Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Latest from National Terror Alert Response Center













Cheney: Obama Doesn’t Recognize Terrorism Threat


Posted: 22 Apr 2009 01:06 AM PDT



Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the Obama administration no longer

believes that America is threatened by terrorists and is making dangerous
mistakes in lowering U.S. defenses.


The threat is there. It’s very real and it’s continuing, Cheney told Fox News Sean
Hannity in the second part of a two-part interview Tuesday night. And what the
Obama people are doing, in effect, is saying, well, we don’t need those tough policies
that we had.


That says either they didn’t work, which we know is not the case — they did work,

they kept us safe for seven years — or that now somehow the threat’s gone

away. There’s no longer a threat out there, we don’t have to be as tough and

aggressive as the Bush administration was.


It' s that post-9/11 mindset that most concerns him, Cheney said.


Barack Obama and his administration are no longer going to ask our guys

tough questions when they are captured. Now, maybe we won’t behead their

people when they capture them. I mean, it’s just — it says something about a

mindset that I worry about very much, Cheney said.


And I think there’s a problem out there nationally in the sense that we are 7.5 years,
almost 8 years now, away from 9/11, Cheney continued. And a lot of people would like

to forget it and believe that the threat is gone, it’s diminished, it’s disappeared.


Unfortunately, that’s not the case. And one of the worst things we could do is start to
act now as though the attack of 9/11 is a thing of the past and will never
be repeated. That’s just not true.


Read Full Article



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US Accuses Swedish-Lebanese Man Of Being Al-Qaeda Operative


Posted: 22 Apr 2009 12:01 AM PDT



In opening arguments in federal court Tuesday, U.S. prosecutors argued that

Ousama Kassir, a Swedish man of Lebanese descent, was planning to set up an
Al-Qaeda terrorist training camp in the United States.


Kassir was extradited to the United States in September 2007 from Prague, where

he was jailed after his arrest in 2005 during a stopover while flying from
Sweden to Lebanon.


“This case concerns a global conspiracy that takes place down here in the

United States,” assistant U.S. attorney Michael Farbiarz told judge John

Keenan in district court in Manhattan.


Kassir, 43, is charged with conspiring with others to set up a “jihad” camp in Oregon,

in the northwest United States, that would offer military weapons training for
Muslims interested in fighting in Afghanistan.


Kassir declared his innocence when he was charged last year, and his lawyer on

Tuesday said his client had “a big mouth,” but was not a criminal.


Kassir arrived in the United States in 1999 and spent a year at an Oregon

ranch, imparting religious teachings at a Seattle mosque before returning to

Europe, according to the prosecution.


“You are going to see a knife that he used for training at the ranch,” Farbiarz told

the jury as Kassir, in a red tunic, listened through an interpreter.


“You will see the bomb-making manuals and the poison making manuals,” he

added.


Farbiarz said next week he would call James Ujaama, a former activist from

Seattle who has admitted supporting the Al-Qaeda network and is now a
witness for the prosecution.


Kassir allegedly admitted before witnesses he supported Al-Qaeda and its boss

Osama bin Laden.


The government also accused Kassir of being a follower of Egyptian Muslim cleric

Abu Hamza al-Masri, currently jailed in Britain for inciting to violence.


Source



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- National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted
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Techniques Worked - May Have Prevented Los Angeles Terror Attack


Posted: 21 Apr 2009 11:50 PM PDT




President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private

memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the

White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in

its struggle with terrorists.


“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were

used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was
attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a

memo to his staff last Thursday.


Source


You ask how?


CIA Waterboarding Produced Intel That Stopped Attack on Los Angeles


from Townhall.com

“Soon, you will know.”


That is the ominous statement an uncooperative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

(KSM), mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, told his Central

Intelligence Agency interrogators when they initially asked him, after he had

been captured, about additional planned al-Qaida attacks on the United States.


In March 2003, KSM became the third and final terrorist ever waterboarded by

the CIA. The other two were Abu Zubaydah and Rahim Al-Nashiri.


On Tuesday, the CIA confirmed to Terry Jeffrey at Townhall that it

stands by assertions credited to the agency in z 2005 memo that subjecting

KSM to “enhanced techniques” of interrogation including waterboarding

caused him to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to stop a

planned 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.


The previously classified memo was released by President Obama last week.


Before they were waterboarded, both KSM and Abu Zubaydah did not

believe Americans had the will to stop al-Qaida, the 2005 Justice Department

memo says, citing information from the CIA.


“Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general U.S.

population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience and would be unable to ‘do what was

necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals,’” said the

memo. “Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of

KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply

noting, ‘Soon, you will know.’”


After he was waterboarded, KSM provided the CIA with information that allowed

the U.S. government to close down a terror cell already “tasked” with flying a jet
into a building in Los Angeles.


Source


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Britain Prepares To Deport 9 Terrorism Suspects to Pakistan


Posted: 21 Apr 2009 11:19 PM PDT




Two weeks after hundreds of police officers staged raids in northern England

and arrested 12 men in what Prime Minister Gordon Brown described as “a very

big terrorist plot,” the police released nine of them on Tuesday and handed them

over to Britain’s border control agency for deportation to Pakistan.


Two other men remained in police custody for further questioning under

Britain’s Terrorism Act.


Another man had been handed over previously to the border agency for

deportation.


A Home Office spokesman, referring to the transfer of the nine suspects to the

border agency, said the government was “seeking to remove these individuals on
grounds of national security,” suggesting
that some kind of plot was still under investigation.

A police spokeswoman in the northern city of Manchester,

which the British news media had portrayed as the focal point of the plot

described by Mr. Brown, said the investigations were continuing.


But Britain’s security agencies appeared to have pulled back from earlier

suggestions that they had foiled a major imminent attack involving infiltrators

with Al Qaeda sent to Britain from Pakistan on student visas. After the arrests

on April 8, senior officials were quoted in British newspapers as saying

they had moved against the 12 men after deciding that a bombing
attack involving mass casualties was
only days from being carried out, probably

against a target in Manchester, possibly a crowded shopping center over the Easter weekend.


via Britain Prepares to Deport 9 Terrorism Suspects to Pakistan -
NYTimes.com
.



This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and
information.


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