In this story:
- Terrorist attack expected within 6 months.
- High level permission needed to kill American citizens in Al Qaeda
- Imam caught smuggling razor blades into jail
Intelligernce Update: Terrorist attack is expected within 6 months. Five senior leaders of the U.S. intelligence community told a Senate panel Tuesday they are “certain” that terrorists will attempt another attack on the United States in the next three to six months.
The warning came during the annual threat briefing to Congress in response to questions from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who asked, “What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S homeland in the next three to six months? High or low?”
“An attempted attack, the priority is certain, I would say,” said Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral.
Four other intelligence agency leaders who appeared at the hearing with Adm. Blair said they agreed with the assessment.
They included CIA Director Leon E. Panetta, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and John Dinger, the acting assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.
Adm. Blair outlined the major threats facing the United States in addition to a possible terrorist attack.
They include:
– The threat of major attacks on U.S. computer networks and infrastructure.
– The increasingly dangerous Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
– Instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
– Iranian and North Korean missile and nuclear programs.
Next – Permission Needed to Kill US Terrorists:
The U.S. intelligence community must obtain special permission before killing American citizens who have joined al Qaeda. Permission must now come the highest levels, a senior official disclosed to Congress on Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in each case a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission.
“We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”
Mr. Blair’s remarks follow a report in The Washington Post last week that disclosed President Obama personally authorized a Christmas eve drone attack against Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen in Yemen who is chief cleric for the terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Awlaki is thought to have survived the attack.
Al-Awlaki was in contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried and failed to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day.
Al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, N.M., in 1971. He was also a former imam at a Falls Church, Va., mosque where Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the officer accused of killing 13 of his fellow service members at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, is said to have attended sermons and sought his advice over e-mail. In recent years al-Awlaki has developed a following on the Internet for his English-language jihadist rants. This is a new development for al Qaeda because most of its Web propagandists write in Arabic.
Also on the hit list is U.S. citizen David Coleman Headley. Headley was charged with participating in the jihadist rampage in Mumbai in 2008 and plotting to attack the offices of the Danish newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Blair said, “We don’t target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans or has resulted in it.”
It is not known how many American al Qaeda members have been killed in the war on terrorism. One American, Seattle-born jihadist Ruben Shumpert, was killed by a U.S. missile strike in Somalia. Shumpert was a known Islamist wanted by federal authorities on gun charges.
Blair also said in his testimony that the charter for a special unit to interrogate terrorists known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, was signed last week and that the HIG was now fully operational.
Next in the news: A Department of Correction Muslim chaplain who served 14 years in prison for murder and robbery was arrested today for carrying three utility blades and a pair of scissors into a lower Manhattan jail, authorities said. The chaplain, Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid, was being paid by $49,500 a year to minister to incarcerated Muslims.
A city Correction source said of Abdu-Shahid’s arrest, “It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence.” Abdu-Shahid’s boss — head chaplain Umar Abdul-Jalil — himself was hired by the DOC despite having done a 14-year stint in prison for drug dealing.
Feb. 2nd – I a rare move, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Ahmed Ressam, a convicted terrorist arrested in December 1999 in Port Angeles with a car full of explosives, be sentenced again.
And this time, the court has ordered that U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who presided over Ressam’s trial and his sentencing and re-sentencing, not be involved. He was too soft on terrorism.
Ressam will face a much longer sentence, given that the appeals court noted several times how much lighter his 22-year sentence was than what sentencing guildelines call for.
In a 2-1 decision, the courts majority said Coughenour sentence — 43 years below the low range of the federal sentencing guidelines — was “both procedurally and substantively unreasonable.” Coughenour should be removed from the bench!