Jan 8, 6:22 AM (ET)
By MICHAEL TARM
CHICAGO (AP) - A would-be terrorist tries to board a plane, bent on mass murder. As he walks through a security checkpoint, fidgeting and glancing around, a network of high-tech machines analyzes his body language and reads his mind.
Screeners pull him aside.
Tragedy is averted.
As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer's head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year.
On Thursday, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt over Detroit, President Barack Obama called on Homeland Security and the Energy Department to develop better screening technology, warning: "In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary."
The ideas that have been offered by security experts for staying one step ahead include highly sophisticated sensors, more intensive interrogations of travelers by screeners trained in human behavior, and a lifting of the U.S. prohibitions against profiling.
Some of the more unusual ideas are already being tested. Some aren't being given any serious consideration. Many raise troubling questions about civil liberties. All are costly.
"Regulators need to accept that the current approach is outdated," said Philip Baum, editor of the London-based magazine Aviation Security International. "It may have responded to the threats of the 1960s, but it doesn't respond to the threats of the 21st century."
Here's a look at some of the ideas that could shape the future of airline security:
---
MIND READERS
The aim of one company that blends high technology and behavioral psychology is hinted at in its name, WeCU - as in "We See You."
The system that Israeli-based WeCU Technologies has devised and is testing in Israel projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, said company CEO Ehud Givon.
The logic is that people can't help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn't help but respond.
The reaction could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, he said.
The WeCU system would use humans to do some of the observing but would rely mostly on hidden cameras or sensors that can detect a slight rise in body temperature and heart rate. Far more sensitive devices under development that can take such measurements from a distance would be incorporated later.
If the sensors picked up a suspicious reaction, the traveler could be pulled out of line for further screening.
"One by one, you can screen out from the flow of people those with specific malicious intent," Givon said.
Some critics have expressed horror at the approach, calling it Orwellian and akin to "brain fingerprinting."
For civil libertarians, attempting to read a person's thoughts comes uncomfortably close to the future world depicted in the movie "Minority Report," where a policeman played by Tom Cruise targets people for "pre-crimes," or merely thinking about breaking the law.
---
LIE DETECTORS
One system being studied by Homeland Security is called the Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, and works like a souped-up polygraph.
It would subject people pulled aside for additional screening to a battery of tests, including scans of facial movements and pupil dilation, for signs of deception. Small platforms similar to the balancing boards used in the Nintendo Wii would help detect fidgeting.
At a public demonstration of the system in Boston last year, project manager Robert Burns explained that people who harbor ill will display involuntary physiological reactions that others - such as those who are stressed out for ordinary reasons, such as being late for a plane - don't.
The system could be made to work passively, scanning people as they walk through a security line, according to Burns.
Field testing of the system, which will cost around $20 million to develop, could begin in 2011, The Boston Globe said in a story about the demonstration. Addressing one concern of civil libertarians, Burns said the technology would delete data after each screening.
---
THE ISRAELI MODEL
Some say the U.S. should take a page from Israel's book on security.
At Israeli airports, widely considered the most secure in the world, travelers are subjected to probing personal questions as screeners look them straight in the eye for signs of deception. Searches are meticulous, with screeners often scrutinizing every item in a bag, unfolding socks, squeezing toothpaste and flipping through books.
"All must look to Israel and learn from them. This is not a post-911 thing for them. They've been doing this since 1956," said Michael Goldberg, president of New York-based IDO Security Inc., which developed a device that can scan shoes while they are still on people's feet.
Israel also employs profiling: At Ben-Gurion Airport, Jewish Israelis typically pass through smoothly, while others may be taken aside for closer interrogation or even strip searches. Another distinquishing feature of Israeli airports is that they rely on concentric security rings that start miles from terminal buildings.
Rafi Ron, the former security director at Israel's famously tight Ben Gurion International Airport who now is a consultant for Boston's Logan International Airport, says U.S. airports also need to be careful not to overcommit to securing passenger entry points at airports, forgetting about the rest of the field.
"Don't invest all your efforts on the front door and leave the back door open," said Ron.
While many experts agree the United States could adopt some Israeli methods, few believe the overall model would work here, in part because of the sheer number of U.S. airports - more than 400, versus half a dozen in Israel.
Also, the painstaking searches and interrogations would create delays that could bring U.S. air traffic to a standstill. And many Americans would find the often intrusive and intimidating Israeli approach repugnant.
---
PROFILING
Some argue that policies against profiling undermine security.
Baum, who is also managing director of Green Light Limited, a London-based aviation security company, agrees profiling based on race and religion is counterproductive and should be avoided. But he argues that a reluctance to distinguish travelers on other grounds - such as their general appearance or their mannerisms - is not only foolhardy but dangerous.
"When you see a typical family - dressed like a family, acts like a family, interacts with each other like a family ... when their passport details match - then let's get them through," he said. "Stop wasting time that would be much better spent screening the people that we've get more concerns about."
U.S. authorities prohibit profiling of passengers based on ethnicity, religion or national origin. Current procedures call for travelers to be randomly pulled out of line for further screening.
Scrutinizing 80-year-old grandmothers or students because they might be carrying school scissors can defy common sense, Baum said.
"We need to use the human brain - which is the best technology of them all," he said.
But any move to relax prohibitions against profiling in the U.S. would surely trigger fierce resistance, including legal challenges by privacy advocates.
---
PRIVATIZATION
What if security were left to somebody other than the federal government?
Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Washington-based Cato Institute, a free-market-oriented think tank, says airlines should be allowed take charge of security at airports.
Especially since 9/11, the trend has been toward standardizing security procedures to ensure all airports follow the best practices. But Harper argues that decentralizing the responsibility would result in a mix of approaches - thereby making it harder for terrorists to use a single template in planning attacks.
"Passengers, too, prefer a uniform experience," he said. "But that's not necessarily the best security. It's better if sometimes we take your laptop out, sometimes we'll pat you down. Those are things that will really drive a terrorist batty - as if they're not batty already."
Harper concedes that privatizing airport security is probably wishful thinking, and the idea has not gotten any traction. He acknowledges it would be difficult to allay fears of gaping security holes if it were left to each airline or airport owner to decide its own approach.
---
AP writers Glen Johnson in Boston and Josef Federman in Jerusalem also contributed to this report.
.
.
Source:http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100108/D9D3HB101.html
.
Showing posts with label Abdulmutallab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abdulmutallab. Show all posts
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Obama presses security overhaul, Nigerian indicted
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama is "not patient" and is demanding immediate changes in airline security, the top U.S. military officer said on Wednesday, as a grand jury indicted a Nigerian man for trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day.
U.S. Barack Obama
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was concern that potential extremists could be inspired by the bombing attempt blamed on 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the attempt, one of the most serious U.S. security breaches and intelligence breakdowns since the September 11 attacks.
"Certainly there is the concern that this would bring more, generate more support from young males who might be on the fence about what to do with their lives," Mullen said.
A grand jury in Michigan indicted Abdulmutallab on six counts, including attempted murder of the other 289 passengers and crew on board the plane, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces life in prison, if convicted.
The bomb, which Abdulmutallab has told investigators was given to him by al Qaeda in Yemen, contained the highly explosive ingredients Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate, or PETN, and Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, the indictment said.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held out the possibility of others being charged, saying, "Anyone we find responsible for this alleged attack will be brought to justice using every tool -- military or judicial -- available to our government."
Jitters have gripped the U.S. travel industry in the aftermath of the bombing attempt. In the latest security scare, an unruly passenger on a Hawaii-bound airliner on Wednesday prompted the pilot to return the plane to Portland, Oregon, escorted by two military fighter jets.
Obama called the Detroit incident a potentially disastrous "screw-up" by the intelligence community during a two-hour meeting with his national security team on Tuesday.
"The president -- he's not patient about this at all. These changes have to be made immediately," Mullen told university students at a seminar in Washington.
The Los Angeles Times, citing senior law enforcement officials, reported on Wednesday that U.S. border security officials learned of intelligence about Abdulmutallab's alleged extremist links as he was en route to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed.
"The ... database had picked up the State Department concern about this guy, that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen. ... They could have made a decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane," the Times quoted a senior law enforcement official as saying.
Obama will address the issue again in a public statement on Thursday, when the White House will release a review that will make recommendations on plugging holes in security, including changes in passenger screening and terrorism watch lists.
"The review will simply identify and make recommendations as to what was lacking and what needs to be strengthened," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, adding it would be "comprehensive."
INTELLIGENCE SHARING
U.S. spy agencies and the State Department had information about Abdulmutallab but they never pieced it together to put him on a no-fly list. Instead, passengers and crew subdued the Nigerian bomb suspect as he tried to detonate the device.
Mullen said part of the problem was intelligence sharing and filtering through the extraordinary amount of data collected by U.S. spy agencies.
"It does have to do with sharing information and it does have to do with huge bureaucracies. And we collect an extraordinary amount of data," Mullen said.
Obama has been lambasted by Republicans who accuse his Democratic administration of being weak on terrorism and unable to fix intelligence gaps that have lingered since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States involving hijacked planes.
Senior Republican lawmakers on Wednesday called on Obama to take more concrete steps to improve security and challenged the decision to try Abdulmutallab in federal court.
"All jihadist attackers should be charged as enemy combatants, taken into military custody, interrogated for vital intelligence, and tried in military courts under the laws of armed conflict," they said in a letter to Obama.
Since the Christmas bombing attempt, there has been finger- pointing within the U.S. intelligence community, including at the National Counterterrorism Center, created in 2004 to serve as the main repository for counterterrorism intelligence.
Asked whether people might lose their jobs over the incident, Gibbs said, "I don't know what the final outcome in terms of hiring and firing will be."
"This is a failure that touches across the full waterfront of our intelligence agencies," he said.
U.S. Barack Obama
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was concern that potential extremists could be inspired by the bombing attempt blamed on 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the attempt, one of the most serious U.S. security breaches and intelligence breakdowns since the September 11 attacks.
"Certainly there is the concern that this would bring more, generate more support from young males who might be on the fence about what to do with their lives," Mullen said.
A grand jury in Michigan indicted Abdulmutallab on six counts, including attempted murder of the other 289 passengers and crew on board the plane, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces life in prison, if convicted.
The bomb, which Abdulmutallab has told investigators was given to him by al Qaeda in Yemen, contained the highly explosive ingredients Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate, or PETN, and Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, the indictment said.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held out the possibility of others being charged, saying, "Anyone we find responsible for this alleged attack will be brought to justice using every tool -- military or judicial -- available to our government."
Jitters have gripped the U.S. travel industry in the aftermath of the bombing attempt. In the latest security scare, an unruly passenger on a Hawaii-bound airliner on Wednesday prompted the pilot to return the plane to Portland, Oregon, escorted by two military fighter jets.
Obama called the Detroit incident a potentially disastrous "screw-up" by the intelligence community during a two-hour meeting with his national security team on Tuesday.
"The president -- he's not patient about this at all. These changes have to be made immediately," Mullen told university students at a seminar in Washington.
The Los Angeles Times, citing senior law enforcement officials, reported on Wednesday that U.S. border security officials learned of intelligence about Abdulmutallab's alleged extremist links as he was en route to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed.
"The ... database had picked up the State Department concern about this guy, that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen. ... They could have made a decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane," the Times quoted a senior law enforcement official as saying.
Obama will address the issue again in a public statement on Thursday, when the White House will release a review that will make recommendations on plugging holes in security, including changes in passenger screening and terrorism watch lists.
"The review will simply identify and make recommendations as to what was lacking and what needs to be strengthened," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, adding it would be "comprehensive."
INTELLIGENCE SHARING
U.S. spy agencies and the State Department had information about Abdulmutallab but they never pieced it together to put him on a no-fly list. Instead, passengers and crew subdued the Nigerian bomb suspect as he tried to detonate the device.
Mullen said part of the problem was intelligence sharing and filtering through the extraordinary amount of data collected by U.S. spy agencies.
"It does have to do with sharing information and it does have to do with huge bureaucracies. And we collect an extraordinary amount of data," Mullen said.
Obama has been lambasted by Republicans who accuse his Democratic administration of being weak on terrorism and unable to fix intelligence gaps that have lingered since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States involving hijacked planes.
Senior Republican lawmakers on Wednesday called on Obama to take more concrete steps to improve security and challenged the decision to try Abdulmutallab in federal court.
"All jihadist attackers should be charged as enemy combatants, taken into military custody, interrogated for vital intelligence, and tried in military courts under the laws of armed conflict," they said in a letter to Obama.
Since the Christmas bombing attempt, there has been finger- pointing within the U.S. intelligence community, including at the National Counterterrorism Center, created in 2004 to serve as the main repository for counterterrorism intelligence.
Asked whether people might lose their jobs over the incident, Gibbs said, "I don't know what the final outcome in terms of hiring and firing will be."
"This is a failure that touches across the full waterfront of our intelligence agencies," he said.
Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Adam Entous and Susan Cornwell; Editing by David Alexander and Peter Cooney)
.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
The Christmas Day Airliner Attack and the Intelligence Process
January 4, 2010 1840 GMT
By George Friedman
As is well known, a Nigerian national named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to destroy a passenger aircraft traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. Metal detectors cannot pinpoint the chemical in the device he sought to detonate, PETN. The PETN was strapped to his groin. Since a detonator could have been detected, the attacker chose — or had chosen for him — a syringe filled with acid for use as an improvised alternative means to initiate the detonation. In the event, the device failed to detonate, but it did cause a fire in a highly sensitive area of the attacker’s body. An alert passenger put out the fire. The plane landed safely. It later emerged that the attacker’s father, a prominent banker in Nigeria, had gone to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to warn embassy officials of his concerns that his son might be involved with jihadists.
The incident drove home a number of points. First, while al Qaeda prime — the organization that had planned and executed 9/11 — might be in shambles, other groups in other countries using the al Qaeda brand name and following al Qaeda prime’s ideology remain operational and capable of mounting attacks. Second, like other recent attacks, this attack was relatively feeble: It involved a single aircraft, and the explosive device was not well-conceived. Third, it remained and still remains possible for a terrorist to bring explosives on board an aircraft. Fourth, intelligence available in Nigeria, London and elsewhere had not moved through the system with sufficient speed to block the terrorist from boarding the flight.
An Enduring Threat
By George Friedman
As is well known, a Nigerian national named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to destroy a passenger aircraft traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. Metal detectors cannot pinpoint the chemical in the device he sought to detonate, PETN. The PETN was strapped to his groin. Since a detonator could have been detected, the attacker chose — or had chosen for him — a syringe filled with acid for use as an improvised alternative means to initiate the detonation. In the event, the device failed to detonate, but it did cause a fire in a highly sensitive area of the attacker’s body. An alert passenger put out the fire. The plane landed safely. It later emerged that the attacker’s father, a prominent banker in Nigeria, had gone to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to warn embassy officials of his concerns that his son might be involved with jihadists.
The incident drove home a number of points. First, while al Qaeda prime — the organization that had planned and executed 9/11 — might be in shambles, other groups in other countries using the al Qaeda brand name and following al Qaeda prime’s ideology remain operational and capable of mounting attacks. Second, like other recent attacks, this attack was relatively feeble: It involved a single aircraft, and the explosive device was not well-conceived. Third, it remained and still remains possible for a terrorist to bring explosives on board an aircraft. Fourth, intelligence available in Nigeria, London and elsewhere had not moved through the system with sufficient speed to block the terrorist from boarding the flight.
An Enduring Threat
From this three things emerge. First, although the capabilities of jihadist terrorists have declined, their organizations remain functional, and there is no guarantee that these organizations won’t increase in sophistication and effectiveness. Second, the militants remain focused on the global air transport system. Third, the defensive mechanisms devised since 2001 remain ineffective to some degree.
The purpose of terrorism in its purest form is to create a sense of insecurity among a public. It succeeds when fear moves a system to the point where it can no longer function. This magnifies the strength of the terrorist by causing the public to see the failure of the system as the result of the power of the terrorist. Terror networks are necessarily sparse. The greater the number of persons involved, the more likely a security breach becomes. Thus, there are necessarily few people in a terror network. An ideal terror network is global, able to strike anywhere and in multiple places at once. The extent of the terror network is unknown, partly because of its security systems and partly because it is so sparse that finding a terrorist is like finding a needle in a haystack. It is the fact that the size and intentions of the terror network are unknown that generates the sense of terror and empowers the terrorist.
The global aspect is also important. That attacks can originate in many places and that attackers can belong to many ethnic groups increases the desired sense of insecurity. All Muslims are not members of al Qaeda, but all members of al Qaeda are Muslims, and any Muslim might be a member of al Qaeda. This logic is beneficial to radical Islamists, who want to increase the sense of confrontation between Islam and the rest of the world. This not only increases the sense of insecurity and vulnerability in the rest of the world, it also increases hostility toward Muslims, strengthening al Qaeda’s argument to Muslims that they are in an unavoidable state of war with the rest of the world. Equally important is the transmission of the idea that if al Qaeda is destroyed in one place, it will spring up elsewhere.
This terror attack made another point, intended or not. U.S. President Barack Obama recently decided to increase forces in Afghanistan. A large part of his reasoning was that Afghanistan was the origin of 9/11, and the Taliban hosted al Qaeda. Therefore, he reasoned the United States should focus its military operations in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, since that was the origin of al Qaeda. But the Christmas Day terror attempt originated in Yemen, a place where the United States has been fighting a covert war with limited military resources. It therefore raises the question of why Obama is focusing on Afghanistan when the threat from al Qaeda spinoffs can originate anywhere.
From the terrorist perspective, the Yemen attack was a low-cost, low-risk operation. If it succeeded in bringing down a U.S. airliner over Detroit, the psychological impact would be massive. If it failed to do so, it would certainly increase a sense of anxiety, cause the U.S. and other governments to institute new and expensive security measures, and potentially force the United States into expensive deployments of forces insufficient to dominate a given country but sufficient to generate an insurgency. If just some of these things happened, the attack would have been well worth the effort.
The Strategic Challenge
The purpose of terrorism in its purest form is to create a sense of insecurity among a public. It succeeds when fear moves a system to the point where it can no longer function. This magnifies the strength of the terrorist by causing the public to see the failure of the system as the result of the power of the terrorist. Terror networks are necessarily sparse. The greater the number of persons involved, the more likely a security breach becomes. Thus, there are necessarily few people in a terror network. An ideal terror network is global, able to strike anywhere and in multiple places at once. The extent of the terror network is unknown, partly because of its security systems and partly because it is so sparse that finding a terrorist is like finding a needle in a haystack. It is the fact that the size and intentions of the terror network are unknown that generates the sense of terror and empowers the terrorist.
The global aspect is also important. That attacks can originate in many places and that attackers can belong to many ethnic groups increases the desired sense of insecurity. All Muslims are not members of al Qaeda, but all members of al Qaeda are Muslims, and any Muslim might be a member of al Qaeda. This logic is beneficial to radical Islamists, who want to increase the sense of confrontation between Islam and the rest of the world. This not only increases the sense of insecurity and vulnerability in the rest of the world, it also increases hostility toward Muslims, strengthening al Qaeda’s argument to Muslims that they are in an unavoidable state of war with the rest of the world. Equally important is the transmission of the idea that if al Qaeda is destroyed in one place, it will spring up elsewhere.
This terror attack made another point, intended or not. U.S. President Barack Obama recently decided to increase forces in Afghanistan. A large part of his reasoning was that Afghanistan was the origin of 9/11, and the Taliban hosted al Qaeda. Therefore, he reasoned the United States should focus its military operations in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, since that was the origin of al Qaeda. But the Christmas Day terror attempt originated in Yemen, a place where the United States has been fighting a covert war with limited military resources. It therefore raises the question of why Obama is focusing on Afghanistan when the threat from al Qaeda spinoffs can originate anywhere.
From the terrorist perspective, the Yemen attack was a low-cost, low-risk operation. If it succeeded in bringing down a U.S. airliner over Detroit, the psychological impact would be massive. If it failed to do so, it would certainly increase a sense of anxiety, cause the U.S. and other governments to institute new and expensive security measures, and potentially force the United States into expensive deployments of forces insufficient to dominate a given country but sufficient to generate an insurgency. If just some of these things happened, the attack would have been well worth the effort.
The Strategic Challenge
The West’s problem can be identified this way: There is no strategic solution to low-level terrorism, i.e., terrorism carried out by a sparse, global network at unpredictable times and places. Strategy involves identifying and destroying the center of gravity of an enemy force. By nature, jihadist terrorism fails to present a single center of gravity, or a strong point or enabler that if destroyed would destroy the organization. There is no organization properly understood, and the destruction of one organization does not preclude the generation of another organization.
There are possible solutions. One is to accept that Islamist terrorism cannot be defeated permanently but can be kept below a certain threshold. As it operates now, it can inflict occasional painful blows on the United States and other countries — including Muslim countries — but it cannot threaten the survival of the nation (though it might force regime change in some Muslim countries).
In this strategy, there are two goals. The first is preventing the creation of a jihadist regime in any part of the Muslim world. As we saw when the Taliban provided al Qaeda with sanctuary, access to a state apparatus increases the level of threat to the United States and other countries; displacing the Taliban government reduced the level of threat. The second goal is preventing terrorists from accessing weapons of mass destruction that, while they might not threaten the survival of a country, would certainly raise the pain level to an unacceptable point. In other words, the United States and other countries should focus on reducing the level of terrorist capabilities, not on trying to eliminate the terrorist threat as a whole.
To a great extent, this is the American strategy. The United States has created a system for screening airline passengers. No one expects it to block a serious attempt to commit terrorism on an airliner, nor does this effort have any effect on other forms of terrorism. Instead, it is there to reassure the public that something is being done, to catch some careless attackers and to deter others. But in general, it is a system whose inconvenience is meant to reassure.
The Challenge of Identifying Potential Terrorists
To the extent to which there is a center of gravity to the problem, it is in identifying potential terrorists. In both the Fort Hood attack and the Detroit incident, information was in the system that could have allowed authorities to identify and stop the attackers, but in both cases, this information didn’t flow to the places where action could have been taken. There is thus a chasm between the acquisition of information and the person who has the authority to do something about it. The system “knew” about both attackers, but systems don’t actually think or know anything. The person with authority to stop a Nigerian from boarding the plane or who could relieve the Fort Hood killer from duty lacked one or more of the following: intelligence, real authority and motivation.
The information gathered in Nigeria had to be widely distributed to be useful. It was unknown where Abdulmutallab was going to go or what he was going to do. The number of people who needed to know about him was enormous, from British security to Amsterdam ticket agents checking passports. Without distributing the intelligence widely, it became useless. A net can’t have holes that are too big, and the failure to distribute intelligence to all points creates holes.
Of course, the number of pieces of intelligence that come into U.S. intelligence collection is enormous. How does the person interviewing the father know whether the father has other reasons to put his son on a list? Novels have been written about father-son relations. The collector must decide whether the report is both reliable and significant, and the vast majority of information coming into the system is neither. The intelligence community has been searching for a deus ex machina in the form of computers able not only to distribute intelligence to the necessary places but also to distinguish reliable from unreliable, significant from insignificant.
Forgetting the interagency rivalries and the tendency to give contracts to corporate behemoths with last-generation technology, no matter how widely and efficiently intelligence is distributed, at each step in the process someone must be given real authority to make decisions. When Janet Napolitano or George Tenet say that the system worked after an incident, they mean not that the outcome was satisfactory, but that the process operated as the process was intended to operate. Of course, being faithful to a process is not the same as being successful, but the U.S. intelligence community’s obsession with process frequently elevates process above success. Certainly, process is needed to operate a vast system, but process also is being used to deny people authority to do what is necessary outside the process, or, just as bad, it allows people to evade responsibility by adhering to the process.
Not only does the process relieve individuals in the system from real authority; it also strips them of motivation. In a system driven by process, the individual motivated to abort the process and improvise is weeded out early. There is no room for “cowboys,” the intelligence community term for people who hope to be successful at the mission rather than faithful to the process. Obviously, we are overstating matters somewhat, but not by as much as one might think. Within the U.S. intelligence and security process, one daily sees good people struggling to do their jobs in the face of processes that can’t possibly anticipate all circumstances.
The distribution of intelligence to the people who need to see it is, of course, indispensable, along with whatever other decision supports can be contrived. But, in the end, unless individuals are expected and motivated to make good decisions, the process is merely the preface to failure. No system can operate without process. At the same time, no process can replace authority, motivation and, ultimately, common sense.
The fear of violating procedures cripples Western efforts to shut down low-level terrorism. But the procedures are themselves flawed. A process that says that in a war against radical Islamists, an elderly visitor from Iceland is as big of a potential threat as a twentysomething from Yemen might satisfy some ideological imperative, but it violates the principle of common sense and blocks the authority and the motivation to act decisively.
It is significant that this is one of the things the Obama administration has changed in response to the attempted bombing.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced Jan. 4 that anyone traveling from or through nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism as well as “other countries of interest” will be required to go through enhanced screening. The TSA said those techniques would include full-body pat downs, carry-on luggage searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology. The U.S. State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers will face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. A rational system of profiling thus appears to be developing.
In all likelihood, no system can eliminate events such as what happened on Christmas, and in all likelihood, the republic would survive an intermittent pattern of such events — even successful ones. Focusing on the strategic level makes sense. But given the level of effort and cost involved in terrorist protection throughout the world, successful systems for distributing intelligence and helping identify potentially significant threats are long overdue. The U.S. government has been tackling this since 2001, and it still isn’t working.
But, in the end, creating a process that precludes initiative by penalizing those who do not follow procedures under all circumstances and intimidating those responsible for making quick decisions from risking a mistake is bound to fail.
"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"
.
.
Obama: We Knew Enough to Stop Terror Attack
January 5, 2010 5:00 PM
Obama: We Knew Enough to Stop Terror Attack
Posted by Brian Montopoli
Watch CBS News Videos Online
Updated 5:31 p.m. Eastern Time
President Obama said this afternoon that government officials "had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt" the Christmas Day terror plot but "failed to connect [the] dots" that would have allowed them to do so.
"This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had," he said.
Following a 90-minute meeting with officials investigating how a Nigerian national with possible al Qaeda links was able to board a Detroit-bound airliner with an explosive device, Mr. Obama said "it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged."
Mr. Obama said the intelligence community knew al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula wanted to strike the United States and that they were working with the individual who turned out to be the Christmas Day bomber.
Special Report: The Christmas Day Terror Attack
Obama: We Knew Enough to Stop Terror Attack
Posted by Brian Montopoli
Watch CBS News Videos Online
Updated 5:31 p.m. Eastern Time
President Obama said this afternoon that government officials "had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt" the Christmas Day terror plot but "failed to connect [the] dots" that would have allowed them to do so.
"This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had," he said.
Following a 90-minute meeting with officials investigating how a Nigerian national with possible al Qaeda links was able to board a Detroit-bound airliner with an explosive device, Mr. Obama said "it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged."
Mr. Obama said the intelligence community knew al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula wanted to strike the United States and that they were working with the individual who turned out to be the Christmas Day bomber.
Special Report: The Christmas Day Terror Attack
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
He called the performance by the intelligence community "not acceptable."
"I will not tolerate it," said the president.
"When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way," said the president. "And it is my responsibility to find out why, and to correct that failure so that we can prevent such attacks in the future."
Mr. Obama also discussed steps already taken to improve security, including updating terror watch list system, adding more air marshals, and giving full-body searches to U.S.-bound travelers from certain countries.
He said that "while our review has found that our watch-listing system is not broken, the failure to add Abdulmutallab to the no-fly list shows that this system needs to be strengthened."
The president had already blamed "systematic failures" for allowing 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the airliner with the explosive device, which failed to fully detonate.
Abdulmutallab was on a federal list of more than 500,000 suspected terrorists, but he was not on no-fly or additional screening watch list despite numerous red flags having been raised about him.
Following the president's comments, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr said "screening is going to be more invasive, it's going to be more expensive, and travelers should get used to the idea that the system will be slower."
Christmas Day Attack a Wake-Up Call for Obama
"I will not tolerate it," said the president.
"When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way," said the president. "And it is my responsibility to find out why, and to correct that failure so that we can prevent such attacks in the future."
Mr. Obama also discussed steps already taken to improve security, including updating terror watch list system, adding more air marshals, and giving full-body searches to U.S.-bound travelers from certain countries.
He said that "while our review has found that our watch-listing system is not broken, the failure to add Abdulmutallab to the no-fly list shows that this system needs to be strengthened."
The president had already blamed "systematic failures" for allowing 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the airliner with the explosive device, which failed to fully detonate.
Abdulmutallab was on a federal list of more than 500,000 suspected terrorists, but he was not on no-fly or additional screening watch list despite numerous red flags having been raised about him.
Following the president's comments, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr said "screening is going to be more invasive, it's going to be more expensive, and travelers should get used to the idea that the system will be slower."
Christmas Day Attack a Wake-Up Call for Obama
(Pete Souza)
At the meeting preceding the comments, Mr. Obama met with 20 top officials, including director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"This was a screw up that could have been disastrous," he said at the meeting, according to a senior administration official. "We dodged a bullet but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals not because the system worked and that is not acceptable. While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it."
Officials are engaged in separate reviews of passenger screening procedures and the use of terror watch lists. The president said a preliminary report from counterterrorism and homeland security adviser John Brennan on the watch lists will be made public in the next few days.
The review process, the president said in his comments Tuesday, "continues to reveal more about the human and systemic failures that almost cost nearly 300 lives." The White House said that leaders from various agencies and departments took responsibility for failures at the meeting.
Napolitano, whose comment that "the system worked" not long after the bombing attempt drew widespread criticism, briefed the president Tuesday on screening procedures. The White House has indicated that it believes the larger problem to be intelligence gathering, not screening.
At his White House briefing Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to comment on whether anyone would be fired over the situation. He said Blair, Panetta and Napolitano all have the backing of the White House.
The White House also announced Tuesday that the U.S. no longer send Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen, at last in the short run. Abdulmutallab had ties to terrorists in that country.
Mr. Obama acknowledged that decision but said the administration was still determined to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, which he called "a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda." About half of the remaining detainees at the facility are from Yemen, and the Department of Justice transferred six Yemeni detainees to the country's government last month.
In his comments, the president said that while he accepts "that intelligence by its nature is imperfect," officials must do better with American lives on the line.
"Time and again we've learned that quickly piecing together information and taking swift action is critical to staying one step ahead of a nimble adversary," he said. "So we have to do better, and we will do better, and we have to do it quickly."
"This was a screw up that could have been disastrous," he said at the meeting, according to a senior administration official. "We dodged a bullet but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals not because the system worked and that is not acceptable. While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it."
Officials are engaged in separate reviews of passenger screening procedures and the use of terror watch lists. The president said a preliminary report from counterterrorism and homeland security adviser John Brennan on the watch lists will be made public in the next few days.
The review process, the president said in his comments Tuesday, "continues to reveal more about the human and systemic failures that almost cost nearly 300 lives." The White House said that leaders from various agencies and departments took responsibility for failures at the meeting.
Napolitano, whose comment that "the system worked" not long after the bombing attempt drew widespread criticism, briefed the president Tuesday on screening procedures. The White House has indicated that it believes the larger problem to be intelligence gathering, not screening.
At his White House briefing Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to comment on whether anyone would be fired over the situation. He said Blair, Panetta and Napolitano all have the backing of the White House.
The White House also announced Tuesday that the U.S. no longer send Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen, at last in the short run. Abdulmutallab had ties to terrorists in that country.
Mr. Obama acknowledged that decision but said the administration was still determined to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, which he called "a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda." About half of the remaining detainees at the facility are from Yemen, and the Department of Justice transferred six Yemeni detainees to the country's government last month.
In his comments, the president said that while he accepts "that intelligence by its nature is imperfect," officials must do better with American lives on the line.
"Time and again we've learned that quickly piecing together information and taking swift action is critical to staying one step ahead of a nimble adversary," he said. "So we have to do better, and we will do better, and we have to do it quickly."
.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Saturday, January 02, 2010
On alert for terrorists
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Reports are flying and fingers are pointing because suspected airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was not identified as a potential terrorist.
Abdulmutallab was on the TIDE list, but that didn't set off alarms. If he had been on the Selectee List, he might have been stopped.
He was not on the No-Fly List, but you can see who is.
Thousands of specially trained officers at 161 U.S. airports might have spotted him. They look for specific behaviors, including micro-expressions.
Some are calling for high-tech full-body scanners at airports, though others complain they're too revealing. Check out pictures of how you would look.
The "8 Signs of Terrorism" video, narrated by a football legend, gives you direction of warning signs to look for.
The profiling of these people at airports has been seen as controversial.
Remember this guy? He and Abdulmutallab used the same type of explosive, and both failed.
Video clips explain what this attempted terrorist attack could mean for travelers headed to the airport. And don't complain: It pales in comparison to security checks at the airport considered the safest in the world.
What lies ahead? Future air travel screening may include special cameras and a good, hard look at your face.
.
.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
In Bomb Plot Probe, Spotlight Falls On Yemeni Cleric
by Dina Temple-Raston
December 30, 2009
December 30, 2009
December 30, 2009
Investigators have fanned out across the globe to piece together the life of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian student at the center of an alleged al-Qaida plot to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.
They know that Abdulmutallab went to an elite British boarding school in the African nation of Togo, studied engineering at the prestigious University College London, and was president of the student Islamic society there. They know he spent some time in Yemen and was enrolled at an Arabic language school in San'a from August until early December of this year.
After that, the details get fuzzier. Abdulmutallab allegedly claims he picked up the explosives used in the attack on the Northwest flight, bound from Amsterdam to Detroit, from an al-Qaida branch in Yemen. Investigators are trying to establish how he contacted them, and they are looking into his connection with a controversial U.S.-born imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, who, most recently, was linked to the November attack at Fort Hood, Texas.
Road Map For Jihadists
The FBI has been tracking Awlaki for some time. Born in New Mexico, he was an imam at several different mosques in the U.S. before he moved to Yemen. He emerged as a prominent figure last month when agents discovered that the accused shooter in the Fort Hood attack, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, e-mailed the imam in Yemen 18 times to ask his advice. Not long after that, Hasan allegedly went on the rampage that killed 13 people.
At first blush, listening to Awlaki's sermons on the Internet, one could be forgiven for thinking there must be some mistake. The speeches don't sound all that fiery. He speaks unaccented English and is soft-spoken. In fact, his tone of voice is actually rather sweet. But his demeanor belies a violent message. His most influential lecture is called "Constants on the Path to Jihad," or "44 Ways to Jihad," and it has become a road map for lone wolf jihadists.
"Wherever you see the word terrorist, replace it with the word jihad," he says in one of his Internet sermons. "Wherever you see the word terrorism, replace it with the word jihad."
What Awlaki is intonating is that attacks and killings that the rest of the world considers terrorism, he sees as perfectly legitimate.
Typically, in his Internet sermons, Awlaki reads from the Quran in Arabic, and because many of his followers don't speak Arabic, he interprets passages for them. The favored passages tend to be about fighting.
"When the forbidden months are passed, then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them," he says in one. "Seize them, beleaguer them and lie and wait for them in every stratagem of war."
Targeting Young Men
Sam Rascoff, formerly in charge of terrorism intelligence analysis at the New York Police Department, says Awlaki "has an unusual ability to interlace an appealing, familiar American preacher style with a fairly vitriolic message.
"And Awlaki is targeting young men searching for guidance."
Young men like bombing suspect Abdulmutallab.
"To listen to Awlaki is to feel like one is in the company of someone who understands you, understands your social predicament and literally and figuratively speaks your language," Rascoff says.
Law enforcement officials won't say definitively and on the record that the two men met, but they will say privately that the two were in contact.
NPR has learned that just before Abdulmutallab cut off all ties to his family in Nigeria, he apparently asked his father if he could go to Yemen to study Shariah (law). His father said no. Officials say Awlaki runs study sessions in Yemen that focus on Shariah. The question is whether Abdulmutallab decided to go to Yemen in August to see Awlaki.
Investigators are looking for clues in Nigeria, London and Yemen. They are also poring through hundreds of Internet postings that they believe were written by Abdulmutallab over the past four years. The postings are from a young man who had the username Farouk1986. That matches Abdulmutallab's middle name and birth year. And investigators say that some of the timing and details in the writings track Abdulmutallab's movements at the time.
The Internet postings begin in 2005 and are clearly written by a lonely young man. One post in 2005 read: "I am in a situation where I do not have a friend, I have no one to speak to ... I do not know what to do." That would have been about the time Abdulmutallab was alone at boarding school in Togo. Investigators say Abdulmutallab was young, didn't speak Arabic very well and was looking for religious guidance on the Internet. In other words, he was Awlaki's target audience.
Linked To Other Plots
"His facility with English has given him the kind of link that he's become the favored source" for English-speaking would-be jihadists, says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. Partly because of that, Awlaki's list of followers reads like a who's who in the jihadist world.
He is linked to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers; a group of Canadian Muslims who were charged with plotting attacks on the Parliament building in Ottawa; the six men convicted of planning an attack on Fort Dix, N.J.; and the London subway bombers, just to name a few. Hoffman says it is still unclear whether Awlaki was "doing this on his own or following the direction or guidance of others."
The sense among intelligence officials has been that Awlaki talks a big game and is not as closely affiliated to al-Qaida as he would like his followers to believe. That said, he is thought to be part of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the same group that claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas Day attack.
In Web postings, the group claimed to have trained Abdulmutallab and provided him with the explosives he carried onto the plane. Abdulmutallab allegedly told police that when he was arrested.
Awlaki moved to Yemen in 2002, and from his post there, he has sent out laudatory messages on his Facebook and YouTube sites after attacks. He called the alleged Fort Hood shooter a "hero." After the Somali Islamist militia group al-Shabab launched suicide attacks against the United Nations in Somalia, Awlaki also put out a congratulatory e-mail to the group.
Now investigators are trying to determine just how closely Awlaki is tied to this latest incident. They are trying to figure out if Abdulmutallab went to Yemen specifically to visit the cleric — and whether Awlaki played any role in introducing him to the people who may have provided the explosives for Northwest Flight 253.
..
P.S.
NPR's experts on geopolitical issues (Go to guys) are frequently from Georgetown University.
I wonder why?.
..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)