Shooting at Ft. Hood Texas 11/05/09 13 dead, 43 wounded-(Murder Charges)

[Heart]

FORT HOOD, Texas - A new command policy regarding registration requirements for privately-owned firearms was signed into effect Dec. 15 by Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, III Corps and Fort Hood commanding general.

The policy, and Fort Hood Regulation 190-11, requires all servicemembers and their families living, residing or temporarily staying on Fort Hood to register any POF kept on post with the Directorate of Emergency Services.

Servicemembers living in barracks or in post temporary housing must notify their immediate commander of the possession of POFs and keep the weapon in their respective unit arms room in accordance with Army Regulation 190-11 and Fort Hood Regulation 190-11, the policy states.

Servicemembers and their families living, residing or temporarily staying on Fort Hood will immediately notify DES of any sale, purchase, trade, gift, exchange or any other action that changes the ownership or long-term possession of a POF kept on the installation.

The policy states that “All persons, whether servicemember or civilian, who intend to transport a POF onto Fort Hood must first register that firearm with DES.” When entering Fort Hood, all persons are required to declare to access control point personnel that they are bringing a POF onto the installation.

“POFs being transported onto Fort Hood will, at all times, be accompanied by post registration documentation and are subject to inspection.”

The new policy is punitive in nature and applies to all III Corps and Fort Hood servicemembers, major subordinate units, tenant activities and family members across Fort Hood.

http://www.hood.army.mil/newsreleases/20091217-01.htm

[Heart]

CIA Prepared Report on Nigerian Terror Suspect Before Attempted Attack, Sources Say

FOXNews.com

The CIA's Africa desk had been preparing a report on the suspect in the Christmas Day airline plot well before the attempted attack but did not distribute it because the analyst in charge was waiting for pictures of the young Nigerian, Fox News has learned.

CIA's Africa division had prepared a report on a young Nigerian man well before he allegedly attempted to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, but the report wasn't distributed because the analyst in charge was waiting for pictures of the man, Fox News has learned.

Sources cite this as a main reason President Obama declared Tuesday that a "systemic failure" had occurred in the run-up to the attempted attack aboard a Northwest Airlines flight.

One official described the CIA report as containing a "more extensive description" of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's travel and contacts, which could have been used to keep him off the plane. The National Counterterrorism Center already had learned about Abdulmutallab and added his name to a terror database of more than a half-million people, but he had not been added to the smaller "no-fly" list or another list that requires secondary screening at airports.

There is disagreement, however, in the intelligence community about whether the CIA report was the "smoking gun" that should have sounded the alarm or rather one of many pieces of a puzzle that the government didn't assemble in time.

The new details come as intelligence, diplomatic and security officials scramble to explain what went wrong -- with lawmakers pointing fingers and Obama calling for "accountability."

Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to ignite an explosive smuggled aboard the plane in his underwear. The device caught fire but failed to detonate, and passengers quickly subdued Abdulmutallab.

The CIA report contained a reference to "more extensive description of (Abdulmutallab's) travel in the Middle East and his contacts," a U.S. intelligence official told Fox News.

But another U.S. official familiar with intelligence sharing at the CIA argued that "there was no smoking gun" in the report, adding that the National Counterterrorism Center has access to the CIA's raw intelligence and reports in progress.

Obama signaled Tuesday that his review of the incident will dig deep into the many warning signs that were missed at multiple levels of the federal bureaucracy.

"The warning signs would have triggered red flags and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America," Obama said.

Within hours of his remarks, new information trickled out about who knew what, and when. And it didn't look good for some agencies.

The basic timeline is this: As early as August, telephone intercepts alerted intelligence officials to someone called "The Nigerian" involved in a planned attack. The CIA, though, didn't realize that the individual was suspect Abdulmutallab until after the bombing attempt.

Then in November, the suspect's father contacted the U.S. embassy in Nigeria to warn U.S. officials about his son's radical associations and that he had disappeared. After the father's warning, the State Department sent a cable Nov. 20 to the National Counterterrorism Center warning about the son's possible extremist ties.

The cable said: "Information at post (embassy) suggests subject may be involved with Yemeni-based extremists." It went on to say Abdulmutallab has traveled to Great Britain, Togo and the United Arab Emirates.

At that point, his name was added to the terror database.

Obama said Tuesday that Abdulmutallab should have been on a no-fly list in part because of the father's warning. That information was passed on to U.S. intelligence, but it wasn't "effectively distributed," Obama said.

Another intelligence official said there was information out there that would have allowed the National Counterterrorism Center to potentially elevate the suspect's name on a terror database.

But other officials bristled at the suggestion that key warning signs were missed in the intelligence community.

One U.S. official told Fox News that the suggestion that a "magic" piece of intelligence would have shot Abdulmutallab's name to the top of the no-fly list is absurd.

One source told Fox News that the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center were all blind-sided by Obama's comments Tuesday about failures at multiple levels of government.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano also said the agency did not have the suspect's name until after his father met with U.S. embassy officials in Nigeria. He said the CIA worked with the embassy to ensure the suspect's name was in the terror database and forwarded "key biographical information" to the National Counterterrorism Center.

The State Department, too, deflected some attention on Monday, saying counterterrorism officials were the ones who decided not to revoke Abdulmutallab's visa. Spokesman Ian Kelly said that while the State Department has the authority to revoke a visa, it's not the department's responsibility. He said that after the suspect's father contacted the embassy, the warning was sent to the National Counterterrorism Center, which reviewed the case and determined there was "insufficient" evidence to take back the visa.

He said a review, nevertheless, is in order.

The preliminary results of an internal review are due Thursday to the president, who is on vacation in Hawaii.

A senior administration official, speaking with reporters on condition of anonymity, said enough had been known about the suspect to stop him, but the government didn't connect the dots.

"It is now clear to us that there were bits and pieces of information that were in the possession of the U.S. government in advance of the Christmas Day attack -- the attempted Christmas Day attack -- that had they been assessed and correlated could have led to a much broader picture and allowed us to disrupt the attack," the official said.

It's unclear how the White House intends to handle any glaring errors in the system. But Obama's remarks Tuesday were to an extent a correction to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's claim Sunday that "the system worked." Napolitano clarified Monday that she was referring to agency coordination after the attempt, not before.

But Napolitano's handling of the affair has made her an early target on editorial pages and from Republicans, who have long taken issue with the former Arizona governor. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., was the first to call for her resignation.

"The fact that this security breach occurred in such a brazen way means that there was a level of significant incompetence involved, and I believe that rests solely on the shoulders of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano," Burton said in a written statement Tuesday. "Her bizarre remarks on Sunday were the final straw in a series of embarrassing and incompetent comments this year."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/30/fingerpointing-begins-aftermath-attempted-terror-attack/

[Heart]

Suicide bomber kills 8 US civilians in Afghanistan
Eight American civilians were killed at a US base in Afghanistan on Wednesday when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest managed to get inside and blow himself up.
 
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 10:59PM GMT 30 Dec 2009

One official described Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Khost province near the Pakistan border, as a former military compound that was “not a regular base” any more. Another source said the base was used by “other agencies”, suggesting that intelligence personnel were involved. Breaching a secure base that carries out potentially sensitive operations made it a particularly bold attack.

A spokesman for the Nato coalition force in Kabul said that no US or Nato troops had been killed in the explosion, which took place in the afternoon. The bomber was thought to have detonated the bomb in or near a gym.
 
It was one of the highest American civilian death tolls in a single incident during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The last known CIA fatality in Afghanistan was Johnny “Mike” Spann, a paramilitary office killed during a jail riot at Qala-i-Jangi in 2001.

Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, is one of the centres of the Taliban insurgency. Most foreigners working there are soldiers or contractors working in reconstruction and intelligence operations. Afghan civilian casualties in the area have been increasing, raising tensions between the Afghan government and Western forces.

The attack on the Americans came as the international forces in Afghanistan - numbering 113,000 and set to grow to 150,000 next year - were embroiled in controversy over the deaths of Afghan civilians in an operation on Saturday.

President Hamid Karzai has accused international forces of shooting dead ten unarmed civilians, including eight teenagers. Nato’s International Security Assistance Force has disputed the findings of an Afghan government investigation, saying the deaths occurred in a battle in which nine insurgents were killed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6913861/Suicide-bomber-kills-8-US-civilians-in-Afghanistan.html

Video:Afghan Bombing Inside Job?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m85mQ144mo&feature=player_embedded

[Heart]

Hasan, who graduated with honors from Virginia Tech, is thought to have rented a room in this house in the 10300 block of Connecticut Avenue in Kensington. (Sarah L. Voisin/the Washington Post)

In aftermath of Fort Hood, community haunted by clues that went unheeded

By Eli Saslow, Philip Rucker, William Wan and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 31, 2009

Nidal Hasan was causing a ruckus in his one-bedroom apartment during the early hours of Nov. 5, banging against the thin walls long after midnight, packing boxes and shredding papers until he woke up the tenants next door.

Maybe that was a clue.

He picked up the phone at 2:37 a.m. and dialed a neighbor. Nobody answered. Hasan called again three hours later, this time leaving a message. "Nice knowing you, friend," he said. "I'm moving on from here."

Maybe that was a clue, too.

He left Apartment 9 early that morning and stopped next door to see a woman named Patricia Villa, whom he had known for less than a month. He gave her a bag of frozen vegetables, some broccoli, a clothing steamer and an air mattress, explaining that he was about to be deployed to a war zone. Then Hasan visited another neighbor, a devout Christian, who looked at him quizzically when he handed her a copy of the Koran and recommended passages for her to read. "In my religion," Hasan told her, "we'll do anything to be closer to God."

Just before the break of dawn in Killeen, Tex., Hasan drove away from the Casa Del Norte apartment complex and stopped for his customary breakfast at a nearby 7-Eleven. The store's owner, wary of him, had spent the past month pretending to be absent whenever Hasan entered. This time, Hasan approached the counter with coffee and hash browns at 6:22 a.m., wearing an Arab robe and a white kufi cap. Before fiddling in his pockets for change, buying his breakfast and driving away to work at Fort Hood, he smiled at another customer and issued what sounded like a warning.

"There's going to be big action on post around 1:30," he said, according to witnesses. "Be prepared."

Clues -- he left them everywhere. When viewed in retrospect, Hasan's life becomes an apparent trail of evidence that leads to an inevitable end. At 1:34 p.m. on Nov. 5, he bowed his head in prayer during his regular shift at Fort Hood, opened his eyes and started shooting, witnesses said. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist allegedly aimed for soldiers in uniform, firing more than 100 times with a semiautomatic pistol and a revolver. The terror lasted less than 10 minutes. Thirteen people died. Thirty were injured.
ad_icon

Now, more than seven weeks later, what is left of the Fort Hood tragedy is a community haunted by clues that somehow went unheeded. During a week in which the government has lamented missed signals in the case of an attempted bombing on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, there remain unresolved questions about how so many signals could have passed unnoticed before the Fort Hood shootings. While the Pentagon, the Army and the FBI work to complete investigations of Hasan with findings due next month, his former friends and colleagues sift backward through his biography and search for answers of their own.

This story, which attempts to fill in that biography, is based on interviews with 100 people who lived, worked or prayed with Hasan in Texas, the District, Virginia and Maryland -- a group now united by its obsession with the same troubling questions.

How do you differentiate between pious and fanatical?

Between lonely and isolated?

more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/30/AR2009123002874.html

[Heart]

Unnoticed Clues Haunt Fort Hood

Nidal Hasan left a trail of suspicious actions

By ELI SASLOW, PHILIP RUCKER, WILLIAM WAN and MARY PAT FLAHERTY
Updated 4:30 AM EST, Thu, Dec 31, 2009

Nidal Hasan was causing a ruckus in his one-bedroom apartment during the early hours of Nov. 5, banging against the thin walls long after midnight, packing boxes and shredding papers until he woke up the tenants next door.

Maybe that was a clue.

He picked up the phone at 2:37 a.m. and dialed a neighbor. Nobody answered. Hasan called again three hours later, this time leaving a message. "Nice knowing you, friend," he said. "I'm moving on from here."

Maybe that was a clue, too.

He left Apartment 9 early that morning and stopped next door to see a woman named Patricia Villa, whom he had known for less than a month. He gave her a bag of frozen vegetables, some broccoli, a clothing steamer and an air mattress, explaining that he was about to be deployed to a war zone. Then Hasan visited another neighbor, a devout Christian, who looked at him quizzically when he handed her a copy of the Koran and recommended passages for her to read. "In my religion," Hasan told her, "we'll do anything to be closer to God."

Just before the break of dawn in Killeen, Tex., Hasan drove away from the Casa Del Norte apartment complex and stopped for his customary breakfast at a nearby 7-Eleven. The store's owner, wary of him, had spent the past month pretending to be absent whenever Hasan entered. This time, Hasan approached the counter with coffee and hash browns at 6:22 a.m., wearing an Arab robe and a white kufi cap. Before fiddling in his pockets for change, buying his breakfast and driving away to work at Fort Hood, he smiled at another customer and issued what sounded like a warning.

"There's going to be big action on post around 1:30," he said, according to witnesses. "Be prepared."

Clues -- he left them everywhere. When viewed in retrospect, Hasan's life becomes an apparent trail of evidence that leads to an inevitable end. At 1:34 p.m. on Nov. 5, he bowed his head in prayer during his regular shift at Fort Hood, opened his eyes and started shooting, witnesses said. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist allegedly aimed for soldiers in uniform, firing more than 100 times with a semiautomatic pistol and a revolver. The terror lasted less than 10 minutes. Thirteen people died. Thirty were injured.

Now, more than seven weeks later, what is left of the Fort Hood tragedy is a community haunted by clues that somehow went unheeded. During a week in which the government has lamented missed signals in the case of an attempted bombing on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, there remain unresolved questions about how so many signals could have passed unnoticed before the Fort Hood shootings. While the Pentagon, the Army and the FBI work to complete investigations of Hasan with findings due next month, his former friends and colleagues sift backward through his biography and search for answers of their own.

This story, which attempts to fill in that biography, is based on interviews with 100 people who lived, worked or prayed with Hasan in Texas, the District, Virginia and Maryland -- a group now united by its obsession with the same troubling questions.

How do you differentiate between pious and fanatical?

Between lonely and isolated?

Between eccentric and crazy?

And the one question the former friends and colleagues return to most: Could they have recognized the clues in time to stop him?

‘An outcast’
Where were the clues back in 2001, when a friend told his Silver Spring youth group to emulate Hasan as the role model for well-rounded success? Here was a devoted student -- a summa cum laude graduate of Virginia Western Community College, an honors graduate of Virginia Tech -- now well on his way to becoming a doctor. Here was a devoted Muslim who regularly drove to a mosque to pray five times each day, as is customary among the devout, and stuck around between prayers to raise money for the homeless and find temporary housing for new arrivals to Washington. Here was a devoted son who took time off from school and made space in his one-bedroom apartment to care for his mother, sick with cancer.

Hasan took a leave from medical school to spend the better part of two years in his suburban Washington apartment with his mother, Nora, until she died on May 30, 2001. She was 49, and other family members considered her Hasan's closest confidante -- a woman who discouraged her son from joining the military only to later introduce herself as the mother of an Army officer. Hasan hosted her funeral at Dar al-Hijrah, Northern Virginia's biggest mosque, where more than 3,000 people sometimes attend evening prayer and stay afterward for brief funerals. Nora's service, held after a crowded Thursday prayer, was Hasan's last gift to his mother: Muslim belief dictates that the more people who pray for the deceased, the greater the rewards in heaven.

Nora's death left Hasan bereft of his anchor, relatives said, and over the next several years he started to drift. He moved three times in three years, renting rooms in one transient apartment building after the next in the Maryland suburbs.

In the meantime, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had made him an occasional target as a Muslim in the Army -- his car was twice vandalized with graffiti and dirty diapers at work -- and he confided to fellow Muslims that he opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt like "an outcast." Even inside the mosque, Hasan's haven, he was becoming a misfit as an aging bachelor in a religion that considers marriage not just a priority but a cultural duty.

Wife hunt
His solution was to find a new anchor. Hasan began looking for a wife.

It seemed less a search than a full-time obsession. Hasan's status as a doctor and a military officer made him a considerable catch, but his standards were exacting. He wanted a virgin of Arabic descent -- a woman in her 20s who wore the hijab, understood the Koran and prayed five times a day. He enlisted matchmaking help from three imams, a neighbor in his Silver Spring high-rise apartment complex and the proprietor of a Maryland deli where Hasan liked to eat halal meat for dinner. He quizzed fellow Muslim men about their wives and asked family members to keep an eye out for prospects.

As the years wore on with little to show for the search, Hasan's plight became a running joke among some at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring: Because of his age, fellow worshipers joked, Brother Nidal always got the first chance at any new woman who joined the mosque.

One day in 2006, as Hasan edged toward his late 30s, he attended a matchmaking event at the Islamic Society of the Washington Area. The annual gathering is a last-chance staple for hundreds of Muslims, some of whom travel from as far as India or Hawaii, to mingle over a breakfast buffet. But attending such an event was an uncharacteristic step for Hasan, who steadfastly avoided group parties with co-workers and who, his aunt Noel Hasan said, "did not make many friends easily and did not make friends fast."

Hasan arrived at the Islamic Society's beige house in Silver Spring, paid the $15 sign-up fee and completed his application. He wrote down his phone numbers, then changed his mind and crossed them out. He skipped several categories, filling out only the essential ones.

Height: 5'6.5".

Weight: 190.

Nationality: Palestinian.

Personality and character: "Quiet, reserved until more familiar with person. Funny, caring, and personable."

Priorities desired in a spouse: "Prays 5x/day at prescribed times. Wears hijab appropriately. Lives life according to Quran/Sunnah."

After breakfast, Hasan and the other 150 singles in attendance formed a gigantic circle and took turns introducing themselves. Some were divorced, others were widowed, and a few had children. When his turn came, Hasan talked about his work as a doctor and his devotion to Islam. Several women showed interest, but Hasan didn't reciprocate. Instead, as the singles filed out, Hasan visited privately with the matchmaker, Faizul Khan, and expressed disappointment. Not a single woman had interested him, he said.

Khan apologized and offered to let Hasan return in a few days to look through stacks of matchmaking applications from previous years. Maybe, Khan suggested, Hasan would find the pious woman of his dreams in the collection of 300 applications and accompanying head shots.

Maybe, Hasan agreed. But he never went back.

In the ensuing months, colleagues said, Hasan spent most of his time alone. He studied for long hours inside a wooden cubicle in the library of the Muslim Community Center, where the administrative assistant wondered whether he was lonely. He ate dinners by himself at his favorite deli, with an open laptop on the table and his head buried behind the monitor. Family members worried that he was becoming increasingly isolated -- with no wife, no parents, no close friends -- but Hasan reassured them. He had no time for company, he said. All of his energy was devoted to work.

Meanwhile, Hasan's colleagues were beginning to worry, too. He proselytized to them in the hallways of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was a psychiatry resident, turning conversations about war and the Redskins into lectures about the Koran. He spoke openly about his opposition to the war in Iraq, repeatedly saying that he could not imagine deploying to fight against fellow Muslims. As the war dragged into 2007, Hasan told family members that he had unsuccessfully tried to get out of the Army by consulting with a lawyer and even offering to repay the cost of his education.

While working at an overloaded military hospital desperate for psychiatrists, Hasan sometimes saw only one or two patients per week -- far fewer than most of his peers, many of whom privately regarded him as either a dud or a slacker. The patients Hasan did treat seemed to deeply unsettle him. He spoke to his aunt Noel Hasan about a patient who had mental problems and facial burns so severe that his skin had nearly melted. The sessions, the aunt quoted him as saying, were sometimes "traumatic." At least once, Hasan counseled a patient about the healing virtues of Islam, prompting a reprimand from his supervisors.

But nothing raised alarm among Hasan's colleagues at Walter Reed quite like his classroom presentations, which seemed to chart the evolution of his beliefs. In June 2007, he gave the culminating presentation of his medical residency to 25 colleagues and supervisors. He was allowed to talk about any subject, and Hasan stood at the front of the room and gave a 50-slide introduction to Islam.

Slide 11: "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims."

Slide 12: "(4.93) And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his punishment is hell."

Slide 49: "God expects full loyalty."

Slide 50: "Department of Defense should allow Muslim Soldiers the option of being released as 'Conscientious objectors' to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events."

Why no-one said anything
Hasan gave another presentation on the topic six months later, classmates said. This time, during his research, he e-mailed back and forth with Anwar al-Aulaqi, an al-Qaeda sympathizer living in Yemen (who also has been linked to the Nigerian man charged in the attempted Detroit plane bombing). Hasan also tested his material in front of fellow Muslims at the Silver Spring mosque. Other students in his public health class presented on topics such as water safety and mold. Hasan focused his work on the thesis that the war on terrorism was actually a war on Islam, several classmates said.

A few months later came a third presentation. This time, Hasan advanced his thesis by one degree: He spoke about the heroism of suicide bombers, classmates said.

Were these the clues of a developing extremist? Or just more cluelessness from a floundering student? Hasan's classmates were divided. At least one student mentioned his concerns to a medical staff supervisor; another classmate, a devout Christian, privately explained to Hasan that the conflict in Iraq was not about "warring with religion," prompting Hasan to shake his head and walk away.

One classmate thought Hasan was misunderstood: "I didn't see him as a threat, I saw him as fervent."

Another believed Hasan could pose a risk but kept quiet. "If you complain and someone higher up says you're biased, that can be a career ender. That dogs you."

By early 2009, what emerged were two conflicting narratives of Hasan's life, which now had only his name in common. One, told by his classmates and colleagues, depicted an isolated man struggling in his career and tending toward radicalism. The other, documented in Hasan's official record, continued to track an Army psychiatrist on the rise: Hasan completed his prestigious medical fellowship, earned a promotion to the rank of major despite his supervisors' misgivings and was named co-chairman of a panel assembled by the American Psychiatric Association. Then, in July 2009, he was assigned to Fort Hood, where he would evaluate and prepare soldiers for war, and prepare to go to war himself.

Guns Galore
Hasan told friends in Maryland that he wished he could avoid moving to Texas, and he never acted like he planned to stay long. Fort Hood staffers typically help officers locate nice places to live, but Hasan found his new home in the classified ads of the Killeen Daily Herald. He paid $325 per month for a one-bedroom unit in a shabby apartment complex on the seedy side of downtown. The welcome sign at the 27-unit Casa Del Norte apartment building was patched together with duct tape, and low-hanging electrical wires lined the nearby streets. Police were dispatched to the building about once a week.

Hasan usually left his apartment for prayer before dawn and returned late in the evening, wearing a white robe and clutching a copy of the Koran. His route home took him past a group of neighbors who liked to drink beer at the picnic table in the courtyard, and they sometimes laughed at his outfits. One neighbor, John Van de Walker, scraped a key across the passenger side of Hasan's car and ripped off a bumper sticker that read "Allah is Love." Van de Walker was charged with criminal mischief and fined, but Hasan told neighbors that he would forgive Van de Walker as a gesture during the holy month of Ramadan.

Shortly after moving to Killeen, Hasan made two purchases that would soon be seen as clues. He went to Guns Galore, a windowless white cinder-block shop on a country highway, and bought a high-powered semiautomatic pistol. He also ordered business cards that listed his professional specialties -- "Behavioral Health -- Mental Health -- Life Skills" -- without mentioning his involvement in the Army. The cards included an abbreviation after Hasan's name: "SoA," standing for "Slave of Allah" or "Soldier of Allah." It was an unusually forceful assertion, one considered odd even by the most pious Muslims.

During business hours at Fort Hood, Hasan worked at the Resilience and Restoration Center, writing psychological profiles of soldiers entering and exiting war. Nobody could study Hasan as closely. Regulars at a Killeen mosque knew him only as devoted and quiet; neighbors in his apartment building referred to him not by name but by his apartment number, calling him "Number 9." He ate dinner night after night at Golden Corral with an 18-year-old named Duane Reasoner, a recent Muslim convert who had left a trail of anti-American postings on jihadist Web sites, but they sat in a corner booth and kept their conversations at a low volume, witnesses said.

Lap dances and conflicting behavior
Nearly everyone in Killeen who interacted with Hasan considered him a mystery, and his actions became more confounding as October turned to November.

Why was an Army psychiatrist, instead of helping soldiers, obsessing over charging them with war crimes?

Why was a conservative Muslim going to the Starz strip club on the nights of Oct. 28 and 29, spending seven hours each night sitting alone at a round table near the stage, handing out Bud Lights and generous tips to each dancer and then buying a series of fully nude private lap dances that cost $50 each?

Why was an Army officer eschewing the shooting range at Fort Hood to drive 35 miles into the central Texas flatlands on Nov. 3 and take his target practice at Stan's Outdoor Shooting Range, where bullets sometimes ricocheted off square targets and hit cars?

Why, on the morning of Nov. 5, were witnesses seeing Hasan hand out copies of the Koran, give away his groceries, issue a warning at 7-Eleven, report to work, stand on a table, shout "Allahu Akbar" and wave two guns inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center?

Then Hasan allegedly opened fire, and suddenly the questions became clues, and the clues began to make horrifying sense.

Staff writers Anne Hull, Kafia Hosh and Dana Priest, research director Lucy Shackelford and staff researchers Meg Smith and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/breaking/Unnoticed_clues_haunt_Fort_Hood-80401817.html

[Heart]

Senior leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula_from left to right: Abu Hurayrah Qasim al-Reemi, Said al-Shihri, Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, and Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi.
IntelCenter / AP

Al-Qaeda in Yemen: Does the U.S. Have a Military Option?

By Mark Thompson / Washington Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009

The foiled bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day has raised talk of striking at al-Qaeda in Yemen, where the plot is believed to have originated. Yet the extremists operating from Yemen present the military with precious view good "aim points." In the old days, the enemy had airfields, early-warning radars, ammo depots — even big defense and intelligence headquarters — that could be destroyed from the air. A general could stride manfully out to the Pentagon podium, wave his pointer like a magic wand at a map where little explosion drawings had been inked, and gleefully tally up the destruction. (Read "The Lessons of Flight 253.")

That was back when nations waged war against one another; today's bad guys are increasingly "non-state actors." Near the top of the list right now are Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi and former Guantanamo detainee Saeed Ali Shehri, the leaders of the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is believed to have trained and outfitted alleged airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. There is also intelligence suggesting that radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based cyber pen pal of Major Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 Army personnel at Fort Hood in November, may have been in contact with Abdulmutallab. (See pictures of the accused Fort Hood Gunman.)

But killing three individuals is a tough assignment for the military, and the dearth of targets offered by terrorist foes frustrates military planners. Too often, they end up bombing chemical-weapons factories that turn out to be pharmaceutical plants (as in Sudan in 1998) or vainly firing missiles that do little more than rustle the flaps on terrorists' tents (in Afghanistan the same year). Such strikes run the risk of highlighting America's impotence rather than its might.

That's President Obama's dilemma as he weighs how to react to the attempted Christmas bombing. There's no doubt, U.S. intelligence officials say, that there is a resurgent core of about 200 AQAP members, aided by thousands of locals, inside Yemen. But the core tends to live among the nation's 23 million people, especially following two recent Yemeni-U.S. strikes against purported AQAP training camps that are claimed to have killed more than 60 militants. The attacks on December 17 and 24 were initially hoped to have had killed Wahishi, Shehri and al-Awlaki, but no evidence has yet demonstrated this to be the case. And there's scant chance those men will allow themselves to end up in the U.S. military's crosshairs by straying far from the human shield provided by innocent Yemenis. (Read "Despite U.S. Aid, Yemen Faces Growing al-Qaeda Threat.")

In the wake of an event like the attempted bombing of Flight 253, Washington often reacts simply to calm a jittery public. That's what led to initial dubious orders to keep airline passengers in their seats for the final hour of flight. Now the Administration is assessing the wisdom of various military strikes on supposed al-Qaeda training sites inside Yemen. But there are few good options. Obama doesn't want to end up like Bill Clinton, whose futile 1998 cruise missile "retaliation" for the East Africa embassy bombings did al-Qaeda more good than harm. Given the partisan sniping already breaking out following the failed airline bombing, the last thing Obama needs right now is to be accused of launching what General Tommy Franks once derided as "pinpricks." (After the 9/11 attacks, Franks voiced his glee that he would no longer be ordered to launch "million-dollar [cruise missiles] into empty tents."

Whatever action he takes, Obama will have to pay attention to the concerns of the weak pro-U.S. Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Washington wants to continue its cooperative relationship with Saleh, and is encouraging his government to take the lead in rooting out al-Qaeda within Yemen's borders. The U.S. is helping, boosting counter-terrorism funding for Yemen from less than $5 million in 2006 to $67 million in 2009, and dispatching CIA and military personnel to train Yemeni forces. But the al-Qaeda problem has been a lesser security priority for Yemen than two unrelated separatist insurgencies in the north and south of the country. (See pictures of conflict in Yemen.)

Unlike an Afghanistan run by the Taliban, missile strikes into a country run by allies could prove politically disastrous for a nation whose citizenry seethes with anti-American sentiment. That's a big reason why there have been so few details about the two strikes earlier this month — although the operation was undertaken by the Yemeni military, some missiles may have come from U.S. ships or planes in the neighborhood. Just as in Pakistan, another weak government that leans Washington's way and whose territory is infested by al-Qaeda, it is important for these governments not to be seen to be acting on Washington's orders.

In fact, Yemen itself offered one successful approach to the problem Obama now faces. Ever since a pair of al-Qaeda suicide bombers in a skiff attacked the USS Cole in Yemen's Aden harbor in 2000 and killed 17 U.S. sailors, Washington had been looking to punish the ringleader of the attack, Qaed Sinan Harithi. More than two years later, after learning he would be traveling across the country in an SUV, the U.S. launched a Predator drone. Once in the open countryside, safely away from any civilians, the drone fired a Hellfire missile into the vehicle, instantly dispatching Harithi and five al-Qaeda colleagues to the ultimate highway rest stop. That marked the first time the U.S. had killed a foe using an unmanned drone. It's a safe bet such aircraft are now orbiting in and around Yemeni airspace, looking to duplicate that feat.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1950834,00.html?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0bH20BoNw

[Heart]

Waging holy war

With an enemy defeated, we can turn to praying for his salvation
Janie B. Cheaney


Chuck Norris does not have stomach problems; he is stomach problems (not an official "Chuck Norris fact"). But during a visit to Brooke Army Medical Center he fell prey to nausea upon learning that Major Nidal Hasan was a patient in the same facility as his victims. "To be honest, [writes Chuck] it made me sick to my stomach and sent shivers of disgust down my spine."

Hasan's shootout at Fort Hood is now considered the worst instance of domestic terrorism since 9/11, and his motives seem clear to anyone who will look. His reported behavior before and during reads like a checklist of jihadist protocol: Post disturbing messages online; give away possessions; visit strip club; shout "Allahu Akbar!" while raining destruction on infidels. Only at the end did his plan go awry.

Hasan no doubt expected to go out gloriously in a hail of bullets. Instead he was cornered by two Texas cops and crippled for life. To compound the agony, at least one of the shots that brought him down was fired by a woman. This must be special hell for the dedicated jihadist: knocked off the fast track to paradise by a lower life form and left with not even a veil of unconsciousness to cover his shame.

But what if, instead of living death, Hasan could experience rebirth?

Less than 100 miles from Fort Hood is Hearne, "the crossroads of Texas," where freight trains rumble through the night. During World War II those trains brought in carloads of POWs from Germany's Afrika Korps to fill one of the largest camps in the entire POW system. Though some enlisted men were sent to work on nearby farms, most of the prisoners were noncommissioned officers, and thus exempt. They filled their days according to their skills: built theaters and a repertoire company, formed a first-class orchestra from members of Rommel's personal band, crafted fountains and statues that still exist. At least for the first few years, prisoners ate better than the local civilians, who started calling Camp Hearne the "Fritz Ritz."

Such consideration eventually turned enemies into friends: After the war, hundreds of former prisoners came back to visit, and some to live. Their experience was typical of POW camps across the nation, and a precursor of extraordinary efforts by the United States not just to forgive our enemies but to help them recover from the devastation they began. Part of this may have been due to guilt over the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, but the record stands: No other nation in history has done as much to "love its enemies."

One thing we must remember, though: Before an enemy can be loved, he must first be defeated. The strong man must be bound. The tolerance shown to Major Hasan before his rampage only made him more contemptuous and determined. Now that the tables have turned and our enemy has fallen into our hands, how do we respond?

That's the quandary Joseph faced when the brothers who persecuted him were at his mercy. Fortunately for them, he had gained wealth and power and enough perspective to know that "God meant it for good." Likewise, the USA was rich and powerful after World War II, blessed with the perspective of two wide oceans.

Christians are rich in grace and powerful in prayer, with the perspective of eternity. Nidal Hasan can't receive visits from clergy (Muslim or Christian), but he is receiving cards and letters. Although the mail is copied by government officials before it's passed on to him, no official can hinder what he needs most. The outer man was crippled by a bullet, but only intense, sustained prayer will subdue the demon within (Mark 9:29).

Chuck Norris concedes that our treatment of Hasan is a measure of our greatness, even if (one suspects) he could cheerfully commandeer a tank and run the man over. Good riddance! But our hearts should always be open to opportunity, and hope abides with life: good deliverance!

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16255

[Heart]

Obama to Get First Reports of Probe Into Christmas Day Terror Attempt

VOA News 31 December 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama will receive the results of a preliminary investigation Thursday into the security lapses that preceded the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound jetliner on Christmas Day.

The focus of the probe appears to be aimed at the National Counterterrorism Center, the main agency charged with collecting and analyzing intelligence gathered by many key government agencies.  Officials say the center failed to connect the various reports on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young Nigerian man suspected of attempting the attack.

But U.S. news outlets say the probe has also discovered that other government entities, such as the CIA and the U.S. State Department, failed to aggressively follow up on information they had received about Abdulmutallab.

Mr. Obama ordered the investigation after Abdulmutallab, who has been linked with al-Qaida terrorists, tried and failed to detonate explosives concealed in his underwear during a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The president also ordered a probe of aviation-screening initiatives at U.S. airports.  Dutch and Nigerian officials both announced Wednesday they will begin using full-body scanners to tighten airport security in their respective nations.

The scanners, unlike metal detectors, produce a whole-body image of a passenger and can reveal plastic or chemical explosives hidden in clothing.

But the security scanners are controversial because they display a detailed image of a passenger's body on a computer screen.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Obama-to-Get-First-Reports-of-Probe-Into-Christmas-Day-Terror-Attempt-80405767.html

[Heart]

Attorney: Fort Hood Suspect Has More Restrictions

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 31, 2009

Filed at 4:53 p.m. ET

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- The Fort Hood mass shooting suspect's attorney says his client is treated more harshly than other soldiers suspected of crimes.

Attorney John Galligan says Maj. Nidal Hasan has excessive restrictions -- including a ban on visitors when his attorneys are in his hospital room.

Fort Hood officials didn't return calls seeking comment Thursday.

Galligan says he can't work on Hasan's case because he needs to meet with Hasan and one of his relatives at the same time.

Hasan is at a San Antonio military hospital, recovering from wounds that left him paralyzed.

Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the Nov. 5 shooting. He was shot by base police, authorities have said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/31/us/AP-US-Fort-Hood-Shooting.html

[Heart]

Official: Apparent contact between AbdulMutallab and radical cleric

December 31, 2009 -- Updated 1643 GMT (0043 HKT)


Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab appears to have had contact with
radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.


Washington (CNN) -- Terror suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab appears to have had direct contacts with radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN Thursday.

The official could not say more about the contacts, their frequency or timing.

Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he believes there is a connection between AbdulMutallab, who is accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day, and the American-born cleric.

Officials are evaluating whether al-Awlaki played a role in the botched attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan on Christmas Day. The attempt to ignite explosives hidden in AbdulMutallab's underwear failed to bring down the plane.

Al-Awlaki's name surfaced in November when U.S. officials revealed he and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 -- had exchanged e-mails. The intercepted e-mails between the two, officials said, had not not set off alarm bells.

The cleric recently told Al Jazeera's Arabic-language Web site that he had been in touch with Hasan in recent years. In that interview, al-Awlaki said he met Hasan nine years ago while serving as an imam at a mosque in the Washington, D.C., area.

The cleric said Hasan communicated with him via e-mail starting about a year before the shooting rampage -- seeking advice about killing U.S. troops, the cleric said.

The cleric said he lauded the Fort Hood attack because it was aimed at troops, whom he accused of fighting an unjust war against Islam.

"It is a military target inside America and there is no dispute over that," al-Awlaki said. "Also, these military personnel are not ordinary; they were trained and ready to fight and kill oppressed Muslims, and commit crimes in Afghanistan."

The 9/11 Commission Report says al-Awlaki had contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers while they were in the United States, though there is no evidence he knew of the plot.

Al-Awlaki is believed to have fled to Yemen in 2003 or 2004. Since then, he has been referred to as a "rock star" by some of those who incite radicalism on the Internet.

His current whereabouts are unknown to U.S. officials. Some have speculated that he was killed in a recent strike on suspected jihadist hideouts in Yemen.

But a U.S. official said the intelligence community believes al-Awlaki is alive. His own family was quoted this week as having said the same thing.

Al-Awlaki's relatives deny he has played any role with al Qaeda. CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said he has seen no evidence to the contrary. "There's no indication that al-Awlaki the cleric is in any way involved in operational matters for al Qaeda, but clearly he has operated as an inciter to jihad in the United States, by his own account," Bergen said.

But even before his name came up in connection with the Fort Hood shootings, al-Awlaki was a subject of scrutiny by the counterterrorism community as he had moved into what one official described as "more of an operational role" for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

CNN Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve and National Security Producer Pam Benson contributed to this story.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/31/abdulmutallab.terror.radical.cleric/

[Heart]

Jetliner incident reveals role Internet imams play

By The New York Times
December 31, 2009, 10:12PM


This photograph of attempted bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was made in 2001 by Mike Rimmer, a teacher at Lomo's International School in Togo, while on a trip to London. ERIC SCHMITT and ERIC LIPTON, New York Times

WASHINGTON -- The apparent ties between the Nigerian man charged with plotting to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day and a radical American-born Yemeni imam have cast a spotlight on a world of charismatic clerics who wield their Internet notoriety to indoctrinate young Muslims with extremist ideology and recruit them for al-Qaida, U.S. officials and counterterrorism specialists said.

U.S. military and law enforcement authorities said Thursday that the man accused in the bombing attempt, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, most likely had contacts with the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who investigators have also named as having exchanged e-mail messages with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting rampage last month at Fort Hood, Texas.

Speaking in eloquent, often colloquial, English, Awlaki and other Internet imams from the Middle East to Britain offer a televangelist's persuasive message of faith, purpose and a way forward, for both the young and as yet uncommitted, as well as the most devout worshippers ready to take the next step, to jihad, officials say.

"People across the spectrum of radicalism can gravitate to them, if they're just dipping their toe in or they're hard core," said Jarret Brachman, author of "Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice" (Routledge, 2008) and a consultant to the U.S. government about terrorism. "The most important thing they do is take very complex ideological thoughts and make them simple, with clear guidelines on how to follow Islamic law."

American and European authorities say some of these clerics, like Awlaki, offer something much more sinister than just guideposts to radical Islam: a pipeline to al-Qaida operatives in places like Yemen and the lawless Pakistan tribal areas.

"Awlaki is, among other things, a talent spotter," a U.S. counterterrorism official said. "That's part of his value to al-Qaida."

Investigators are still trying to determine the precise nature of any contacts between Abdulmutallab and Awlaki.

In an online posting in 2005 under the name "farouk1986," Abdulmutallab referred to another radical Muslim cleric he listened to, a Jamaican-born preacher named Abdullah el-Faisal.

Faisal, who was deported from Britain in 2007, was convicted four years earlier for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, urging his followers to kill Hindus, Christians, Jews and Americans. He was later accused of influencing one of the attackers in the London bombings of July 2005.

http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/12/jetliner_incident_reveals_role.html

[Heart]

Focus on Internet Imams as Recruiters for Al Qaeda
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01imam.html

Prominent Clerics Who Have Helped Inspire Global Jihad

[Heart]

Counter- penetration & counter – sanctuaries

Thursday, December 31, 2009 Leave a Comment

“Counter-penetration refers to one’s ability to thwart the attempts of the terrorists to penetrate one’s set-up-----sometimes to collect the intelligence required for planning their operations and sometimes for the planning and execution of their terrorist strikes.”
…………………………………….

By B.Raman

(January 01, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) There can be no effective counter-terrorism without effective counter-penetration and counter-sanctuaries techniques and capabilities.

Penetration refers to one’s capability to penetrate the set-up of a terrorist organization to collect human and technical intelligence about its future plans. The impressive success rate of the unmanned Drone flights of the US in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan since August,2008, spoke of a significant improvement in the penetration operations of the US intelligence community in their continuing fight against Al Qaeda and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.


Similarly, the impressive number of instances of detection and neutralization of indigenous and Pakistan-sponsored terrorist cells by the Indian intelligence community and police during 2009 was the outcome of an improvement in their penetration operations----after the series of explosions in the urban areas organized by the so-called Indian Mujahideen since November,2007, and after the 26/11 terrorist strikes by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan in Mumbai.

Effective penetration is important for successful counter-terrorism, but the gains made by effective penetration can be diluted if it is not accompanied by effective counter-penetration.

Counter-penetration refers to one’s ability to thwart the attempts of the terrorists to penetrate one’s set-up-----sometimes to collect the intelligence required for planning their operations and sometimes for the planning and execution of their terrorist strikes.

A weak counter-penetration capability facilitates a terrorist strike. Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capability of the Indian counter-terrorism community were brought out by the ease with which David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana of the Chicago cell of the LET managed to obtain visas from the Indian Consulate-General in Chicago without a proper scrutiny of their visa applications and the equal ease with which they repeatedly managed to pass through the Indian immigration manned by intelligence officers without a proper scrutiny of their passports and their landing and departure cards.

The success of Headley in visiting different places in India in order to collect operational information, staying in hotels and making a network of contacts without being suspected even once by the police Special Branches in different states showed the disturbing state of our counter-penetration capability. One of the principal tasks of the police Special Branches and the regional offices of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) all over the country is to detect and neutralize attempts of indigenous and foreign terrorist organizations to penetrate our set-up. The fact that neither the passport-visa section of the Ministry of External Affairs nor the airport set-ups of the IB and the R&AW nor the Special Branches of different States and the regional offices of the IB and R&AW suspected Headley and Rana even once till they were ultimately arrested by the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in October,2009, speaks poorly of them.

Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capabilities of the US in the US homeland were brought out by an incident in a US military base in Fort Hood, Texas, on November 6, 2009.Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist of the US Army born to Palestinian migrants to the US from Jordan, suddenly went on a killing spree killing 13 soldiers with a handgun before he was injured and overpowered. Initially, it was presumed to be an isolated attack of an angry Muslim individual in the US Army, but subsequent enquiries have brought out worrisome details of his alleged contacts with Anwar Al Awlaki, an extremist cleric born in the US, who has been living in Yemen since 2002. Many regard Awlaki as an ideologue of Al Qaeda in Yemen. There were adverse indicators about Major Hasan in the past, but these were either not noticed or, if noticed, not taken seriously.

Even now, there is a reluctance in the Obama Administration to admit that the case of Major Hasan indicates a possible success of Al Qaeda in penetrating the US Army and was made possible by a weak counter-penetration capability in the US homeland. This is similar to the reluctance of the Government of India to admit weaknesses in our counter-penetration set-up, which were exploited by Headley and Rana.

Weaknesses in the counter-penetration capabilities of the US in the Af-Pak region have now been revealed by the ease with which the Afghan Taliban penetrated the Afghan National Army (ANA) by having one of its members recruited into it and used him to kill seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed near the Pakistan border in the Khost province of Afghanistan through an act of suicide terrorism.

Details available till now indicate that the CIA set-up in the Khost area was playing an important role in facilitating the Drone strikes in the FATA. If this is correct, the Afghan Taliban not only managed to identify the CIA set-up in Afghan territory, which was behind the increasing successes of the Drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but also managed to penetrate it without its penetration efforts being thwarted by the counter-penetration capabilities of the US intelligence community.

Counter-penetration is a difficult task in an operational area such as Jammu & Kashmir in India’s fight against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism or in the Af-Pak region in the USA’s fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Failures are bound to be there despite the best efforts at counter-penetration. One should keep admitting and analysing those failures in order to identify and close gaps in counter-penetration security.

Counter-penetration failures in non-operational areas such as in the Indian hinterland in the case of Headley and Rana and in the US homeland in the case of Major Hasan should be a matter of serious concern. In the case of India, the failures lasted nearly three years before they were noticed after the arrest of Headley and Rana by the FBI in October,2009.

If such failures have to be reduced, if not prevented, in future, one must have the political courage to admit them and go into them thoroughly. One does not find evidence of such courage either in Washington DC or in New Delhi. The reflexes in the two capitals are similar---- play down the gravity of the failures and avoid a thorough probe.

The post-1967 escalation in terrorism by organisations such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Abu Nidal Group, the Hizbollah, the set-up of Carlos, the Baader-Meinhof of the then West Germany, the Red Army factions of West Germany and Japan, the Irish Republican Army etc was made possible partly by the support received by them from the Muslim States such as Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Iran and partly by the support from the USSR and other communist states.

While the PLO, the Abu Nidal Group and the Hizbollah were the beneficiaries of support from the Muslim States, the other organisations received the backing of the communist states in East Europe, North Korea and Cuba. In both cases, the support consisted of not only money, training, arms and ammunition and false documentation, but also, more importantly, sanctuaries.

It was the realisation that no counter-terrorism fight against a foreign-sponsored terrorist organisation can be effective unless action is taken against the guilty State, which motivated the US Congress in the late 1970s to make it mandatory for the US Administration to act against foreign state-sponsors of terrorism. The post-1991 collapse of the Communist States in East Europe practically brought an end to the activities of the ideologically-oriented leftist terrorist groups. Without sanctuaries and other assistance from countries such as the then East Germany and Yugoslavia, they could not survive.

It was again the pressure exercised by the US against States such as Syria and the Sudan, which made organisations such as Al Qaeda shift their sanctuaries to the Af-Pak region. It is the present reluctance of successive US administrations to act as vigorously against Muslim States sponsoring or aiding jihadi terrorism in foreign territories as they used to act against communist states in the past which should account for the continuing successes of organisations such as Al Qaeda and the LET.

India paid a heavy price on 26/11 for the continuing inaction against Pakistan’s state-sponsorship of jihadi terrorism. The US almost paid a similar price at Detroit on 25/12 when a Nigerian terrorist, trained in a sanctuary in Yemen, narrowly failed in his attempt to blow up an American plane over Detroit. Whereas Pakistan has been using terrorism as a strategic weapon to advance its foreign policy objectives, there is no reason to believe that Yemen is doing the same. But Yemen’s inability to act effectively against the sanctuaries in its territory is posing the same threat to the security of the US homeland as Pakistan’s active complicity with the terrorists is posing to the security of the Indian and US homelands.

Unless effective counter-penetration and counter-sanctuaries strategies are devised and enforced vigorously, we will all continue to bleed at the hands of the jihadi terrorists.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2009/12/counter-penetration-counter-sanctuaries.html

[Heart]

Former Gitmo Detainees Help Al-Qaida Grow in Yemen


This image taken from an undated video posted on a militant-leaning
Web site Friday, Jan. 23, 2009, and provided by the SITE Intelligence
Group shows Said Ali al-Shihri.

As a prisoner at Guantanamo, Said Ali al-Shihri said he wanted freedom so he could go home to Saudi Arabia and work at his family's furniture store.

Instead, al-Shihri, who was released in 2007 under the Bush administration, is now deputy leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that has claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempted bomb attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.

more...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9457031

[Heart]

Report to Obama Shows Intelligence Lapses Persist

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 31, 2009

Filed at 9:22 p.m. ET

HONOLULU (AP) -- U.S. security chiefs briefed President Barack Obama on Thursday about missteps in the lead-up to the attempted Detroit jetliner bombing as lawmakers joined the White House in racing to find out what went wrong.

The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Jan. 21 hearings as part of an investigation to begin sooner. ''We will be following the intelligence down the rabbit hole to see where the breakdown occurred and how to prevent this failure in the future,'' said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, top Republican on the committee. ''Somebody screwed up big time.''

Few questioned that judgment, even if Obama's fellow Democrats rendered it in more measured tones. Vacationing in Hawaii, Obama received an preliminary assessment ahead of meetings he will hold in Washington next week on fixing the failures of the nation's anti-terrorism policy. Administration officials said the system to protect the nation's skies from terrorists was deeply flawed and, even then, the government failed to follow its own directives.

Obama spoke separately with counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who announced she was dispatching senior department officials to international airports to review their security procedures.

Despite billions of dollars spent to sharpen America's eye on dangerous malcontents abroad and at home, the creation of an intelligence-information overseer and countless declarations of intentions to cooperate, it was already clear that the country's national security fiefdoms were still not operating in harmony before the attempted bombing Dec. 25.

The preliminary assessment is part of a continuing, urgent examination that officials said Thursday is highlighting signals that should not have been missed. One likely outcome, they said, was new requirements within the government to review a suspicious person's visa status.

Officials are tracing a communications breakdown that would have had grave consequences except for the attacker's fumbling failure to detonate an explosion and the quick response of others on the flight. Now Obama, like George W. Bush before him, is struggling to get the nation's disparate intelligence and security agencies on the same page.

In the heat of hindsight, even Obama and some fellow Democrats are excoriating a system they thought was on the mend in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Democrats are joining a chorus led by Obama in declaring the government's intelligence procedures in need of repair. Among them, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said that when the government gets tipped to trouble as it did before a Nigerian man boarded a Detroit-bound jet with explosives, ''someone's hair should be on fire.''

Instead an anxious father's pointed warning that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had drifted into extremism in Yemen, an al-Qaida hotbed, was only partially digested by the U.S. security apparatus and not linked with a visa history showing the young man could fly to the U.S.

That was one prominent lapse the review is addressing, said U.S. officials familiar with the process. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public.

The State Department has said it followed the procedures laid out in regulations adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that require it to share potential threat information in an interagency process led by the National Counterterrorism Center.

In this case, the potential threat was in the form of the father's warning expressed to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on Nov. 19, that Abdulmutallab was falling under the influence of extremists in Yemen. The information was passed to Washington the next day in a so-called Visas Viper cable identifying potential terrorists.

While meeting the standards set out in the regulations, the cable did not contain supplementary information, such as the fact that Abdulmutallab held a valid U.S. visa, the officials said. Although that detail could have been found by looking in other databases, officials said the review is likely to make the reporting of a subject's visa history mandatory.

The State Department received no request to revoke Abdulmutallab's visa, spokesman Ian Kelly said. He said that in the post-Sept. 11 era, State normally relies on an interagency screening system to advise the department of visas that should be revoked based on terrorism-related concerns, although it has the authority to do so on its own.

The department's visa and reporting procedures are being examined as part of the government's review, Kelly said.

Other clues were missed too, such as conversations between the suspect and at least one al-Qaida member that U.S. authorities are studying now. The form of the conversations, whether written or by phone, has not been disclosed and it is not known whether U.S. officials intercepted them before the attack or found them later.

For the second time in two months leaders are acknowledging ''systemic'' security lapses due in part to the government's failure to sift through and fully share intelligence.

In the year before the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage in November that killed 13 people, a joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned of the Army suspect's repeated contact with a radical cleric in Yemen who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops but did not relay the information about the major to superiors.

The government overhauled the intelligence system in 2004, creating the office of national intelligence director as part of it. The goal was to ensure that information pulled from a multitude of intelligence sources and sometimes hoarded by one agency reaches authorities who are capable of penetrating the white noise of information and acting on genuine threats.

''The act set up a process to transition from a 'need to know' culture to a 'need to share' culture, but the Christmas bomb incident is evidence that we have much work to do,'' said Harman, who leads a House homeland security panel.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: ''The Christmas Day incident revealed some serious failures in our nation's system of security.''

------

Woodward reported from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/31/us/AP-US-Airliner-Attack-Obama.html

[Heart]

Yemen links accused jet bomber, radical cleric

By Sudarsan Raghavan
In Print: Friday, January 1, 2010


SANA, Yemen — A senior Yemeni official says the Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day might have met with suspected al-Qaida operatives in a house used by a radical Yemeni-American cleric.

Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi, Yemen's deputy prime minister for defense and security affairs, also said the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, is believed to be alive. It was the first such statement from Yemen's government on the fate of the U.S.-born preacher, who also has been linked to the gunman accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5. Obama administration officials have said Awlaki was killed in a Dec. 24 airstrike on a house in southeastern Yemen where he had met with the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Alimi said U.S. authorities did not alert Yemen when CIA operatives learned in August that al-Qaida was planning to set in motion "a Nigerian bomber."

Nor were the Yemenis informed that Abdulmutallab's father had raised concerns in November about his son's growing Islamic radicalism, Alimi said. Abdulmutallab was in Yemen from August until December.

"If we had received the information at the appropriate time, our security apparatus could have taken obvious measures to stop him," Alimi said.

Alimi said the investigation is focusing on the Shabwa province in southeastern Yemen, a known al-Qaida stronghold, where Abdulmutallab might have been in October. Investigators, he said, believe this was where Abdulmutallab was trained and equipped with explosive chemicals sewn into his underwear

In Shabwa, the 23-year-old engineering graduate met with al-Qaida operatives in a house built by Awlaki to hold theological sessions, said Alimi. Suspected al-Qaida leaders were believed to be meeting with Awlaki in the house at the time of the Dec. 24 airstrike. U.S. and Yemeni authorities say Awlaki has strong ties to al-Qaida.

U.S. investigators have said Awlaki was in contact by e-mail with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist accused in the Fort Hood attack.

Awlaki has said he considers Hasan a "hero" but has denied encouraging the Fort Hood attack.

Airport security missteps under review

U.S. security chiefs briefed President Barack Obama on Thursday about missteps in the lead-up to the attempted Detroit jetliner bombing. Obama will hold meetings in Washington next week on fixing the failures of the nation's antiterrorism policy. Obama spoke separately with counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who announced she was dispatching senior department officials to international airports to review their security procedures. The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Jan. 21 hearings as part of an investigation.

Nigeria underusing full-body scanners

The United States gave Nigeria four full-body scanners for its international airports in 2008 to detect explosives and drugs, but none was used on the man suspected of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight, Nigerian officials say. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tracked by cameras through the security check, only went through a metal detector and had his bag X-rayed, the officials say. A spokesman for the antidrug agency that operates the Nigerian machines said the one at Lagos airport is used sporadically and only on potential narcotics smugglers. Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport has 15 scanners, but the United States has discouraged their routine use on privacy grounds.

Somalis release man in airport incident

In a setback for U.S. investigators, a Somali official said Thursday that another suspect who tried to board a plane with chemicals already had been freed. His release last month will hamper efforts to learn whether the incident in Mogadishu was linked to the attempted attack against the U.S.-bound plane on Christmas Day. Terrorism analysts had said the arrest in Somalia could prove highly valuable to the U.S. investigation. The Somali police commissioner, Gen. Ali Hassan Loyan, said a Somali court released the suspect Dec. 12 after ruling that officials hadn't demonstrated he intended to commit a crime.

Associated Press


[Last modified: Dec 31, 2009 09:26 PM]

http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/yemen-links-accused-jet-bomber-radical-cleric/1062446

[Heart]

Attorney: Hasan being treated unfairly

Lawyer complains of treatment for Fort Hood shooting suspect
By ANGELA K. BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dec. 31, 2009, 6:45PM


FORT WORTH — The Fort Hood shooting suspect's attorney said Thursday that he is being hampered by a lack of access to information in the case and his client's excessive confinement restrictions.

Attorney John Galligan said he planned to meet with Maj. Nidal Hasan and one of his relatives Thursday in his room at a San Antonio military hospital, where Hasan is undergoing rehabilitation for his wounds that left him paralyzed.

But Galligan said he canceled the trip, a three-hour drive, after hospital military guards said they would enforce the rule barring Hasan from having any other visitors when his attorneys are in the room. Galligan said he has tried to have the rule overturned, saying it constitutes pretrial punishment that is not allowed under military law, but that Army prosecutors have not returned his calls.

“I'm here stuck in Belton, unable to work on my client's case, because of deliberate interference,” Galligan told The Associated Press from his office near Fort Hood, about 150 miles southwest of Fort Worth. “I don't think I need to explain why I need to meet with my client privately in his room with his relative to work on his case, instead of talking to his relative in the lobby.”

Fort Hood officials didn't immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.

Hasan, an Army psychologist, has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the Nov. 5 shooting at the Army post in central Texas. He was shot and wounded by Fort Hood police officers, authorities have said.

Army officials haven't said if they plan to seek the death penalty. They have said they plan by mid-January to determine Hasan's mental state on the day of the shootings and if he is competent to stand trial.

Galligan also said that while he has received hundreds of pages of witness statements, his request to make copies of some investigators' documents were denied. He said authorities also denied his request for his own crime scene investigator; he said they also won't let him see the governmental reports on the shooting until Hasan's next hearing, which is similar to a grand jury proceeding. A date for that hearing hasn't been set.

“We were asking to see the (investigators') reports, which we would routinely do in other cases, but in Maj. Hasan's cases we were denied,” Galligan said.

Restrictions on Hasan were imposed during a hearing in his hospital room in November, when a military magistrate ordered him confined until his trial.

Hasan is only allowed to see his attorneys and relatives, but not at the same time, and relatives may see him twice a week for one hour per visit, Galligan said. Hasan's phone conversations can be recorded, his relatives' visits must be supervised, and all communication during visits must be in English or be delayed until a translator is brought in.

Hasan also has been barred from watching or reading news reports, and his private room has no television, the attorney said.

But Galligan said fewer and different restrictions exist for soldier suspects held in the Bell County Jail, where Fort Hood usually confines soldiers because the post has no holding facility.

Galligan said that in other cases, he has requested that one of his soldier clients be brought from the jail to Fort Hood, and they have met with relatives or others as part of his defense work.

Bell County sheriff's officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment about soldier inmate policies.

Galligan has said some restrictions violate Hasan's religious rights. Two weeks ago guards stopped a phone conversation between Hasan and one of his brothers because they were praying in Arabic, not English, Galligan said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6794064.html

[Heart]

ABC corrects its erroneous reporting --too little, too late
http://www.examiner.com/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2009m12d31-ABC-corrects-its-erroneous-reporting-too-little-too-late

[Heart]

Clues left by Fort Hood suspect raise haunting question: Should Army have seen it coming?

12:00 AM CST on Friday, January 1, 2010

The Washington Post

Nidal Malik Hasan was causing a ruckus in his one-bedroom apartment during the early hours of Nov. 5, banging against the thin walls long after midnight, packing boxes and shredding papers until he woke up the tenants next door.

Maybe that was a clue.

He picked up the phone at 2:37 a.m. and dialed a neighbor. Nobody answered. Hasan called again three hours later, this time leaving a message. "Nice knowing you, friend," he said. "I'm moving on from here."

Maybe that was a clue, too.

He left Apartment 9 early that morning and stopped next door to see a woman named Patricia Villa, whom he had known less than a month. He gave her a bag of frozen vegetables, some broccoli, a clothing steamer and an air mattress, explaining that he was about to be deployed to a war zone. Then Hasan visited another neighbor, a devout Christian, who looked at him quizzically when he handed her a copy of the Quran and recommended passages for her to read. "In my religion," Hasan told her, "we'll do anything to be closer to God."

Just before the break of dawn in Killeen, Texas, Hasan drove away from the Casa Del Norte apartment complex and stopped for his customary breakfast at a 7-Eleven. The store's owner, wary of Hasan, had spent the past month pretending to be absent whenever Hasan entered. This time, Hasan approached the counter with coffee and hash browns at 6:22 a.m., wearing an Arab robe and a white kufi cap. Before fiddling in his pockets for change, buying his breakfast and driving away to work at Fort Hood, Hasan smiled at another customer and issued what sounded like a warning.

"There's going to be big action on post around 1:30," he said, according to witnesses. "Be prepared."

Trail of evidence

Clues – he left them everywhere. When viewed in retrospect, Hasan's life becomes a trail of evidence that leads to an inevitable end. At 1:34 p.m. on Nov. 5, he bowed his head in prayer during his regular shift at Fort Hood, opened his eyes and started shooting, witnesses said. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist allegedly aimed for soldiers in uniform, firing more than 100 times with a semiautomatic pistol and a revolver. The terror lasted less than 10 minutes. Thirteen people died. Thirty were injured.

Now, more than seven weeks later, what is left of the Fort Hood tragedy is a community haunted by clues that somehow went unheeded. How do you differentiate between pious and fanatical?

Between lonely and isolated?

Between eccentric and crazy?

And the one question the former friends and colleagues return to most: Could they have recognized the clues in time to stop him?

Where were the clues in 2001, when a friend told his Silver Spring, Md., youth group to emulate Hasan as the role model for well-rounded success? Here was a devoted student – a summa cum laude graduate of Virginia Western Community College, an honors graduate of Virginia Tech – now well on his way to becoming a doctor. Here was a devoted Muslim who regularly drove to mosque for prayer five times each day, as is customary among the devout, and stuck around between prayers to raise money for the homeless and find temporary housing for new arrivals to Washington. Here was a devoted son who took time off from school and made space in his one-bedroom apartment to care for his mother, sick with cancer.

Hasan took a leave from medical school to spend the better part of two years in his suburban Washington apartment with his mother, Nora, until she died on May 30, 2001. She was 49, and other family members considered her Hasan's closest confidante – a woman who discouraged her son from joining the military only to later introduce herself as the mother of an Army officer. Nora's death left Hasan bereft of his anchor, family members said, and over the next several years he started to drift. He moved three times in three years, renting rooms in one transient apartment building after the next in the Maryland suburbs.

In the meantime, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had made him an occasional target as a Muslim in the Army – his car was twice vandalized with graffiti and dirty diapers at work – and he confided to fellow Muslims that he opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt like "an outcast." Even inside the mosque, Hasan's haven, he was becoming a misfit as an aging bachelor in a religion that considers marriage not just a priority but a cultural duty.

His solution was to find a new anchor. Hasan began looking for a wife.

It seemed less a search than a full-time obsession. Hasan's status as a doctor and a military officer made him a considerable catch, but his standards were exacting. He wanted a virgin of Arabic descent – a woman in her 20s who wore the hijab, understood the Quran and prayed five times a day. As the years wore on with little to show for the search, Hasan's plight became a running joke among some at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring: Because of his age, fellow worshipers joked, Brother Nidal always got the first chance at any new woman who joined the mosque.

One day in 2006, as Hasan edged toward his late 30s, he attended a matchmaking event at the Islamic Society of the Washington Area. The annual gathering is a last-chance staple for hundreds of Muslims, some of whom travel from as far as India or Hawaii, to mingle over a breakfast buffet. But attending such an event was an uncharacteristic step for Hasan, who steadfastly avoided group parties with co-workers and who, his aunt Noel Hasan said, "did not make many friends easily and did not make friends fast."

Increasingly isolated

After breakfast, Hasan and the other 150 singles in attendance formed a gigantic circle and took turns introducing themselves. Some were divorced, others were widowed, and a few had children. When his turn came, Hasan talked about his work as a doctor and his devotion to Islam. Several women showed interest, but Hasan didn't reciprocate. Instead, as the singles filed out, Hasan visited privately with the matchmaker, Faizul Khan, and expressed disappointment. Not a single woman had interested him, Hasan said.

In the ensuing months, colleagues said, Hasan spent most of his time alone. He studied for long hours inside a wooden cubicle in the library of the Muslim Community Center, where the administrative assistant wondered whether Hasan was lonely. He ate dinners by himself at his favorite deli, with an open laptop on the table and his head buried behind the monitor. Family members worried that he was becoming increasingly isolated – with no wife, no parents, no close friends – but Hasan reassured them. Meanwhile, Hasan's colleagues were beginning to worry, too. He proselytized to them in the hallways of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was a psychiatry resident, turning conversations about war and the Redskins into lectures about the Quran. He spoke openly about his opposition to the Iraq war, repeatedly saying he could not imagine deploying to fight against fellow Muslims. As the war dragged into 2007, Hasan told family members that he had tried to get out of the Army by consulting with a lawyer and even offering to repay the cost of his education.

While working at an overloaded military hospital desperate for psychiatrists, Hasan sometimes saw only one or two patients per week – far fewer than most of his peers, many of whom privately regarded him as either a dud or a slacker. The patients Hasan did treat seemed to deeply unsettle him. At least once, Hasan counseled a patient about the healing virtues of Islam, prompting a reprimand from his supervisors.

'Adverse events'

But nothing raised alarm among Hasan's colleagues at Walter Reed quite like his classroom presentations, which seemed to chart the evolution of his beliefs. In June 2007, he gave the culminating presentation of his medical residency to 25 colleagues and supervisors. He was allowed to talk about any subject, and Hasan stood at the front of the room and gave a 50-slide introduction to Islam.

Slide 11: "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims."

Slide 12: "(4.93) And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his punishment is hell."

Slide 49: "God expects full loyalty."

Slide 50: "Department of Defense should allow Muslim Soldiers the option of being released as 'Conscientious objectors' to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events."

Hasan gave another presentation on the topic six months later, classmates said. Other students in Hasan's public health class presented on topics such as water safety and mold. Hasan focused his work on the thesis that the war on terror was actually a war on Islam, several classmates said. A few months later came a third presentation. This time, Hasan advanced his thesis by one degree: He spoke about the heroism of suicide bombers, classmates said.

One classmate thought Hasan was misunderstood: "I didn't see him as a threat, I saw him as fervent."

Another believed Hasan could pose a risk but kept quiet. "If you complain and someone higher up says you're biased, that can be a career ender."

By early 2009, what emerged were two conflicting narratives of Hasan's life, which now had only his name in common. One, told by his classmates and colleagues, depicted an isolated man struggling in his career and tending toward radicalism. The other, documented in Hasan's official record, continued to track an Army psychiatrist on the rise: Hasan completed his prestigious medical fellowship, earned a promotion to the rank of major despite his supervisors' misgivings and was named co-chairman of a panel assembled by the American Psychiatric Association. Then, in July, he was assigned to Fort Hood, where he would evaluate and prepare soldiers for war, and prepare for going to war himself.

He told friends in Maryland that he wished he could avoid moving to Texas, and he never acted as if he planned to stay long. Fort Hood staffers typically help officers locate nice places to live, but Hasan found his new home in the classified ads of the Killeen Daily Herald . He paid $325 per month for a one-bedroom unit in a shabby complex. Shortly after moving to Killeen, Hasan made two purchases that would later be seen as clues. He went to Guns Galore, a windowless white cinder-block shop on a country highway, and bought a high-powered semiautomatic pistol. He also ordered business cards that listed his professional specialties – "Behavioral Health – Mental Health – Life Skills" – without mentioning his involvement in the Army. The cards included an abbreviation after Hasan's name: "SoA," standing for "Slave of Allah" or "Soldier of Allah." It was an unusually forceful assertion, one considered odd even by the most pious Muslims.

During business hours at Fort Hood, Hasan worked at the Resilience and Restoration Center, writing psychological profiles of soldiers entering and exiting war. Nearly everyone in Killeen who interacted with Hasan considered him a mystery, and his actions became more confounding as October turned to November.

Why was an Army psychiatrist, instead of helping soldiers, obsessing over charging them with war crimes?

Why was a conservative Muslim going to the Starz strip club on the nights of Oct. 28 and 29, spending seven hours each night sitting alone at a round table near the stage, handing out Bud Lights and generous tips to each dancer and then buying a series of fully nude private lap dances that cost $50 each?

Why was an Army officer eschewing the shooting range at Fort Hood to drive 35 miles into the Central Texas flatlands on Nov. 3 and take his target practice at Stan's Outdoor Shooting Range?

Why, on the morning of Nov. 5, did witnesses see Hasan hand out copies of the Quran, give away his groceries, issue a warning at 7-Eleven, report to work, stand on a table, shout "Allahu Akbar" and wave two guns inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center?

Then Hasan allegedly opened fire, and the questions became clues, and the clues began to make horrifying sense.

The Washington Post

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/010110dnmethasanclues.3f4b199.html

[Heart]

I shall send hundreds of men to fight alongside our neighbours, vows al-Qaeda ally in Somalia

James Hider in Sanaa

The leader of Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked insurgency yesterday declared that he would send hundreds of fighters to join the Islamist campaign in Yemen, adding to fears that increased US involvement in antiterrorism operations in the country could fuel even greater instability.

As Gordon Brown called for an urgent international meeting to tackle the crisis in Yemen — highlighted by al-Qaeda’s attempt in the Arabian Peninsula to blow up a US airliner last week — the international jihadi network was swinging into action to counter Western efforts to bolster the feeble government, which is struggling to confront the Islamist threat.

“We tell our Muslim brothers in Yemen that we will cross the water between us and reach your place to assist you fight the enemy of Allah,” declared Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansour, a senior official of the Shebab militia, as he addressed hundreds of newly trained recruits cheering “Allahu Akbar”.

“Today you see what is happening in Yemen; the enemy of Allah is destroying your Muslim brothers. I call upon the young men in Arab lands to join the fight there.”

The American military is treading a fine line by expanding its support for Yemeni government forces, providing intelligence for operations, money and expertise for equipment and training.

On the one hand, it has to shore up a failing and often reluctant ally in the war against the Islamists, who launched the Detroit bomb attack from a base in Yemen. On the other, it may energise hundreds of recruits among the fiercely anti-American tribes of Yemen, whose civilians have often been the casualties of airstrikes carried out by Yemeni warplanes acting on US Intelligence.

“The American entrance into the war is very dangerous,” said Abdulelah Haidar Shaea, a Yemeni expert on al-Qaeda, who has met the Yemeni branch’s leadership.

“If most people hate the Government, then all the people hate America for its alliance with Israel and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

He said witnesses to an attack before Christmas on an alleged al-Qaeda base in the south had told him that US missiles had killed at least five civilians. The Government claimed its warplanes had wiped out the al-Qaeda leadership as well as Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Yemeni preacher who inspired both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit bomber, and Nidal Malik Hasan, the US major who shot dead 13 fellow soldiers in Fort Hood.

After the attack, Mr Shaea said that relatives of the victims took their bloodstained clothes to al-Qaeda leaders and pledged allegiance. The Government has been unable to confirm any of the deaths it claimed because its forces are unable to enter the area without being attacked by the well-armed tribes and al-Qaeda, as happened last summer in Marib, when they lost five tanks in fighting after Yemeni special forces accidentally blew up a tribal residence which they mistook for an al-Qaeda hideout.

Gregory Johnsen, of Princeton University, an expert on Yemen, said there was evidence that while the US military was being forced to invest in a weak and unpopular government, al-Qaeda was building a powerful support base among the tribes. Foreign al-Qaeda members are even marrying into local tribes, while many of the fighters are native Yemenis who enjoy the full protection of their clans.

“This development is both new and worrying because it has the potential to turn any counter-terrorism operation into a much broader war involving Yemen’s tribes,” Mr Johnsen said in a recent article, noting that Said Ali al-Shihri, the deputy commander of al-Qaeda, had moved his family from their native Saudi Arabia to Yemen.

“Al-Qaeda is not on the run in Yemen, but rather is largely free to do what it wants in certain areas,” he said.

“Al-Shihri’s move is also indicative of a growing attempt by al-Qaeda to become part of the local scene by integrating itself into the entire community, in a way that a single man is unable to do,” he added.

Even the Government acknowledges the scale of the problem. Abdulkarim al-Eryani, political adviser to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has admitted that his country — already fighting a persistent Shia rebellion in the north and trying to calm increasing secessionist calls in the south — would crumble without international handouts.

He said Yemen was not a failed state like nearby Somalia, but admitted it was certainly “dysfunctional”, with some areas lacking any government infrastructure, including police forces.

Indeed, Mr Shaea said that the recent air strikes against al-Qaeda in remote areas were sometimes the first presence that many local Yemenis had seen of their government. He added that corruption had left the armed forces so weakened that some soldiers fighting the Shia rebels in the north had sold their weapons to the enemy, then declared they were taken hostage

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6973512.ece