The White House boasted yesterday of “building a culture of preparedness” with its new homeland strategy just as The Washington Post reported that administration leakage mooted a private firm’s years-long counter-jihadi surveillance op, The Chicago Tribune’s Mark Silva blogs. (The administration yesterday denied the loose-lips accusation, Reuters mentions — while the Post, again, has U.S. intel officials promising to probe the allegation.) The new homeland document, meanwhile, also “warns that help from U.S. allies and the public is needed to thwart an attack on American soil that is being planned by a reconstituted al Qaeda,” the Los Angeles Times’ Josh Meyer adds.

High courts: A German citizen kidnapped by the CIA and tortured in Afghanistan lost his last shot at legal redress yesterday when the Supremes declined his case, The New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse records — while the Post’s Josh White has a federal judge nixing the repatriation of a Tunisian detainee due to fears of torture or death. Justice last week asked the Supreme Court to review an appeals court rejection of the sentence imposed on convicted “Millennium Bomber” Ahmed Ressam, The Seattle Times relays.

Spooks: The major telecoms are vigorously campaigning to win legal immunity for having helped the NSA conduct eavesdropping without warrants, the Times’s Eric Lichtblau relates — while The Associated Press’ Pamela Hess has a top House Dem offering to legislate immunity, provided the administration details what they did. Civil libertarians rap the House surveillance bill as insufficiently protective of citizens’ rights, Reuters’ Thomas Ferraro and Randall Mikkelsen add. “The CIA is a relatively calm place these days, with its senior officials concentrating more on nailing foreign targets than each other,” CQ Homeland Security SpyTalker Jeff Stein leads.

Poly-ticks: “While the relentless 2008 race is being bitterly fought — over the war in Iraq, U.S. policy on Iran and terrorism — candidates are also trying, some might say too hard, to showcase their lighter side,” Agence France-Presse leads. “Republicans concerned about homeland security and terrorism [are] settling for Rudy Giuliani, despite his poor decisions surrounding Sept. 11,” a Red and Black contributor comments. Hillary Clinton is at pains to assure USA Today that de-frocked ex-national security advisor Sandy Berger “has no official role in my campaign” — while Captain’s Quarters seethes that any association “with a man who pled guilty to stealing national-security documents during a bipartisan investigation should continue to generate outrage.”

State and local: Hard-line Islamic books that justify violence against non-Muslim societies are freely available in Gotham’s public libraries, The New York Daily Newsalerts. Sen. Charles Schumer calls for tougher federal testing of a safety device that can fail in high heat and water and has been linked to at least 15 firefighter deaths nationwide, Newsday notes. Laws aimed at breaking licensing hurdles that barred out-of-state medicos from volunteering during Hurricane Katrina are gaining momentum in states from Oregon to Pennsylvania,” USA Today leads. A long-awaited LAPD report details numerous errors made by commanders and officers in a violent May Day clash with immigration rights protesters and journalists, the LA Times tells.

Follow the money: A little-discussed 9/11 Commission monograph underlines how cheap terror attacks really are and debunks the urban legend of bin Laden’s fortune, CounterPunch recounts. Canadian officials have denied charitable status to at least 14 organizations since 9/11 on worries they might have links to terrorist groups, The Toronto Globe and Mail mentions. Iraqi and Afghan insurgents “are using handheld video cameras to chronicle their operations and raise money,” a Post special report recounts. Scams and “charitable” donations allows terrorist insurgents “to gain local support by providing micro-incomes and funding clinics,” Policy Review analyzes. In an alert last week against possible terror attacks at religious sites, India warned that militants could fund their attacks with counterfeit money, Agence France-Pressereports.

Know nukes: More than 1,000 hospital and research facility irradiation machines should be replaced before terrorists mine them for dirty bomb fuel, an advisory group’s report obtained by AP advises. In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate “important individuals,” documents obtained by AP, again, show. The Post blogs on two separate audits — one from Energy’s IG, another from the GAO — rapping administration efforts to stem the smuggling of radiological materials.

Air turbulence: TSA plans to expand its use of screening machines that look under passengers’ clothing for hidden weapons, USA Today tells. “Approach any major airport . . . and there is one message transmitted loud and clear to you — be afraid,” ex-politico Bob Barr writes in an Atlanta Journal-Constitutionslam at TSA’s behavioral profiling. The 11th International Symposium on Wearable Computers is warning attendees this week not to flaunt their designs in Boston’s airport, where an MIT student festooned with an LED device was arrested last month, the Globe reports. British greens with an anti-air travel group blockaded a Manchester airport terminal’s check point for three hours Monday morning, The Guardian recounts.

Coming and going: Some terror and security experts support New York State’s plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, saying it will bring a hidden population into the open, the Times tells. “Local and state law enforcement agencies throughout the country are taking unprecedented steps to police illegal immigration,” The Houston Chronicle surveys. Georgia laws should be tightened to keep illegal immigrants suspected of serious crimes from bonding out of jail, The Chattanooga Times Free Press quotes state solons.

Troubled waters: Citing homeland security, a Minnesota agency refuses to release detailed inspection reports on the states’ outdated bridges, The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. “A generous grant from DHS will help Racine [Wisc.] improve security throughout the city’s water utility,” The Journal Timestells. “After months of confusion and delays,” Port of Wilmington workers will be among the nation’s first to get those long-awaited high-tech security ID cards, The Journal Newsnotes. The Coast Guard faces budget obstacles to the $260 million needed to upgrade its command centers to meet Safe Port Act of 2006 benchmarks, Federal Computer Week quotes a GAO audit.

Terror talk: “A host of so-called ‘security’ measures have been enacted that are actually hurting America’s larger interests,” Paul Raines remarks in CSO Magazine. “The trouble is that ‘preparing for the worst,’ while it sounds sensible, carries a cost,” Gideon Rachman amplifies in The Financial Times. By Osama bin Laden’s “sociology of America, 9/11 ripped the mask off the face of the beast,” showing it as a destroyer of not just nations but it’s own citizens’ rights, Steve Simon suggests in a Post review of an “al Qaeda reader.” Noting the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act’s inking exactly one year back, a Post leader also bemoans that “no such specific attention has been paid to the needs of children during and after a disaster.”

Define your terms: The “truism in liberal circles that Ronald Reagan brought us Osama bin Laden and the Taliban [is merely] ideologically convenient misinformation,” Paul Kengor comments in The Weekly Standard. “Describing the global Islamic insurgency as a fringe phenomenon is unrealistic and self-defeating,” considering that “since 9/11, democracies have fought three wars against nonstate Islamist actors,” Ariel Cohen essays for Policy Review. “What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism,” The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh writes of the U.S. confrontation with Iran.

Rights and wrongs: Last month, “America’s own Joseph K., the terrorist who was not a terrorist, got a little more revenge on the government that had persecuted him,” leads a Salon analysis of an Oregon lawyer’s Kafkaesque ordeal. “Is America’s war on terror a real war in the legal sense? If not, then the detainees should be treated as ordinary criminal suspects,” The Economist essays. “South Asians in America are still experiencing the impact of government policies implemented after Sept. 11 that led to an unprecedented number of detentions and deportations,” New American Media surveys. Interrogation foes got the White House “to repudiate a 2003 memo said to be overbroad. Now critics are up in arms over newly leaked 2005 memos that responded to that earlier criticism by attempting to be more specific,” The Wall Street Journal jousts.

Over there: Three Islamists arrested last month for planning car bombs attacks on U.S. targets smuggled the detonators into Germany with the help of a teenager, Deutsche Welle records. Osama bin Laden could hide more easily in a city than a remote tribal region, Reuters quotes an ex-Pakistani intel chief. “We didn’t go to war in Iraq to thrash al Qaeda,” but the protracted conflict “makes this a contest where al Qaeda is actually now losing the hearts-and-minds game,” a New Republic contributor rues. Jemaah Islamiah remains a potent threat five years after the first Bali bombing, despite the gutting of its hierarchy by security forces, The Australian assesses.

Changing of the (private) guard: “The head of Blackwater USA, the largest American mercenary army, has been chosen to be the next prime minister of Iraq,” Unconfirmed Sources confirms. “The election of Erik Prince and expulsion of Nouri al-Maliki occurred yesterday during a secret session of the Iraqi parliament,” Kamal El-Din recounts. During the historic session, Mesopotamian solons revised the Iraqi constitution, dumped Maliki and elected Prince in just 45 minutes. After his elevation, Prince spoke to a reporter from deep within his Green Zone bunker: ‘Today is a great day for Iraq and America alike. For Iraqi’s, my election to prime minister means that finally someone who can really work with the Americans is in charge. My relationship with the American government will allow the government of Iraq to gain the focus and direction which it needs.’” Listen to “The President’s Weekly Radio Address” in The Onion, for “the next step in the fight against Terror.”