U.S. Marshals Service

Police arrested two men at JFK airport in New York last Saturday who allegedly were headed to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-based terrorist group. (Read the criminal complaint here.)

The two, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, and Carlos Eduardo “Omar” Almonte, 24, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic, were infiltrated by federal authorities and a New York Police Department undercover.

The complainant basically said that the duo were a little too eager and were too excited when searching and viewing terrorist-made videos on the Internet.

Prior to their arrests in a sting known as “Arabian Knight,” the dynamic duo lifted weights in the gym because they wanted to be the “buff terrorist,” bought camouflage gear and practiced their skills through war video games. Tactics were refined at the paintball course. If that wasn’t enough, the hours of bragging about what they were going to do when they became full-fledged terrorists is humorous at best.

I have one word to describe these kids: clowns. I would laugh them off had it not been for their intentions of actually trying to carry out their warped missions. I’m sure it must have been amusing to listen to these guys talk on tape. It is only when they actually were trying to go overseas to join al-Shabaab that made them dangerous. These two are perfect examples of what al-Qaeda looks for and brands them as “suicide terrorist.” They are young, gullible and have such low self esteem that, in their warped minds, murder is the only way they can get notoriety.

If you sense any sarcasm, it’s because these two lasted this long without someone actually addressing the problem. Their track record spells out natural-born losers before they became adults, and yet they continued on their path. Alessa’s parents took some note by allegedly taking him to a psychiatrist at a young age, but you cannot convince me the parents (of both) didn’t realize something was wrong with these kids. Every parent is aware when their own kid is acting erratic. These two were acting insane: thrown out of school for violent behavior, threatening teachers and students — all while preaching their faith. Almonte even beat up his own brother for not converting. Still, the professional help they were given was slim for the behavior they exhibited.

They remind me of the kids who join gangs because they are starving for attention and want to belong to a group who will accept them. Although, when they traveled to Jordan three years ago to link up and join al-Qaeda, Alessa and Almonte were turned away because no one trusted them.

I believe al-Qaeda currently is in a weakened state. The threat they pose in 2010 is not that of nine years ago. My concern is what is left in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The appeal of these well-produced videos that litter the Internet is targeting kids like Alessa and Almonte. They appeal to the weak-minded and the uneducated young male. If you look at the latest plots foiled in the U.S., you will see that all the principles fit this mold: the five young men arrested in Pakistan in December 2009 after leaving a video tape for family and authorities; the group of 20-something Somali men in Minneapolis in 2008; Najibullah Zazi, the immigrant who allegedly plotted to blow up the New York City subway system.

The concept of “homegrown terrorism” that is being thrown around does not fit the phenomena that we are seeing. The wannabe terrorists are not being preached to, nor are they attending sermons by shady figures. The preachers are all overseas in lawless lands, such as Anwar al-Alwaki, who some analysts consider to be terrorist No. 1. The one thing, though, that these men all have in common is they are following a dream. A dream nicely laid out and professionally produced by al-Qaeda.

I see it more as a nightmare.

During the past year-and-a-half, the United States has been under a constant state of attack and it appears that the terrorists are stepping up the pace. But, is the news media and the White House paying attention? No.

The majority of these attempts have come from Somalia and our Pakistani “friends,” let alone what Osama bin Laden and company have planned. Remember them? “The Base” still is out there, lurking and waiting very patiently. Patience is an al-Qaeda trademark and America’s attention span is that of a flea.

Terrorists that answer to a higher cause will not negotiate. Like a serial killer that gets more comfortable with their environment, they increase the frequency of attempts and so do the terrorists. They are more than comfortable with how the White House, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder view them and how the administration will continue to “drop the ball.”

The terrorist world views the Obama administration as weak. And so do I. The daily drone attacks inside Pakistan have come to a trickle, if at all, since the attempt to blow up Times Square. Makes sense, right?

As a result of all this, Obama and company can take a lesson from law enforcement in the fight on terror. The way you catch a serial killer is to identify the location of their first crime. It is the location where the killer felt most comfortable. So, we should employ the same tactic and look for the terrorists where they feel most comfortable: in our backyard.

Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE/caglecartoons.com

A former United Nations nuclear inspector said Friday that secret documents smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector show the country anxiously is looking to develop nukes.

This comes at a time when North Korea is threatening its southern counterpart and when U.S. President Barack Obama has called for peace treaties to curb nuclear proliferation, all while Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speeds up his country’s technology.

The report, first obtained by The Associated Press, states Myanmar has attempted experiments with uranium and the equipment needed for enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency had no comment.

The world is beginning to see a now power-hungry nuclear arms race that talking heads have said for years is not a threat. Unfortunately, it is even more of a threat now than ever with the rise of terror organizations that want their hands on nuclear technology and will pay handsomely for the devices.

Al-Qaeda is one of them (i.e. Sharif Mobley, though officials swear his time at U.S. nuclear plants did not compromise security).

Some governments appear to take a laissez-fare attitude toward nuclear terrorism because, according to some, it’s a nearly impossible task to detonate a nuke. Granted this may be temporarily true, but it should not be the reason governments or “experts” label such activity as inconsequential. It should be the reason we focus on preventing warheads and nuclear technology from falling into the wrong hands.

It’s quite obvious that Myanmar is only the tip of the iceberg in this fight. The country allegedly has ties with North Korea and some U.S. officials have accused the two countries of collaborating to develop nuclear weapons (as the AP reported that early documents show North Korea allegedly helped Myanmar construct underground facilities to create nukes).

The next phase is whether or not these countries will “black market” their nuclear ambition to other nations known to harbor terror groups or to the cells themselves. It provokes a danger the world cannot afford. We must start turning Obama’s words from the April nuclear summit into action if we are to stay vigilant in the fight against nuclear terrorism. Because over the past two months, our beautiful blue-green marble is beginning to resemble an oil-smeared ticking time bomb.

The report, released Tuesday, screams that DOJ leadership failed to develop a Crisis Management Committee or name an official to coordinate such efforts.

“The Department is not prepared to fulfill its role, assigned to it under the National Response Framework’s ESF-13, to ensure public safety and security in the event of a WMD incident,” states the report.

It also states the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was supposed to be the lead agency to implement the security, but, according to the report, the ATF and the Justice Department did not fulfill such a requirement.

This comes at a time when it’s already a black eye for the current administration, with a recent U.S. Homeland Security memo that states terrorist attacks are at an all-time high—and there’s little evidence of them decreasing.

It’s sad that millions of dollars get poured into agencies whose sole mission to protect the U.S. from known, er, unknown threats, but little gets done.

We guess that’s the whole point of such an embarrassment.

Read the entire report here.

FBI photos

In a 55-minute long video Wednesday, courtesy al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Fahd al-Quso pledges new attacks on American soil, its embassies and warships. Al-Quso is under indictment by the Untied States for the USS Cole bombing in October 2000, where 17 service men were killed and 49 injured.

AQAP rapidly is growing and is gaining support in Yemen. They operate and move about without recourse largely due to the weak and debilitated Yemeni government.  This is the first time al-Quso has surfaced since his early release from prison in Yemen.  He was convicted by a Yemeni court for his role in the USS Cole bombing and received a mere ten-year sentence. Despite repeated escape attempts and finally escaping from jail in 2003, he was captured a year later and returned to jail only to spend another three years before early release.

Al-Quso appeared as a player within the al-Qaeda network as early as January 2000, where he attended the al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia. The summit of the terror group was a stage for the planning of the USS Cole attack and Sept. 11, 2001. All the major players within al-Qaeda were present, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind 9/11. Al-Quso left that meeting to become part of the plot to target the USS Cole in the port of Aden.

AQAP steadily is becoming stronger as experienced terrorists, such as al-Quso, are joining their ranks. In his video, he mentions and praises the tribes which have affliations to AQAP and he specifically mentions the “Awalik tribe,” which he is a member. The tribe recently announced threats in early April against anyone who attempts harm against Anwar al-Awlaki, the Internet preacher who has released a video that professes his allegiance to AQAP. The Awalik tribe also has made a statement that they would retaliate if any attacks come to the tribe or its members.

Al-Quso should be considered a dangerous figure within the network since he already has experience in the field and has been operational. He has the trust of Osama bin Laden and his connections with the Arab world, as well as Pakistan, make him a key figure within the network.

If we are to take al-Quso seriously, we should look at his past strategies and expect large-scale attacks, a trademark of al-Qaeda. AQAP already has taken credit for Maj. Nidal Hasan in Fort Hood, Texas, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber. We should take this latest video seriously and expect that AQAP already is planning an attack against the U.S.

Wright, The Detroit News/caglecartoons.com

Thirty-eight days ago, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, in a conflagration that killed 11 workers and was the result of poor decision making after nearly two days of arguments as to how to proceed.

The result of replacing heavy-drilling fluids with light-weight sea water allowed methane gas to surge up the riser, expanding at an incredible rate and igniting the platform. Nineteen million gallons of spilled oil later, the gusher continues its unrelenting assault on what eventually will involve the entire Gulf coast from Louisiana to the southern tip of Florida.

From the White House to the wheel house, hopes ran high Thursday that BP had found a way to stop the deluge from below in, what they now call, an “environmental catastrophe.”

It was not to be.

Using a technique referred to as “top kill,” the oil men employed a 30,000-horsepower pump to force drilling mud one mile down and into the outlet orifice of the acutely named, “blow-out preventer.” If enough mud can be forced into the orifice to overcome by pressure the mass escaping, the problem can be stopped.

So far, top kill’s greatest effect, employing all of these metrics, has been to remove the top person at the U.S. Department of the Interior, Ken Salazar, and the top person at MMS, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum. Who knows how much longer BP will employ the top kill technique and how many top people will be forced to step down, or how much high-pressure mud it eventually will take to plug their orifices.

One thing is for certain: The high-pressure mud will continue to fly under great pressure and the oil plume will continue to grow.

The oil plume is the 800-pound gorilla, currently lurking out of sight in this saga. Just below the water surface, like a huge angry hippo bottom feeding in the Nile, this oil plume is now 22 miles long, 6 miles wide and 3,300 feet deep; and, it is moving, undulating ever-so slowly, on a collision course with an environmental holocaust.

Sand berms, skimming rigs and floating booms are pathetic attempts at sand-bagging a tsunami. Political and business leaders rival our most productive wind farms, bloviating about who is at fault. In the end, though, the American people will pick up the tab at the gas pump and American wildlife will once again find it increasingly difficult to share the planet with a voracious energy consumer.

Fill er up.

The memo, dated May 21, and first reported by CNN late Wednesday night, is proof that the current administration is not taking the appropriate action needed to slow attacks.

The unclassified document divvied out to law enforcement agencies, informs them to “operate under the premise that other operatives are in the country and could advance plotting with little or no warning.”

It also states that terrorists will go after “smaller, more achievable attacks against easily accessible targets.”

Juval Aviv, a counterterrorism expert and former Israeli agent, has said that future attacks in the U.S. likely are to be cheap, suicide bombers or car bombs that “target not just large cities, but rural America.”

Action must be done to curb these attempts. The New York Times Square incident May 1 was a wakeup call. We no longer can hit the snooze on this issue. More police, more intelligence, more operations is a mantra that almost every official screams, but the truth is, it should be better police, better intelligence and better operations. Only being one step ahead of the bad guys will get goverents two steps closer to preventing problems.

How do we achieve this? By practicing what we preach. We know that advanced technology can help track information, deter actions and aid in prevention, but we also need to employ and rely on more overseas and more domestic intelligence because the terrorists are getting smarter. Some U.S. police departments already employ and have people traveling across the country and around the world to help in prevention. More local departments should do the same or at least learn from those agencies who conduct such operations. Maybe even more support is needed (both in logistics and operations) by the federal goverent to help local law enforcement, as domestic terrorism grows and spreads to rural America. (Bossier Parish, La., sheriff’s idea, though, is not the way to do this.)

A new national security policy is due for release Thursday, according to the White House. Let’s hope its strategy will focus on better initiatives worth the time and the investment before another strike hits home.

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune/caglecartoons.com

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office reveals that 16 known terrorists deceived agents at U.S. airports from May 2004 to August 2008.

The organization used U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Department of Justice information to examine the travel “of key individuals allegedly involved in six terrorist plots that have been uncovered by law enforcement agencies.”

GAO determined that “at least 16 of the individuals allegedly involved in these plots moved through eight different airports where the SPOT program (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) had been implemented. Six of the eight airports were among the 10 highest risk airports, as rated by TSA in its Current Airport Threat Assessment.”

These 16 included an individual in December 2007 who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to Somali terrorists, but boarded a plane at Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport to Somalia in order to “engage in jihad,” according to the report. Another boarded a plane in August 2008 at Newark Liberty International Airport for Pakistan to “receive terrorist training…to attack the New York subway system,” states the report. (The latter likely Najibullah Zazi.)

Little has changed.

Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomb attempt suspect, slipped past screeners and TSA agents at New York’s JFK airport—only to be stopped on the runway just before take-off.

The problem airports and the TSA faces is beefing up security. The answer to most of the problems at airports comes in the form of new technology. That technology, however, quickly is being defeated. For example, when the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound plane with a bomb on Christmas Day, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said, “No worries. We have full-body scanners.”

Not even a month later, reports began to pour in over “butt bombs” or bombs made specifically for the rectum so terrorists can slip by security.

TSA currently employs the SPOT program that behavior detection officers (BDO) use at airports to identify if someone is a risk to aviation security. The system works on behavioral and appearance indicators. It was this system the GAO was asked to review.

But, it’s obvious that it fails. Granted, the report states TSA made 1,100 arrests, but none of those were terror related.

The GAO recommendation for the problem is: “To help ensure that SPOT is based on valid scientific principles that can be effectively applied in an airport environment, the Secretary of Homeland Security should convene an independent panel of experts to review the methodology of the DHS Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate study on the SPOT program to determine whether the study’s methodology is sufficiently comprehensive to validate the SPOT program.”

If TSA is going to stand by their system, they must improve their ability to detect and deter such actions found in the GAO report. This likely means better training or better personnel. Because it’s quite clear the current workers are not doing their job. Of course, it’s understandable how many people pass through a busy airport on a given day and how stressful such a job is to begin with, but when dealing with lives, it’s different. There are no excuses.

If this means stricter searches, higher pay, more-educated scanners and agents and even an additional 20 minutes at the waiting line, then OK. Forget the complaints. Let’s demonstrate with results, and actively stop terror on U.S. soil.

Bill Schorr/caglecartoons.com

You are a Gulf State emergency manager and you need to have a plan in place to protect your community in the event of a disaster. Your job is to do a hazard vulnerability analysis of your community and determine the perils and hazards that could become threats. You would then need to determine which hazards you are most vulnerable to and make an assessment of the community’s identifiable risk exposure.

As you assess your community’s assets, you may determine that a priority must be given to any asset that is a component of the two engines that drive your local economy: energy production and commercial fishing. An oil rig accident could not only affect the energy production engine, but a resultant oil spill could devastate the commercial fishing engine.

Threat is one issue; probability is another. Your resources are limited. You must plan for the events with the highest probability of occurrence in order to be an effective manager.

What is the likelihood of an oil spill happening in the Gulf of Mexico? Since 1967, there have been seven energy-related events affecting the Gulf states. In June 1979, an oil well blow-out dumped 140 million gallons into the Gulf. The resultant environmental impact was reported as LOW. In June 1990, there was a tanker explosion 60 miles off Galveston, Texas, which spilled 5.1 million gallons. In August 1993, three ships collided, causing the loss of 336,000 gallons of fuel oil into Tampa Bay. In November 2000, the oil tanker Westchester runs aground and dumps 567,000 gallons of fuel into the lower Mississippi River. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it was estimated that 7 million gallons of oil were lost due to the storm. In July 2008, a barge and tanker collide and release 250,000 gallons of fuel into the Mississippi River near New Orleans. In January 2010, a barge and tanker collide, spilling 175,000 gallons of oil near Port Arthur, Texas.

In the past 43 years, there only has been one major oil rig accident in the Gulf that involved a significant oil spill. There was no reported environmental impact from the spill. Barge and tanker collisions resulting in spills have a much higher probability of occurring, as they happen close to shore.

So, with a very low probability of occurrence, but a potentially devastating financial impact, you decide to do an analysis of which drilling operations have the highest risk of a blow-out and spill. The numbers point to deep-water drilling. You decide to base your analysis on a well-run operation. You choose the Deepwater Horizon, a high-tech, deep-water rig with only one minor safety infraction since 2005. Through investigation, you determine that the Department of the Interior oversees a federal agency called the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which regulates the oil drilling industry and, oddly enough, receives billions of dollars in oil-generated royalties from the industry it regulates.

Through more intense investigative work, it is determined that what makes deep-water drilling more risky is the proximity of methane gas when the seabed is disturbed through drilling or through natural geologic occurrences. As the methane rises and comes in contact with extremely cold sea water, the molecules of compressed methane are captured in the molecular structure of the slushy, near-frozen sea water at great depth. These captured molecules of methane in sea slush are called hydrates. If hydrates become heated through drilling, or rising oil in the riser pipe, or the heat generated from curing concrete, which is used to stabilize the gap between the riser pipe and the bore hole, this heat allows the methane molecules to escape their slushy cage and rise.

As the methane molecules rise, they expand. Each molecule can expand as it rises to a ratio of 1:180. This expanding methane bubble can rise slowly or explosively fast, depending on what it is pushing ahead of it in the riser pipe. If anything ignites the methane, an explosion happens. To prevent an explosion, each rig has a Blow Out Prevention system (BOP), which involves a cut-off valve to stop the continuing rise of methane. If the BOP fails and the bubble ignites, there is an unending supply of fuel that will eventually incinerate the rig. If the rig collapses, the riser pipe will break, resulting in a spill. The MMS did not require the Deepwater Horizon to have a plan in place for this type of disaster scenario.

As an emergency manager, you have no control over the best practices of the drilling companies, nor can you enforce inspection schedules. The probability of an oil spill occurring due to rig failure is low. Mitigatory strategies, should an oil spill happen, would be to use volunteers to clear away naturally occurring beach debris that might hamper oil clean-up and to be able to procure enough oil containment booms to stretch across the lengths of exposed beaches and wetlands.

Now, as agencies race to siphon the April 20 incident in the Gulf, remember: It’s better to focus on a high probability of occurrence with advanced warning capability than a low-probability event you have no control over.