Starting Points

Dec 31, 2009

Suicide bomber attacks CIA base in Afghanistan, killing at least 8 Americans

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 31, 2009; A01

A suicide bomber infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the deadliest single attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency's history, U.S. officials said.

The attack represented an audacious blow to intelligence operatives at the vanguard of U.S. counterterrorism operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that are active on the frontier between the two nations. The facility that was targeted -- Forward Operating Base Chapman -- is in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, which borders North Waziristan, the Pakistani tribal area that is believed to be al-Qaeda's home base.

U.S. sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were civilians and said they believed that most, if not all, were CIA employees or contractors. At least one Afghan civilian also was killed, the sources said.

It is unclear exactly how the assailant managed to gain access to the heavily guarded U.S.-run post, which serves as an operations and surveillance center for the CIA. The bomber struck in what one U.S. official described as the base's fitness center.

In addition to the dead, eight people were wounded, several of them seriously, U.S. government officials said.

While many details remained vague Wednesday, the attack appears to have killed more U.S. intelligence personnel than have died in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion began in late 2001. The CIA has previously acknowledged the deaths of four officers in fighting in Afghanistan in the past eight years.

"It is the nightmare we've been anticipating since we went into Afghanistan and Iraq," said John E. McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director who now serves on a board that supports children of CIA officers slain on the job. "Our people are often out on the front line, without adequate force protection, and they put their lives quite literally in jeopardy."

The CIA has declined to comment publicly on the attack until relatives of the dead are notified. A former senior agency official said it was the worst single-day casualty toll for the agency since eight CIA officers were killed in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983.

"I know that the American people will appreciate their sacrifice. I pray that the government they serve does the same," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because the agency has not yet publicly acknowledged the deaths.

The CIA has been quietly bolstering its ranks in Afghanistan in recent weeks, mirroring the surge of military troops there. Agency officers coordinated the initial U.S.-led attack against the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001, and have since provided hundreds of spies, paramilitary operatives and analysts in the region for roles ranging from counterterrorism to counternarcotics. The agency also operates the remote-control aircraft used in aerial strikes on suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the lawless tribal provinces on the Pakistan side of the border. The campaign of strikes in Pakistan has not been officially acknowledged, but it has escalated rapidly in the past two years.

Intelligence experts who have visited U.S. bases in the region say the CIA officers at Chapman would have focused mainly on recruiting local operatives and identifying targets.

"The best intelligence is going to come from the field, and that means working closely with the Afghans," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

The loss of experienced CIA field officers would be particularly damaging to U.S. efforts in the area "because they know the terrain," Hoffman said. "Every American death in a theater of war is tragic, but these might be more consequential given these officers' unique capabilities and attributes."

The bomber and those who aided him must have had very good intelligence to gain access to the secure base without arousing suspicion, he said.

Ninety CIA deaths are memorialized by stars on a wall in the agency's Langley headquarters. The inscription on the memorial reads: "We are the nation's first line of defense. We accomplish what others cannot accomplish and go where others cannot go."

U.S. military officials and diplomats confirmed Wednesday's attack and the eight civilian deaths. "We mourn the loss of life in this attack," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

The number of U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan this year has reached 310, the highest one-year total since the start of the war. Twelve U.S. troops have been killed since Dec. 1.

Khost has been the scene of several major attacks this year. In May, an attack killed 13 civilians and injured 36 others. Seven Afghan civilians were killed and 21 were wounded by an improvised explosive device detonated outside the main gate of Forward Operating Base Salerno on May 13.

Also Wednesday, NATO announced that four Canadian troops and a journalist from Canada were killed in an explosion in Kandahar province, one of the most dangerous areas of southern Afghanistan.

The international coalition said the journalist was traveling with the troops on a patrol near Kandahar city when they were attacked Wednesday.

Kandahar is a hotbed of the insurgency. On Dec. 24, eight people, including a child, were killed when a man driving a horse-drawn cart laden with explosives detonated the cache outside a guesthouse frequented by foreigners. The day before, another Canadian soldier was killed by a homemade bomb in the province.

According to figures compiled by the Associated Press, the latest casualties bring to 32 the number of Canadian forces killed in Afghanistan this year.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung, Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr. and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Dec 30, 2009

#gusdur

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

JakartaToday: Facebook Fan Pagenya #GusDur -- http://bit.ly/4ClPmx via @tikabanget

3 hours ago - retweet - follow

35	fajarjasmin: Anyone who accept Dorce and Inul as friends really understands the meaning of the word "love". And that is a measure of a great man. #gusdur 2 hours ago - retweet - follow

45	beritaindonesia: TEKNOLOGI : Topik Gus Dur Mendominasi Twitter: Topik #gusdur sempat menjadi topik terpopuler di peri... http://bit.ly/5ebOKi @VIVAnewsGroup 6 hours ago - retweet - follow

45	nicsap: Do me,yourself and everybody a favour; go online and google: GUS DUR RT @IRDAituNDUE: Sbnrny apa si jasa bliau?nothing :B re: #gusdur 6 hours ago - retweet - follow

26	endihamid: @Hotmanism u're welcome. The least i could do to show how much #GusDur is loved by this nation RE twibbon #tributetoGusDur 2 hours ago - retweet - follow

28	cho2_marsmellow: RT @jakartatoday: Facebook Fan Pagenya #GusDur -- http://bit.ly/4ClPmx via @tikabanget 3 hours ago - retweet - follow

25	dyanti: "O Captain!my Captain!For you they call,the swaying mass,their eager faces turning"(Walt Whitman)\| #GusDur my Captain,beloved President, RIP 3 hours ago - retweet - follow

Image by Luluk via Flickr

ShafiqPontoh: http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/?date=1997-11-01&zoom=3&subs=anews.gus+dur/ Google news timeline on #Gusdur

6 hours ago - retweet - follow

34	ShafiqPontoh: #GusDur went on TV and radio to insist that the fatwas had no legitimacy and called on Muslims to ignore them (22 Jan 2006 the boston globe) 6 hours ago - retweet - follow

36	sepatumerah: Rest in peace, the agent of peace in this nation. #gusdur 7 hours ago - retweet - follow

32	kemalarsjad: @iyansusanto: He had brain&swaggers to make him controversial. technically speaking,he was overqualified to be rockstar.#GusDur 6 hours ago - retweet - follow

39	vehandojo: Oh my, and to think that I was once just literally an inch away from him! #GusDur 8 hours ago - retweet - follow

27	inggita: "With its history if violence, few leaders acknowledged evil committed by their forebears." Jean Gelman Taylor "Indonesia" #gusdur 5 hours ago - retweet - follow

33	kennedymuslim: Sorry Mr. George and Mr. Pohan, but we have no time for your petty feud #gusdur 7 hours ago - retweet - follow

31	guedanar: RT @iskyd: #GusDur (founder and member) Shimon Perez Center for Peace, Tel Aviv, Israel since 1994 7 hours ago - retweet - follow

37	pinot: RT @somemandy He was a true believer in pluralism & free speech. Scared the hell out of most people & that's why he got impeached #gusdur 9 hours ago - retweet - follow

24	AyakoSuzuki: RT @DiandraPrmth: #INFOLIMIT @RACHELMRZ LIMIT YAAA. RT THIS! YANG GAK NGE-RT NANTI SAKIT KAYAK #GUSDUR 5 hours ago - retweet - follow

35	katarangga: In the land of blinds, the one eyed man was the wisest king. #gusdur 9 hours ago - retweet - follow

34	dessey: RIP Gus Dur :( RT @katarangga: In the land of blinds, the one eyed man was the wisest king. #gusdur 8 hours ago - retweet - follow

35	mbakdos: and this radio is playing MJ's Gone Too Soon while the adzan's on the background #gusdur 9 hours ago - retweet - follow

Abdurrahman Wahid, Former Indonesian President, Dies at 69

Image via Wikipedia

JAKARTA -- Former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, a key religious moderate and spiritual leader of one of the world's largest Muslim organizations, died on Wednesday aged 69.

Mr. Wahid, an almost-blind and wheelchair-bound cleric whose health had deteriorated sharply in recent years, died in a central Jakarta hospital, an aide said. The cause of death was not immediately known but Mr. Wahid has suffered regular health problems in the past decade since suffering a near-fatal stroke.

As head of the Nahdlatul Ulama, an Islamic organization with 40 million members founded in 1926 by his paternal grandfather, Mr. Wahid came to be seen as a key ally of the West in its ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism.

He fought to keep the NU out of politics in the 1980s and 1990s at a time when Muslim organizations across the Middle East and Asia were agitating to implement Islamic Shariah laws.

"He was against political Islam as a concept," said Robin Bush, the Indonesia country representative for the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based think tank. "He was one of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of Islam in Indonesia. It's a huge loss."In recent years, Indonesia has experienced a rise in more conservative forms of Islam. A number of local governments passed Shariah laws earlier this decade and homegrown terrorists have launched attacks on Western hotels and embassies, as well as the resort island of Bali.

But a large majority of Indonesia's 240 million people remain moderates who lean more toward Mr. Wahid's vision, and his death is unlikely to open the door to Islamists, analysts say. The current leaders of NU lack Mr. Wahid's charisma and remain wedded to his moderate and secular views, as do most politicians from other Muslim-based parties, Ms. Bush said.

Mr. Wahid, who was widely known by his nickname Gus Dur, embodied the nation's syncretic religious traditions, which meld more austere Middle Eastern strands of Islam with older Hindu and animistic traditions. Mr. Wahid himself was a descendent of an old Hindu royal family, and enjoyed being irreverent about Islamic traditions. He said he disliked his time in the 1960s studying at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's premier seat of learning, because of the dull rote-learning of verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book.

But Mr. Wahid ended up -- against his better instincts -- entering politics, a decision that clouded his legacy.

His term as president between 1999 and 2001 after the fall of authoritarian president Suharto in 1998 disappointed many of his followers. Although Mr. Wahid worked to roll back the role of the military in political life and to decentralize power to Indonesia's far-flung provinces, his administration was frequently chaotic, characterized by unpredictable cabinet reshuffles and allegations of nepotism in the appointment of government positions.

Mr. Wahid's presidency was also wracked by concerns about his health after he suffered a stroke shortly before assuming office.

His spell in office ended with his impeachment for alleged corruption in the alleged misappropriation of state funds. Mr. Wahid was forced to step down, but denied any wrongdoing and said the impeachment was politically motivated by Suharto-era figures vying to return to power.

Mr. Wahid said he was a reluctant politician pushed in to the arena by other leaders in NU. He defended his move by saying the National Awakening Party, which he founded in 1999 before running for president, was a secular-minded organization that admitted non-Muslims.

In recent years, Mr. Wahid lost control of the National Awakening Party amid bitter infighting among members. More recently, he founded the Wahid Institute, which promotes moderate Islam and his headed by his daughter.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com

Can Facebook, Capitol Hill be friends? Lawmakers learn social networking.

Image by Muhammad Adnan Asim ( linkadnan ) # 2 via Flickr

By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 30, 2009; C01

Inside the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee, 25-year-old Adam Conner -- registered Facebook lobbyist, poster of multiple Obama attaboys and a guy whose Facebook photo is a grizzly bear wielding two chain saws -- sits to teach a course. The subject: How to use Facebook better. His student: Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.).

"If we're going to improve our presence on Facebook and really maximize it, what would you recommend as tangible steps?" Roskam asks, thumbing his BlackBerry.

"It looks like you're very comfortable with your BlackBerry," Conner replies earnestly. "Maybe commit to a status message a day? A photo a week? Dive deeper. You'll be surprised at how things that seem routine to you as a congressman are so interesting and cool to constituents."

Conner is Facebook's evangelist in Washington, a social-networking pro summoned by elected officials and bureaucrats alike to teach them, free of charge, how to leverage Facebook -- within strict government rules and security guidelines. The mere existence of Conner's hand-holding lessons illustrates the cultural gulf between Washington and Silicon Valley, and spotlights the complex web of congressional rules that limit social networking among federal workers.

Conner is certainly grateful for his job as associate manager of Facebook's privacy and public-policy division. Compared with many of his highly educated but underemployed peers in Washington, Conner is doing just fine financially, earning about $75,000 a year, with equity to boot. (He declined to give specifics on his salary or stock options.)

But striver that he is, Conner, a 2006 George Washington alumnus who worked on Democrat Mark Warner's exploratory presidential campaign in 2006, chafes at his mechanic's role and the clash of cultures between Facebook's open-book attitude and Washington's need-to-know boundaries.

Image via Wikipedia

He's impatient for a time when he no longer receives as many as 20 help requests a day from government officials. "Everyone really wants to talk on the phone in D.C., and it's often not a polite request," says Conner, who is considering graduate school and entering politics one day. "It's often, 'Call me today.' Yeah, we have a 'Help' section on Facebook. It's very helpful. At the bottom of the page, it says 'Help.' "

On his own public Facebook page -- boasting 2,500 "friends," including many government officials -- Conner stays true to the transparency-is-king credo of the Internet.

One of his status updates earlier this month was this re-tweet -- the re-posting of another person's Twitter post: "RT @cjoh: Go outside. Feel that hail? That's God being pissed off at Joe Lieberman." Or, some days later: "Not a politics party till people start referring to previous hookups present by campaign cycle, like 'She was New Hampshire Primary 07.' "

His day job requires him to seek inroads with security-conscious government agencies and uptight lawmakers -- some of whom are looking into limiting Facebook's running room on privacy issues. But off the clock, Conner's Facebook page is unmoored from the Beltway ethic of caution.

Nor does Conner hold back on his partisan positions, a fact that does not seem to poison his relations with those on the right. Last week, Conner posted a link to a Web site devoted to mocking Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, adding as preface: "this one is legendary."

Image via Wikipedia

"He'll be sitting in my office and I'll ask him, 'Is your skin burning?' " said John Randall, the National Republican Congressional Committee's e-campaign director, who has requested Conner's help for two "campaign schools" this year designed to help Republican candidates improve their Facebook pages. "He just comes back and says, 'Hey, I am a businessman. I think you guys are wrong on a bunch of stuff, and other things not so much.' But I understand what he does. Facebook is a business and there are people who want to spend money on Facebook who are Republicans."

For a stronger democracy

Conner, who two years ago launched Facebook's Washington office out of his apartment and is now one of three employees in the company's Dupont Circle office, doesn't believe he's aiding the enemy. Conner believes that the savvier politicians become with social networking, the stronger democracy will be. "It would make no sense to cut out 50 percent of the country," he said. "It's better for us to have as many points of view. Facebook is not a partisan platform."

Yet, the company has political battles of its own to fight. Facebook recently hired Tim Sparapani, a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, as its public policy director. Sparapani said Facebook's challenges in Washington are convincing some federal agencies that the site is secure, and overcoming allegations that Facebook is cavalier about its users' privacy. "Our mission in this office is helping Washington understand this new phenomena of social networking and translating Washington back to Silicon Valley," he said. "Adam's been a big part of that.

Sparapani says Conner's pro bono teaching will help if and when the company needs help dealing with federal regulators. "It is better to talk to people when you don't need them than to show up when you're in trouble," Sparapani said.

One of the trickier parts of Conner's job is helping members of Congress and their staffers figure out how to use Facebook without breaking ethics rules set by the House Committee on Administration. Members of Congress and staffers, for instance, may not use a member's "campaign" Facebook page at the office, and must instead use a second Facebook page meant for official government use. To the average person, these pages are nearly indistinguishable.

Despite his affection for transparency, Conner has learned that some aspects of Washington life require discretion. Asked about White House restrictions on using Facebook, he says: "I can't go into details, but we're helping them solve some issues there."

Conner sometimes gets emergency calls. At around 9 one night earlier this month, Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, the Army's director of online and social media, discovered that someone was trying to impersonate him on Facebook with a fake account and was friending his wife and son. "I immediately got on Facebook to write Adam," Arata recalls. "He writes back within three minutes and then all the other pages were taken down."

A cautious response

But perhaps the hardest part of Conner's job is persuading cautious congressmen to reveal the oddball minutiae of their lives.

In his meeting with Roskam, Conner tries to motivate his student with the example set by actor Vin Diesel of "Fast and Furious" fame. "The most popular page on Facebook is the actor Vin Diesel," Conner says. "It used to be Obama. How did an actor become more popular than the president? The answer is that he spends a lot of time putting up personal posts. He'll put up pictures from his travels and answer questions about his movies."

Roskam, who updates his campaign and official Facebook pages along with his staffers, isn't so sure about following Conner's advice and posting items about his mundane doings. " 'I am going to the dry cleaners' -- that's not interesting," the congressman says. "I am trying to think of what is interesting from a personal connection. 'Going over to the Ways and Means Committee'? You're sensing a little caution in my voice, because you really don't want to be that guy."

What about responding to people's comments on your Facebook wall? "That is running, whereas I am more at the creeping stage," says Roskam, who as of late Tuesday had not updated his pages' walls with his own messages since early December.

As his meeting with Conner wraps up, Roskam and his chief of staff, Steven Moore, recall how Facebook helped secure younger voters in the 2008 election. "We spent $60,000 on radio ads, and about $3,000 on the Internet," Moore says. "If I had known that information going in, I would have doubled down."

"Well, feel free to spread the word to other campaign managers," Conner says.

Roskam likes what he sees in the Facebook pitchman, even though Conner is a Democrat. "There you go!" he says, extending his hand to Conner. "What a closer."

Failed attack on jet renews concerns over lack of TSA chief

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By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 30, 2009; A11

The failed terrorist attack on a packed airliner on Christmas has renewed concerns about the lack of stable leadership at the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. agency on the front lines in preventing exactly that kind of incident.

The TSA has been operating without a permanent top official for almost a year, a result of months of delay by the Obama administration and a political power play by a Republican senator opposed to collective bargaining by government workers.

The result, according to some transportation and security analysts, is an agency unable to muster the political will to make the alterations necessary to adapt to changing international threats.

"What doesn't get done as well is leadership and confident direction-setting," said Stewart A. Baker, who was a top official at the Department of Homeland Security in the Bush administration. "There are plenty of competent people at TSA. But when you are not a political appointee, you have to walk on eggshells a little."

Baker and others say they do not think the security failure of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 would have been avoided if President Obama's nominee -- former FBI agent and police detective Erroll Southers -- had been on the job Friday.

But they say they doubt that Acting Administrator Gale D. Rossides, a Bush appointee, has the political connections within the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress to reinvent the agency in ways that get ahead of terrorists.

"She's competent and knows the system well," said one transportation expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he regularly works with TSA officials. "But she doesn't want to rock the boat. She's basically there to keep the trains on the tracks."

Several analysts said Tuesday that the events of the past week highlight the need for a permanent TSA administrator to move quickly in a number of areas. They say the TSA must find the resources -- financial and otherwise -- to design a "checkpoint of the future" that anticipates emerging threats and to phase out metal-detector technology that dates to the early 1980s.

The agency also needs to design better ways to share and interpret the mountain of passenger data collected by U.S. and foreign agencies, they said. The suspect in Friday's incident, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, would not have been allowed to board the flight if warning signs about him had been properly shared, Obama said Tuesday.

And some experts say the new TSA administrator must be deeply knowledgeable about security and terrorism, and more willing to be aggressive in shaking up a seven-year-old bureaucracy that does not respond nimbly to current threats.

"It's critical," said Michael Boyd, an airline consultant based in Colorado. "We need an [H. Norman] Schwarzkopf type there who's going say, 'I'm going to start thinking like a terrorist.' We don't have that."

A spokesman for the TSA declined to comment on the critique.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer defended Rossides on Tuesday but reiterated the administration's demand that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) stop blocking Southers's nomination.

"The acting TSA administrator is very able, and we have a solid team of professionals at TSA," Pfeiffer said. "But Senator DeMint and others should put their short-term political interests aside and allow the Senate vote on the confirmation of the president's nominee to head the agency."

Obama nominated Southers on Sept. 11, nearly eight months after taking office, a delay that White House officials say was necessary to identify "the appropriate candidate" for the job.

In the wake of Friday's incident, Republicans have criticized the TSA and the Obama administration. But one of their own has single-handedly prevented new leadership at the agency. DeMint has refused to allow a vote on the nomination as long as Obama insists on permitting TSA workers to participate in collective bargaining negotiations, as other unionized government workers do.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," DeMint accused the administration of being intent on "unionizing and submitting our airport security to union bosses [and] collective bargaining."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) criticized Republicans on Tuesday, accusing them of "playing politics with national security" by stalling the nomination.

"Despite his qualifications and being reported out by two Senate committees earlier this year, Republicans have decided to play politics with this nomination by blocking final confirmation," Reid said in a statement. "Not only is this a failed strategy, but a dangerous one as well with serious potential consequences for our country."

Reid vowed to force the nomination to a vote next month. But until that happens, or DeMint relents, the top TSA post will go unfilled.

In addition, the Senate has yet to decide when it will vote on Obama's choice to head the Customs and Border Protection agency, another key post in the fight against terrorism.

Longtime observers of airport security say the TSA vacancy will complicate efforts to implement effective procedures against efforts by terrorists to breach the system.

"During a time when security is so important and we need to think about the strategy going forward, we need to push politics aside," said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association.