President Obama has signed off on new security protocols for people flying to the United States, establishing a system in which intel data, not nationality alone, will prompt extra scrutiny, The New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny relates. Since Obama scolded agencies for overlooking warning flags heralding the underpants bomber, the checking of visa applicants against watch lists has evolved into a burdensome ordeal, The Washington Post’s Edward Cody surveys — as the Post’s Tara Bahrampour sees returning U.S. Muslims “facing new complications” at ports of entry.
Homies: “If there’s no one in charge [at TSA] of preventing [an attack], when something does happen, it’s a political disaster that could mortally wound a president’s hopes for a second term,” Time Magazine’s Mark Thompson assesses. Drug smugglers have set booby traps — barbed wire stretched like clotheslines across trails — for Border Patrollers on border roads near Deming, N.M., The El Paso Times’ Daniel Borunda reports — while Tucson’s KOLD 13 News has DHS earlier this week transferring 10 ATVs, four motorcycles, 50 global positioning units and an assortment of tactical equipment to Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Safety.
Feds: CIA counterintel officers recently concluded that agency interrogators risk exposure to al Qaeda through Guantanamo inmates’ contacts with defense attorneys, The Washington Times’ Bill Gertz reports. The CIA “ceased long ago to be the ‘rogue elephant’ unmasked in congressional hearings in the 1970s. On the contrary, since 9/11 the agency has been accused less often of sinister misdeeds than of incompetence,” The New York Times’ Sam Tanenhaus essays. The Pentagon is implementing new safety measures since a gunman opened fire there last month, its security chief tells The Associated Press’ Monica Norton. The Nevada Capitol was locked down late Tuesday after the FBI advised the nation’s governors they would be receiving letters from an extremist group demanding their resignations, The Nevada Appeal’s Geoff Dornan relates.
State and local: DHS chief Janet Napolitano plans to hit Rhode Island today to assess damage from the worst flooding in 200 years, AP reports. Kentucky’s state auditor has found further questionable spending in a program that gives DHS grants to counties surrounding the chemical weapons-demilitarizing Bluegrass Army Depot, The Lexington Herald-Leader relates. Gov. Bill Richardson ordered more law enforcers to the New Mexico-Mexico border this week, following an Arizona rancher’s murder, The New Mexico Independent informs — and see The Washington Times: “Border violence threatening Americans.” The carnage in Mexico is worse now than the terror that enveloped Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s, The Texas Tribune, relatedly, has the state’s Public Safety director briefing lawmakers.
Cyberia: Federal spending for cybersecurity will reach $10.5 billion by 2015, a 10.5 percent increase from 2010, Homeland Security Newswire quotes from a Market Research Media study. In response to past cyber-attacks, the FAA is teaming with IBM on a system to secure commercial and private aviation networks from such threats, CNET News notes. “Mass indiscriminate computer attacks are giving way to highly targeted individual attempts in a new wave of professional cybercrime,” The Sydney Morning Herald relates. “Terrorists do not have the capabilities to launch cyber-attacks. They may eventually acquire them, but the notion that they have them and are merely waiting to use them — Osama bin Laden’s birthday, perhaps? — is silly,” James Lewis essays for U.S. News.
Bugs ‘n bombs: Looking at the indictment of Michigan cultists for plotting to use “weapons of mass destruction” against law officers, Slate wonders: “When did IEDs become WMDs?” On the bioterror front, “the government has done a pretty good job of protecting things, but a less adequate — and at times substandard — job of protecting people,” BioPrepWatch quotes an expert. Renewed DHS funding will allow Kansas State University food scientists to keep “educating current and future leaders in homeland security and food defense,” The Wichita Eagle relates — as Cattle Network has another grant supporting Texas A&M’s National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense.
Know nukes: At Sen. Harry Reid’s request, DHS has canceled a mock “dirty bomb” terrorist attack exercise in Las Vegas, much dreaded by local innkeepers, The Christian Science Monitor mentions. “Asserting the right of first use [of nuclear weapons] is described as tough and realistic, but it is actually unrealistic,” Selig S. Harrison comments in a USA Today op-ed anticipating release of Obama’s nuclear posture review. Russia’s ambassador to the United States sees the Moscow metro bombings “as a grave warning that keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists means eliminating them completely,” a FOX News op-ed relays. An Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, actually defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States, ABC News learns.
Close air support: A $20 million upgrade of the Colorado Springs airport’s checked bag inspection system “is focused on being more efficient and more private,” KKTV 11 News relates. A British Airways computer expert who allegedly offered himself as a suicide bomber is now slated to face trial next January, BBC News notes — while This Day reports a Nigerian man shouting “repent” while crashing his car through security barriers and into a parked airliner, and Gulf News has an elderly man desperate to go on hajj to Saudi Arabia jumping a New Delhi airport emergency gate.
Off track: “This week’s Moscow subway bombings raise several questions, but one of the most mysterious must be: Why hasn’t something like this happened here?” a Slate columnist probes — and see The Christian Science Monitor, again, on five ways to make mass transit safer. “Just as the Moscow bombers sent New York into a new round of terror jitters,” Gotham’s MTA removed weekend security details from the Queens Midtown Tunnel and the Verrazano Bridge, the Daily News learns — while CBS 2 News has 100 NYPD officers working a three-hour transit exercise Wednesday, supposedly planned before the Moscow blasts. This week, too, it was discovered that half of the NYC subway monitoring cameras were out of order, News.am briefs.
Over there: U.S. naval forces yesterday captured a “mothership” and five suspected Somali pirates after exchanging gunfire and sinking their boat, The Voice of America mentions. The Pentagon may provide surveillance drones and other limited military support for a Somali government offensive against al Qaeda-linked insurgents, AP reports — as AFP has Nigeria’s self-styled Taliban militant Islamist sect threatening to widen its activities beyond the borders. French authorities have left extradition proceedings against Canadian professor Hassan Diab “hanging in limbo,” The Ottawa Citizen has the accused terrorist’s defense attorney charging.
Courts and rights: An Algerian man in Ireland charged with making death threats against a Dearborn attorney is also implicated in an international plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist for his drawings of Muhammad, The Detroit Free Press reports. The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that lawyers have a constitutional obligation to advise clients of the collateral immigration consequences of a guilty plea in a criminal case, The National Law Journal notes. “Governments are using increasingly heavy-handed tactics to crack down on environmental activists,” most notably levying charges of “eco-terrorism,” Green Left growls. A senior CBP lawyer “and her parents will receive $152,000 from NYC after police and child welfare workers raided her home based on false info, the Advance advises.
Say bye-bye, Jack Bauer: For viewers, “24” (FOX Entertainment) “is part sum of all fears, part wish fulfillment in an age of shadowy enemies . . . [but] the show’s trademark clock is about to stop ticking, The New York Times leads. “Let’s face it. Jack Bauer is not necessarily somebody it would be great fun to sit around and have a beer with, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have with me [if] I realized someone had just slipped a small nuclear device into my carry-on luggage,” a FOX News contributor eulogizes — and see BuddyTV on “Jack Bauer’s Top 5 Human Rights Violations.” In a silver lining for bereft Bauer-holics, Kiefer Sutherland promises Hollywood Insider the series finale will tee up the “24”movie in the works at 20th Century Fox.
>Kulture Kanyon: “When last we left ‘V,’ the ABC remake of the ’80s miniseries . . . a vast fleet of Visitors’ spaceships was waiting to, presumably, swarm down on an unsuspecting Earth. Yikes — what’s the color for that emergency in the DHS playbook?” The Dallas Morning News curtain-raises. “Just like Hollywood, video game publishers capitalize on trends . . . Now there’s a new trend on the horizon, or message, if you’re a conspiracy theorist: Russia’s evil,” GameDaily essays. “It is hard for me, as a human being and a Middle Easterner, to portray these kinds of roles,” Arab American actor Said Faraj tells Aramica in re: the parts playing terrorists that has largely been his lot. Artist Robin Lasser presented a performance of her “Ms. Homeland Security” last Friday in Topeka, KTKA 49 News notes.
Nuclear Casual-Tea Party: “The National Rifle Association has unleashed a new campaign to allow all American citizens ‘their God-given rights to own an atom bomb!’” Glossy News notes. “The public is being bombarded with television, newspaper, movie and billboard ads pushing the new ‘right’ that the NRA feels should be passed through Congress. Already the FOX News channel has picked up the baton and is aggressively pushing for legalization of individual possession. Anyone challenging this new mandate has been ruthlessly booed down and hunted . . . People complaining about it have been told ‘Why do you hate America? Do you want only the terrorists to have atom bombs?’ Interestingly enough, the NRA appears to have bought the majority share of stocks in the first company to mass produce atom bombs for the general consumer . . . Once the personal possession atom bomb amendment is forced through Congress the NRA plans on pushing for the legal right to carrying concealed atom bombs on the street.
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