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Pakistan arrested five men and charged them with leaking information relating to the 2 May killing of Osama bin Laden; no, they were not accused of being informants for al Qaeda or the Taliban; rather, they are charged with secretly providing information to the united States — information which led to the successful operation; among the detainees are the Pakistani who rented and maintained to safe house in Abbottabad , from which CIA operatives kept an eye on bin Laden’ compound, and a Pakistani Army major who is credited with photographing the license plate of the car of bin Laden trusted couriers; following the courier’s car was the key to locating bin Laden’s hideout; deputy CIA director, when asked to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in fighting terrorism, replied: “Three”
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Al Qaeda
As analysts pour through the files confiscated from Osama bin Laden’s compound, U.S. intelligence agencies are gaining valuable insights into al Qaeda’s operations and plans as well as how they think and operate; during the raid that killed bin Laden, Navy SEALs managed to take bin Laden’s handwritten journal, five computers, ten hard drives, and 110 thumb drives; so far cyber experts and translators are “95 percent done” with decrypting and translating the confiscated information
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Domestic terrorism
In May 2009, DHS issues a report saying that the recession and Obama’s election could lead to a “violent radicalization” of extremist groups in the United States; conservative politicians and commentators charged that the report was an attack on conservative ideology and groups opposing abortion and immigration; in response, DHS has eviscerated the analytical unit which issued the report, cut the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled state and local law enforcement briefings, held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups, and has blocked the dissemination of a digest of domestic terror incidents and the distribution of definitions for terms such as “white supremacist” and “Christian Identity”; state and local law enforcement and security experts are worried
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Terrorism
The U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May yesterday unveiled the U.K. government’s revised strategy for tackling extremism; the new approach emphasizes preventing extremism at community levels; the new policy is the result of a review of the current policy, called Prevent, which was launched after the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks on London transportation; the goal of Prevent was to stop the growth of home-grown terrorism by, among other things, supporting Muslim organizations which were considered moderate; the review found that many of these organizations took the money but did little, if anything, to counter extremism in the Muslim community; these organizations’ funding will now be cut; May said that terrorists must be tackled, but that any anti-terrorism programs “must also recognize and tackle the insidious impact of non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularize views which terrorists exploit”
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Terrorism
Denying safe haven to terrorists is one of the pillars of the U.S. counter-terrorism efforts; the U.S. government is required by Congress to report regularly on progress made on this issue; a new GAO report says the U.S. government has not fully addressed these reporting requirements
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Suicide bombing
New study argues that female suicide bombing is a political and military tactic, not a religious act; according to mainstream scholars of Islam, the Qur’an, the Hadith (traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad), and other principles of Shari’a (Islamic law) clearly condemn terrorist acts and oppose suicide operations; in order to justify suicide bombings, leaders of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and al Qaeda have formulated their own interpretations of Islam, which are based more on military strategy than theology
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Nuclear terrorism
Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that U.S. officials were concerned about terrorist attacks at Japan’s nuclear facilities and the government’s seemingly lax security measures; one cable dated 26 February 2007, detailed a meeting where Japanese officials brushed aside U.S. concerns for physical security at one of the country’s nuclear facilities; additional cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to Washington D.C. reported that anti-terrorism drills held at nuclear facilities were unrealistic and overly “scripted”
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On Wednesday, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano visited Mumbai, India where ten gunmen killed more than 160 people in a November 2008 terrorist attack; Napolitano met with local counterterrorism and law enforcement officials to discuss their policing and counterterrorism strategies; Napolitano’s visit comes as part of a four day visit to India which will culminate in a formal dialogue with India’s top security chief Home Minister P. Chidambaram; the meeting will be the first formal dialogue between the two countries; topics for discussion will include counter-terrorism, but also financial fraud, counterfeiting, and currency smuggling; the high level strategic dialogue is designed to bolster ties between the United States and India by increasing communication and information-sharing practices on terrorism and national security issues; as Napolitano meets with her Indian counterpart, Tahawwur Rana is on trial in Chicago for assisting David Coleman Headley provide intelligence to Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization in their attack on Mumbai; India has been on a heightened state of alert since bin Laden’s death and has increased security along its borders
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Terror targets
Refineries and ship operators are on a state of heightened alert after documents recovered from the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound revealed that al Qaeda had considered bombing oil tankers; DHS officials issued the warning to law enforcement officials nationwide based on evidence that al Qaeda operatives had discussed holding drills to practice hijacking and bombing oil tankers to create “an extreme economic crisis” in the United States; port officials and refineries in Houston, Texas are particularly wary, as it is the largest oil producing region in the United States with tankers constantly moving in and out
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Counterterrorism financing
As U.S. lawmakers battle to cut the deficit and reduce spending, some are beginning to question if the billions of dollars being poured into counter-terrorism measures are cost effective; in calculating the costs for America’s efforts to combat violent extremism both domestically and abroad, two university professors estimated that the U.S. government spent more than $1 trillion from 2002 to 2011; argues that funds allocated to enhanced security measures are a gross misallocation of resources and that DHS has not conducted proper cost-benefit analysis of projects before spending large sums of money
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Terror watch
Following the death of Osama bin Laden and with fears of a retaliatory attack on the rise, public policy researchers are touting the efficacy of the new “See Something Say Something” campaign which encourages individuals to report any suspicious activity they see; of the sixty-eight stopped terrorist attacks from 1999 to 2009, nearly 40 percent of the plots were stopped following a report of suspicious activity; critics say that the “See Something Say Something” campaign inundates law enforcement officials with tips that could take valuable time and resources from real investigations
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The brief // by Ben Frankel
Providing for homeland security is an expensive proposition; government-wide homeland security expenditures grew from about $12 billion in FY2000 to $66 billion in VY2009; DHS budget grew from $33 billion in 2003 to $55 billion in 2010 — an increase of 45 percent after adjusting for inflation; there are indirect costs to homeland security, too: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimates that major homeland security regulations — by “major” OMB means regulations that costs more than $100 a year — cost the U.S. economy between $3.4 and $6.9 billion a year; since not too many Americans have been killed by terrorist acts, the post-9/11 added spending on homeland security means that the United States spends between $63 million and $630 million per one life saved; this an order of magnitude more than what experts, using accepted market measures, would consider the value of a statistical life
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The brief // by Ben Frankel
There are serious people who raise thoughtful questions about the nature and scope of the terrorist threat to Western societies, and because they do not accept the assumptions of both the Bush and Obama administrations about the nature of the threat, they criticize these administrations’ policies; this group of critics of current policies are joined by others who belong to a second group of critics: in this second group we find people who do not share the assessment of members of the first group about the nature of the threat, but who join them in criticizing government anti-terror policies as too expensive, to intrusive, and ineffective; a new, thought-provoking article on the subject performs a useful service in that it should keep advocates of expensive and intrusive government anti-terrorism policies honest
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In the trenches
In the daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Navy Seals were likely outfitted with latest in high-tech weapons and gadgets; Fox News speculates on five key technologies that could have helped the highly trained members of Navy SEAL Team 6 successfully complete their mission including bomb sniffing dogs, satellite-linked helmet cameras, and modified stealth Black Hawk helicopter
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Profiling
In a recent meeting with local Muslims in Detroit, a senior DHS official assured Muslim-Americans that they would not be subject to racial profiling following the death of Osama bin Laden; last week in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, federal officials met with Arab-American and Muslim community leaders to answer any questions and address their concerns; local Muslims were particularly worried that they would be profiled as authorities were on a heightened state of awareness for fear of a retaliatory attack; to help ease fears, Margo Schlanger, the national head of the office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at DHS, assured Muslims that the government was not giving special scrutiny to any ethnic groups at this time, including Muslims
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Syrian update
The Syrian government has intensified its crackdown on anti-government protesters over the last three days: more and more cities have been cut off from power, phone, and Internet connection, and have been surrounded by tanks and troops to prevent people from coming or leaving; a vast, nation-wide campaign of arrests and disappearances, carried out by the secret police, has so far resulted in hundreds being taken from their homes or place of employment to destinations unknown; the army has now began to use live rounds not only against demonstrators, but also against participants in funeral processions for those killed; so far, 580 civilians and about 100 soldiers and police have been killed
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Osama bin Laden
SEEK II from Florida-based Cross Match is a 4-pound computer that captures photographs, complete fingerprints, and iris scans; its memory holds the images and biometrics of up to 60,000 people; unconfirmed reports suggest that the Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden used a SEEK II to identify him; there are about 5,000 SEEK II devices in the field, being used by the U.S. military, border patrol, and law enforcement agencies, and also by other militaries
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Terrorism
A new report finds al Qaeda to be the deadliest terrorist organization in history; since its founding in 1998, the organization has conducted eighty-four terrorist attacks, resulting at least 4,299 deaths and 6,300 people injured; in comparison: ETA, the Basque separatist organization in Spain, killed 820 people between 1972 and 2008; IRA attacks have killed about 1,829 people dating back to 1970; the only group that comes close in terms of deadly attacks is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), killing 4,835 people during the course of its existence
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7/7 London attacks
An inquest into the 7 July 2005 attack on London transportation concluded that any suggestion MI5 could have stopped the attacks was “based to a considerable extent on hindsight”; there were failures in the response by emergency workers — confusion, a shortage of first aid supplies, and radios that did not work underground, but the report concludes that government errors had not increased the death toll
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The treasure trove of documents, multimedia, and computers seized in the raid on bin Laden’s hideout is being exploited by intelligence experts for information on the terror network and future plots; on Thursday the FBI and DHS circulated to law enforcement units around the United States the first piece of information from the bin Laden raid: in February 2010 al Qaeda operatives discussed attacks on U.S. trains as a way to commemorate the 9/11 attacks; the discussions show that the planners, in order to achieve a maximum-casualty attack, were thinking of derailing a train so that it plunged into a ravine or fell off a bridge; the FBI-DHS Thursday warning urged local la enforcement to be circulated for clips or spikes missing from train tracks, packages left on or near the tracks, and other indications that a train could be vulnerable
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The long view
Southport Attacks: Why the U.K. Needs a Unified Approach to All Violent Attacks on the Public
The conviction of Axel Rudakubana for the murder of three young girls in Southport has prompted many questions about how the UK handles violence without a clear ideological motive. This case has also shown up the confusion in this area, and made clear the need for a basic reframing of how we understand murderous violence against the public today.
Mis- and Disinformation Trends and Tactics to Watch in 2025
Predicting how extremists may weaponize false narratives requires an understanding of the strategies that allow them to spread most effectively.
Evidence-Based Solutions to Protect Against Mass Attacks
Mass attacks like the New Year’s Day incident in New Orleans stir public emotion and have tragic consequences. While the investigations into this case will take time, we know from our work that there are things law enforcement and the public can do to mitigate and perhaps stop mass casualty events.