Aden Hashi Ayro, a top al Qaeda agent in East Africa and leader of the Islamist comeback in Somalia, was killed yesterday morning by an American airstrike, The New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt report. “He will not be missed,” Rob Crilly adds in The Times of London. In a situation top dip Condoleezza Rice calls “embarrassing,” South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists, needing special permission to travel here, USA Today’s Mimi Hall relates.

Feds: With Mexican drug war border violence mounting, Pentagon chief Robert Gates hit Mexico this week to address potential threats from militant border crossers, The Christian Science Monitor’s David Montero mentions. The military continued to use abusive interrogation methods on detainees after a 2003 directive meant to end such practices, The Associated Press’ Adam Goldman has docs released by the ACLU revealing. After January’s presidential inauguration, DHS could be in the hands of its top career civil servants for months until political appointees are confirmed, Federal Times’ Stephen Losey relates. DHS yesterday launched an eight-day disaster-preparedness drill, testing response to a large-scale attack in Seattle, The Seattle Times’ Haley Edwards reports.

Obama-rama: When a questioner at an Indiana event suggested DHS “was more of an enemy, due to the loss of civil rights in America, than al Qaeda,” Barack Obama replied that ‘they want to blow us up,’ so al Qaeda was the more lethal enemy,” The Corydon Democrat’s Lee Cable recounts. Obama’s denunciation Monday of former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s equating “U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism response,” an LRC Blog poster decides, “shows that he is a warmonger and foreign policy will not change if he is elected.” Who seriously believes “Obama’s policies toward terrorism will be guided by Wright’s views that U.S. terrorism justifies al Qaeda terrorism against U.S. targets?” Richard Silverstein demands in The Guardian.

Poly-ticks: Asserting that terrorism “is the biggest threat to us since World War II,” an ex-POW says he will stump Colorado for his ex-Hanoi cellmate, John McCain, Lauren Glendenning writes in a Vail Trail look at voter involvement. If Hillary Clinton “becomes president, the world will look at her as an extremist whose policy is no different than” Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Jameel Theyabi charges in an Dar Al-Hayat column on her threat to “obliterate” Iran — while AP has Iran’s U.N. rep denouncing Clinton’s statement as “provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible.” As to which, The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler blogs: “If Iran is a Rorschach test, there are few issues with such stark differences among the three major party candidates.”

Chasing the dime: “Using the private sector as a potent anti-terrorist force provides additional ammunition in the War on Terror,” according to a Forbes commentary touting the 2002 Safety Act as “a powerful tool for corporate America.” Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., claims that New York’s practice of not collecting taxes on Indian cigarette sales supports smugglers whose profits can end up in the hands of terrorists, AP relates. “Whereas primes, subcontractors, and the media originally foresaw the DHS as a Department of Defense-like entity it was in fact quite different,” a market report in The Mil & Aero Blog suggests. At this year’s GovSec homeland security trade show “everything from mobile command centers, tiny surveillance cameras, robots and a soldier’s helmet equipped with a video camera were on display,” CNN notes.

State and local: D.C. yesterday launched a program to tie together 5,000 city-owned video cameras — without having the money to complete the surveillance net or privacy rules to guide it, The Washington Post reports. Port Mansfield, Texas may be “a quaint fishing village. But at night there’s no one watching the port [while] compounding the problems, is a small unregulated airport,” KRGV-TV 5 warns. More recruiters and incentives have led to the Virginia Army National Guard’s highest troop levels in 14 years, The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot relays. Two self-proclaimed ex-terrorists who have caused controversy with their slant on Islam told a University of Colorado crowd to “Wake up and smell the hummus” Tuesday night, The Rocky Mountain News mentions. The NYPD is pushing for new powers to regulate devices that detect radiological, chemical and biological attacks, Newsday notes.

Bugs ‘n bombs: What an ex-military veterinarian “learned about the infrastructure of Afghanistan prepared him to work on protection of the American infrastructure” as a DHS food and agriculture analyst, The Grove City (Pa.) Allied News profiles. The post-9/11 rush of events has forced an updating of the 1997 standard edition of the U.S. Army’s authoritative reference, “Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare,” CNET News surveys. A Mississippi woman’s false bomb threat to a Greyhound station has won her five years probation, The Biloxi Sun Herald relays. A House bill would require proof that North Korea had dismantled its nuclear weapons program before being removed from the sponsors-of-terrorism list, AP reports — while The Washington Times has Pyongyang tentatively agreeing to hand over thousands of records from its Yongbyon reactor dating back to 1990.

Coming and going: Adding insult to injury, “if an airline cancels its flight and books you on a different airline’s flight, you are automatically selected for secondary screening,” an Austin American-Statesman travel columnist blogs. “I could see sweat under my arms, the rivets in my jeans and a pack of gum in my back pocket,” CNN’s dauntless homeland reporter writes of his experience with TSA’s new “whole body imaging.” When Brad Pitt recently arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare to fly commercial, “a TSA agent magically materialized to whisk him through security,” E! Online relates in a look at star treatment at air hubs. Much like Americans’ attitudes towards it, the border fence “is less a wall than a stuttering set of blockades: half barrier, half gaps,” AP leads — while The Arizona Daily Star says that by year’s end, nearly 110 of the states 350 miles of U.S.-Mexican border are scheduled to be fenced.

Courts and rights: Before he forced his way into a Seattle Jewish center and opened fire two years ago, Naveed Haq struggled with mental severe illness, The Seattle Times has his ex-shrink testifying this week. When he faces an immigration judge on May 8, a popular New Jersey imam may have to counter claims that he confessed to being a member of a terrorist group, The Bergen County Record relays. A former Al Jazeeracameraman, believed to be the only journalist held at Guantanamo, has been released after more than six years of detention, The New York Times tells — while Al Jazeera itself has him declaring of his ordeal that “rats are treated with more humanity.” Detainees’ planned suit against the U.K. government for complicity in their Guantanamo internment would be among the first anywhere to examine alleged wrongdoing by spy agencies in the U.S.-led terror war, Reuters relates.

Over there: One of Osama bin Laden’s sons has been denied residency in the U.K. because of his “loyalty” to his father and disruption his presence might impose, The Mirror mentions. Sunday’s attempt to kill the president of Afghanistan was the work of militants linked to al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas, The New York Times tells. Moroccan police have arrested one of nine terror convicts who escaped from prison in April, AP reports — and see a BBC News series on “Algeria and the rise of Islamist extremism.” Among many other things, State’s annual terror report says al Qaeda operatives pose serious regional threats to African countries, Voice of America mentions. Scotland runs the risk of complacency about the prospect of new generations of suicide bombers being reared in its communities, The Scotsman quotes an expert.

Kulture Kanyon: “Consider becoming a border patrol agent. You can help to protect America’s boundaries,” is just one of the solution’s Mike Huckabee’s putative DHS chief, action hero Chuck Norris, proposes in a WorldNetDaily op-ed decrying American boundary fluidity. “Pondering the emotional and historical complexities of terrorism, especially in the teasingly postmodern style that Walid Raad seems to prefer, isn’t something that comes naturally to many Americans,” Bill Van Siclen writes in a Providence Journal review of the Lebanese artist’s latest installation. “When mi go places and sing that song to people who never hear it before, people ask me if mi record it after 9/11. It was many years before it revive back,” dancehall artist Admiral Tibet tells The Jamaica Gleaner’s Krista Henry in re his 1987 joint: “Terrorist.”

Art attack: “In an era where a federal anti-terrorism law allows the government unfettered access to what books people are checking out from their local libraries,” some Vermonters may be curbing their reading, a University of Vermont librarian tells The Barre Times Argus. Homeland security “hasn’t been about protecting people from terrorism. It’s been about protecting people from weird,” the University of Buffalo professor-artist recently relieved of terror-related charges, tells The Buffalo News. “Torture, terrorism, eco-disaster: a wave of new films is tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues head-on,” Nick Fraser leads in an Observer meditation on “how, in turbulent times, powerful movies with a political message always emerge.”

Ask the Jihadist: For The New Yorker, Andy Borowitz offers a smattering of questions from the public that al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri has not yet addressed: Confused in Cairo writes: “I am a member in good standing of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and am considering switching my terror membership to al Qaeda. Is there a difference in dental?” to which al-Zawahiri answers: “Unfortunately, that is not my department. Please call the office between the hours of eight and five and ask for al Qaeda No. 37.” And from Bill in Chappaqua comes: “Does al Qaeda ever endorse political candidates? If so, I recommend that you give a big thumbs-up to Barack Obama. I guarantee you he hates America as much as you do (if not more)! It would be great if you appeared in a bunch of TV ads and called him ‘the evildoing President that evildoers have been waiting for.’” Responds the terror chief: “Al Qaeda is only interested in American elections to the extent that we can plunge them into abject chaos. So this year, as in every other year, we are supporting Ralph Nader.”