Monthly Archive for November, 2009

India to join NSA’s eavesdropping program?

November 23, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

India and the U.S. will sign an intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism pact, The Times of India reports as PM Manmohan Singh begins his three-day state visit to Washington on Monday.

Details of the pact are not being disclosed yet, but such was the importance of the agreement that CIA Director Leon Panetta flew down to New Delhi last week to discuss details with his Indian counterparts before the fine print could be drawn up. The agreement could involve exchanging and stationing more intelligence personnel in the two countries, including mobile units, to facilitate better interaction.

The Times describes this as an “intelligence upgrade” involving unspecified ”technical means” supplied by the US.

An unnamed Indian official tells India’s DNA News:

“We are looking at an agreement that could involve exchanging and stationing more intelligence personnel in the two countries. We are also seeking technology to counter terrorism, the National Investigation Agency is looking at US equipment to trace the location of mobile phone calls,” he added.

America’s National Security Agency has an expensive programme that analyses calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity. It has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.


Anwar al-Awlaki, infidel

November 23, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

 An insightful post on Jihadica reveals that Anwar al-Awlaki, a former San Diego imam who ministered to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was once denounced as an infidel (kafir) and part of a CIA plot.

Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who is said to live in Yemen, has been in the news lately because he was in e-mail contact with suspected Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan, whom he recently praised as a “hero.”

As I wrote earlier, Awlaki was the imam at the Rabat mosque in San Diego until mid-2000. Two future hijackers also attended the Rabat mosque.  The Sept. 11 Commission reported the two hijackers “reportedly respected Awlaki as a religious figure and developed a close relationship with him.”

One of Awlaki’s sermons at the Rabat mosque came to the attention of London-based jihadi Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, a radical imam who was imprisoned in 2003 for soliciting murder and eventually deported from the UK  for his links to one of the London Tube bombers.

This San Diego sermon so outraged al-Faisal that he devoted an entire sermon to it and ultimately declared Awlaki an infidel. One of al-Faisal’s followers can be heard in the recording suggesting that Awlaki should be killed.

Al-Faisal’s complaint about al-Awlaki is basically twofold: First, that al-Awlaki’s criteria for declaring takfir (unbeliever) was overly restrictive—someone would have to directly refute the Quran or blatantly denounce central tenets of Islam in order to receive that designation.  And, second, that al-Awlaki argued that only God should judge Muslims. Al-Faisal argues that this non-judgmental understanding of Islam is pushed by the CIA in order to limit violent activism.

Al-Faisal’s sermon is titled “CIA Islam – Sheikh Faisal’s Takfeer of Anwar Awlaki.” It’s available here.

For a would-be jihadi, this sermon should been a devastating blow. Yet, today it’s Awlaki who’s seen as the dangerous radical warping Muslim winds.

The lesson, Brian Fishman says, is not that Awlaki is a moderate but that “the world of jihadi ideologues is never as simple as it seems.”


The Spy Who Conned Me

November 22, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

Must read Sunday Times (of London) story on Kevin R. Halligen, a British security consultant who conned the Washington defense and security establishment.

Halligen was indicted earlier this month in Washington on fraud charges. Apparently, everything about Halligen was a con. He passed himself off as a former British secret agent. Even his 2007 wedding to a Washington lawyer was a scam; according to the Times, the “priest” was really the caterer.

One of the guests was Andre Hollis, a lobbyist who became chief executive of Halligen’s Washington company. “It was like a global intelligence debutante ball,” he said. “And nobody knew it was fake.”

Not even the best man, Colonel John Garrett, a defence lobbyist for the blue-chip Washington law firm Patton Boggs, was let in on the secret. Nor was the most powerful guest in the room, Noel Koch, a security expert who has now become a deputy undersecretary in the defence department.

He said: “We found out later that it was not a real wedding. The priest was an actor.”

Halligen’s firm, Oakley International Group was paid $2.1 million to secure the release of two executives of Trafigura, a Dutch oil trading firm.

The executives were held in an Ivory Coast jail after a ship chartered by Trafigura dumped tons of toxic sludge in the Ivorian port of Abidjan that was blamed in 17 deaths and thousands of injuries.

Instead of freeing the Trafigura executives, the money went toward the purchase of Halligen’s mansion in Great Falls, Va.

Update: Halligen was arrested at a hotel in Oxford, England where he had been staying for months under the name Richard Hall. He is being held without bail and is awaiting extradition to the US.


Jihadis have learned from Internet pirates

November 20, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

AP has a story out reporting that the number of Arabic-language jihadi websites has declined markedly since the Sept. 11 attacks from 1,000 to around 50. Meanwhile, the number of English language sites sympathetic to al-Qaida has grown.

This article may fuel the growing hysteria over the Fort Hood shootings. The suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, had e-mail contact with a Yemeni preacher who ran an English-language Website and called Hassan a “hero” on his blog.

It is easy to get the wrong impression from the AP story. The jihadis are much more sophisticated than this article implies.

It’s true that radical websites such as al-Qaida’s official site, alneda.com, have been shut down, but Osama bin Laden’s followers have figured out new ways to communicate with audiences in the Arabic-speaking world, which — let’s face it — supplies the overwhelming majority of recruits.

Jihadis have adopted the tools of Internet pirates who illegally share music, movies, software and porn, according to a report from West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center:

 The process works as follows. When a new official jihadist group notice, video or audio file is released, multiple users upload the file to various file-hosting websites, creating hundreds of URL links to where that file can be downloaded. A large list of links, or virtual library of hyperlinks, is then posted on multiple jihadist web forums. Once a user reads the post, they then duplicate the forum posting on another forum. This practice is welcomed and encouraged by the rest of the readers, which allows the original user to gain prestige and continue ascending in the forum’s “roster.”

These files can be easily and anonymously uploaded from Internet cafes to file-sharing sites like Rapidshare. Many of these links expire quickly or are disabled by the file-hosting company, yet the sheer number of hyperlinks uploaded makes it almost impossible to stop the message from spreading.

Read the latest issue of the CTC Sentinel here (.pdf)


Rhetoric of Rage: Limbaugh + North Korea

November 19, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

“We’re becoming like North Korea,” is something you often hear on talk radio in the United States.

The conservatives who dominate the AM airwaves are, of course, referring to the Democratic administration of President Obama.

To me, however, these fire-breathing conservatives echo the incendiary rhetoric issued daily by the Korean Central News Agency of DPRK, the official state news agency of the communist dictatorship:

  • North Korea: “The present approach of the Japanese government towards the past crimes is very prejudiced, narrow-minded and wicked.”
  • Rush Limbaugh: “This is a diabolical intricately woven web of deceit that is being executed and woven here, and you have been sucked right into it.”
  • North Korea: “The plan is a despicable product of the anti-DPRK policy pursued by the above-said forces that are running amuck (sic) with bloodshot eyes to find a pretext for a war of aggression on the DPRK and an extension of their strategy for a war against it.”
  • Rush Limbaugh: “The American people are being awakened, and they’re being awakened because they are finally seeing the real Barack Obama, and it’s nothing like the man they thought they elected. This is an utter, cold, mean-spirited partisan liar.”
  • North Korea: “The imperialists are driven into an uncontrollable crisis at present and the fact that the popular masses are getting awakened in a revolutionary manner is a clear proof that the doom of imperialism is coming nearer.”
  • Rush Limbaugh: “Whether Obama is diabolical, deceitful or just plainly incompetent doesn’t matter. The end result is the same: rotten.”
  • North Korea: “The U.S., in particular, is whipping together pro-American conservative forces forsaken by history in a desperate bid to help them wrest ‘power’ through the forthcoming ‘presidential election’ at any cost and thus tide over the crisis of its colonial rule and revive the rotten politics.”

The Story of Semtex

November 18, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

The BBC is airing a fascinating radio documentary on Semtex, one of the world’s most lethal explosives.

Extremely powerful and easily concealed, Semtex is a favorite weapon of terrorists. It was Semtex that exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 residents of  Lockerbie, Scotland.

Semtex takes its name from the town of Semtin in the Czech Republic where it is still produced today.

Tons of it were shipped — at Moscow’s approval — to the North Vietnamese Army. When the Vietnam War ended, a new customer was found: Libya.

No more than 11 ounces of the yellowish explosive brought down Pan Am 103, yet Czech President Vaclav Havel revealed that 1,000 tons of it was shipped to Libya — a claim the company disputes.

Libya, in turn, supplied Semtex to terrorist groups like Black September and the IRA. The IRA began receiving significant quantities of Semtex after the 1984 murder of a policewoman in London led to a breakdown in UK-Libya relations.

The “Semtex families” are a group of 147 British families who lost relatives and loved ones in the 1970s and 1980s to IRA bombs packed with the plastic explosive. They are now seeking $1 billion in compensation from Qadaffi’s regime.

The BBC finds the Explosia company that produces Semtex and is very touchy about what it calls the “hysteria” that surrounds Semtex. (Read Explosia’s 10 myths about Semtex.)

Listen to the documentary here.


Are Embedded Journalists Lawful Targets?

November 17, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

Browsing the Internets, I came across an article by Douglas W. Moore in the July issue of Army Lawyer that tackles the difficult question of whether embedded journalists can be considered lawful enemy targets.

To help clarify when an embedded journalist’s activities will result in a loss of protections, this paper recommends three criteria to aid in this evaluation: (1) the integration of war correspondents into military information operations, (2) the eroding distinction between PAO [Public Affairs Office] and war correspondents, and (3) the loss of reporter objectivity on the battlefield.

The Geneva Conventions declare that journalists covering armed conflicts should be treated as civilians, whether they are accredited by the military or not, assuming “they take no action adversely affecting their status as civilians.”

According to Army Lawyer, embedded journalists run the risk of losing protections because they are increasingly becoming part of military “information operations” or IO.

Overall, IO seeks to use war correspondent news coverage to support positive public relations, build public support, and support successful information operations against the enemy….

Under “operational security” or OPSEC rules, the military controls what embedded reporters can or can’t report. It uses them for “psychological operations” (PSYOP) targeting foreign audiences, particularly during combat operations. Finally, public affairs officers use embedded press to reach targets back home.

The integrated nature of the embedded press system, combined with this military function, dramatically increases the likelihood that a journalist’s activities will be defined as directly supporting combat operations.

The full article is available here (.pdf).


Imam Aulaqi and Yemen’s image problem (Updated)

November 11, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

Anwar al-Aulaqi’s website and his statement praising the suspected Fort Hood shooter as a “hero” has vanished from the Internet. (For those who are interested, the statement in its entirety can be found at the end of this post.)

The words of the former San Diego imam — now said to be living hiding in Yemen — have received wide distribution. The timing of his Nov. 8 statement of support for Maj. Nidal Hasan, however, has escaped notice.

While Aulaqi’s name and his links to Maj. Hasan were being leaked to the Western press, U.S. military officials were quietly holding two days of talks on terrorism and other issues with their counterparts in Yemen, according to Saba, Yemen’s official state news agency.

Brig. Gen. Jefforey A. Smith, recently named deputy director for politico-military affairs in the Middle East (J5) for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed a joint cooperation agreement today, confirming U.S. support for Yemen’s shaky government.

Update: The US embassy declined to comment on whether an agreement had been signed, but tells AFP that talks involving Smith had taken place and said they focused on counterterrorism efforts against groups operating in Yemen. (The AFP misidentified Smith.)

This week’s talks in Sana’a have attracted no attention in the United States. But Yemen’s Chief of the General Staff Ahmed al-Ashwal said the talks were of great concern to the government of President Ali Abdullah Salih, which is battling al-Qaida in the east and tribal rebels in the north backed by Iran.

The Economist reported this week:

Yemen’s increasing lawlessness outside shrinking zones of state control around the main cities is one reason why, earlier this year, al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch announced it was moving across the border and merging forces with its brethren in Yemen. The joint operation, calling itself “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula”, known in intelligence circles as AQAP, has carried out sporadic attacks inside Yemen, where tacit agreements with the government appear to have broken down. But its main target still appears to be Saudi Arabia.

The most recent State Department report on terrorism described Yemen’s efforts as “mixed.” While it took action against al-Qaida, Yemen, despite pressure from the U.S., continued a surrender program for terrorists it could not apprehend and released all returned Guantanamo detainees.

All of which makes the timing of Aulaqi’s statement even more interesting:

Nidal Hassan Did The Right Thing

Nidal Hassan is a hero.

He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges.

Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.

The heroic act of brother Nidal also shows the dilemma of the Muslim American community. Increasingly they are being cornered into taking stances that would either make them betray Islam or betray their nation. Many amongst them are choosing the former. The Muslim organizations in America came out in a pitiful chorus condemning Nidal’s operation.

The fact that fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can defy the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right — rather the duty — to fight against American tyranny. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims. The American Muslims who condemned his actions have committed treason against the Muslim Ummah and have fallen into hypocrisy.

Allah(swt) says: Give tidings to the hypocrites that there is for them a painful punishment – Those who take disbelievers as allies instead of the believers. Do they seek with them honor [through power]? But indeed, honor belongs to Allah entirely. (al-Nisa 136-137)

The inconsistency of being a Muslim today and living in America and the West in general reveals the wisdom behind the opinions that call for migration from the West. It is becoming more and more difficult to hold on to Islam in an environment that is becoming more hostile towards Muslims.

May Allah grant our brother Nidal patience, perseverance and steadfastness and we ask Allah to accept from him his great heroic act. Ameen.


Fort Hood and the San Diego 9/11 hijacking connection (Updated)

November 9, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 3 Comments

Investigators are examining connections between the suspected Fort Hood shooter and an imam named Anwar Aulaqi.

On his blog yesterday (yes, his blog), Aulaqi called Maj. Nadal Hasan “a hero.”

Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.

The heroic act of brother Nidal also shows the dilemma of the Muslim American community. Increasingly they are being cornered into taking stances that would either make them betray Islam or betray their nation. Many amongst them are choosing the former. The Muslim organizations in America came out in a pitiful chorus condemning Nidal’s operation.

The man who calls on fellow Muslim soldiers to kill their brothers in arms is a U.S. citizen who broadcasts his message of jihad (in English) from Yemen where he has lived since 2004. He not only has a website, but can be found on Facebook.

Before Yemen, Aulaqi had preached in Denver, San Diego, and Falls Church, Virginia.

It was in Virginia that Aulaqi may have met “brother Nidal.” Hasan attended a mosque in Falls Church in 2001 where Aulaqi was serving as imam, according to The Washington Post. Update: The Dar Al Hijrah mosque says Aulaqi was employed there from January 2001 through April 2002.

Also attending the Falls Church mosque were two Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid Almidhar.

According to the Sept. 11 Commission’s report, the two hijackers “reportedly respected Aulaqi as a religious figure and developed a close relationship with him.”

Before moving to Virginia, Aulaqi was imam at the Rabat mosque in San Diego until mid-2000. The two hijackers also attended the Rabat mosque. They may even have met or at least talked to Aulaqi on their first day in San Diego.

According to his online biography, Aulaqi received a master’s degree in educational leadership from San Diego State University.

Aulaqi had connections to others of interest to the San Diego FBI, including Mohdar Abdullah (see my earlier post) and Omar al Bayoumi, a man believed to be a Saudi agent who helped the hijackers settle in San Diego.

From a footnote in the Sept. 11 Commission report:

The FBI investigated Aulaqi in 1999 and 2000 after learning that he may have been contacted by a possible procurement agent for Bin Ladin. During the investigation, the FBI learned that Aulaqi knew individuals from the Holy Land Foundation and others involved in raising money for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Sources alleged that Aulaqi had other extremist connections.

None of this information was considered strong enough to support a criminal prosecution.

The Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 notes that Aulaqi was visited by a “subject of a Los Angeles investigation closely associated with Blind Sheikh [Omar Abdel] Rahman,” who was convicted in a 1993 New York City bomb plot.

In mid-2006, Aulaqi was arrested in Yemen and spent 18 months behind bars, almost all of it in solitary confinement. In this interview with a former Guantanamo detainee, Aulaqi says he was held at the request of the U.S. government and was interviewed in custody by FBI agents.

Update: TPM Muckracker’s Justin Elliott has a comprehensive post on Nidal, including The New York Times report that “intelligence agencies” intercepted 10 to 20 communications last year and this year between Aulaqi and Hasan.  The messages reportedly did not suggest any threat of violence.

Homeland Security Undersecretary for Intelligence Charles E. Allen last year described Aulaqi as an al-Qaida supporter and a former “spiritual leader” to three of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

And finally, judging from these recent comments on his website here, here and here, Aulaqi is deeply missed in San Diego.

Second Update: The Falls Church, Virginia mosque where Aulaqi served as imam has openly denounced his statement of praise for Hasan:

During Mr. Al-Awlaki’s short employment at our center, his public speech was consistent with the values of tolerance and cooperation. After returning to Yemen, Mr. Awlaki now claims that the American Muslims who have condemned the violent acts of Major Hasan have committed treason against the Muslim Umaah [community] and have fallen into hypocrisy. With this reversal, Mr. Al-Awlaki has clearly set himself apart from Muslims in America.


“Focused lethality” and modern warfare

November 2, 2009, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

Anyone reading through the Goldstone Report, the fact-finding mission into during the Gaza conflict, will find themselves confronted with the painful realities of modern warfare.

For instance, doctors working in Gaza during the conflict noticed a “strikingly high percentage of patients with severed legs.”

The amputations mostly occurred at waist height in children, generally lower in adults, and were combined with skin-deep, third-degree burns, four to six fingers upward from the amputation. Where the amputation took place, the flesh was cauterized as a result of the heat. The patients with these amputations had no shrapnel wounds, but red flashes on the abdomen and chest. The excision of large pieces of flesh was not infrequent in these patients.

These wounds are believed to be the result of a new weapon that is intended to minimize collateral damage in urban conflicts. The bomb is made of special materials that limit the effects to a small diameter. Inside that circle, however, is sheer hell.

Most bombs have a metal casing that turns into shrapnel, but this bomb has a carbon-fiber casing that turns to dust on impact.  Packed inside is an “explosive fill,” a powder, really, made of an alloy of tungsten.

The physics involved are complex, but the presence of the tungsten makes for a much more powerful blast. During tests, instruments used to measure blast force were destroyed. The high-velocity, extremely hot tungsten particles can easily slice through skin, tissue and bone.

This new weapon goes by many names. They are also known as focused lethality munitions. The U.N. calls them dense inert metal explosives or DIME weapons.

Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, which builds the bombs in St. Joseph, Mo., refers to them as GBU-39s. One of these bombs dropped from an F-15E can be guided via satellite to a target as far as 40 miles.

Israel ordered (.pdf) 1,000 GBU-39s in September 2008. The Jewish state has denied using DIME wepaons during the conflict.

The U.N. fact-finding mission found no actual proof that DIME were dropped on Gaza during the Israeli military operation known as “Operation Cast Lead” from December 2008 to January 2009.

However, the mission’s ordnance expert believed that some weapons used during the conflict had a “DIME component.” Samples taken from the scene of the attacks in Gaza revealed the presence of tungsten.

U.S. forces have been using DIME weapons since at least October 2006:

The new bomb, the first of its kind in the Air Force inventory, gives aircrews the ability to destroy targets that would normally be “passed over” due to the proximity of friendly troops, civilians, structures or personal property.

The efforts to minimize collateral damage raise difficult (and so far unanswered) questions about the laws of warfare.

Tungsten alloy particles are so small they can’t be removed from the body. They are also highly carcinogenic (.pdf) At a U.N. press conference in Geneva, Col. Desmond Travers, one of the report’s authors, referred to a potential “time bomb” inside some of the Gaza victims.

This raises a thorny (and as yet unanswered) question: Should GBU-39s and other DIME weapons properly be classified as biological weapons which are illegal under the Geneva Convention?

Israel is a signatory to the Conventional Weapons Convention, which prohibits the use of any weapons that injures by fragments that cannot be detected by X-rays. The United States is also a signatory.

Boeing is set to make thousands of these weapons in the next few years. The defense giant apparently believes that the international community will not stand in its way.