Is Houston A Target For Terrorists?

When al-Qaida first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 a Palestinian who was part of the conspiracy— had just months earlier been living right here in Houston.

Then in 2006, Federal agents arrested three men, Shiraz Qazi, Adnan Mirza, and Kobi Williams, in Houston. The case against the trio involved learning to use weapons here in order to join the Taliban overseas and fight U.S. soldiers.

Two of the men, Mirza and Qazi, were Pakistanis with student visas. One of them reportedly lived in a west side apartment.

The third man, Williams, worked part time at Rice University and lived near the Galleria and had been heard on a local Pakistani radio show according to the FBI.

Then in 2007, Daniel Maldonado, a Muslim convert who’d lived at a complex off the Beltway, admitted to actually training with al-Qaida in Somalia.

Records show that these men are the terrorists or would-be terrorists amongst us. The job for law enforcement has been to detect such people.

But who does that best? The FBI or the CIA? How about HPD?

Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey has a possible answer to that question.

He’s been writing about terrorists for 20 years and is author of “Securing the City” book. In it, he focuses on NYPD but there are lessons for Houston, he said.

“The police have always been a great entry level job for immigrants,” said Dickey.

He said that the NYPD has had great success utilizing officers from immigrant families, officers with native language skills and street creed that he says can sometimes give them better intelligence-gathering abilities than the FBI or CIA.

“People will trust you and will talk to you,” he said.

He said that is also a critical factor in Houston. He said that working sources in diverse communities could pick up signs of terrorism.

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