Terrorism News

President Obama will deliver a speech Thursday at the National Defense University in which he will address how he intends to bring his counterterrorism policies, including the drone program and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in line with the legal framework he promised after taking office.  A White House official, speaking Saturday on the condition of anonymity to describe the speech in advance, said Obama will “discuss our broad counterterrorism policy, including our military, diplomatic, intelligence and legal efforts.”

“He will review the state of the threats we face, particularly as the al-Qaeda core has weakened but new dangers have emerged,” the official said.  “He will discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones.  And he will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.”

Read more: Washington Post

Experts on Islam and terrorism are decrying the Department of Homeland Security’s recently revealed anti-terrorism training guidelines, which pressure cops to ignore Islamic beliefs when investigating terror crimes.  The Boston bombings demonstrated the impact of such training, Andrew McCarthy, a former New York prosecutor, told The Daily Caller.  “The Boston Marathon was bombed by a jihadist who had been investigated by the FBI … [and was confirmed in 2011 to be] an Islamist, which would have been hard not to do since he does not appear to have made any secret of it,” said McCarthy, who persuaded a New York jury in 1995 to convict “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman for his use of Islamic teaching to spur jihad attacks, including the 1993 attack against the Twin Towers.

But before the bombing, “the FBI closed its file [on Tamerlan Tsarnaev] because it found this did not constitute ‘derogatory information,’” McCarthy said.  McCarthy and other security experts, and even members of the American Islamic community, indicate that a culture of excessive concern for the sensibilities of Muslims supremacists is preventing law enforcement agencies from pursuing jihadists.  Under the federal guidelines, “agents are admonished to discount the possibility that an Islamist’s constitutionally protected abhorrence of the United States might possibly lead to violence,” McCarthy told TheDC.

Read more: Daily Caller

Militants on witness protection were able to board flights because their new identities had not been updated on the US no-fly list, a watchdog has found.

The US justice department report said its Witness Security Program had failed to give the new names to the FBI-managed Terrorist Screening Center.

The miscommunication allowed people whom the US had branded as suspected or known terrorists to board airliners.

The justice department said it had now amended its information sharing. A restrictive travel policy had since been fully implemented, it added.

Read more: BBC News

Aware that intensified American counterterrorism efforts have made an ambitious Sept. 11-style plot a long shot, Al Qaeda propagandists for several years have called on their devotees in the United States to carry out smaller-scale solo attacks and provided the online education to teach them how.  “I strongly recommend all of the brothers and sisters coming from the West to consider attacking America in its own backyard,” wrote Samir Khan, an American who joined Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch and emerged as a fervent advocate of homegrown, do-it-yourself terrorism before he was killed in an American drone strike in September 2011.

The Boston Marathon bombing — which the authorities believe was carried out according to instructions that Mr. Khan posted online — offers an unsettling example of just how devastating such an attack can be, even when the death toll is low.  It shows how plotters can construct powerful bombs without attracting official attention.  It offers a case study in the complex mix of personality and ideology at work in extremist violence. And it raises a pressing question: Is there any way to detect such plotters before they can act?

Read more: New York Times

US defence planners have rebuilt the country's biggest bomb, the bunker buster, to ensure the country can still destroy Iran's fortified underground nuclear plant.  Pentagon officials have reportedly shown Israeli officials details of the extensive upgrade in recent weeks to convince their allies that time to attack Iran has not run out, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The newspaper reported that engineers had installed cyber warfare capabilities and new explosive targetting designs on the 30,000 lbs device, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator.  Videos of the secret tests of a previous version of the device have been shown to Israels as Americans attempt to explain the changes.

The new bunker buster has a fusing system that intensifies its burrowing power as well as sophisticated new stealth and electronic guidance technology to overcome recent advances in Iran's air defences and electronic warfare systems, the newspaper said.  Iran's fortification of the Fordow Enrichment Plant, where it has thousands of centrifuges refining uranium that could be converted into a nuclear bomb, has drawn warnings from Israel that the opportunity to destroy Iran's nuclear programme is closing rapidly.

Read more: UK Guardian

The head of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has declared that Syria has real friends who will not let it fall to the US, Israel or Islamic radicals.  Hassan Nasrallah said Syria's opposition was too weak to bring down Bashar al-Assad's regime militarily. He was speaking in an address broadcast on Hezbollah's TV station al-Manar.

BBC Arab affairs analyst Sebastian Usher says the speech tacitly confirmed the group has been involved in fighting in neighbouring Syria. The Syrian opposition has long claimed the Iranian-backed Shia movement has been supplying fighters to help Mr Assad, a key Hezbollah backer.  "A large number [of rebels] were preparing to capture villages inhabited by Lebanese... so it was normal to offer every possible and necessary aid to help the Syrian army," Mr Nasrallah was quoted as saying by AFP news agency. The Hezbollah leader said it had never hidden its martyrs, but that reports that large numbers of its fighters had been killed were lies.

Read more: BBC

The Maryland Jockey Club has unveiled enhanced security plans for the 138th Preakness in the wake of the recent deadly bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Fans will be subject to electronic wand searches at all gates for the races at Pimlico Race Course on May 17 and May 18. They will not be allowed to carry backpacks or duffel bags into the race and only see-through coolers will be permitted. Other newly banned items include laser lights, and cameras with detachable lenses or lenses longer than six inches.

"Collectively, we feel these changes will address concerns fans may have following the Boston tragedies," Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas said in a statement. "We ask that everyone please read carefully our security procedures and policies, so that guests may enjoy Black-Eyed Susan and Preakness days in a safe and secure manner with a minimum of inconvenience."

Read more: Baltimore Sun

As detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, press ahead with a widening hunger strike nearly three months old, President Barack Obama has come under increasing criticism for his policy of force-feeding them.  But U.S. law is on his side, an analysis of court rulings shows.  Most U.S. judges who have examined forced feeding in prisons have concluded that the measure may violate the rights of inmates to control their own bodies and to privacy - rights rooted in the U.S. Constitution and in common law.  But they have found that the needs of operating a prison are more important.

Courts generally view a prison hunger strike as a suicide attempt, and they have ruled wardens have authority to stop suicide attempts as part of their mandate to preserve order.  "If prisoners were allowed to kill themselves, prisons would find it even more difficult than they do to maintain discipline, because of the effect of a suicide in agitating the other prisoners," Judge Richard Posner wrote for a Chicago-based appeals court in 2006 in a case involving a Wisconsin prison that punished a disobedient inmate by refusing him food.  As of Thursday, 94 of the 166 prisoners were on a hunger strike in Guantanamo, meaning they had refused at least nine consecutive meals.  According to a military count, 17 had lost enough weight to be force-fed liquid meals through a nasogastric tube, and three were in the hospital for observation.  Striking inmates began refusing to eat around early February, alleging rough handling of the Koran during searches for contraband and protesting their prolonged imprisonment.

Read more: Reuters

A move by the United States to designate two Lebanese exchange agencies as primary money launderers seeks to prevent Hezbollah from abusing the country’s financial system, said David Cohen, U.S. Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

“Hezbollah is both a full-fledged terrorist organization, lavishly funded over the years by Iran, and an enterprise that increasingly turns to crime to finance itself as the economic pressure on Iran mounts, and Iran’s financial situation becomes more tenuous,” Cohen said.

“Today’s actions are not an entitlement of the Lebanese financial center as a whole. But rather exposes those actors who abuse it,” he added.

Read more: Al-Arabiya

A hacked Twitter account of a major news organization Tuesday dispelled any lingering notion that tweets are mere 140-character missives that harmlessly fly off into the ether.  Tuesday, a 1:07 p.m. ET tweet from the Associated Press exclaimed "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured."  It was a hoax, but within seconds, Wall Street was in panic mode, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average into free-fall and erasing nearly $200 billion off the broader market's value.

The Associated Press quickly revealed its Twitter account had been hacked and said the tweet was fake.  The White House issued assurances that the president was safe.  "The president is fine," spokesman Jay Carney said. "I was just with him."  Fresh off last week's deadly Boston Marathon attacks, the Texas fertilizer facility explosion and fear inspired by ricin-laced letters mailed to the president and congressional leaders, the hoax underscored a great vulnerability in our 24/7 faster-is-better news environment: stories (even fake ones) travel at light speed and can in an instant upend an increasingly anxious public's faith in business, government and the news media.

Read more: USA Today