With Congress deadlocked over government spy powers, old rules of terrorist surveillance may go back into effect, The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau relates. In a report to the National Archives released last week, the DIA said it could not locate a recording of the final interrogation of convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, Secrecy News’ Steven Aftergood reports. FBI immigrant background checks have become so backlogged since 9/11 that thousands of legal immigrants are waiting years to get into the United States or obtain citizenship, the Los Angeles Times’ Richard A. Serrano has a Justice IG report finding.

Feds: President Bush has signed an executive order requiring contractors and others doing business with the feds to make sure their employees are working legally, The Associated Press’ Susan Gamboa reports. A new White House directive requires agencies to better share amongst themselves biometric information on people believed to pose a threat, Federal Computer Week’s Ben Bain relates. DHS has decided to award Boeing contracts for the construction of two sections of a high-tech border fence to be built in Arizona, Reuters reports. A bipartisan House bill would require the Secret Service to protect Veep Dick Cheney for six months after he leaves office, Politico’s John Bresnahan recounts.

McBama:John McCain and Barack Obama both say Iran is developing nuclear weapons even though the intel community thinks Iran halted an effort to build a warhead in mid-2003, McClatchy Newspaper’s Jonathan S. Landay spotlights. “There is no more consequential question than war. And while it is likely to be discussed obliquely at best, that question, with respect to Iran, may very well be on the ballot this November,” The Arizona Republic’s Robert Robb ruminates. Britain and the United States should lead the way in efforts to prevent and mitigate epidemics caused by bioterrorism or pandemic diseases, The Guardian’s Richard Norton-Taylor finds a new paper from ex-Sen. Tom Daschle, an Obama senior advisor, urging.

Poly-ticks: “Immigration was going to be one of the issues of the 2008 presidential election season. It has not so far turned out to be the potboiler many expected. But it’s still simmering away below the surface,” The Miami Herald analyzes. “Had Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq proved uncontroversial, or had she provided a compelling explanation for it, she might now be the Democratic nominee,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson suggests in the New York Times. The World Socialist Web Site, meanwhile, makes much of GOP elder Newt Gingrich’s offhand suggestion that maybe the Bush administration “should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us” of its counterterror bona fides.

State and local: If last year’s U.S. Open is any indication, “taxpayers in California should be prepared to cough up some big bucks so that nothing — bad traffic, hooligans or al Qaeda — mars the [golfing] festivities,” The Tarentum (Pa.) Valley News Dispatch remarks. “If terrorists target the Fox Valley, it’s covered [as] dozens of Valley communities, schools and fire departments are protected with terrorism insurance,” The Appleton (Wisc.) Post-Crescent leads. The head of Pierce College’s Center for Excellence in Homeland Security envisions making Washington a national model for homeland security training, and congressional earmarks are helping him do it, The Tacoma News Tribune spotlights.

Bid-ness: “Blackwater USA is now a one-stop shop for security outsourcing, offering CIA-like services to Fortune 500 companies,” The Nation leads. San Diego’s internal audit of permits for Blackwater Worldwide’s much-contested Southern California training facility found no evidence of misrepresentation in its permit applications, the Times-Union tells. With a $100,000 grand prize, the American Security Challenge is billed as “America’s first business plan competition devoted to our nation’s security,” Danger Room spotlights. “In the past terrorism has been viewed as an event that could not have been anticipated. This is no longer the case,” says a Continuity Central op-ed urging bizzes to look anew at terror risk insurance. See, also, Salon, for an excerpt from Tim Shorrock’s “Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing” (Simon and Schuster).

Alarums: Tennessee police have charged a Mississippi man with making a bomb threat in Midtown Memphis, ABC 24 broadcasts — while The Loudon (Va.) Times-Mirror sees a Maryland man in custody after talking to sheriff’s deputies about having a bomb last Friday. In an evergreen story that crops up on a weekly basis, a Wal-Mart was evacuated following a bomb hoax, The Lancaster (Pa.) New Era notes. A report of gunfire Saturday led to the arrest of an 18-year-old and the discovery of explosives, forcing the evacuation of four houses, The St. Petersburg Timestells. Underlining a security breach, three teenagers were charged last weekend with trespassing on the grounds of a Chicago water filtration plant, the Tribune tells — while, amidst federal concern about dam security nationally, guards have been hired to keep boaters at least 100 feet from Colorado’s Dillon Dam, KMGH 7 News notes.

Know nukes: Kazakhstan’s army held a large-scale military exercise Friday as part of a U.S.-backed program to prevent the use of radioactive materials by terrorists, AP relates. “In the terror war, nuclear terrorism has become the weapon of both first choice and last resort for American war planners,” an Atlantic Free Press contributor thumb-sucks. In re: “the certainty that terrorists are going to acquire nuclear bombs. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know we need to start thinking about it,” a Daily Telegraph review essay concludes. “Threats to attack nuclear plants on suspicion they would one day make bombs could undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Reuters has the U.N. nuke watchdog warning.

Coming and going: Americans who prefer to fly without showing ID will be turned away by airport security beginning June 21, Threat Level relates. “America is finally showing interest in adopting Israel’s approach to airline safety which looks for bombers, not bombs — and won’t confiscate your tiny bottles of shampoo,” an International Analysts Network piece suggests. Critics urge security improvements at Montreal’s air hub after three workers are arrested for cocaine trafficking, CTV Newsnotes. Four were arrested last week for pointing a green laser beam at a police chopper and two passenger planes attempting to land at Cleveland’s airport, The Plain Dealer records. A new ferry service carrying New Jersey commuters to Wall Street boasts a friendly, laid-back atmosphere, but the security safeguards are intense, The Middletown (N.J.) Courierspotlights.

Talking terror: “People talk about the scare tactics of the government with the threat of terrorism, but to be perfectly honest, I am more concerned about my government than I am any terrorist,” writes a Hagerstown (Md.) Herald-Mail reader upset about reports of DHS planning for mass casualty triage. A “bitter personal struggle” is reverberating inside the Beltway “between two of America’s leadingtheorists on terrorism and how to fight it, two men who hold opposing views on the very nature of the threat,” The New York Times’ Elaine Sciolino and Eric Schmitt relate. A Policy Studies Journal study claims that measures of terror risk are positive determinants of DHS funding, while measures of political influence and party affiliation of elected officials do not affect distribution of grants, PhysOrg.com relays. The war on terror could be recast as “A Global Struggle for Security and Progress,” Homeland Stupidity’s Michael Hampton reports of an internal DHS memo.

Stratego: In fairness, in his much-debated recent assessment, “the CIA director did not say that al Qaeda had been put out of business. His main point was that it had suffered setbacks in the realm of ideology,” The Economist acknowledges. Despite the conventional wisdom that terrorists can’t be deterred, in Israel’s terror conflicts “we see that a de facto deterrence strategy was employed and often succeeded, achieving periods of relative quiet,” a Policy Review analysis asserts. So focused are we on al Qaeda and allied groups, it’s easy to overlook the continuing danger posed by Spain’s ETA—“a seemingly anachronistic ‘national liberation’ force in an ever more globalized world,” Judith Miller mulls in City Journal.

Courts and rights: The Syrian gun runner, now held by Spain, who allegedly armed terrorist groups including the Achille Lauro hijackers, will stand trial in the United States, ABC News notes. Declaring the Guantanamo war crimes trials a national priority, the Pentagon will more than double the number of military lawyers assigned to them, Reuters reports. “What a pleasure to see [accused 9/11 plotters] facing the hangman — however much they seem to like that idea,” The New York Daily News beams — as CBS News analyzes the “jurisprudential jihad” waged by al Qaeda defendants.

Over there: “The United States and allies Pakistan and Afghanistan wasted a chance to build ties with tribal leaders in volatile border areas that could have curbed al Qaeda and Taliban’s resurgence,” the Los Angeles Times surveys. An Iraqi tribal leader is offering his men to help gin up a rebellion against al Qaeda along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the New York Sun says. “American and Asian intel analysts say financial and logistical support from al Qaeda to other groups in the region has long dried up, and the most lethal are scrambling for survival,” The New York Times leads — while Bloomberg has State easing its eight-year terror-related advisory on travel to Indonesia for that very reason.

Herd on the Street: “Former ‘Law & Order’ star Dennis Farina was arrested and charged with a felony after he took a loaded, unregistered handgun to an airport. What do you think?” The Onion’s question-asking photo-taker inquires of exceedingly random passersby. “Can’t say I blame him. That Brookstone in Terminal One can get pretty dicey,” systems analyst Elizabeth Carter contends. “There’s always one loose cannon in every fictitious television precinct,” parachuting instructor Lyle Greystoke reasons. “What’s the big deal? Maybe he was just planning to shoot people on the plane,” molecular geneticist Doug Napier demands. Listen, also, to Onion Radio News: “NORAD Headquarters Crawling With Missile Weevils.”