“Thousands of key federal employees are being whisked from the Washington area by helicopter and car for a three-day test of their ability to run the government from remote locations during a disaster,” The Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan leads. “The time required to staff the senior levels of the U.S. government can prove problematic when a major national security crisis occurs early in the life of a new administration,” Richard Weitz remarks in a World Politics Review look at terror perils of the 2009 transition.

Feds: Lawmakers yesterday tentatively agreed that DHS — not Agriculture — should fully control the transfer of research on highly contagious animal diseases from an offshore lab to a new facility on the mainland, The Associated Press’ Larry Margasak mentions. Michael Leiter’s confirmation hearing Tuesday for the post of National Counterterrorism Center chief “was about as warm and collegial as confirmation hearings get,” ABC News’ Jason Ryan leads. As part of a broader crackdown, CBP agents now apprehend illegal immigrants not only on entry but as they are leaving the country, too, the Los Angeles Times’ Richard Marosi mentions. “Unless lawmakers do something, the current E-Verify workplace citizenship verification system will expire in November,” The Orange County Register’s Dena Bunis reminds.

Tough talkers: Questions about Dem front-runner Barack Obama’s friendship with and support from former-Weatherman William Ayers “will need to be answered,” Robert Novak rumbles in the Post — while Media Matters raps AP’s Libby Quaid for “uncritically” relaying John McCain’s charge that Obama has “zero national security experience,” when he has been involved with action on several security-related bills. “At a time when Americans feel the pain of the middle-class squeeze more acutely than they do the fear of terrorism, John McCain is unfamiliar with, and even unconcerned about, those economic struggles,” The Hill’s Mark Mellman maintains. “Hillary Clinton’s threatening posture with Iran suggests that she will continue the hostile war policies of the past. As a woman who is trying to look tough, will she have the courage to try talking rather than just bombing?” rabble news’ Jillian Skeet questions.

Other voices: Having become “a thorn in the side of Bush administration, criticizing what he perceives to be abuses of power and the Patriot Act,” ex-Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., “is an all-but-announced presidential candidate — as a Libertarian,” The Philadelphia Inquirer profiles. Seeking a seventh term, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., “has made a name for herself of late with comments on former president Jimmy Carter and a 10-point plan to combat terrorism,” Raleigh’s News 14 reports. Rush Limbaugh, who has welcomed mayhem at the Dem Convention, would be liable only in the event “he gets on the air during the convention, when he knows a crowd is assembled, and starts exhorting them to violence,” Denver’s Westword parses.

State and local: In the wake of 9/11, “Neighborhood Watch groups have taken on greater significance” as transmitters of “terrorism awareness,” a Jersey Journal op-ed observes. Emergency responders from four counties met with Kentucky’s homeland czar at a security summit Tuesday, WYMT 57 News notes. Stepping down, Montana’s top officer says the state’s National Guard “has never been stronger,” even in the face of stress caused by deployments to Iraq, The Billings Gazette relates. Asserting that “securing the nation’s borders is absolutely necessary,” retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told a conference this week that conscription into the Border Patrol or National Guard “might solve the problem,” The Monterey Herald mentions. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says he has seen an improvement in security along the U.S.-Mexico border, AP reports. University of Southern Mississippi crews installed receivers in 37 buildings this week as part of the first phase of an emergency notification system,” The Hattiesburg American mentions.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: One of the 75 students in Tuesday big drug bust at San Diego State University was one month away from a master’s degree in Homeland Security, ABC News notes. For all of the focus on detainee treatment at Abu Ghraib, “do most people know that the American military is now running one of the Middle East’s largest Islamic schools for those detainees?” City Journal asks. An online forum participant recently “posted six training episodes comprising the basic knowledge needed by a novice jihadi to become a full-fledged terrorist,” Terrorism Focus spotlights. DHS has invited Michigan’s Baker College, winner of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, toattend the next Cyber Storm response exercise in March 2010, United Press International informs. A high school dedicated to preparing students for homeland security careers “has gone from theory to planning in Wilmington,” The Delaware Business Ledger relates. If nothing else, the charter school will “train tomorrow’s prison guards,” Boing Boing blurbs.

Bugs ‘n bombs: New York National Guards will join forces with other responders this weekend for a massive terror exercise, Desastres.org relays — while The Tacoma News Tribunespotlights Washington State’s five-year, post-Katrina routine of major drills aimed at improving multi-agency response to disasters. The Rib Mountain (Wisc.) Fire Department, meantime, is hosting a three day crash course on weapons of mass destruction, Wassau’s WYOW 34 relates. The 2002 bust in Rome of four terrorists with nine pounds of cyanide compound “highlighted a new and dangerous risk to our water supplies,” a Daily Mailsurvey of water security issues says.

Coming and going: Starting Monday, air travelers can sign up to speed through Customs checkpoints at select U.S. airports when returning from abroad, USA Today tells.“Increased airport security and scrutiny of foreign visitors are not the primary causes of America’s global image problem,” claims a Washington Post op-ed, pointing the finger instead at Abu Ghraib and other besmirchers. Passengers missing items from their luggage should report it within 24 hours, though airlines now “expect victims of theft to prove it didn’t happen under the control of security workers,” Rochester’s 13 WHAM spotlights. “There is no doubt that small boats can be used for sabotage . . . [but] encouraging millions of boaters to watch for suspicious activities, that could have unintended consequences,” The Reading (Pa.) Eagle editorializes.

Courts and rights: Justice on Tuesday indicted accused international arms dealer Viktor Bout for conspiracy to kill Americans and terrorism-related charges, NBC News notes. A sold-out gala in Miami on Friday honored Luis Posada Carriles, “wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago,” the L.A. Times profiles. Osama bin Laden’s “media director” rejected war crimes proceedings in a Wednesday hearing marred by technical flaws in a new Guantanamo courtroom, Reuters reports. A British court ruled yesterday that an anti-Tehran group should be removed from the terrorist blacklist, BBC News notes. A Kuwaiti who complained about maltreatment during three years at Guantanamo committed a deadly suicide bombing in Iraq last month, the Post has U.S. officials confirming.

Over here: Lebanon’s Hezbollah has a long history of antagonism with the United States, “but ironically, for many of Hezbollah’s Shia constituency, the United States is home,” The Inter Press Service spotlights. “We are doing as much at home to empower radical Islam as those on the front lines are to defeat it,” Victor Davis Hanson harrumphs for The National Review. “Even today, partly because of our successes in fighting the [terror] war, a good portion of our society won’t or can’t see we are at war,” a Washington Times columnist laments. “In the very real war on terror, a nosy squabble over ‘fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here’ clouds a simple truth: namely, that ‘they’ are here already,” a Pajamas Media poster assert. “Of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, how many are radicals? If the number is relatively small, then the fear of a clash is inflated; if the number is relatively large, then the nightmare might not be so outlandish after all,” a Weekly Standard contributor contends.

Holy Wars: Was Pope Benedict’s April visit to Ground Zero “a gambit in the Catholic Church’s contest with Islam for the soul of the developing world?” an American Prospect columnist questions. “Al Qaeda is pulling out all the stops to try to prevent the Sunni Iraqi mujahedeen from militarily winning the war but then losing the political spoils because of disunity,” Michael Scheuer maintains in Asia Times. So far this year, at least nine women have staged suicide attacks in Iraq compared to six for all of last year, but there has been little research into why the number of female suicide bombers is increasing, a Keene (N.H.) Sentinel examines. A renunciation of violence by a bloody-minded Kurdish Islamist group highlights “a key dilemma . . . Can militants with blood on their hands be trusted when they publicly renounce violence?” The Washington Times explores. “Islam is being invariably associated with terrorism both in media as well as in political circles, especially in Western countries. When they hear it being condemned by Muslim theologians, it is celebrated as something unusual,” an op-ed in Bangladesh’s Daily Star complains.

Pope on a rope: “In an unprecedented breach of national security, Pope Benedict XVI, leader of the international organization known as ‘the Roman Catholic Church,’ has infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government and devised a wide-ranging plan to destroy the entire country,” The Onion reports. “Using recently uncovered information, shocked intelligence analysts have determined that the religious extremist’s recent tour of the nation was in fact a reconnaissance mission designed to exploit essential weaknesses in our country’s defenses and expose them to mass destruction. “This is the most devastating failure of American intelligence imaginable. “We are completely helpless.” said CIA director Michael Hayden, who reportedly has already tendered his resignation over the massive security failure . . . Twenty-seven separate federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies participated in security measures for His Holiness’ visit to Washington and New York. All are now considered compromised.”