GISAC Weekly Open Source Report Issue 315
Authorities ask for help in finding terrorism suspect
CNN) -- Authorities are asking for the public's help in finding an eighth suspect accused of being a member of a North Carolina group that allegedly plotted "violent jihad" overseas.
The Raleigh Joint Terrorism Task Force is seeking any information the public may have regarding the whereabouts of Jude Kenan Mohammad," the FBI said in a statement.
Federal authorities had said earlier that they believed Mohammad, 20, was in Pakistan.
Seven other suspects are in custody. All eight are accused of plotting "violent jihad" overseas, according to the indictment, and are charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people.
The indictment identifies Mohammad as a U.S. citizen and a North Carolina resident. It says he traveled to Pakistan in October 2008 to "engage in violent jihad." No further details are offered.
A federal judge denied bail last week for six of the men, but expressed skepticism about the charges against them.
Magistrate Judge William Webb said the defendants had made a number of statements espousing holy war, and said the statements could be interpreted in isolation as braggadocio.
But because some group members had amassed a large arsenal and ammunition and had engaged in firearms training, Webb found there was reason to believe that they harbored criminal intent and presented a flight risk or a possible danger to the community.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/13/nc.terror.suspects/
Police seize man after 8-hour standoff in Westwood
A Westchester man who allegedly threatened to blow up the White House held police at bay for nearly eight hours Thursday as he sat parked in his car at the Federal Building in Westwood and was finally subdued when lawmen shattered a window, Tasered him and dragged him out of the vehicle. The man, who authorities identified as Joseph Moshe, 56, of Westchester, initially fled from U.S. Secret Service agents who had attempted to arrest him near his home. Moshe fled in his bright red Volkswagen Beetle and parked in front of the Federal Building. Local and federal authorities feared at first that the car might contain explosives and boxed the vehicle in with police cruisers and an armored vehicle. The Federal Building was locked down and hundreds of people were prevented from leaving the scene as the standoff wore on for hours. The confrontation reached a climax when police used a robot to shatter a rear window and filled the car with tear gas repeatedly. Though officers expected Moshe to bail out of his car, he remained seated behind the steering wheel. "Unfortunately to everyone's surprise, he didn't come out," said Det. Gus Villanueva of the Los Angeles Police Department. Ultimately, officers shattered the driver's side window, Tasered Moshe and dragged him out of the vehicle. He was taken to a hospital for minor scrapes, Villanueva said. Police had tried to negotiate with Moshe throughout the incident, but he refused to communicate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-westwood14-2009aug14,0,50605.story
Ga. Man Guilty of Aiding Terrorist Groups A 23-year-old Georgia man was convicted Wednesday of aiding terrorist groups by sending videotapes of U.S. landmarks overseas and plotting to support "violent jihad" after a federal jury rejected his arguments that it was empty talk.
The jury found Ehsanul Islam Sadequee guilty of all four charges he faced after about five hours of deliberations. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 60 years in prison and his sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 15. (Read "Bryant Neal Vinas: An American in Al Qaeda")
Authorities say Sadequee never posed an imminent threat to the U.S, but he took concrete steps to bolster terrorists when he sent the videos overseas and tried to aid a Pakistani-based terror group while on a trip to Bangladesh.
Sadequee, who stared silently as the verdict was read, is the second Georgia terror suspect to be convicted in the last two months. A judge convicted Sadequee's friend, Syed Haris Ahmed, in June on one count of conspiring to support terrorism in the U.S. and abroad.
Authorities said Sadequee first sought to join the Taliban in December 2001 and that he spent the next few years meeting other supporters as he delved deeper into "radical" online forums devoted to violent jihad.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1916167,00.html?FORM=ZZNR2
U.S. sees signs of disarray within Pakistani Taliban WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Wednesday there were signs of disarray within the Taliban in Pakistan following the apparent death of the group's leader in a missile strike.
Washington says there is a "90 percent certainty" that the Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a strike by a pilotless CIA drone earlier this month in South Waziristan. Mehsud's aides have disputed the claim and say he is alive.
"The end of Baitullah Mehsud, as we all know, is a very big deal," U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said, citing reports of "disarray among his people, of other factions maneuvering."
At a panel organized by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, Holbrooke said the "thrashing around" by the Taliban and its allies in Pakistan was "very good news for all of us."
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1215346920090812
Report: Pakistan Nuclear Facilities Attacked at Least Three Times by Terrorists
Pakistan's nuclear facilities have been attacked at least three times by home-grown extremists in little-reported incidents over the last two years, according to security experts, reports the Times of India.
The incidents include an attack on a nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on Nov. 1, 2007, and a homicide bombing at the nuclear airbase at Kamra on Dec. 10, 2007, as tracked by Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford in the UK.
But Bradford also noted a much more considerable raid by the Pakistani Taliban on Aug. 20, 2008, when homicide bombers blew up several entry points to a main armament complex at the country's main nuclear facility, the Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex, according to the paper.
Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are secure and that there is no chance of their falling into the hands of extremists or terrorists.
But these homegrown attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken steps to safeguard its stockpile against potential strikes, Gregory writes in the July issue of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,538904,00.html
Govs to DoD: Thanks, but no thanks
On August 7 the National Governors Association replied to a letter evidently received from Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Stockton. The content of this letter is extracted below.
I have not yet seen a copy of the original letter from Dr. Stockton.
According to Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive, the letter signals an intention to seek Congressional approval to post almost 400,000 military personnel in the U.S. Rothschild continues, “This request has already occasioned a dispute with the nation’s governors. And it raises the prospect of U.S. military personnel patrolling the streets of the United States, in conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.”
AP reporter Lolita Baldor offers a more expansive explanation for the governors’ concern. “At the heart of the disagreement is who will exercise the muscle to command reserve troops when they are sent to a particular state to deal with a hurricane, wildfire or other disaster. The governors see the Pentagon move as a strike at state sovereignty, while the military justifies it as a natural extension of its use of federal forces.”
Writing in The Hill, Reid Wilson, reports, “A bipartisan pair of governors is opposing a new Defense Department proposal to handle natural and terrorism-related disasters, contending that a murky chain of command could lead to more problems than solutions.”
A regular reader of HLSwatch suggests there is very helpful background in a November 2008 CRS report, written by Jennifer Elsea and Chuck Mason, entitled: Use of Federal Troops for Disaster Assistance: Legal Issues. The first paragraph is a great one, “Recognizing the risk that a standing army could pose to individual civil liberties and the sovereignty retained by the several states, but also cognizant of the need to provide for the defense of the nation against foreign and domestic threats, the framers of the Constitution incorporated a system of checks and balances to divide the control of the military between the President and Congress and to share the control of the militia with the states. This report summarizes the constitutional and statutory authorities and limitations relevant to the employment of the armed forces to provide disaster relief and law enforcement assistance.”
http://www.hlswatch.com/2009/08/13/govs-to-dod-thanks-but-no-thanks/
AP source: Obama officials to tour Michigan prison
LANSING, Mich. – Obama administration officials plan on Thursday to tour a soon-to-be-shuttered Michigan state prison considered an option to hold terrorism suspects now detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Two government officials said representatives of the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments would visit a state prison in Standish. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the visit.
An Obama administration official said the visit was intended to gather information about the facility and no decisions had been made about where to move the detainees. Multiple options are being considered, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
The maximum-security prison about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and the military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are among the sites being considered to house the detainees if the prison in Cuba is closed by early 2010, as ordered by President Barack Obama.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090812/ap_on_re_us/us_guantanamo_detainees
Man pleads guilty to racial threat using fake Facebook account
(CNN) -- An African-American man has pleaded guilty after being accused of impersonating a white supremacist in a fictitious Facebook account to make death threats against an African-American university student.
Dyron L. Hart, 20, of Poplarville, Mississippi, pleaded guilty Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt to one count of communicating threats in interstate commerce, according to a Department of Justice statement.
Hart admitted creating the fictitious account in November, pretending to be a white supremacist outraged by the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president, the statement said.
He then transmitted a death threat via Facebook to an African-American student at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, saying he wanted to kill African-Americans because of Obama's election, according to the statement.
A court document provided by the U.S. attorney's office said Hart told an FBI interviewer that he intended the threat to be a prank "to get a reaction."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/13/facebook.racial.threat/index.html?eref=rss_crime
Airlines Set to Ask More of Passengers
U.S. airlines on Saturday will begin asking travelers to provide their birth date and sex for the first time under a new aviation security requirement, federal officials said Wednesday.
The change comes as the Department of Homeland Security takes over responsibility for checking airline passenger names against government watch lists. The additional personal information, which airlines will forward to the Transportation Security Administration, is expected to cut down on cases of mistaken identity, in which people with names similar to those on terrorist watch lists are erroneously barred or delayed from flights.
U.S. airlines on May 15 started asking passengers for their full name as it appears on a government-issued identification card, a change intended to allow companies to upgrade their reservation and information systems. Starting Saturday, airlines will be required to get both the name and the additional information, although TSA is working with individual airlines to phase in compliance, TSA spokesman Greg Soule said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203000.html?nav=rss_email/components
NYPD directive on the legality of public photography to print and carry
Here's a scan of the NYPD Operations Order "Investigation of Individuals Engaged In Suspicious Photography and Video Surveillance," a document issued last month by the Department telling cops in no uncertain terms to stop hassling photographers who shoot in public places, and to get a warrant before searching a camera. Good one to print and carry in the Big Apple.
It acknowledges that the city is a terrorist target, but since it's a prominent "tourist destination, practically all such photography will have no connection to terrorism or unlawful conduct."
The department directive -- titled "Investigation of Individuals Engaged in Suspicious Photography and Video Surveillance" -- makes it clear that cops cannot "demand to view photographs taken by a person . . . or direct them to delete or destroy images" in a camera.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/17/nypd-directive-on-th.html#previouspost