Thanks to lax background checks, even after 9/11, the Hezbollah spy who obtained work at the FBI and CIA is not the first terror supporter to infiltrate the U.S. government, the reliably paranoid WorldNetDaily reports, saying an alleged al Qaedaite also infiltrated the EPA. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., founded the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus, she tells Investor’s Business Daily’s Paul Sperry, “because President Bush does not talk to the American people about the long-term threat of radical Islamofascism infiltration in America.”

Feds: An intelligence bill the Senate is scheduled to take up after it returns Dec. 3 would block Americans from learning details of any warrantless surveillance program conducted after 9/11, USA Today’s Richard Willing writes. “Despite their latest court setback, challengers of domestic surveillance “have another arrow in their quiver — a section of the same law that Bush spurned when he first ordered wiretaps six years ago,” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Bob Egelko leads. Accused of using torture on terrorism suspects, the United States should make clearer what it permits during interrogation and what it does not, Reuters’ Stephanie Nebehay quotes State’s top lawyer — while The Arizona Daily Star’s Aaron Mackey has the FBI dismissing a report that jihadists teamed with Mexican drug runners to target Arizona’s Fort Huachuca.

Poly-ticks: A recently obtained National War College essay shows that former POW and current GOP prez contender John McCain “is not as thoughtful as advertised about the lessons of Vietnam,” Matt Welch maintains in the Los Angeles Times. Oil consumers are financing both sides in the war on terror because of the actions of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, The Associated Press quotes GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. “In keeping with the pacifism of much of the Iowa caucus electorate,” Barack Obama now says the U.S. military can best confront al Qaeda and other terrorists from outside Iraq, The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt hits.

State and local: A program allowing local and state police to work hand-in-hand with ICE agents is skyrocketing in popularity, but critics question whether it could hamper police performance of core duties, Stateline.org surveys. A suspect has been nabbed in the Charlotte, N.C., theft of a DHS worker’s laptop, credentials, night vision gear and other trade tools, WBTV News 3notes. With his refusal to classify a late Ground Zero-serving police officer as an attack-related homicide victim — because he didn’t hit the site until Sept. 13 — NYC’s coroner casts doubts on thousands of future cases, The New York Daily News notes. Thanks to DHS dollars, the Georgetown County (S.C.) Sheriff’s Office was awarded a side scan sonar for finding objects under water, WBTW News 13notes

Follow the money: Justice is urging a federal court to go easy on Iran in a legal dispute in which terror victims are attempting to seize valuable Iranian antiquities, The New York Sun says. When Treasury IDs Saudi Arabia as a conduit for “millions of dollars to al Qaeda, and the president certifies that ‘Saudi Arabia is cooperating with efforts to combat international terrorism,’ you know the fix is in,” The Niagara Falls Reporter nags. (Saudi Arabian authorities have released, after their repenting of their Jihadist ways, approximately 1,500 “reformed extremists,” The Terror Finance Blog adds.) The Council on American-Islamic Relations seeks congressional pressure on Justice to change the group’s status as a co-conspirator in a terror finance case, The Washington Times tells.

Licensed to ill: Bioterrorism may have begun 3,300 years ago when the Hittites sent diseased rams to their enemies to weaken them with tularemia — which remains a potential bioterror threat even today, New Scientist says. U.S. researchers have devised “cell canaries,” living cells engineered to die when exposed to a particular bio-chemical pathogen, providing early warning, NS also notes. Boffins at Southampton University have developed a computer model to simulate the transmission of infectious diseases between people, The Engineer Online observers. “Our ability to track bird flu is being held hostage to the fears and ideologies of a divided planet,” New Scientist nags — as The Jakarta Post details Indonesia’s refusal to share virus samples with the WHO. Read, also, a CRS Report: “Pandemic Influenza: An Analysis of State Preparedness and Response Plans,” and another: “The Public Health and Medical Response to Disasters: Federal Authority and Funding.”

Radiation Free America: “What will we do when our children come home from school with blisters on their skin and their parents don’t know what to do?” a top Scottish cop asks The Sunday Herald,vividly touting the inevitability of radiological terrorism. (Atomic radiation “might not be as deadly as is widely believed,” Spiegel suggests, meanwhile.) “Every day, about 500 radiation alarms sound at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports,” the L.A. Times spotlights in a cargo-screening update. A record number of low-level radioactive materials, the kind fashionable into dirty bombs, have gone missing in Canada this year, The Ottawa Citizen says.

Air turbulence: Kiosks meant to speed up check-in could be open doors for terrorists to hide their identities on U.S. flights, Portland’s KATU 2 is told. Travelers booked on a delayed flight out of Knoxville Sunday night couldn’t board because TSA screeners had gone home for the day, WATE 6 says. A wildcat strike by Cyprus airport workers to protest “degrading” security checks stranded more than 1,000 passengers last weekend, The International Herald Tribune relays. A Vancouver Muslim is filing a human rights complaint after being stopped from boarding a Canadian fight three years ago without explanation, The Toronto Star says.

Courts and rights: A Somali man who pleaded guilty to a charge involving a plot to blow up a central Ohio shopping mall will serve 10 years in prison, 10TV News notes. Testimony wound up yesterday in the Liberty City Seven terror trial, with final arguments slated for Thursday, The Miami Herald relays. Simply charging terror suspects in civil courts “may be a heroically noble human rights policy, but ordinary citizens will be forgiven if they find it criminally negligent of public safety,” a Weekly Standard contributor criticizes. When the Supreme Court hears arguments next week about the rights of Guantanamo prisoners it will immediately release audio tapes of the proceeding, AP reports. At Guantanamo, destroying a Styrofoam cup is a punishable offense and extra toilet paper goes only to the most privileged, with interrogators determining one’s ration of this “comfort item,” CounterPunch recounts.

Over there: Ratification of a Euro-treaty giving the European Union sweeping power over the continent’s security policies could make it harder for the United States to keep track of suspected terrorists across the Atlantic, securicrats tell The Boston Globe. Even as his confrontation with democracy advocates plays out in the cities, “Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s real war with militants is heating up — and far from public view,” The Christian Science Monitor surveys. In a wide-ranging interview with a Muslim lifestyle mag, the Archbishop of Canterbury contends that “the U.S. had lost the moral high ground since the Sept. 11 attacks,” The Daily Telegraph tells.

Over here: All candidates for the presidency “should actively begin searching for American Muslims and Arab Americans who can serve in primary decisionmaking cabinet level posts,” Mansour Ijaz insists in The Christian Science Monitor. Team Romney is skeptical of Ijaz’s recounting of GOP prez contender Mitt Romney’s contention he wouldn’t appoint a Muslim to the cabinet, The National Review reports — and see a New York Times round-up on the flap. DHS officers did not violate the constitutional rights of five Muslim U.S. citizens returning from Canada subjected to searches usually reserved for suspected terrorists, Reuters has a court ruling Monday.“Its most virulent critics have dubbed it ‘Terror High’ and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down,” AP leads in re: Virginia’s Saudi Islamic Academy. A British primary school teacher was arrested in Sudan on Sunday for insulting Islam’s prophet by allowing her class of 7-year-olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed, BBC News notes.

Holy Wars: The prophet “Mohammed and the other jihadists made a fortune out of enslaving kafirs. Mohammed used the money for more jihad. So slavery financed the spread of Islam and jihad from the beginning,” the Center for the Study of Political Islam’s director tells FrontPage. What is it about a small neighborhood in the Moroccan city of Tetouan that yielded many of the men involved in the Madrid train bombings, as well as would-be suicide bombers in Iraq? a Times Sunday Magazine feature mulls. “The word ‘Islamofascism’ never had any meaning, except as a catch-all for whatever regimes and groups the word’s users wished to make targets for military action,” The American Conservative critiques. The six essays collected in “Democracy in Muslim Societies” (Sage) “posit that one must grasp the varieties and multiple paths taken by Muslim politics in the quest for democracy,” Asia Times reviews.

Outrageous outlaw outsourcing: “While the United States continues to wage its war on terror in locations where terrorists are not originally present, al Qaeda (also known as: al-Qaida or al-Qa’ida or al-Qa’idah) has been stretched to its limits sending terrorists and trainers to assist locals fighting the Americans,” Avant News notes. This situation has left al Qaeda short on bodies to protect their primary assets and leaders in the hills of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan,” Raoul Thibodeaux writes. “Thus, al Qaeda has hired the American private military security firm Blackwater USA to protect many of these bases, caves and training camps. ‘Although many infidels trained by the Great Satan work for Blackwater, we feel it is in the best interest of Allah and our cause to employ these pig eating sinners to protect our great jihad,” a spokesman explained. “As long as the Blackwater boys get paid and can bring home what they call ‘the bacon,’ they will be fine guards and fighters.”