Fear Factor: British Fighter Jet Scrambled After Incident on Passenger Plane ~ Telegraph
The Telegraph
‘The plane, which was flying from Lahore to Manchester was intercepted by the fighter jet and diverted to Stansted Airport where two men on board were arrested.
It is understood that the incident is not terror related and that the pilot had become concerned about an unruly passenger on board and had requested a diversion.
The Guardian reported that the passenger had started shouting and that the pilot had become worried about the safety of the plane.’
Anthrax drug brings $334 million to Pentagon advisor’s biotech firm ~ LA Times
by DAVID WILLMAN
The L.A. Times
‘Over the last decade, former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig, a prominent lawyer, presidential advisor and biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, has urged the government to counter what he called a major threat to national security.
Terrorists, he warned, could easily engineer a devastating killer germ: a form of anthrax resistant to common antibiotics.
U.S. intelligence agencies have never established that any nation or terrorist group has made such a weapon, and biodefense scientists say doing so would be very difficult. Nevertheless, Danzig has energetically promoted the threat — and prodded the government to stockpile a new type of drug to defend against it.
Danzig did this while serving as a director of a biotech startup that won $334 million in federal contracts to supply just such a drug, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
By his own account, Danzig encouraged Human Genome Sciences Inc. to develop the compound, and from 2001 through 2012 he collected more than $1 million in director’s fees and other compensation from the company, records show.
The drug, raxibacumab, or raxi, was the first product the company was able to sell, and the U.S. government remains the only customer, at a cost to date of about $5,100 per dose.
A number of senior federal officials whom Danzig advised on the threat of bioterrorism and what to do about it said they were unaware of his role at Human Genome.’
FBI Says Man Arrested On Terrorism Charges Allegedly Plotted To Poison The Air Or Water Supply ~ CBC
Tannerite: Explosive Product Anyone Can Buy and Homeland Security Wants You To Know It Exists ~ NWCN
FBI: ‘Terror Attack’ Plot Disrupted in Minnesota ~ US News
by STEVEN NELSON
U.S. News & World Report
‘
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Minneapolis division announced Monday it believes a terrorist attack was disrupted when local and federal authorities arrested Buford Rogers, 24, in a Friday raid.
Agents discovered “gun and explosive devices” at Rogers’s Montevideo, Minn., residence, according to the FBI.
“The FBI believes that a terror attack was disrupted by law enforcement personnel and that the lives of several local residents were potentially saved. The terror plot was discovered and subsequently thwarted through the timely analysis of intelligence and through the cooperation and coordination between the aforementioned agencies,” said the FBI’s release.’
Via Rail train plot brings counterterrorism, civil liberties to top of House’s agenda ~ Globe and Mail
by STEVEN CHASE
The Globe and Mail
News of a terror plot to attack a Via Rail train, just one week after the Boston Marathon bombings, has pushed public security to the front burner just as the Harper government seeks Parliament’s authority to curb civil liberties in the name of keeping Canadians safe.
The House of Commons was several hours into a debate Monday over a government-sponsored counterterrorism bill that would give authorities extra powers of arrest and detention when the RMCP announced they had foiled an al-Qaeda-backed plan to attack a Toronto-area passenger train.
At issue is S-7, the Combating Terrorism Act, which would authorize police to pre-emptively detain Canadians and hold them for up to three days without charging them.
Boston bombers allegedly planned Times Square attack ~ AFP
Agence France-Presse
The brothers accused of carrying out the Boston marathon bombings also planned to carry out an attack in Times Square, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.
Bloomberg said the information on the attack had been provided by surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
It was a “horrific reminder that we remain targets for terrorists,” Bloomberg told a press conference.
“Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets,” Bloomberg said.
“He told the FBI apparently that he and his brother had intended to drive to New York and designate (sic) additional explosives in Times Square.”
Canadian Police Wanted To BUST Train Terror Plot “FOR MONTHS” But Held Off At American Request ~ CBC
Coleen Rowley: ‘FBI pumps resources into profiling Americans, ignores real threat’ ~ RT
Investigators into the Boston Marathon bombings are trying to figure out what triggered two young suspects into carrying out the worst US terror attack since 9/11. The Tsarnaev brothers, who’d spent around half their lives living in the US, are believed to have carried out Monday’s twin explosions which killed 3 and wounded more than a hundred. The suspects’ family claims they had been under FBI surveillance for the past 5 years, and refuses to believe the young men carried out the atrocity. Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley joins RT studio.
US teen accused of seeking to join al Qaeda-linked Syrian group ~ Reuters
by Alex Dobuzinskis
Reuters
An 18-year-old Chicago-area man accused of planning to join an al Qaeda-linked group fighting in Syria has been arrested by the FBI, the agency said on Saturday.
Abdella Ahmad Tounisi of Aurora, Illinois, was taken into custody late on Friday as he prepared to board a plane at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport bound for Turkey, the FBI said in a statement.
It added that Tounisi was a friend of Adel Daoud, an American accused of trying to stage a bombing outside a downtown Chicago bar last year. The agency said Tounisi had not been involved in that plot.
Tounisi appeared before a U.S. magistrate on Saturday on one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was ordered held until his next court appearance on Tuesday, the FBI said.
A criminal complaint accused Tounisi of making online contact in March with a person he thought was a recruiter for Jabhat al-Nusrah, the militant Islamist Syrian group that the U.S. government calls a foreign terrorist organization operating as a wing of al Qaeda in Iraq.
The supposed recruiter was an FBI employee working undercover, the agency said.
Tounisi said in emails to the FBI employee that he planned to get to Syria via Turkey and was willing to die in the Syrian struggle, the complaint said.
[...] Tounisi faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted.
The 2012 arrest of Daoud, 19, also involved his alleged communication with an undercover member of the FBI. The fake bomb that Daoud tried to detonate outside a Chicago bar was provided to him by an undercover FBI agent, authorities said.
Daoud was indicted on two counts of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and maliciously attempting to use an explosive to destroy a building. He pleaded not guilty in October in federal court.
Man Criticizes School Security, Charged With Terrorism ~ WHO TV 13
A disabled grandfather from Centerville is behind bars facing terrorism charges.
We talked with 52-year old Brian Davis from the Appanoose County Jail where he is charged with felony threat of terrorism. He says he was making small talk with his physical therapist, complaining about what he considers to be lax securty at his granddaughter’s school, when the therapist claimed Davis made a threatening comment about going into the school and opening fire.
“We got a call from the administrator of the hospital, expressed concern over what Mr. Davis had said to some employees.” says Centerville Police Sergeant Mike Moore, “It did become more of a personalized issue, where he said he was going to do this or he could do this.”
But Davis says he was making the point that anyone could get into the school, and never said anything about shooting students “I never said that I would go in there and do something to those kids.” Davis says, “I said anybody, any one person could go in there. Anybody.”
Davis, who has no criminal record and says he doesn’t even own a gun, says this is all a big misunderstanding. But police say they won’t take any chances when it comes to children’s safety. Davis is being held on $50,000 cash bond.
‘NATO 3′ can be tried under terror law ~ UPI
An Illinois judge has declined to drop terrorism charges against three men accused of planning violence during the NATO summit in Chicago last year.
Cook County Judge Thaddeus Wilson said the state terrorism law under which the so-called “NATO 3″ were charged was “constitutional on its face,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday.
Wilson said the attorneys for Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly could still argue the constitutionality of the law when the case goes to trial later this year.
The trio are charged with plotting to attack President Obama‘s campaign headquarters and the mayor’s home during the summit.
The terrorism charges their attorneys wanted thrown out include providing material support for terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and two counts of possession of an incendiary device with intent to commit an act of terrorism.
It is only the second time the law has been used since it was passed following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Chase’s attorney, Thomas Durkin, slammed authorities for “selectively” using the law, charging they “pulled this statute out of their bag of tricks just for publicity purposes.”
‘Underwear bomber’ was working for the CIA ~ Guardian (from 2012)
by Paul Harris and Ed Pilkington (Wednesday 9 May 2012)
A would-be “underwear bomber” involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged.
The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker.
The plot, which the White House said on Monday had involved the seizing of an underwear bomb by authorities in the Middle East sometime in the last 10 days, had caused alarm throughout the US.
It has also been linked to a suspected US drone strike in Yemen where two Yemeni members of al-Qaida were killed by a missile attack on their car on Sunday, one of them a senior militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso.
But the news that the individual at the heart of the bomb plot was in fact an informer for US intelligence is likely to raise just as many questions as it answers.
Citing US and Yemeni officials, Associated Press reported that the unnamed informant was working under cover for the Saudis and the CIA when he was given the bomb, which was of a new non-metallic type aimed at getting past airport security.
The informant then turned the device over to his handlers and has left Yemen, the officials told the news agency. The LA Times, which first broke the news that the plot had been a “sting operation”, said that the bomb plan had also provided the intelligence leads that allowed the strike on Quso.
Earlier John Brennan, Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser and a former CIA official, told ABC’s Good Morning America that authorities are “confident that neither the device nor the intended user of this device pose a threat to us”.
US officials have said the plot was detected in its early stages and that no American airliner was ever at risk.
Comment from Kurt Haskell, witness to the original ‘underwear bomber’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab:
‘This article is from last year when the so called Underwear Bomber part II took place. This will require a little explaining. In my opinion Underwear Bomber II never happened, but was a fake story to cover up the release of secret information (The Underwear Bomber worked or the CIA). If you recall, Underwear Bomber II had the following: No picture of the perpetrator, no flight ticket ever bought, admitted CIA involvement, and many other characteristics of Underwear Bomber I. The facts of the story were released simultaneously with a report that the Underwear Bomber worked for the CIA. Imagine the fallout if this “secret” info was tied to Underwear Bomber I. Thus, there was a need for a cover story. Remember John McCain threw a fit about the leak that the Underwear Bomber worked for the CIA. Underwear Bomber II’s identity was never leaked and his picture was never shown. However, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s photo was shown worldwide. This was the reason for McCain’s outrage. Thus, Underwear Bomber II was created and subsequently swept under the rug as quickly as it happened. You see, with today’s U.S. Government, this makes perfect sense.’
Pope Smoke Distraction ~ Breaking the Set
Abby Martin calls out the corporate press for their round-the-clock coverage of ‘pope smoke’ whilst neglecting the Guantanamo hunger strikers, and the DHS buying 1.6 billon rounds of ammunition.
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The FBI Goes To Disturbing Lengths To Set Up Potential Terrorists ~ Business Insider
by Paul Szoldra
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has busted an impressive number of homegrown terror plots over the past decade, but many people don’t realize how these plots materialize. In some cases, they are hatched not from a cave-dwelling fanatic, but actually from the Bureau itself.
Ever since 9/11, the task of thwarting terrorist plots has consumed the majority of the FBI’s budget — $3.3 billion compared to $2.6 billion for organized crime, according to Mother Jones.
The once exclusively investigative bureau has morphed into a counterterrorism agency, with field agents tapping into a nationwide network of informants that infiltrate mainly-Muslim communities.
The FBI targets the “disgruntled few” who would participate in a terrorist plot if given the opportunity, according to Mother Jones. In many cases, the FBI recruits potential terrorists and provides them with plans, equipment, and weapons — before finally shutting them down and getting credit for thwarting another attack.
TSA screeners allow fed agent with fake bomb to pass through security at Newark Airport ~ NY Post
by PHILIP MESSING and CHUCK BENNETT
An undercover TSA inspector with an improvised explosive device stuffed in his pants got past two security screenings at Newark Airport — including a pat-down — and was cleared to get on board a commercial flight, sources told The Post yesterday.
The breach took place Feb. 25, when the Transportation Security Administration’s special operations team — the agency’s version of internal affairs — staged a mock intrusion at the airport.
“This episode once again demonstrates how Newark Airport is the Ground Zero of TSA failures,” a source said.
The “bomber” was part of the four-person “Red Team” that posed as ticketed passengers and filed through the B1 checkpoint of Terminal B — home of American Airlines, JetBlue and Delta, sources said.
With the inert “bomb” stashed somewhere in his pants, he got through the magnetometer undetected at around 11 a.m. He was then pulled aside for a physical screening, and a TSA agent failed to discover the IED and allowed the “bomber” to go to his gate.
“He did have a simulated IED in his pants,” the source said. “They did not find it.”
The exact makeup of the mock IED was not available, but even devices small enough to be stashed in a passenger’s pants could blow a hole through a plane’s fuselage.
TSA inspectors have previously used mock bombs modeled after devices used by 2009 “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and 2001 “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.
Only one member of the TSA’s terror team was stopped at the checkpoint — a female agent “carrying a simulated IED inside her carry-on that was inside a child’s doll,” the source said.
It had “wires sticking out” and was obviously suspicious and she was pulled aside, sources say.
The Red Team also targeted Terminal C the same day, although results from that test were unclear.
The TSA said in a statement that it would not provide details of any of its undercover operations.
Are You Sleeping with an Undercover Cop? ~ Breaking the Set
Abby Martin takes a look at a number of cases of law enforcement entrapment of everyday people, and how undercover operations are becoming more pervasive in the expanding police state.
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Holder: Home-Grown Terrorists Threat Rivals Overseas ~ ABC
by Chris Good
After years of security briefings and thwarting terrorist plots, national security still keeps Eric Holder awake.
“I still worry at night,” the U.S. attorney general told ABC’s Pierre Thomas in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview on Wednesday.
“I’m concerned about whether or not we have done all that we can to ensure that every threat has been adequately examined, that we put up our defenses in appropriate ways,” Holder said. “So, yeah, I still go to bed worried at night.”
America now confronts a very different terrorist threat than it did four years ago, according to Holder. While al Qaeda’s central leadership has been diminished, the group is more “widespread” geographically—and the threat of homegrown terrorists in the U.S. now rivals that of plots hatched overseas, Holder told ABC News.
“Core al Qaeda doesn’t have the capacity that it once did, but it’s metastasized in a number of ways. We now worry about the nodes of al Qaeda—al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda now in Africa, al Qaeda in Iraq,” Holder said. “The threat is more widespread in terms of where those people are, where those significant people are. That’s how it’s different now.”
The nation’s top law enforcer worries that Americans could become “complacent” about the threat of terrorism, even as the FBI has thwarted not only international plots, but homegrown terrorists that Holder called “a very serious threat.”
“I worry a little that the American people, from the general population, has become a little complacent that we don’t understand or realize that the threats are still real, that the danger is out there, is still tangible, that we still have to be as vigilant as we need to be,” Holder said.
During his tenure as attorney general, federal authorities have thwarted numerous terrorist plots hatched within the U.S., and Holder told ABC News that the threat of homegrown plots warrants as much attention as international terrorism.
In December, the FBI arrested two Florida brothers, Raees Alam and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, alleging they had sought to obtain explosives and carry out a terrorist attack in New York City. The two were charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
“It’s a very serious threat. I think what it says is that the scope, our scope, has to be broadened. We can’t think that it’s just a bunch of people in caves in some part of the world,” Holder said. “We have to be concerned about the homeland to the same extent that we are worried about the threat coming from overseas.”
“It’s a very serious threat. I think what it says is that the scope, our scope, has to be broadened. We can’t think that it’s just a bunch of people in caves in some part of the world,” Holder said. “We have to be concerned about the homeland to the same extent that we are worried about the threat coming from overseas.”
Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren’t Invented by Al Qaeda, They’re Manufactured by the FBI ~ Trevor Aaronson
On the evening of December 2, 2010, Martinez was in another Muslim’s car as they drove through Baltimore. A hidden device recorded their conversation. His mother had called, and Martinez had just finished talking to her on his cell phone. He was aggravated. “She wants me to be like everybody else, being in school, working,” he told his friend.
“For me, it’s different. I have this zeal for deen and she doesn’t understand that.” Martinez’s mother didn’t know that her son had just left a meeting with a purported Afghan-born terrorist who had agreed to provide him with a car bomb. But she wasn’t the only one in the dark that night.
Martinez himself didn’t know his new terrorist friend was an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that the man driving the car—a man he’d met only a few weeks earlier—was a paid informant for federal law enforcement.
America’s False Flag Attacks ~ Breaking the Set
Remember the Maine? On the 115th anniversary of the Maine explosion, Abby Martin explores US False Flag Attacks as being at the heart of every major US war of aggression in history.
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Manufactured Terror Threats: Interview with Trevor Aaronson ~ Breaking the Set
Abby Martin interviews investigative journalist and author, Trevor Aaronson, about the war terror manufactured threat and FBI entrapment of ‘terrorists’.
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FBI Celebrates Duping Another Mentally Ill Man Into Fake Terror Plot ~ New American
by Alex Newman
Following a series of similar widely ridiculed so-called “sting” operations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last week that it had foiled yet another “terror plot” that, like virtually every supposed “terrorist” case in recent years, was created and managed from start to finish by the FBI itself. This time, the dupe was a 28-year-old California man, Matthew Aaron Llaneza, with a documented history of mental illness, who apparently believed his government handlers were helping him wage “jihad.” Critics, however, say the whole scheme smacks of entrapment and a waste of taxpayer money.
Llaneza was arrested by federal agents on February 7 in Oakland after he supposedly tried to blow up a bogus bomb the FBI helped him create. According to authorities, the mentally ill San Jose suspect planned to detonate the fake explosives outside a Bank of America branch. The alleged plan, officials said, was to start a “civil war” by making it appear as if the attack had been carried out by “anti-government militias,” sparking a crackdown by the government on right-of-center dissidents.
“Unbeknownst to Llaneza, the explosive device that he allegedly attempted to use had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” the FBI admitted in a press release celebrating the arrest of its mentally unstable stooge. The man was charged in a criminal complaint with “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against property used in an activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.” If convicted, he could face life in prison.
According to the government’s court filings, the mentally ill man met with an undercover FBI agent late last year under mysterious circumstances. The federal official somehow managed to convince the naïve dupe that he was connected to the “Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan” — Islamist forces that were originally armed and trained by the U.S. government before becoming official enemies. From there, federal handlers worked with the man to develop the half-baked plot and the fake bomb to blow something up.
“Llaneza’s stated goal was to trigger a governmental crackdown, which he expected would trigger a right-wing counter-response against the government followed by, he hoped, civil war,” the FBI claimed in a statement applauding its work defending the Homeland from its own plot. “Llaneza’s arrest was the culmination of an undercover operation during which he was closely monitored by the FBI’s South Bay Joint Terrorism Task Force.” State and local officials also participated in the scheme, the FBI said.
Despite the Justice Department’s celebration over foiling its own bogus plot, as has become typical in this sort of case, critics are raising serious concerns. Among the most widely expressed: Official documents and family members confirmed that Llaneza has a long history of mental-health issues. Hospital and medical records obtained by local media outlets revealed Llaneza had previously attempted suicide, was taking medication for psychosis, and that doctors considered him “delusional” and suspected he may have been suffering from schizophrenia.
Report: U.S. Muslim Terrorism Was Practically Nil in 2012 ~ Wired
Try as al-Qaida might to encourage them, American Muslims still aren’t committing acts of terrorism. Only 14 people out of a population of millions were indicted for their involvement in violent terrorist plots in 2012, a decline from 2011′s 21. The plots themselves hit the single digits last year.
So much for a widespread stereotype. According to data tracked by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in North Carolina and released Friday (.PDF), there were nine terrorist plots involving American Muslims in 2012. Only one of them, the attempted bombing of a Social Security office in Arizona, actually led to any violence. There were no casualties in that or any other incident. And the Triangle study tracks indictments, not convictions.
Terrorist incidents from American Muslims is on the decline for the third straight year. After an uptick in 2009, there were 18 plots in 2011 involving 21 U.S. Muslims. And it’s not just violent plots: Fewer Muslim-Americans are getting indicted for money laundering, material support for terrorism, and lying to investigators. There were 27 people indicted on those terror-support charges in 2010, eight in 2011 and six in 2012.
Witness: FBI manipulated bomb plot suspect ~ KGW
A psychologist testified that the FBI used advanced psychological techniques to lure a teenage terrorism suspect into agreeing to a plan that would have killed thousands.
Elizabeth Cauffman, a defense witness in the trial of Mohamed Mohamud, testified Tuesday that undercover FBI agents rewarded risky behavior and used social pressure to convince Mohamud to attempt to detonate a weapon of mass destruction at Portland’s 2010 Christmas tree-lighting.
The bomb was a fake supplied by the FBI.
