US Al Qaeda Reality Hits Dems on NSA Bill

Is there anyone in the American intelligence community who does not think there are al Qaeda and other terrorist cells organizing and operating in the United States? Since 9/11, hasn't this been the single greatest suspicion among Americans? The fear of such cells lurking in America's shadows was sufficient to prompt a Time magazine cover dedicated to it in August 2004. In my career, especially since 9/11, my employer has wisely worked under the assumption that there are active terror cells in America, and we have worked closely with other government agencies to develop counterterrorism programs and security planning reflecting that belief. Perhaps because of this long held position in my workplace, it amazes me that news headlines like “Al Qaeda Cell May Be Loose in U.S.” are met with shock, fear, or even surprise by readers. That headline, from today’s New York Sun, frankly tells Americans nothing that should cause surprise, particularly to anyone who even remotely follows trends and developments in the War on Terror.

I do not mean to single out the New York Sun or the author of the above-mentioned article, Eli Lake, for criticism. The Sun and Lake in particular, have been referred to and frequently praised by Capital Cloak for fine coverage of the War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lake in this article was merely reporting what one of his reliable Washington sources told him about new evidence that al Qaeda had been in contact electronically with sympathizers or potential operatives inside the United States. Lake reported, in part, as follows:

E-mail addresses for American individuals were found on the same password-protected e-mail chains used by the United Kingdom plotters to communicate with Qaeda handlers in Europe, a counterterrorism official told The New York Sun yesterday. The American and German intelligence community now believe the secure e-mail chains used in the United Kingdom plot have provided a window into an operational Qaeda network in several countries.

"Because of the London and Glasgow plot, we now know communications have been made from Al Qaeda to operatives in the United States," the counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity. "This plot helps to connect a lot of stuff. We have seen money moving a lot through hawala networks and other illicit finance as well." But this source was careful to say that at this point no specific information, such as names, targets or a timeline, was known about any particular plot on American soil. The e-mail addresses that are linked to Americans were pseudonyms.

Lake’s report is important not for the fact that it appears to confirm the presence of al Qaeda cells in America, something that virtually everyone in the intelligence community has assumed for years. What makes Lake’s information important is its timing. Over the weekend, as the most significant final pre-recess action taken by Congress, the House and Senate approved a bill strengthening and expanding government authorization to monitor international telephone and electronic communications without a warrant between Americans and foreign suspects.

These are the same Democrat-controlled House and Senate bodies that have relentlessly and obviously disingenuously accused the White House of abusing the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. There have been hearings, misrepresentations of the Bush administration’s motives, and cries of violations of civil liberties from the left since the program was leaked to and eagerly exposed by the New York Times. Now it appears that the intelligence gleaned from the thwarted London and Glasgow plots in July was sufficient to convince the virulent leaders of the anti-Bush Congress, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, that all those warnings about potential terrorist cells in America were not merely presidential bluster.

Neither House nor Senate Democrats were personally pleased to pass this expanded surveillance powers legislation, and they continue to grumble about it in the media. After all, it was Pelosi who stated in January 2006 that, “I would not want any president — Democrat or Republican — to have the expanded power the administration is claiming in this case.” Yet now, when faced with the reality of actual email evidence of al Qaeda cells receiving communications from the bomb plotters in London, even the liberal left wing in Congress realized the surveillance was distasteful to them but ultimately necessary for survival.

As a safety net for the Democrats, the powers authorized in the bill were extended only for a six month period, in which we can expect rancorous debate over domestic surveillance, further accusations that the president is abusing civil liberties, and likely revisions of certain aspects of the bill. That six month period also indicates, however, that Congress felt the threat to the homeland was sufficiently grave in the next six months to merit special preventive measures. That fact, in and of itself, is telling.

The following is an excerpt from the New York Times’ description of the new legislation approved Saturday night by Congress and signed into law yesterday by President Bush:

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.

Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.

By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.

This change was necessary because much of the infrastructure of the world’s largest telecommunications companies is housed in the United States, particularly the switch and server backbone that powers the Internet globally. The vast majority of the world’s email, even point to point between foreign countries, passes through servers located in America. In all respects, the bill was a necessary and prudent expansion of government surveillance powers to monitor international communications, and regardless of their motives or their half-hearted passage of the measures, Congressional Democrats should be applauded for doing the right thing to protect Americans by coming to terms with President Bush on this issue, even if it is only a temporary fix.

While no one in the intelligence community was surprised at the report of email communications between European al Qaeda and American operatives, it provided a wake up call to Congress that the War on Terror and the threat of attacks in the United States, are not merely “bumper sticker” slogans of the Bush administration. There were active al Qaeda cells in America more than one year prior to 9/11, and it is logical to conclude that there were others at that time and now who merely await activation and instructions from leadership. The activation and instructions will likely come in some form of long distance communication; email, telephone, instant messenger, or similar. Thanks to the president’s vigilant insistence on the power to monitor such communication and Congress’s reluctant cooperation, our chances of intercepting key messages have increased, and that makes America safer than it was just last week prior to this legislation.

It should be remembered that these expanded surveillance powers will not necessarily prevent any plans that have already reached the execution phase with a predetermined date or time, but they will prove crucial to detecting developing plots and in identifying suspected cell members.

It was not surprising to read of communications between al Qaeda and its operatives in America. The real surprise was that Congressional Democrats took so long to realize the importance of the government surveillance program in protecting America from attack. When the president’s critics do the right thing, even grudgingly, for national security, we all benefit.

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Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in America, FISA, NSA, Wiretap, Electronic Surveillance, Terrorist Cells, Bush Administration, Email monitoring

Miniter: US Muslims, Vigilance, Top Brits

Multiple attempted vehicle bombings conducted by radical Islamic terrorists in London and Glasgow on Friday and Saturday raise the all-important question for Americans: why have such attacks been attempted in Britain, but not in the U.S.? This was the topic of a “Fox and Friends” interview with Richard Miniter of the Hudson Institute this morning, and Miniter offered some interesting possible answers to the question.

According to Miniter, there are three primary reasons that al Qaeda is actively targeting Britain but has thus far not struck within the U.S. with car bombs or suicide bombers:

1. U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of al Qaeda leaders and high level operatives, and this has caused a scarcity of resources, including knowledgeable, trained leaders to plan and carry out attacks. Miniter opined that the failed weekend bombings had the appearance of an operation that lacked the professionalism and technical expertise commonly associated with al Qaeda IEDs and VBIEDs. The failure of three bombs to detonate properly indicated to Miniter that the cell did not include a master bomb manufacturer.

2. U.S. officials are more vigilant than their British counterparts. According to Miniter, communication and intelligence flow between federal, state, and local law enforcement in the United States is superior to information sharing and investigative cooperation in Britain.

3. American Muslims are more assimilated into American culture than British Muslims are to British society, and thus American Muslims provide more tips and investigative assistance to U.S. law enforcement than British Muslims. Miniter commented that the increased likelihood of tip-offs from American Muslims to law enforcement made it more difficult for radicals to operate anonymously or without drawing attention to themselves.

While all of these are interesting hypotheses for why the U.S. has not yet been victimized by subway bombings, VBIEDs, or suicide bombers (individual, of the type seen in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan), in many ways they miss the mark. While I tend to agree with Miniter’s first point about our military weakening al Qaeda’s infrastructure and leadership, his second and third points deserve critical scrutiny.

My experiences lead me to an opposite conclusion regarding Miniter’s second point that America is more vigilant and intelligence flow in the U.S. is superior to that found in Britain. The Patriot Act and other post-9/11 legislation may have removed many of the formal barriers between America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but little has been done to address the informal barriers. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, containing as it does a mixture of agencies with legitimate national security duties and others who have no role whatsoever in homeland security, was a mere political gesture. If the Bush administration and Congress truly had been seeking to establish a department capable of securing the homeland to the best of its ability in “the terrorists’ war on us,” as Rudy Giuliani calls it, the department would also contain the FBI, the federal agency designated to investigate potential terrorism on U.S. soil. Information sharing has certainly improved between the federal agencies and state/local departments, but information sharing between federal agencies remains a significant problem that may not be resolved until future terrorist strikes in America force more drastic cooperation requirements on the federal intelligence and law enforcement communities in the name of survival.

Our vigilance dwindles depending on what else catches our interest: far more media attention was given over the past month to Paris Hilton than Muslim unrest in Paris, France; we complain about airport passenger screening inconveniences; we spend millions to support Hollywood movies depicting our own government as the true enemy we should fear most; we narrowly pass Patriot Act legislation each time it comes up for renewal, and the margin decreases with each passing year without a terrorist attack on U.S. soil; our major newspapers and news networks leak information about secret government programs designed to identify terrorists and prevent future attacks in the planning stages; we openly declare that enforcement of our illegal-immigration laws is unrealistic, thus encouraging more illegal immigration which surely includes terrorists cloaked within groups of laborers; we pay sub-standard wages to airport screeners directly responsible for preventing bombs, firearms, chemicals, and other deadly items from making onto our passenger aircraft. To claim that America is more vigilant than Britain is surely Miniter’s sincere wish, but there is precious little evidence to support the assertion.

It is ironic that Miniter made the claim to superiority of American information sharing over that of Britain in the wake of a massive and rapidly successful anti-terror investigation related to the linked incidents in London and Glasgow. Some unconfirmed reports indicated that U.S. intelligence received warning of a future attack in Glasgow two weeks ago but never shared that information with British officials. By this morning, less than 48 hours after the Glasgow incident, seven individuals apparently affiliated in an al Qaeda influenced cell had been arrested in Britain. There did not seem to be any shortage of intelligence flow or information sharing between Britain’s foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement services, and local police were actively involved throughout the continued investigation. Rolling up seven members of a terrorist cell within 48 hours of an attack is efficient police work by any standard, providing an object lesson disproving Miniter’s apparently low expectations of Britain’s internal cooperation. By comparison, how long did it take for U.S. authorities to identify and arrest the DC snipers? How about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? The rapid execution of warrants and arrests in Britain has been impressive in all respects.

Britain’s investigative technologies exceed our own to a high enough degree that Senator Joe Lieberman stepped into his leadership role yesterday to trumpet the need for the U.S. to imitate Britain,” specifically in reference to the widespread use of security cameras throughout London and most major British cities. The ability British authorities have to isolate digital recordings of suspects’ faces, vehicles, license plates, and tactics is far beyond anything currently available to U.S. law enforcement, in large part due to “privacy issues.” British authorities seized upon a point that America’s liberal left refuses to concede: when in public, a person has no expectation of privacy. Thus, the installation of thousands of surveillance cameras on the streets and in the subways of British cities was considered a reasonable method for boosting security with no invasion of privacy for the public in public areas. Lieberman was right to call for similar measures in public areas in the U.S. Information sharing is much more effective when it includes photos of the suspect and his accomplices and transportation. Law enforcement cannot be everywhere at all times, but cameras can.

Miniter’s third point regarding American Muslims being more cooperative with law enforcement than British Muslims is, at a minimum, controversial. It would be helpful if Miniter could provide empirical evidence to support this claim, because such evidence would do much to diffuse the hostility and suspicion many Americans feel towards their Muslim neighbors. In a previous post I recounted my experience at a Muslim cultural sensitivity training course in 2004, hosted in part by CAIR for the law enforcement and intelligence communities. In a separate post regarding American Muslims and their involvement in the War on Terror, I included a marvelous quote from a notable American Muslim that expressed what all non-Muslim Americans wish they heard more of from their Islamic friends and neighbors:

In a similar but even more blunt assessment of what Arab-Americans should be doing to fight terrorism within their own religion, M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, contributed a wonderful articleto National Review Online last week. Jasser defended the plot line of "24" and declared that Muslims need to unite and defeat the true enemy, which he explicitly identified as Islamism. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, made the following call to arms to fellow American Muslims:

"It’s time for hundreds of thousands of Muslims to be not only private but public in their outrage — and to commit themselves to specific, verbal engagement of the militants and their Islamism. We, as American Muslims, should be training and encouraging our Muslim-community youth to become the future Jack Bauers of America. What better way to dispel stereotypes than to create hundreds of new, real images of Muslims who are publicly leading this war on the battlefield and in the domestic and foreign media against the militant Islamists. Condemnations by press release and vague fatwas are not enough. We need to create organizations — high-profile, well-funded national organizations and think tanks — which are not afraid to identify al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah by name, and by their mission as the enemies of America. If Muslim organizations and the American Muslim leadership were seen publicly as creating a national, generational plan to fight Islamism — rather than searching for reasons to claim victimhood — then the issues and complaints surrounding such TV shows would disappear. The way to fight the realities of 24 is to create a Muslim CTU, a deep Muslim counterterrorism ideology and a national action plan for our security."[emphasis added]

While American Muslims have cooperated in numerous terrorism investigations, more will be expected and required of them. They could erase most suspicion or bigotry by actively working toward the vision expressed above by Jasser.

The logic behind Miniter’s assessment that British Muslims are less loyal to Britain is questionable. How does one quantitatively determine levels of loyalty among the Muslim populations in two different nations? It is too simplistic to assume that because Britain is experiencing increasing incidents of homegrown Islamic terrorism and America is not, that American Muslims are thus more cooperative with investigations. I would be thrilled to believe that the freedoms and liberties of America had so inspired American Muslims that radical Islam will never find enough fertile ground in American mosques to ever spark domestic jihad here. However, I also know that the 9/11 operatives lived and moved freely among American Muslims for significant amounts of time, planning, plotting, and training for the hijackings, and apparently no one noticed these behaviors or considered them suspicious. Miniter seems to give American Muslims the benefit of a doubt for that but labels British Muslims as less cooperative because they failed to tip-off British authorities to the 7/7 London subway bombing or the failed car bombs this weekend. If Miniter has a comparative statistical analysis that validates his claim that American Muslims are more cooperative than their British counterparts, let him bring it forward for review.

The far more likely and simple answer to the original question posed to Miniter is that we have been lucky but our time will come. The VBIEDs utilized in the failed Glasgow and London bombings this weekend indicate a cell’s over-emphasis on constructing and executing attacks with little prior planning or on short notice. They were crudely designed, simple to construct, and made with readily available materials that would attract no suspicion at the point of purchase. These VBIEDs could be thrown together in a matter of hours in virtually any city in the world upon orders from a controlling leader or by independent target selection of the cell members. In a nation full of stores with shelves lined with propane tanks, gas cans, and limitless electronic gadgetry, rudimentary attacks like the ones in Britain over the weekend may be coming to a city near you, and if these attacks are any indication, there will be no prior warnings identified by our vigilant but over-restricted intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Glasgow car bomb photo courtesy of UK Daily Mail.

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Glasgow Airport, London Car Bomb, Richard Miniter, Information Sharing, Intelligence Agencies, al Qaeda, Terrorist Cells, VBIED

Deafening Silence Before Thwarted London Bombing

The defusing of a large car bomb set to detonate outside one of London’s most popular night clubs early this morning is naturally the story of the day, and media reports are saturated with mostly similar summaries of what is known at this point about the incident. The Associated Press, not surprisingly, reported earlier that there was no known link to terrorism, while more responsible news outlets obtained information connecting the construction and materials used in the foiled bomb to a known al Qaeda bomb maker. Conflicting media reports are not unusual in the early stages of a significant terrorist plot investigation, and rather than dwell on media inconsistencies I offer a few observations on this morning’s bomb discovery.

1. Those who have read the author’s bio here know that I work directly in this field, and without getting into any details of how, if there had been any prior warning or indications of a potential bombing in London today I would have known about them. The silence, in this case, was truly deafening. Ordinarily prior to terrorist attacks, even of small magnitude, “chatter” increases and analysts in my line of work warn of the change in activity levels. That did not happen in this case. Whether through evolving terrorist strategies, exposed government surveillance techniques, or a combination of the two (the most likely), the cell that planned, constructed, and attempted to deliver and detonate today’s bomb kept a sophisticated silence. They may yet be identified and arrested through Britain’s effective metropolitan closed circuit TV camera systems standing guard on nearly every street corner, but the key point to this attempted bombing is that there were no warning signs. America and her allies have improved communication and information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies somewhat since 9/11, but if the enemy provides no pre-operation signs of activity, information sharing is a moot point.

2. As one of my favorite fellow bloggers pointed out today at his site In From the Cold, perhaps the only reason hundreds of night club patrons in London are still alive today is because an ambulance crew responding to a call in the area noticed something unusual about the car containing the bomb, and notified the police. We should never underestimate our “gut instincts.” Every day, we see unusual behavior or something that just seems amiss, and we have to make judgments regarding the nature of what we have seen and evaluate whether it warrants alerting authorities. In this case, the ambulance crew was en route to render emergency assistance to someone and could have ignored the silver Mercedes parked sloppily on the curb. No one would have thought less of the crew had they proceeded on to perform their duty. However, by taking the time to make that one radio call to the police, hundreds of lives were likely spared. They did not know that at the time, they simply followed their “street smarts” or if you prefer, “intuition.”

If you see something or someone that just doesn’t look right, follow your instincts, trust them, and make that call to the authorities. If it turns out to be nothing, you can chuckle about it later. If it turns out to be a bomb made of gasoline, propane, and nails intended to maximize casualties, and you chose not to make the call for fear of embarrassment, you will be devastated by your inaction. Police, firemen, and EMTs are not the only first responders when it comes to public safety. More often than not, ordinary citizens will be first to witness something unusual or come across someone in need of assistance. As the Boy Scout motto urges, “Be Prepared!”

3. As we move closer to our July 4th festivities, we should keep in mind the events in London today. Large gatherings of reveling westerners are a particularly attractive target for radical Islamic terrorists. Our celebrations are representative to them of our decadence, and parades, concerts, and fireworks extravaganzas offer a banquet full of tasty terror choices. Extensive camera surveillance systems are not yet the norm in America as they are in Britain, and so we must rely on our intelligence agencies to provide us advance warning. Advance warning, however, does not always come, as today’s events proved yet again. Three hundred million Americans are the best anti-terror tool available to us today. They possess six hundred million eyes and six hundred million ears looking out for or listening to each other and not ignoring that object, vehicle, conversation, or person who seems out of place or suspicious.

If “to err is human,” then “to err on the side of caution” should be our duty.


Diagram map of London courtesy of BBC

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London Car Bomb, Piccadilly, Haymarket Bomb, Tiger Tiger Nightclub, IED, Scotland Yard, Counterterrorism