April 21, 2008 – 6:58 a.m.
In the three years since Michael Chertoff took office, his DHS posting “has been transformed by a bitter debate over illegal immigration . . . Once dubbed the nation’s ‘anti-terrorism czar,’ he is now also its top border agent,” the Los Angeles Times’ Nicole Gaouette profiles. At a hearing late last week, Chertoff was grilled about his inability to follow a bipartisan law signed by President Bush ordering DHS fence builders to consult with border communities, The Alpine (Texas) Avalanche relates — and see a more positive Heritage Foundation Web Memo. As a senior Justice official, Chertoff’s 2002 “guarantee that CIA agents would not be prosecuted for breaking anti-torture laws led directly to the use of waterboarding,” Jason Leopold objects for OpEdNews.
Feds: “To head the FBI’s counterterrorism division for the nation’s capital is to treat every day as an orange alert,” The Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan profiles. “If there is to be better oversight of the intelligence agencies, the people who control the purse strings must have knowledge, expertise and clear responsibility,” The New York Times prescribes in a slap at parochial Hill oversight. Justice is pursuing a plan to take DNA samples from anyone in federal custody, United Press International informs — and see a John Birch Society commentary rapping that plan. The administration has used its control over access to transform talking-head “military analysts” into “an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks,” the Times’ David Barstow exposes. “Sometimes it seems the CIA’s ineptitude knows no bounds,” CQ Homeland Security’s Jeff Stein assesses in re: the agency’s still-reverberating 2003 Milan snatch job.
You gotta have friends: The Barack Obama campaign was last week “forced to reject an unsolicited endorsement by the Islamist terror group Hamas as the candidate worked to reassure leery Jewish voters,” The Washington Times’ Christina Bellantoni and S.A. Miller relate. (“Obama has a Jewish problem,” The Miami Herald’s Beth Reinhard flatly states.) “If that’s the best [ABC News] can do to associate Obama with terrorism — he had a meeting in the house of [ex-Weather Undergrounder William Ayers] — they’re skating on pretty thin ice,” Democratic Underground denounces — while CNN has McCain yesterday denouncing Obama’s links to an “unrepentant terrorist,” and Politico’s Ben Smith finds Ayers himself arguing, rather unconvincingly: “I’ve never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it.” Important features of Hillary Clinton’s “close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters are still opaque to the public view,” Dick Morris, disloyalist ex-adviser to her husband, insists for FOX News.
Poly-ticks: Critics complain that by framing the enemy in Iraq as “al Qaeda,” John McCain oversimplifies the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in a way that exploits the emotions aroused by 9/11, The New York Times spotlights.Senate homeland chair Joe Lieberman, an independent who ran as a Dem for veep in 2000, says he’d be happy to make a prime-time speech supporting John McCain at the GOP convention, The Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American reports. “I’m trusting Hillary to bring my son home safely and with honor,” an female Vietnam vet in Indiana with a son serving his fifth tour in Iraq tells The South Bend Tribune. Obama, meanwhile, “believes his patriotism can’t be challenged. Maybe he should talk to Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry,” a Boston Globe columnist comments.
State and local: Two dozen California state solons blast ICE’s workplace immigration raids, citing especially a Feb. 7 action in which 130 arrestees were denied legal counsel, The Los Angeles Daily News notes. Maine’s legislature has approved and its governor signed a bill to tighten procedures for issuing driver’s licenses, The Kennebec Journal recounts — making Down East the last of the 50 states to comply with Real ID, the Times adds. After a long-fought immigration bill was killed in committee last week, South Carolina lawmakers are vowing to overcome a deadlock concerning means of verifying citizenship credentials, The Charleston Post and Courier recounts. Hundreds gathered Saturday morning at the Oklahoma City National Memorial with one purpose: to remember the 168 killed in the bombing of a federal building 13 years ago, The Oklahoman relates — as Reuters has the pontiff kneeling at Ground Zero yesterday to pray for the terrorists’ redemption.
The air up there: New training is designed to help airport screeners think creatively about possible threats — “including those they have never thought of,” AP reports. Canadian airlines hope Ottawa’s decision to allow U.S. carriers a new severe weather “escape route” into Canada will cause Washington to reconsider burdensome security regs governing its own airspace, The National Post notes. “I don’t think people are really aware of just how accurate and detailed the images are of their naked body,” a civil libertarian tells the L.A. Timesin re: disputes over millimeter wave imaging’s impending arrival at LAX. (“Are the new airport scanners too revealing?” an AP video report ruminates.) Minnesota’s St. Cloud Regional Airport is using DHS dollars to expand its terminal to create a larger area for security screening, The St. Cloud Times tells, while Australia’s transport minister apologizes for any inconvenience to the Sikh community caused by Brisbane Airport screeners insisting on the removal of all headwear, World Sikh News notes.
Bugs ‘n bombs: When economic impact studies for five sites under consideration for DHS’s $451 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility wind up next month, Mississippi will be a “strong contender,” The Jackson Clarion-Ledger alleges — even as The East Hampton Star says DHS is “seriously considering” keeping that dangerous research at New York’s Plum Island. A major freeway interchange was closed for two hours Friday as authorities searched for a suspicious package they named a “bomb threat,” The L.A. Times tells. The range of a deadly new hemorrhagic fever — similar to Africa’s dread Lassa virus — identified in Bolivia could be widened by global warming, New Scientist notes — while The Chicago Tribune has Illinois’ homeland chief calling the rare 5.2 magnitude earthquake that rattled the Midwest on Friday morning “a wake-up call.”
Bar Chat: Justice’s domestic terrorism record to date — few blockbuster convictions and some high-profile hung juries or acquittals — has provoked criticism of its early strategy for going after suspects well before deadly events occur, the Post surveys. “Convicted terrorist Jose Padilla has a new address, a federal prison in Colorado known as ‘Supermax,’ [where] he will spend the next 17 years,” Miami’s CBS 4 recounts. A military court in Lebanon has postponed the trial of an alleged al Qaeda loyalist accused of plotting to attack New York train tunnels, The Jerusalem Post relays. The U.S. military will televise the “tribunals” of the accused 9/11 mastermind and five other suspects so relatives of victims can watch on the U.S. mainland, Reuters reports.
Rights and wrongs: The then-Joint Chiefs chairman was “hoodwinked” earlier in the decade by top Bush officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation of Gitmo detainees, The Guardian relates. While the other healing professions, like the AMA, bar their members from participating in terror interrogations, the American Psychological Association has fought any such restrictions, Amy Goodman explores for King Features Syndicate. “Why is this not bigger news?” Ruth Conniff asks in The Progressive about President Bush’s acknowledged condoning of White House meetings to discuss terrorist interrogation techniques. “Before Dick Cheney passes from this life to the next, he ought to receive another Presidential Medal of Freedom for . . . approv[ing] ‘harsh interrogations’ of terrorism suspects,” Dan Calabrese applauds in American Chronicle — while Asia Times limns the Indian Ocean isle of Diego Garcia, a/k/a “the other Guantanamo.”
Qaeda Qorner: A man claiming to be the leader of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq vowed in an audiotape released Saturday to launch a monthlong offensive against U.S. troops, AP recounts. The L.A. Times, yet again, taps declassified al Qaeda memos to paint a bureaucratic portrait that “at times, brings to mind Dilbert as much as death and destruction,” Danger Room relays — while The Christian Science Monitor links a series of bombings in Iraq to concern that al-Qaeda-in-Iraq may be regrouping, and CNN has U.S. intel &warning of a wave of Baghdad suicide blasts “in the near future.”
Over there: NATO attacks in Afghanistan have forced tactical changes on the Taliban, which warns of an even more deadly fight ahead, Newsweek notes. U.S. commanders, meantime, have been urging a widening of the war there that could include American attacks on indigenous Pakistani militants, The New York Timestells. The Taliban says a deadly assault on Dutch soldiers was in retaliation for an anti-Islamic film made by a politician in the Netherlands, Reuters reports. Bomb disposers have carried out controlled explosions at the home of a young Brit Muslim convert arrested Friday, Agence France-Presse reports — as The Guardian sees another U.K. convert getting four and a half years in prison.
Tunnel at the end of the light: “For more than five years, Americans have heard nothing but terrible news from Iraq: cars exploding, mosques burning, and bodies piling up in the streets,” Ridiculopathy relates. “According to a new Pentagon report, however, things are apparently improving. There are still exploding cars, burning mosques, and piled-up bodies — just slightly fewer of them. In testimony before the Senate earlier this month, Gen. David Petraeus asserted that Iraq is making ‘fragile progress’ toward military and political security— to the point where he now believes the mission deserves a whole new classification. ‘Two years ago, it would have been fair to call the situation in Iraq a quagmire,’ said Petraeus, motioning to a PowerPoint slide. ‘But as you can see on this graph — especially this long meandering line pointing subtly upward toward the end — things have gotten better in relative terms. My people have spent months poring over the statistics for this report, and we believe that it is safe to say that Iraq now qualifies as a clusterf***.’”
