“The FBI's elite Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark says it is not only monitoring a number of North Jersey residents with ties to al Qaeda, but that agents have quietly ‘disrupted’ their activities and even deported a few,” The Bergen County Record’s Mike Kelly leads. Death Cab for Cutie lead guitarist Chris Walla is “baffled” why DHS seized the master disk of his prospective solo album at the Canadian border, dispatching it to computer-forensics for closer inspection, MTV News’ James Montgomery relates.

Feds: “Across several of DHS's most troubled projects . . . contractors are so enmeshed in DHS's work that they oversee other contractors,” The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu cites a GAO report out today. Under Bush, Justice has stressed immigration and terror-related investigations and downplayed white-collar crime, mobster and civil rights cases, the Post’s Dan Eggen and John Solomon survey. Lawmakers demand a probe into the treatment of two ex-Border Patrollers imprisoned for shooting a drug dealer near the Mexican border, The Washington Times’ Sara A. Carter recounts. The White House agreed yesterday to give Senate intel overseers access to internal documents related to its domestic surveillance program, the Post, yet again, also reports.

Poly-ticks: The donnybrook over the House homeland panel’s having recommended inoculations for aides headed to a NASCAR race raises a red flag on the perils Dems face seeking vital votes in NASCAR Country, The Associated Press’ Mike Baker analyzes. For the first time since the Depression, a GOP candidate has a good shot at the Pittsburgh mayor’s office, thanks to such missteps by the young incumbent as tooling around in a DHS-funded SUV, AP’s Joe Mandak also handicaps. The widow of 1992 presidential candidate Paul Tsongas on Tuesday defeated the brother of an airline pilot who died in 9/11 in a special Bay State House election, The Lowell Sun says.

Tehran precinct reports: Nothing “short of another terrorist attack or a new war against Iran will alter the electoral terrain of America,” Mark Green predicts on The Huffington Post. “The specter of a hypothetical U.S. military strike on Iran is emerging as a dominant foreign policy theme in a 2008 White House race already haunted by the war in Iraq,” Agence France-Presse adds — and see The Sacramento News & Review: “Will the U.S. attack Iran before the November ’08 presidential election?” Charges Dem juggernaut Hillary Clinton in a platform-positing Foreign Affairs essay: “The Bush administration refuses to talk to Iran about its nuclear program, preferring to ignore bad behavior rather than challenge it.”

State and local: A terrorist attack and take-over staged at McCook Regional Airport Sunday morning “had its flashes of reality and intensity and . . . its moments of fun,” The McCook (Neb.) Daily Gazette records. Restaurants and merchants in downtown Chandler are kicking off a discount promotion to take advantage of the DHS dirty bomb drill being played this week, The Arizona Republic reports. New York State GOP senators are threatening to withhold funding for the governor’s bid to provide driver’s licenses to illegals, The Albany Times-Union tells. An emergency training center that includes a five-story fireproof structure, a rappelling platform and a smoke machine has opened in Coeur d'Alene, The Idaho Statesman informs.

Responder blues: Mounting fatal police shootings prompt suggestions that “an increasing number of suspects are adopting a troubling disregard for cops,” USA Today spotlights — while The Chicago Reader tracks a connection between the over-crowded Cook County Jail and a deadly staph outbreak in the wider community. Unease about a new NYPD surveillance system for Lower Manhattan “is hardening into a full-fledged protest by civil liberties advocates,” The New York Sun says. Wisconsin’s AG is taking static for urging the public to silence with the media about the recent off-duty-deputy massacre, AP reports.

How we live now: Security at Frenchman’s Creek “means training in antiterrorism and border safety [and] men wearing all black, hiding behind trees,” The Palm Beach Post reports — and see WorldGolf.com on that golf community’s “new customized golf cart fitted with infra-red thermal imaging and GPS tracking systems for nightly grounds patrols.” Citizens of Aurora, Ill. “laughed, chatted and snapped photos” going into the traveling exhibition for the future National Sept. 11 Memorial, but “many came out crying,” The Chicago Tribune leads. South Carolina “state fair-goers “for the first time — are being asked to walk through metal detectors, but employees are letting many visitors in without scrutiny when the new security measure causes long lines,” The Columbia State says.

Follow the money: The Patriot Act put bank tellers on the front lines of watching for terror financers, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review surveys. A Pentagon review finds systemic problems in military efforts to obtain financial records in terror probes, the Times tells — while The Counterterrorism Blog heralds arrival of the first Defense study of terror funding. Washington welcomed the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force’s concern over Iran's weak measures against terror money laundering, AFP reports. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, relatedly, has inked a bill divesting California's pension funds from companies trading with Tehran's energy and defense sectors, The Los Angeles Daily Newsnotes. The Abu Sayyaf Group has received fresh funding from foreign donors, The Philippine Daily Inquirerquotes intel sources.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Authorities in a Michigan suburb say they've contained a hydrochloric acid leak that prompted the evacuation of three schools and about 3,000 residents, The Detroit News notes. Despite its “big-bang production values,” Portlanders are unlikely most will notice anything out of the ordinary during the four-day, multi-state DHS dirty bomb drill launched yesterday, The Oregonian offers. Food industries and federal regulators advocate having companies self-police to forestall food contamination, but “preventive controls” work only with adequate regulatory enforcement and industry support, The Wall Street Journal spotlights.

Coming and going: A ring of airline employees exploited security weaknesses in security procedures to help smuggle heroin and cocaine through JFK Airport, Newsday has federal authorities charging. Playing games with airport screeners “sounds like a bad idea, but Praveen Paruchuri of USC is trying to thwart criminals by doing just that,” New Scientistteases. An Indiainteracts.com contributor tries to convey his “horrible experience” at India’s Bangalore air hub, an “Air Port stricken by Chaos [that] has got only two gates for security check.” The panic that swept Uganda’s Entebbe airport Friday upon word of terrorist bombs “normalized after the security agents were later informed that it was an anti-terror drill,” The Kampala Monitor mentions.

Terror tech: “The one place where you don’t need a modified remote-controlled toy is in the passenger cabin... But a remote-controlled toy in checked luggage, now that's a clever idea,” Crypto-Gram comments of the latest TSA ban. Implausibly, the 51-year-old U-2 spy-bird, once one of America's toppest secrets, “has been adapted to the age of al Qaeda as an indispensable workhorse,” U.S. News spotlights. “To the extent that we're losing the war, IEDs are a major reason why. What can we learn from this humbling experience?” Slate explores. France plans to triple its number of video surveillance cameras by 2009 in its fight against terror and crime, Reuters reports — while The Evening Standard cites an analysis casting doubt on the crime-solving utility of London’s 10,000 CCTV cameras.

Cyberia: “The giant, searchable database known as Dark Web is an attempt to uncover, cross-reference, catalogue and analyze all online terrorist-generated content,” FOX News defines. The Vermont Air National Guard is creating a first-of-its-kind squadron specializing in computer networks, electronic warfare and advanced learning, The Rutland Herald relays. DHS has published a draft “framework of knowledge and skills” it believes needed to prevent cyberattacks, Federal Computer Week recounts. The new homeland strategy “acknowledges the need to better secure cyberspace,” while suggesting “defensive actions will be accompanied by offensive measures,” InfoWeek discusses. At least one jihadist Web site has published a link to Google Earth, suggesting that all mujahedeen allied in Iraq use the service, In Homeland Security quotes a private intel firm.

Courts and rights: A defense team in the Detroit terror prosecutor trial are flying to Jordan for videotaped testimony to later be shown to jurors, the Free Press reports. When a Californian was handed six-plus years for arms trafficking last week, the specter of terrorism hung heavy over the courtroom, The Fresno Bee reports. As Holy Land Foundation trial deliberations drag on, it seems possible “the largest terrorism financing case in history will crumble under weight of a mountain of complex evidence,” The Dallas Morning News notes. A terror suspect cited among the 15 most dangerous Guantanamo detainees met with his civilian attorney for the first time yesterday, AP reports.

Over there: A Bahraini conference next month “on tackling terrorism will seek to confront the major security challenges facing the Middle East,” The Gulf Daily News notes. “If Iran’s Revolutionary Guards aren’t terrorists, who is?” a Wall Street Journalcolumnist queries. Beirut authorities have detained “terrorist network” members for plotting attacks against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, AFP reports. Coalition forces in Afghanistan are being trained to avoid civilian casualties even if that means sometimes ignoring direct attacks, The Washington Times tells.

At long last, have you left no sense of decency? “According a newly-leaked top-secret document published in The New York Times, the CIA has employed controversial methods to extract information from terror suspects, including threats to put the detainee in front of a Senate committee for further interrogation,” ScrappleFace’s Scott Ott reports. “’I’ve seen those Senate hearings on TV,” an unnamed source told the Times. “I’d rather be waterboarded, slapped about the head and assaulted with high-volume Britney Spears music while confined to a meat locker.’ President Bush refused to confirm or deny the new allegations, [adding] that if, in the future, the U.S. did decide to subject terror suspects to Senate hearings, ‘at least no one would accuse us of using sleep deprivation.’” And see The Satirical Political Report: “Bush claims CIA interrogation techniques no worse than his ‘Skull and Bones’ initiation.”