“The Obama administration is for the first time drafting classified guidelines to help the government determine whether newly captured terrorism suspects will be prosecuted or held indefinitely without trial,” the Los Angeles Times’ David S. Cloud and Julian E. Barnes lead. Even as “vexing detainee decisions” loom, this fall’s midterm elections “will lead to further politicization of detention issues and make the administration’s efforts more difficult,” John B. Bellinger III safely predicts in a CFR Expert Brief — while The Boston Globe’s Bella English spotlights a group of 9/11 families fighting for a civil trial rather than a military tribunal for the attacks’ plotters.
Feds: Facing a Senate subpoena threat, Defense will not share info that could compromise prosecution of the suspected gunman in last year’s Fort Hood shooting, Reuters’ Phil Stewart hears Secretary Robert M. Gates vowing. Taking a leaf from the Fort Hood shootings in November, the Pentagon last week announced steps to expand the dissemination of info on terrorist threats to the military, Killeen (Texas)’s KWTX 10 News notes — as NBC News’s Jim Miklaszewski cites an internal Pentagon report’s judgment that existing safeguards were “unclear” or “inadequate.” The Supreme Court is asking for more federal security funds, citing as one reason the “volume” of threats it receives, The Hill’s Russell Berman reports.
Homies: “There’s almost nothing I’ve done [in my career] that doesn’t touch upon DHS. This department crosses so many things,” Janet Napolitano says in a Washington Post Magazine “First Person Singular” squib — while The Boston Globe’s Brian R. Ballou covers the homeland chief’s frantic Friday rounds in Beantown. His new blog “is all national security and terrorism stuff related to some of the threats we face,” soon-to-be imprisoned would-be DHS chief and ex-NYPD commish Bernard Kerik touts to TPM’s Justin Elliott. Senate homeland overseers plan to introduce a bill later this month to overhaul and modernize DHS’s edifice-encircling Federal Protective Service, Government Executive’s Robert Brodsky updates.
State and local: Wyoming authorities have refused to turn over detailed records showing how DHS grants have been used there since 2001, The Cowboy State Free Press relays. The court security division of the Seneca County (N.Y.) sheriff’s department has received its official accreditation, The Finger Lakes Times tells — as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sees the supervisor for the private firm hired last month to secure the Milwaukee County Courthouse being removed in view of newly revealed convictions. “Researchers continue waiting to move into the new Homeland Security lab at Fort Detrick . . . after an endurance test uncovered flaws in the building,” The Frederick (Md.) News-Post reports.
Know nukes: “Almost from the invention of the atomic bomb, government officials were alarmed by the threat that compact nukes would be smuggled into the United States by Soviet agents and detonated,” The New York Times surveys. “Obama’s proclamation of unilateral nuclear disarmament [has] nullified America’s willingness and ability to defend itself . . . when worldwide nuclear proliferation abounds,” an American Thinker contributor condemns — as Al Jazeera sees Iran’s supreme leader telling a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on Saturday that the United States’ atomic weapons “are a tool of terror and intimidation.” The Christian Science Monitor spotlights a Pentagon memo fretting that the United States lacks a long-term plan to deal with Iran — while Defense’s Gates tells the Post: “The memo was not intended as a ‘wake-up call.’”
Bugs ‘n bombs: “While the United States cannot defend its citizens against a nuclear weapons blast, we do have the capability against bioterrorism,” the WMD Commission chairmen stress in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch op-ed. The author of “Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security” (Lyons Press) decries to Pro Publica the United States’ “weak, outmoded defenses and poorly trained personnel more apt at discouraging burglars than stopping suicide terror teams.” The soon-to-depart Northern Command/NORAD chief warns that wind farms pose problems for the radar that scans for air and space threats, The Colorado Springs Independent informs — while The Boston Herald hears that officer’s pending successor warning that small, hard-to-detect terror plots are a mounting concern.
Exercised: Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection joined state and local agencies last week for a chemical threat response training exercise at the Banner Center for Homeland Security & Defense, Tallahassee’s WCTV News relays. California local response officials, meanwhile, are gearing up for a June exercise simulating the detonation of a 10-kiloton nuke in Los Angeles, the L.A. Daily News notes. Access and fishing areas near the dam at Old Hickory Lake was closed Friday and Saturday while the Army Corps of Engineers ran homeland security exercises, The Tennessean tells — as The Arizona Republic reports responders and health officials staging a mock bioterror attack at the Peoria Sports Complex last week.
Close air support: One of three Motor City men arrested for a series of fast food restaurant robberies turns out to be a TSA screener at Detroit Metro Airport, the Free Press reports — while ABC 15 News uncovers hundreds of internal e-mails, audits and other documents revealing a pattern of failures involving security contractors at Phoenix’s air hub. A California woman is slated to stand trial today for allegedly hitting a TSA agent who tried to seize her mother’s applesauce at a Bob Hope Airport checkpoint, The Burbank Leader relates. “The lesson of the Jihad Janes is that our safety requires vigilance that exempts few groups, if any,” a Post reader writes. Logan airport, meantime, is in line for 60 more explosive trace detectors, The Boston Globe, again, has DHS’s Napolitano announcing during Friday’s junket.
Border wars: Arizona’s two senators have asked CBP reduce the long vehicular and pedestrian lines at Nogales’ border crossings, stressing the backups’ harm to the local economy, The Nogales International informs. Ultra-tough legislation passed in Arizona last week is heightening debate on how far is too far to go to curb illegal immigration, and prompting renewed calls for a federal immigration overhaul, The Christian Science Monitor surveys — while The High Plains Journal hears the Independent Cattlemen’s Association of Texas urging DHS to increase security along the Mexico border, and The San Diego Union-Tribune has CBP officers shooting a man Saturday morning after he came through the San Ysidro border crossing.
Courts and rights: FBI agents are in Guyana seeking evidence in the case against four men accused of plotting to blow up New York’s JFK airport, CaribWorldNews.com recounts. With less than six months until the terror trial of seven North Carolina men begins, defense attorneys say they are trying to work through the massive amount of evidence, Raleigh’s WRAL TV-5 News notes — while ABC 11 News has the seven back in court Friday for a hearing on the same. The feds are probing whether an Oregon peace activist knowingly helped fund Muslim terrorists in Russia when he allegedly laundered donations through his charity in 2000, The Medford Mail Tribune tells.Decrying “judicial interference,” lawyers for New York City want a judge to stop talking about his objections to a $657 million settlement of some 10,000 9/11 respiratory cases, The New York Law Journal notes.
Qaeda Qorner: The destruction of nearly 100 videotapes showing the harsh interrogation of two al Qaeda detainees in 2005 triggered concerns within the CIA over whether it was adequately cleared, CNN notes. Osama Bin Laden requested a satellite TV dish be installed in his Afghanistan hideaway so he could watch the 9/11 attacks unfurl, but the signal was blocked by the mountainous terrain, The Daily Mail mentions — while FOX News notes Facebook moving to shut down a social-networking page purportedly put up by the chatty terrorist mastermind. A new video by the al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab shows the Somali militant group indoctrinating children, some of whom appear to be toddlers, The National Post notes — while the Times has the group outlawing school bells in a southern town after deciding that they conflicted with Islam.
Over there: Pakistani authorities beat confessions out of some of the five northern Virginia men accused of planning terrorist acts there, the mother of one defendant tells The Associated Press — and check the Times, again, for a broader profile of that family. Former Pakistani P.M. Benazir Bhutto’s 2007 assassination might have been prevented had security forces taken adequate steps after death threats were made against her, Bloomberg has a U.N. probe finding. India is further tightening security before the October Commonwealth Games after State issued a warning to American citizens about possible militant attacks on hotels and markets in India, Reuters reports — as France 24 has at least 10 people hurt Saturday when two bombs exploded at a cricket stadium in Bangalore.
Ashes to asses: “A gigantic ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano that blanketed Northern Europe and paralyzed air travel across the continent has turned out to be part of the finale of the television series ‘ Lost,’” The Borowitz Report has network officials confirming. “Bracing themselves for the public uproar over a special-effects spectacle gone awry, ABC officials attempted to explain how the producers’ desire for a fitting ending to the increasingly convoluted series led to an aviation nightmare,” Andy Borowitz writes. “’The producers of ‘Lost’ set off a small explosive charge underneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland, hoping to create a cloud of black smoke,’ said ABC spokesperson Carol Foyler.‘That was pretty much the only way they could think of to end the series.’ But longtime ‘Lost’ fanatics doubt the network’s story. Tracy Klugian, 27, a web designer from Evanston, Illinois who has seen every episode of the confusing series at least eight times doesn’t believe that the gigantic ash cloud could possibly be the end of the series: ‘For one thing, it makes too much sense.’,”
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