German US Airbase Terror Suspect On The Run In Britain
September 30, 2007
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A prime suspect in the alleged plot to mount an attack in Germany on the scale of 9/11 is on the run in Britain, German security officials disclosed yesterday.
Scotland Yard counterterrorism detectives are hunting the man, who escaped from Germany after a plot to explode bombs at Frankfurt airport and a US airbase. The collective power of the bombs would have exceeded those in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005.
The plot was foiled on September 4 when three men were arrested at a rented holiday apartment near the central German town of Kassel. Police recovered chemicals and bomb-making equipment which investigators believe would have led to the biggest loss of life since the 9/11 attacks in America six years ago.
About 10 other members of the gang were said by German prosecutors to have escaped and one is now in Britain. The arrested three - two of whom were German nationals who had converted to Islam - were alleged by prosecutors to be members of an Al-Qaeda splinter group called the Islamic Jihad Union.
At the time the British and German authorities denied that there were any links between the cell and Britain. Security sources also played down reports that there had been telephone contact between members of the cell and people in Britain.
However, it emerged yesterday that the Germans have told Britain that at least one of the fugitives has since made his way to this country. A security dragnet has been put in place by Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command to try to arrest the man.
Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s interior minister, revealed last week that the three arrested men had acquired detonators that originated from Syria and had received direct orders to act from operatives in Pakistan. “We know that there is a clear network, highly conspiratorial,” he said after two days of meetings in Washington with US security officials. “The demand came from Pakistan [saying], ‘You should go on for action. Do not go on preparing for months and months and months, but now is the time to take action in the first half of September’ and they did.”
German officials said that the attacks were timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The suspects had already assembled the ingredients for homemade bombs: they were caught with 750kg of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical that is easily transformed into explosives.
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Suspicious Items Found In U-Haul Truck In Tempe Arizona
September 29, 2007
There were some tense moments at a U-Haul facility in Tempe on Friday.
A 15-foot truck was returned to the company’s Priest Drive location around 3 p.m.
When a manager opened it up, he spotted some items he thought looked suspicious.
According to Vice President of Product and Safety, “It didn’t take me long to call people let’s put it that way.”
Doug Matteson from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office explains what happened next.
“We opened it up, we saw some items that kinda looked linked to suspicious activity…we are not saying this is involved with terrorism…we saw some items that kinda bring some attention to our Deputies that work anti-terrorism. We called them out to make sure, have them go through everything.”
The Sheriff Office confirms there were no guns, explosives, or hazardous materials found in the truck.
They do say there was a messy pile of suspicious documents and files.
There were also some other items that the Sheriff’s Office said it was not prepared to comment on.
Investigators will continue combing through the documents and are trying to dig up more information about the person who last rented the truck.
Matteson would not divulge exactly what the other items were or what they were related to, only saying it was significant enough for the Maricopa County’s anti-terrorism group to be called out to investigate.
Authorities are currently checking where the truck came from and who last rented it.
Matteson said that he believes the truck has been at that U-Haul location for 3 to 6 months and that as far as he knows no one has had access to it during that time. The rental center is surrounded by fences and has a security unit, Matteson said.
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No Verdict Yet Holy Land Foundation Terror Trial
September 28, 2007
A jury finished its sixth full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict Friday in the case of a Muslim charity accused of financing Middle Eastern terrorists.
Deliberations were scheduled to resume Monday in federal district court.
Jurors heard two months of testimony in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its former leaders. Holy Land was once the largest Muslim charity in the country.
The trial was expected to last even longer. Legal experts said prosecutors and defense attorneys appeared to cut short their cases to avoid wearing out the jury.
An Israeli agent and FBI agents testified that Holy Land funneled money to groups controlled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The U.S. government designated Hamas a terrorist organization, making it illegal to support it.
The former Holy Land leaders could be sentenced to life in prison if the jury finds that they helped cause deaths. Prosecutors charged that Holy Land supported the families of suicide bombers.
Defense lawyers argued that Holy Land was a legitimate charity and that none of the groups it helped were designated as terrorist organizations.
They also attacked a key prosecution witness, an Israeli official who was allowed to testify under a pseudonym, and the government’s introduction of unsigned and undated Arabic documents.
Holy Land operated from an office park in Richardson. The federal government shut it down in December 2001 and seized its assets. Holy Land fought the seizure all the way to the Supreme Court, which let stand a lower court ruling against the group.
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Terror Website Offers How To Fly A Boeing 747 Video Set
September 28, 2007
A pro-terrorist web site last week posted a series of video links that reveal how to teach people to fly a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, an indication that terrorists are still planning to use hijacked aircraft in future attacks.
The web site posted a statement “On the Anniversary of Manhattan’s Attack, 18 Videos Teaching You How To Fly a Boeing 747.” The statement contains a link to Wikipedia.org to learn about the Boeing 747 aircraft and 18 links to videos teaching how to fly a Boeing 747 aircraft with narration in Arabic.
A translation of the web site stated that the “very important” videos will assist in learning “the rules and steps for take of an fly the famous Boeing 747 aircraft.”
The 18 videos were made available for downloading and were described as “high-quality.”
The videos include several sections including numerous Flight Management Computer videos, instruction on taxi, take off, ascending and autopilot, as well as gradual descent. Additional videos explain how to conduct an approach and landing, taxi to terminal, and turning off the engines.
“Then, to those who do not need to learn the last three parts, choose any target you wish and continue what the lion Sheikh Osama Bin Laden , God protect him, started,” the report said.
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Calif. Student in Custody After Firing Shots Taking Hostages
September 28, 2007
A student fired shots inside a high school and held three students hostage for over an hour before he was taken into custody Friday morning, authorities said. No one was injured.
The 17-year-old student initially took about 30 students hostage in a band room at Las Plumas High School around 9 a.m., said Police Capt. Jerry Smith. He quickly released most of them, but held three students for about an hour longer before he was arrested, Smith said.
The gunman’s only demand to deputies during the standoff was that they “back off,” he said.
A message posted on the Oroville Union High School District Web site said all six schools were locked down until the standoff ended. Smith said the teenager fired numerous shots at random from a handgun.
Oroville is 65 miles north of Sacramento.
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Probe Shows Terror Risk At Mexico and Canada Borders
September 28, 2007
A terrorist wanting to smuggle radioactive material from Canada into the United States probably would find it easy to do, a new report from congressional investigators said.
Government investigators were able to cross from Canada into the United States carrying a duffle bag with
contents that looked like radioactive material and never encountered a law enforcement official, according to a report released Thursday by investigators from the Government Accountability Office.
“Our work clearly shows substantial vulnerabilities in the northern border to terrorist or criminals entering the United States undetected,” the GAO’s Greg Kutz testified Thursday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the topic.
- Unmanned points make for easy border crossings, report says
- Three times agents crossed border with fake radioactive material
- Nearly 1,000 agents on northern border, 12,000 on U.S.-Mexican border
The Story
Congressional investigators looking at unmonitored US borders said Thursday they were able to freely cross into the United States from Canada carrying simulated radioactive material.
Canada’s government and US lawmakers expressed concern after the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO), the US Congress’s investigative branch, released a report on security vulnerabilities at unmonitored and unmanned Canada and Mexico border crossing.
Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, US lawmakers have called for a reinforcement of the US borders, especially its southern frontier with Mexico, to prevent potential terrorists from entering the United States.
“Frankly, it’s hard to believe that there has been so little progress in plugging these gaping security holes since 9/11,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the report.
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Tania Head - A 9/11 Tale Too Amazing to Be True?
September 28, 2007
In all the stories that came out of 9/11, stories of love, loss and heroism, Tania Head’s tale had it all.
As president of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network and as a tour guide at ground zero, she told countless people for the past six years about being burned on the 78th floor of the south tower. Head says she was rescued by a citizen hero, and felt compelled to escape by her promise to return a wedding band to a victim’s wife and by her love for a man she later learned had died in the north tower.
Tania Head’s story, however, was too good to be true, as The New York Times reported Thursday.
Though she’d spoken to journalists for years and recounted her story hundreds of times among other survivors, the newspaper found that nearly every detail of Head’s tale was false.
Now the many survivors of 9/11 and the families of victims who had come to trust Head, at times suppressing their own grief to help her cope with her enormous loss, are left to wonder why she would perpetrate such an enormous fabrication.
“I’ve heard her story over and over,” said Janice Cilento, a social worker and board member of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network.
“I’ve been there anytime she needed someone to listen, even if it was at three in the morning. She has stolen my time and my soul,” she said.
Cilento said many of the network’s members “feel very upset and betrayed.
“We have members who thought Tania’s trauma was so extreme they did not want to discuss their own. They gave their time to help her, and she didn’t even need it,” she said.
The Times reported that Merrill Lynch had confirmed that no one by the name of Tania Head had ever worked on the 78th floor of that company. The family of the victim who Head claimed was her killed fiancé, or her husband in some versions of the story, and whom the paper identified only by his first name, Dave, to protect his family’s privacy, told reporters they had never heard of Head.
Head claimed she was rescued by Welles Remy Crowther, an equities trader who has been credited with saving several people on the 78th floor.
Watch Video
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Update - Goose Creek Terror Case Admission
September 27, 2007
In a 12-minute video posted on YouTube, an Egyptian man wearing a white shirt, khaki pants and rubber gloves explains in Arabic how to turn a toy boat into a bomb.
His name is Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, and last month he was arrested in Goose Creek after authorities found four PVC pipes containing a mixture of potassium nitrate, kitty litter and sugar in his car’s trunk.
Mohamed told FBI agents he made the video to teach “those persons in Arabic countries to defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries,” according to federal court documents released late Tuesday.
Specifically, he told the FBI “the technology which he demonstrated in the tape was to be used against those who fought for the United States.”
and then there was the conversation in the back of the patrol car…
In the back of the patrol car on the way to jail on charges of possession of an explosive device, the two whispered in their native Arabic while a hidden recorder taped their conversation, according to court documents:
“Did you tell them there is something in them?” Mohamed asked, an apparent reference to the PVC pipes.
“Water,” Megahed said.
“Water! Right? The black water is in the Pepsi.”
A few seconds pass in silence. Mohamed speaks again.
“Did you tell them about the benzene (gasoline)?”
“I have nothing to do with it. I do the fireworks and so… so… so… that is it.”
But the pipes weren’t fireworks.
An examination by the FBI’s explosives unit found the materials in the PVC pipes fit the legal definition of an “explosive.”
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U.S. Forces May Have Just Missed Bin Laden
September 26, 2007
Looks as though we may be getting close, perhaps this could explain the release of numerous video over the past few weeks.
A little more than a month ago, with the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and fears of a new al Qaeda attack rising, some U.S. intelligence and military analysts thought they had found one of the world’s two most wanted men just where they last saw them six years ago.
For three days and nights between Aug. 14 and 16 U.S. and Afghanistan forces pounded the mountain caves in Tora Bora, the same caves where Osama Bin Laden had hidden out and then fled in late 2001 after U.S. forces drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan cities. Ultimately, however, U.S. forces failed to find Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, even though their attacks left dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban dead.
One of the officials interviewed by NBC News, a general officer, admitted Tuesday that it was “possible” Bin Laden was at Tora Bora, saying, in fact, “I still don’t know if he was there.”
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Video Shows Simulated Hacker Attack of Power Grid
September 26, 2007
Watch CNN Video - A government video shows the potential destruction caused by hackers seizing control of a crucial part of the U.S. electrical grid: an industrial turbine spinning wildly out of control until it becomes a smoking hulk and power shuts down.
The video, produced for the Homeland Security Department and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday, was marked “Official Use Only.” It shows commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that the enormous turbine shudders as pieces fly apart and it belches black-and-white smoke.
The video was produced for top U.S. policy makers by the Idaho National Laboratory, which has studied the little-understood risks to the specialized electronic equipment that operates power, water and chemical plants. Vice President Dick Cheney is among those who have watched the video, said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because this official was not authorized to publicly discuss such high-level briefings.
“They’ve taken a theoretical attack and they’ve shown in a very demonstrable way the impact you can have using cyber means and cyber techniques against this type of infrastructure,” said Amit Yoran, former U.S. cybersecurity chief for the Bush administration. Yoran is chief executive for NetWitness Corp., which sells sophisticated network monitoring software.
“It’s so graphic,” Yoran said. “Talking about bits and bytes doesn’t have the same impact as seeing something catch fire.”
The electrical attack never actually happened. The recorded demonstration, called the “Aurora Generator Test,” was conducted in March by government researchers investigating a dangerous vulnerability in computers at U.S. utility companies known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The programming flaw was quietly fixed, and equipment-makers urged utilities to take protective measures.
There was no evidence any U.S. utility company suffered damage from hackers or terrorists using this technique, U.S. officials said. But these officials cautioned that affected systems are not routinely monitored as closely as many modern corporate computer networks, so there would be little forensic evidence to study after such a break- in.
Industry experts cautioned that intruders would need specialized knowledge to carry out such attacks, including the ability to turn off warning systems.
“The video is not a realistic representation of how the power system would operate,” said Stan Johnson, a manager at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the Princeton, N.J.-based organization charged with overseeing the power grid.
A top Homeland Security Department official, Robert Jamison, said companies are working to limit such attacks.
“Is this something we should be concerned about? Yes,” said Jamison, who oversees the department’s cybersecurity division. “But we’ve taken a lot of risk off the table.”
President Bush’s top telecommunications advisers concluded years ago that an organization such as a foreign intelligence service or a well-funded terror group “could conduct a structured attack on the electric power grid electronically, with a high degree of anonymity, and without having to set foot in the target nation.” Ominously, the Idaho National Laboratory which produced the new video has described the risk as “the invisible threat.”
Experts said the affected systems were not developed with security in mind.
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