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The future commander of U.S. Northern Command says that the U.S. military is increasingly concerned with small, hard-to-detect terror plots; the nation’s most serious challenge, he added, is protecting the country from extremists using weapons of mass destruction
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The Israeli security authorities are now alerting pet owners that their pets, if they look like “suspicious animals,” may be subjected to X-ray screening before boarding; if the owners refused, the pet would not be allowed on the flight; more than four million pets are flown across the world each year
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The Oklahoma bombing: 15 years on
MSNBC is airing ‘The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist,’ tonight at 9:99pm EST; the film draws on forty-five hours of never-before-released interview audiotapes recorded during McVeigh’s prison stay; the film reveals the bomber’s descriptions of the planning and execution of the horrific attack and offers insight into how a decorated American soldier became a dangerous, anti-government terrorist
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The Israeli security authorities are now alerting pet owners that their pets, if they look like “suspicious animals,” may be subjected to X-ray screening before boarding; if the owners refused, the pet would not be allowed on the flight; more than four million pets are flown across the world each year
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Nuclear matters
The nations of the world together have in their possession about 1.6 million kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and about 500,000 kilograms of plutonium; it takes only about 25 kilograms of HEU or eight kilograms of plutonium to make a crude nuclear bomb; thus the weapon-grade material now available in the world could yield 64,000 HEU-based bombs and 62,500 plutonium-based bombs
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Nuclear matters
Reviews ordered by President Obama have found weaknesses in the U.S. government’s stewardship of its nuclear cache, from weapons to the ingredients and classified information that go into them; before opening the nuclear summit earlier this week, Obama said that “Unfortunately, we have a situation in which there is a lot of loose nuclear material around the world”; this is true for the United States as well
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Domestic terrorism
DHS officials and lawmakers have been warning for months that law enforcement agencies are unprepared to deal with what they say is a mounting threat. Experts note that Michigan, in particular, is vulnerable because of its growing number of anti-government militia groups and the attractiveness of its large Arab-American population to radical Muslim groups
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FCC will move forward on the with key recommendations in its national broadband plan — even though a federal appeals court this week undermined the agency’s legal authority to regulate high-speed Internet access; plan calls for advancing “robust and secure public safety communications networks”
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Hamas claims Israeli intelligence uses information Palestinians from Gaza put in their profiles on Facebook to pressure them to become spies for Israel; it is not clear how someone can be blackmailed or coerced into a risky spying career using information in the public domain, and it seems more likely Israel is using social networking to map contact networks
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The United States is replacing broad screening of all in-coming travelers with a more targeted approach; the intelligence-based security system is devised to raise flags about travelers whose names do not appear on no-fly watch lists, but whose travel patterns or personal traits create suspicions
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Domestic terrorism
Lieberman: “The level of discourse about our politics and about our country are so extreme and so incendiary that if you’re dealing with people who may not be clicking on all cylinders and, and may have vulnerabilities personally, there’s a danger that they’re going to do what this group of militia [the Hutaree] planned to do this week”
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U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies say that in the past year, federal agents have seen an increase in “chatter” from an array of domestic extremist groups, which can include radical self-styled militias, white separatists, or extreme civil libertarians and sovereign citizens; in explaining why the FBI, DHS, and other agencies are worried about the letters sent to the governors, intelligence sources say officials have no specific knowledge of plans to use violence, but they caution police to be aware in case other individuals interpret the letters “as a justification for violence or other criminal actions”
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Unease in Oklahoma; the alleged domestic terror plot by a Michigan-based militia was planned for April, the month of the Murrah blast; David Cid, a former FBI counter terrorism specialist and now the executive director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, formed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing to train law enforcement officers in counterterrorism measures: “In March 2009 we felt something would happen within a year — we missed it by about a month”
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The FBI and DHS are investigating letters sent to 30 governors demanding their resignation within 30 days; “While there does not appear to be credible or immediate threats of violence attached to the letters, we are working with state and local authorities and continue to assess the matter,” the FBI and DHS said in a joint statement
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Domestic terrorism
The Michigan-based Hutaree group planned to kill a large number of law enforcement officers by mimicking the manner in which IEDs are used in Iran and Afghanistan against American soldiers; the purpose was to trigger a wide-spread, violent revolt against the U.S. government; some of information about the group’s violent plans came from an undercover FBI agent
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Domestic terrorism
The FBI raids the homes of members of a Michigan-based militia and arrests nine; the group members are charged in plot to wage war with U.S.; the men planned to kill a law enforcement officer and then attack and bomb that officer’s funeral, where there was certain to be legions of law enforcement attending
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Domestic terrorism
Experts say that discontent with the state of the U.S. economy, resentments of illegal immigrants, suspicions that health care-like bills are ushering in an age of “socialism” in America, and unease with the fact that the U.S. president is an African American — all mixed with a volatile brew of conspiracy theories — have swelled the ranks of extremist militia organizations, increased the vehemence of their hate rhetoric, and pushed some of their members to plan violent acts against the U.S. government
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Russia’s cities are bracing themselves for a renewed terrorist bombing campaign after two “black widow” suicide bombers launched a rush-hour attack on the Moscow metro killing 38 people and injuring 64; the Monday explosions were the deadliest suicide attacks in Moscow since 2004, when the bombing of a metro train killed 41
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The terrorism behind the Moscow subway explosions could become an economic drag on the Russian economy if it changes perceptions of security risks in Russia; research shows that a sustained low-level terror campaign can raise long-term security concerns and hurt economic growth more than even a very dramatic single event: the 9/11 terror attacks punctured America’s sense of domestic security in a single day, but nevertheless, a year after the attacks, the U.S. economy was growing again; on the other hand, two decades of Basque terrorist activity in Spain — activity which caused far fewer fatalities than 9/11 — created a 10 percent drop in per capita gross domestic product in that area of Spain
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The U.K. police are testing a new tool in the fight against terrorism: surveillance of Internet cafés; owners and patrons are asked to watch for — and report to the authorities — suspicious behavior; owners are asked to scan the hard drives in their shop on a regular basis to look for suspicious browsing and communication patterns; monitoring of Internet cafés’ computer use has been tried in several
countries, including India and the United States; civil libertarians worry that without a clear definition of suspicious behavior or suspicious Web
browsing, individuals with outside-the-mainstream political or religious views may be targeted -
The long view
How Male Grievance Fuels Radicalization and Extremist Violence
Social extremism is evolving in reach and form. While traditional racial supremacy ideologies remain, contemporary movements are now often fueled by something more personal and emotionally resonant: male grievance.