May 31, 2005

Bioterrorism at US/Canada Border?

I saw this over at NEIN and then found a local NY paper had covered the story. While most of us worry about the next wave of terrorism coming from our unprotected Southern border it would be good to pause and remember that the majority of the 9/11 terrorists made their way from Canada, not Mexico.

By no means is it certain that this is an act of bioterrorism, but it is alarming none-the-less.

Tonawanda News:

A day after a suspected hazardous materials incident shutdown the Rainbow Bridge for almost five hours, Customs and Border Protection agents still donÂ’t know exactly what happened.

What they do know is, during an investigation into three men trying to smuggle $180,000 in counterfeit cash into the country, a half-dozen agents suddenly became ill with flu-like symptoms and almost three dozen travelers ended up spending more time than they could have imagined trying to cross the border.

Customs officials said Monday that three Pennsylvania men, identified as Tommy Nguyen, Than Nguyen and Cuong Hong, were stopped Sunday afternoon as they attempted enter the country by crossing the bridge. All three are U.S. citizens.

During a secondary inspection of their vehicle, Customs agents found a plastic bag in the area of the rear seat. Inside the bag were 20 bundles of counterfeit $100 bills.

The three men were placed under arrest, but as the agents began examining the money, they began to experience irritation in their eyes and throats. The three arrested men and then other people in the immediate vicinity of the counterfeit cash also began to get the flu-like symptoms.

“At that time, a decision was made to by Customs and Border Protection to declare the area a possible hazardous materials incident scene,” Customs and Border Protection Public Affairs Officer Kevin Corsaro said.

The bridge was closed and cleared, along with a section of the southbound Robert Moses Parkway from Findlay Drive to the bridge.

That was followed by a swarm of federal, state and local law enforcement and emergency services agencies arriving on the scene. They included the Niagara Falls Police and Fire Departments, the Niagara County HAZ-MAT Team, the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station Fire Department, the Niagara County Department of Emergency Services, the Erie County SMART Team, a group of specially trained doctors, Rural Metro Medical Services, the Niagara and Erie County Health departments, the New York State Police, the New York State Park Police, the U.S. Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as agents from the FBI and the Secret Service.

Thirty-four travelers on the bridge and a half-dozen Customs and Border Protection agents initially were isolated after their exposure. Twenty-one people, including the Customs agents, were quarantined and decontaminated.

The civilians were all released from the bridge after being examined by medical personnel. The agents were taken by ambulance to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, where officials said they complained of symptoms such as coughing, sneezing and dizziness.

A blood screen of all the agents failed to identify the cause for their symptoms. Medical officials said the blood screens were “negative.”

“Our examination indicated no evidence of exposure to any toxins or biological agents,” medical center spokesman Patrick Bradley said.

However, NEIN reports that:
Another witness reported seeing a puff of brownish-white smoke, “similar to a small smoke bomb,” “go off” near the vehicle that was being inspected, or somewhere near the underside of the pavilion. The origin of this smoke remains unknown at this time.

At that point, at least to customs agents began coughing and at least one stooped to the ground. “I thought someone set off tear gas or a smoke bomb,” stated the witness who asked not to be identified. “Someone yelled for an ambulance, and a few other agents in the area began coughing and having trouble breathing, some walking with their hands over their mouths and noses,” stated the witness.

This seems to indicate that the source of the smoke wasn't the money, as the news report indicates, but from a secondary source.

Again, this may be nothing but it also should remind us just how vulnerable those that guard our borders are to terrorist attack.

Posted by: Rusty at 05:20 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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May 27, 2005

Further Thoughts on Bolton's Nomination

By Demosophist

Larry Johnson has a new post up that puts a lash or two across the back of John Bolton. The value of Larry's contribution is that he knows some of the principles who Bolton is supposed to have retaliated against for their intelligence assessments. There's no substitute for being close to the action. But there are two things, besides the reasoning of Larry's co-blogger, Andrew Cochran that prevent me from being excessively concerned about the "chilling" of the intelligence community's professional objectivity. Or, to be more precise, I'm probably concerned about a different aspect of the problem. Those things are: more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 03:28 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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May 22, 2005

Which Numbers Matter? The NCTC Report Revisited, Recoded and Reanalyzed

By Demosophist

At Rusty's suggestion I'm moving this reanalysis of the Terrorism Chronology back to the start, for another run through the gauntlet. What I'd like to make clear is that I disagree that there's any implication in the numbers that we're losing, or losing ground, in the fight against Totalitarianism 3.x. In fact, we're confounding them at every turn, which is one reason they're becoming more vicious. In addition, they're raising the number of attacks in certain places, such as Kashmir, at the expense of "quality." Anyway, here's the original post, from last week:

Marc Danziger (by way of reader T.M. Lutas) recently emailed an Excel file containing the narratives from the report released by the National Counterterrorism Center entitled A Chronology of Significant International Terrorism for 2004, describing the 651 terrorist attacks it identified.  (Although there has been a debate with Larry Johnson over the significance of these numbers I've no argument with the idea that we ought to be concerned.  After all, I'm concerned or I wouldn't be posting this re-analysis. However, I object to the notion that these numbers are some sort of signal that we're not winning the war.)  At any rate, I've been mulling over these data since Marc dropped them to me about two weeks ago, doing a lot of what data geeks do with this sort of delicacy, and thought I'd post a little of what I've found. 

First of all, Marc's post on Winds of Change describes his preliminary findings, according to which it's clear that two countries, India and Iraq, account for over 3/4ths of the terrorist attacks that took place in 2004. (If all attacks listed in the report are included these two countries account for 76.2%).  After looking more carefully at the narratives in the glossy report the first thing that one finds is that there are about 70 events on the list of terrorist attacks that may not belong.  That's because the target of those attacks was clearly military, rather than civilian.  These amount to about 11% of the total number of attacks listed, and more than 80% of these (57 of 70) occurred in Kashmir.

Now, it's true that the folks who did these dirty deeds probably were not very concerned about "collateral damage" to civilians, so I don't have reservations about including them, provided some civilians were either wounded or killed, but in 36 of the 70 cases where the objective was clearly military there were no civilian casualties at all.  I'm not sure why these events even appear in a terrorist attack database, but their inclusion tends to put more emphasis on terrorist activity in the troubled Indian state than might otherwise be the case.  This is not so much because the events were included for Kashmir, but more because similar events were not generally included elsewhere.  But whatever the justification, as one deletes some of these questionable "terrorist" attacks from consideration the percentage of attacks in Iraq rises from roughly 31% to 34% while those in India/Kashmir fall from about 45% down to 41%.  So, while the proportion of "terrorist" attacks rises for Iraq and falls for India after you do a bit of circumspective culling, those two nations still account for approximately 3/4ths of all terrorist attacks in the world.  That fact doesn't change.  And in sheer frequency of attacks, India/Kashmir is still more active than Iraq, or anywhere else.  But that's not the whole story, by a long shot.

more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 01:22 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
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May 20, 2005

Fisking Robert A. Pape

By Demosophist

There's something about ths piece from the New York Times Op/Ed page that just got me riled up, and I had to tackle it. I don't really have a problem with the basic thesis that terrorism, and even suicide terrorism, is a rational strategy. But I really do not like what Professor Pape does with that, at all.

Blowing Up an Assumption
By ROBERT A. PAPE
Published May 18, 2005
Chicago
MANY Americans are mystified by the recent rise in the number and the audacity of suicide attacks in Iraq.

I'm not. I'm mystified by the absence of reporting about the success of our strategies in Iraq, and the rather obvious fact that we're winning. So is there a reason why I need to read the rest of this? I'll read it though, because I have a hunch there are illusions waiting to be dispelled. Call me psychic. more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 02:30 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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May 13, 2005

Predator Missile Offs al Qaeda #3

The last 10 days have been extremely productive for our military in terms of snuffing dirtbags. 100s of insurgents killed, more captured including al-Libbi, al- Rawi, al- Zubaydi and now this. more...

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Viva Las Vegas

By Matt from WMD:

This comes as no surprise to anybody who has been following al Qaeda in the news, but apparently there is still some sort of threat being leveled towards Las Vegas.

The Egypt Election Daily News reports, you decide:

Las Vegas has been revealed as Osama Bin Laden's number one terror target.

Al Qaeda terrorists posing as tourists compiled a detailed dossier on America's gambling mecca, according to a top secret intelligence report. Videos and photographs of a string of landmarks and major hotels were sent back to terror bosses plotting a spectacular sequel to the September 11 attacks.

The security report - marked "restricted" and circulated to U.S. and coalition intelligence agencies - was drawn up by British intelligence agents following the arrest of 21 Al Qaeda operatives. It says: "Based on intelligence, Las Vegas is seen as the prime target for a major impact attack."

It explains later: "It would be the mainland 'spectacular' that we have been hearing about for some time.

"Information indicates that any attack would be multi-centered at several sites and probably take the form of explosive devices.

"Las Vegas represents all that is wrong about the West and so symbolically represents, to them, the ideal choice of target. This elevates it to being probably the most likely target in our assessment based on what we have learned recently."


Naturally, the Homeland Security folks are mum on the subject.

Visit Matt's home blog: Weapons of Mass Discussion

Posted by: MattWMD at 09:46 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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May 12, 2005

NCTC Teaser and "Right to Bear" in Kashmir

By Demosophist

I'm doing some "post-coding" of the terrorist attack data that was so controversial just last week. Armed Liberal on Winds of Change sent me the data (provided by T.M. Lutas), and I've been reading the narratives in an attempt to put together some sort of measures of magnitude and quality of terrorist attacks, in addition to mere quantity. There are several interisting patterns, though the work is not yet done. more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 03:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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May 11, 2005

The Western Approaches

By Demosophist

The primary characteristic of the current operations in western Iraq, which the Belmont Club discusses here in great depth and with typically impressive insight, is that the insurgents aren't slipping stealthily away as they have in previous engagements. Their "investment" is anchored at these approaches to the Syrian border, and while they may be able to swing a wide arc through the country allowing them the option of relocation after they've been ejected from Fallujah or Ramadi, that arc must be anchored *somewhere*. They may not have other options. more...

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E-mail a Terrorist

zimas.alansar@gmail.com

If no response, I'm sure there are plenty of gay-porn sites that would just love to add that e-mail to their spam list.........

Posted by: Rusty at 09:27 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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May 10, 2005

Utah Webhost Killing American Soldiers

I know it's not possible for Orem, Utah based United Online Web Services, Inc. which runs the 50megs.com free webhosting service to police all of it's sites, but come on!

We are talking about the worst sort of jihadi site here, the type that trains insurgents to kill American soldiers using Improvised Explosive Devices.

If the link doesn't work that's because I filed a complaint with the company, but Open Source Intelligence took a screenshot.

If the link still works it's either because a) they haven't gotten around to taking down this disgusting site because of manpower issues or b) they are a bunch of idiots who in the name of 'free speech' are willing to see their friends and neighbors killed.

If b, then I suggest somebody go down to 1253 N. Research Way, Suite Q-2500, in Orem Utah and raise bloody hell!

UPDATE: Site down!

Posted by: Rusty at 02:32 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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May 09, 2005

Nuke Rockets on Sale to Terrorists

Come on, it can't be that easy to buy a rocket with a radiological tip? Joe Gandalman brings us this little tidbit of news from the UK. Times Online:

THREE radioactive rockets capable of contaminating a city centre were offered for sale last week to a Sunday Times reporter posing as a middleman for Islamic terrorists.

The Alazan rockets, which have a range of eight miles, were among 50,000 tons of weapons left behind at an arms dump in the breakaway eastern European republic of Transdniester when the Russian army withdrew after the cold war.

They were offered to the reporter for $500,000 (£263,000) after he approached a senior officer in Transdniester’s secret police, claiming to represent a militant group in Algeria. The officer contacted a local arms dealer who arranged meetings with the reporter on a bridge in Transdniester and later at a hotel in neighbouring Moldova.

Did I say don't panic?

No?

Ok. PANIC.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:05 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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May 07, 2005

Update on Online Counterterrorism

E-mail from the man who helped the FBI nab the bad guy. We'll call him Werewolf. I'll also include this in the original post, just to clarify.

I would like to make one slight correction which I consider important-- it turns out that the FBI was NOT sitting on its hands "doing diddly squat" as I originally thought.

When Werewolf first e-mailed me he was pretty ticked off. He had alerted the FBI about the suspected terrorist. They had seemed less than interested.

One of the agents told me that I may think nothing was happening during those weeks when I didn't hear from them after I'd alerted them, but in fact a lot was going on behind the scenes. Actually, during that time, apparently the guy was being apprehended. So the last thing I want to do is seem annoyed in any way with the Feds! I think they deserve some enthusiastic thanks and appreciation, they are doing a great job. Especially since in their line of work, they can never get any recognition for what they do. In short, this was NOT a case of someone getting them off their duffs, etc, if you understand me.

Seriously, this makes me feel a whole lot better about the FBI.

Secondly, we have no way of knowing if my emails or my alerting of the FBI actually led to his capture. They may have been watching him for a long time already and just needed an excuse, etc. I have no idea. Just wanted to make it clear that I am not taking credit for that.

Ok, I just wanted to put this out in the open so that the story is clear.

In any event Werewolf deserves a lot of credit for helping nab this guy.

Posted by: Rusty at 03:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Hospitals Being Targetted for Terrorist Attacks?

A number of other people have posted about this so I wasn't going to do a story on it, but since a number of you e-mailed me with it I thought I'd better put it up.

Hat tip to John Little and others. NY Sun:

New York City hospitals are on the lookout for impostors trying to scope out health-care facilities and locate radioactive materials following warnings late last month from the Department of Homeland Security and the city Police Department about an emerging pattern of "suspicious incidents" in some American cities.

In an April 22 bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security warned hospitals that a string of people falsely representing themselves as inspectors for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations had visited hospitals across America at odd hours, demanding information about the inner workings of the facilities.

Posted by: Rusty at 03:17 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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May 05, 2005

Jawa Report Nabs Terrorist

I almost never cuss. If you cuss too much it sort of takes away from the times when swearing is really appropriate. This is one of those time.

I know this is a PG-13 blog, but every now and then you have to say what the hell.

FUCKING-A!!

From time to time we like to do something called post the terrorist's e-mail. It's not just great fun to sign up for gay porn using a terrorists e-mail, it also pays off from time to time.

One of our terrorist buddies is now in jail thanks to a dedicated Jawa reader.

I'm not at liberty to give all the details yet. I'll post the rest of the story when the reader gives permission. I've been holding back on this one for a month. I can't anymore, though.

The basic story is we posted a terrorist's e-mail. A reader with an Arabic sounding e-mail address sent off a message to the terrorist. The terrorist responded. The FBI was informed. The FBI didn't do diddly-squat. The reader kept bugging the FBI. The FBI finally investigated, and ...... drumroll please ..... the FBI now has said terrorist locked up in a jail.

The Jawa Report readers get shit done.

Oh. One more piece of information. Some of you are going to love this.

Are you ready?

Wait for it.

Here it comes.....

The terrorist in question was in the U.S. illegally.

Let that sink in for a second.

Alright, I'm going to go celebrate by taking the rest of the day off and going fishing.

I think I fucking deserve it.

UPDATE 5/07/05:

E-mail from the man who helped the FBI nab the bad guy. We'll call him Werewolf.

I would like to make one slight correction which I consider important-- it turns out that the FBI was NOT sitting on its hands "doing diddly squat" as I originally thought.

When Werewolf first e-mailed me he was pretty ticked off. He had alerted the FBI about the suspected terrorist. They had seemed less than interested.

One of the agents told me that I may think nothing was happening during those weeks when I didn't hear from them after I'd alerted them, but in fact a lot was going on behind the scenes. Actually, during that time, apparently the guy was being apprehended. So the last thing I want to do is seem annoyed in any way with the Feds! I think they deserve some enthusiastic thanks and appreciation, they are doing a great job. Especially since in their line of work, they can never get any recognition for what they do. In short, this was NOT a case of someone getting them off their duffs, etc, if you understand me.

Seriously, this makes me feel a whole lot better about the FBI.

Secondly, we have no way of knowing if my emails or my alerting of the FBI actually led to his capture. They may have been watching him for a long time already and just needed an excuse, etc. I have no idea. Just wanted to make it clear that I am not taking credit for that.

Ok, I just wanted to put this out in the open so that the story is clear.

In any event Werewolf deserves a lot of credit for helping nab this guy.

Posted by: Rusty at 02:51 PM | Comments (36) | Add Comment
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