• McCain meets with Syrian rebel leaders in Syria

    Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) on Monday, Memorial Day, met with Syrian rebel leaders. McCain’s visit makes him the highest ranking U.S. official to enter Syria since the civil war began in 2011.Rebel commanders asked that the U.S. consider providing heavy arms to the Free Syrian Army, set up a no-fly zone in Syria, and conduct airstrikes on Hezbollah. McCain, for his part, asked the rebels how they planned to reduce the presence of Islamic extremists in rebel ranks.

  • Biometric technology identifies one of the Boston Marathon bombers

    In a study which evaluated some of the latest in automatic facial recognition technology, researchers were able quickly to identify one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects from law enforcement video, an experiment that demonstrated the value of such technology.

  • New Obama policy sets higher standards for drone use

    In a major policy speech Thursday, President Obama announced plans to set higher standards for the use of drones in the fight against terrorists. He defended the use of the unmanned vehicles in that war, however, including when, in extreme situations, they are used to kill American citizens.

  • Terrorists kill British soldier in London in broad daylight

    Two men – one a British-born Nigerian, the other a naturalized Nigerian – yesterday attacked and killed a British soldier in broad daylight outside his London barracks. The used meat cleavers and knives. The attack was caught on the smartphones of passersby. The attackers stayed near the body until the police arrived, explaining their violence to n-lookers: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” one of them said.

  • Court upholds CIA’s decision not to release post-raid Bin Laden photos

    A federal appeals court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that the U.S. government does not have to release more than fifty images and a video of Osama Bin Laden, taken after his death. “It is undisputed that the government is withholding the images not to shield wrongdoing or avoid embarrassment, but rather to prevent the killing of Americans and violence against American interests,” the judges said.

  • Oregon drills first responders for bioterrorism attack

    A three day drill called the Portland Area Capabilities Exercise (PACE), simulating a terrorist attack involving a biological weapon, will take place across fifty different facilities and sixty-five jurisdictions in the state of Oregon.

  • Ricin can kill, but there are more potent bioterror weapons

    Ricin was in the headlines a few weeks ago, when envelopes containing the poison were mailed to President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), and a Mississippi judge. The threat from ricin is low, however, because ricin cannot poison someone through contact with the skin. To be poisoned, an individual would have to ingest or inhale traces of the poison.

  • Leak exposed valuable informant, jeopardized counter-terrorism efforts

    Discussing the Justice Department’s effort to obtain telephone records of several AP journalists, sources close to the case say that the leak was deemed exceedingly egregious because it exposed an informant working for the U.K. and U.S. intelligence services, and who was able to achieve what other informants had not: the trust of the terrorists.

  • FBI defends handling of Boston bombing, admits FBI-CBP miscommunication

    FBI director Robert Mueller yesterday defended the way his agency handled the Russian request that the FBI pay attention to Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the months before the 15 April attack on the Boston Marathon. The two key junctures: following the FBI’s March 2011 investigation of Tamerlan, an investigation which found no ties between him and terrorism, the FBI twice, in September and October 2011, asked the Russian security services for more information about why the Russians suspected Tameraln, so the FBI could dig more deeply, but the Russians never responded. Still, the FBI went ahead and placed Tameraln’s name on a low-level watch list, which meant that his travel was tracked. The CBP Boston office, however, took no action in response to two FBI’s electronic messages – from January and June 2012 — about Tsarnaev’s travel to Russia.

  • Mathematical models can be used to detect, disrupt terror networks

    Can math models of gaming strategies be used to detect terrorism networks? Researchers say that the answer is yes. The researchers describe a mathematical model to disrupt flow of information in a complex real-world network, such as a terrorist organization, using minimal resources.

  • Canadian government finally deports terrorist

    After a 26-year long legal battle, Canada two weeks ago deported a Palestinian terrorist who attacked an El Al plane in Athens in 1968. He entered Canada with a false passport, but his identity was quickly discovered. The main point of contention was where should Issa Mohammad, the terrorist, be deported to: he was a Palestinian, but there is no Palestinian state to accept him. The Lebanese government finally agreed to take him, and he was deported

  • Israel warns Assad: if you attack Israel, you “risk forfeiting [your] regime”

    Israel has issued a highly unusual public warning to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The warning, couched in no uncertain terms, consists of two parts: First, if Syria and Iran again try to ship game-changing weapon system to Hezbollah, Israel will destroy these shipments, as it has already done three times, on 30 January, 3 May, and 5 May. Second, if Syria retaliated against Israel in the wake of such attacks, Israel would inflict crippling blows on the Assad regime and force Assad from power.

  • Nigeria launches “massive” military campaign against Islamists

    One day after the president of Nigeria said that Islamist terrorists, who now control parts of northeast Nigeria, have declared war on Nigeria, the Nigerian military has deployed thousands of troops to three states in the country’s northeast to reassert the government control over the area.

  • DHS refuses FOIA requests for the Tsarnaev brothers’ immigration papers

    DHS has rejected repeated FOIA requests for the federal immigration records of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s records on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, saying they are still conducting an investigation. 

  • Nigeria’s president: Islamists have “declared war” on Nigeria; state of emergency imposed

    Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan yesterday announced a state of emergency in northeast Nigeria. In a speech to the nation, Jonathan said that Islamic militants are now in control of large areas, imposing strict Islamic law in dozens of towns and villages. “What we are facing is not just militancy or criminality, but a rebellion and insurgency by terrorist groups which pose a very serious threat to national unity and territorial integrity,” the president said. “These actions amount to a declaration of war” by groups “whose allegiance [is] to different flags than Nigeria’s.”