Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune and read the following from its editorial board:

“Wednesday evening’s airstrike on the lair of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi amounts to more than the clean decapitation of a terrorist network in Iraq. That welcome assassination — a phrase you don’t often read — adds to growing evidence that al-Qaida is no longer the menacing monolith that has provoked so much fear in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. What we may be witnessing is the stark decline of a tight network that many governments were slow to recognize — and too hesitant to squash — during its ascent in the 1990s.”

—Chicago Tribune editorial, June 9, 2006

Noting the decline of al-Qaida is risky business. You could be proved disastrously mistaken at any moment.

But in 2006, there were unmistakable signs of the terror group’s waning influence.

Today those signs have grown stronger:

•The terrorists are on the run in Pakistan and in their former sanctuary, Afghanistan.
•There hasn’t been a successful major al-Qaida-hatched attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, or in Europe since the July 2005 London transit bombings.
•And now, as a democratic revolution sweeps the Arab world, al-Qaida finds itself … shoved to the sidelines.

Is Al-Qaeda really in decline? I dug up some material yesterday that indicates the militant Islamist group could be more dangerous than ever to the United States. Heidi Blake and Christopher Hope from the Daily Telegraph (UK) reported last month:

A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11″.

Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing “workable and efficient” biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.

Thousands of classified American cables obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph detail the international struggle to stop the spread of weapons-grade nuclear, chemical and biological material around the globe.

At a Nato meeting in January 2009 security chiefs briefed member states that al-Qaeda was plotting a programme of “dirty radioactive IEDs”…

The briefings also state that al-Qaeda documents found in Afghanistan in 2007 revealed that “greater advances” had been made in bio-terrorism than was previously realised.

To be fair, even while suggesting Al-Qaeda’s influence was waning, the Chicago Tribune pointed out that they remain a threat- especially when it comes to the specter of nuclear terrorism. From the piece:

No, we do not diminish the potential threat of al-Qaida. It remains a dangerous foe that seeks a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and would not hesitate to use either.

Blake and Hope discussed how far along Al-Qaeda is in acquiring nuclear weapons:

An Indian national security adviser told American security personnel in June 2008 that terrorists had made a “manifest attempt to get fissile material” and “have the technical competence to manufacture an explosive device beyond a mere dirty bomb”.

Alerts about the smuggling of nuclear material, sent to Washington from foreign US embassies, document how criminal and terrorist gangs were trafficking large amounts of highly radioactive material across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The alerts explain how customs guards at remote border crossings used radiation alarms to identify and seize cargoes of uranium and plutonium.

Freight trains were found to be carrying weapons-grade nuclear material across the Kazakhstan-Russia border, highly enriched uranium was transported across Uganda by bus, and a “small-time hustler” in Lisbon offered to sell radioactive plates stolen from Chernobyl.

In one incident in September 2009, two employees at the Rossing Uranium Mine in Namibia smuggled almost half a ton of uranium concentrate powder – yellowcake – out of the compound in plastic bags.

Not good. And while some people might fool themselves into thinking the above interdictions mean all the loose nuclear material has been recovered, realists know this probably isn’t the case. They’re asking, just how much has slipped past the authorities, and how far along is Al-Qaeda to having an operational nuclear weapon?

Al-Qaeda might be “on the decline,” but like a cornered animal, that’s when the Islamist terror organization could pose the most danger.

“WTC Attack September 11, 2001 from New York Police Helicopter – Leaked Footage”
YouTube Video Link
(Warning! Language)

Sources:

Editorial Board. “Al-Qaida’s decline.” Chicago Tribune. 4 Mar. 2011. (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-03-04/news/ct-edit-qaida-20110304_1_qaida-al-qaida-abu-musab) 8 Mar. 2011.

Blake, Heidi and Hope, Christopher. “WikiLeaks: al-Qaeda ‘is planning a dirty bomb’” Daily Telegraph (UK). 2 Feb. 2011. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8296956/WikiLeaks-al-Qaeda-is-planning-a-dirty-bomb.html). 8 Mar. 2011.

Tags: Al-Qaeda, bioterrorism, dirty bomb, nuclear terrorism, WikiLeaks

More Vulnerabilities For Terrorists To Exploit

So far this holiday season, terrorist threats have surfaced regarding potential suicide attacks in the United States and of sabotage against the food supply. Even while the different levels of government do the best they possibly can to protect Americans against acts of terrorism, there always seems to be some Achilles Heel in our defenses- both on land and in the air. Gary Stoller wrote on the USA TODAY site Monday:

The government’s top security officials say they are upgrading subway and rail defenses against terrorist attacks throughout the country, but a USA TODAY examination finds gaping holes, including many that may not be possible to plug.

The holes in security leave travelers more vulnerable on the more than 4 billion trips they take by subway and rail each year than in the sky, where airlines carried fewer than 700 million passengers from U.S. airports last year.

Six terrorist plots targeting U.S. subway and rail systems have been exposed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the systems remain a target, transit authorities, security experts and members of Congress agree. An alleged plot to simultaneously bomb four Washington, D.C., Metro subway stations was foiled in October, and another plot to detonate explosives in New York’s subway system was averted last year.

Yet, as the nation debates the federal Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) stricter screening methods at airport security checkpoints, about 15 million passengers board subway cars and trains unscreened each weekday.
“Mass transit systems are much less secure than the aviation sector or certain key government buildings,” says Clark Kent Ervin, the Department of Homeland Security’s former inspector general.

And they’ll likely remain that way…

Having a secure network ultimately is the responsibility of the TSA, which is in the Department of Homeland Security. While the agency has imposed stringent screening of air passengers at the nation’s 450 commercial airports, it says it has no similar plans for rail passengers.

The TSA has largely left rail security to local governments, which USA TODAY finds often don’t have the capability and money to make systems secure.

At the present time, random, instead of universal screening, of subway/rail passengers is being carried out. Stoller added:

But security analysts say screening all subway and rail passengers is impractical and too costly. And the TSA “is not considering” requiring it, the agency said in a written response to USA TODAY questions…

In the absence of universal screening, the TSA has pushed random screening of passengers and a show of force as a deterrent to attacks.

Random screening, the TSA says, has been conducted by transit and rail authorities in the New York and Boston subway systems and in Amtrak stations in the Northeast.

On Dec. 16, Washington, D.C., Metro police said they would begin random inspections of passengers’ carry-on items. The TSA says it will partner next year with local law enforcement to conduct random screening in additional locations.

And what about in the air? Apparently, overflights are not being scrutinized as carefully as their domestic counterparts. Ashley Halsey III wrote on the Washington Post website on December 27:

Those planes that look like specks in the stratosphere are flying so high because they are merely passing by the United States – flying bananas to Germany, Canadians to Mexico and Europeans to Jamaica. But should that exempt such flights from the full security screening they would get if their destination were in this country?

As the Obama administration works to harden domestic defenses against terrorism, some experts point to a potential vulnerability from thousands of flights that pass over the United States each week.

Although the United States regulates overflights, the cargo aboard them is not screened to federal standards and passenger lists are not matched to names on the terrorist watch list maintained by the Transportation Security Administration.

The TSA says other countries “have their own cargo security protocols that apply to those aircraft.” The TSA has not implemented the new Secure Flight program to scrutinize passengers boarding overflights. That behind-the-scenes operation is designed to ferret out potential terrorists through a process that begins with airlines collecting detailed information when someone buys a ticket.

These overflights can pose a risk to homeland security. Halsey added:

But Richard Bloom, a longtime U.S. intelligence operative who teaches counterterroism courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, said a terrorist could “explode a plane with a dirty bomb or a biological weapon or an actual nuclear weapon on board, and that material will spread wherever it crashes.”

According to Steven Lott, communications director for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group for 230 airlines accounting for more than 90 percent of international passenger flights, he estimates there are between 2,000 and 3,000 planes that fly over the continental United States each week.

Sometimes I think the press should keep a lid on these things. As much as I despise the torrential amount of fluff they keep pushing these days, when faced with choosing to run a story about more vulnerabilities terrorists could exploit or some powder-puff piece, I’d actually prefer the MSM to go with the latter.

Then again, that could be the reason why there’s so much fluff…

Sources:

Stoller, Gary. “Can trains, subways be protected from terrorists?” USA TODAY. 27 Dec. 2010. (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2010-12-27-railsecurity27_CV_N.htm). 29 Dec. 2010.

Halsey III, Ashley. “Cargo that flies over the United States doesn’t get screened to federal standards.” Washington Post. 27 Dec. 2010. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122601795.html). 29 Dec. 2010.

Tags: air cargo, airlines, bioterrorism, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, dirty bomb, nuclear terrorism, overflights, rail, Secure Flight, subways, Transportation Security Administration, TSA