Seven hours of interrogation footage released by Omar Khadr’s lawyers show the then-16-year-old Guantanamo detainee breaking down and weeping while being questioned, Reuters’ David Ljunggren reports. The Bush administration has not given legal U.S. resident Ali al-Marri an adequate opportunity to challenge his detention as an enemy combatant, The Associated Press’ Larry O’Dell has a closely divided federal appeals court ruling yesterday — while The New York Times’ Adam Liptak notes that an overlapping decision endorsed the president’s legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States.

Feds: “ Federal officers charged with keeping terrorists off planes are now searching their own ranks for staff who told CNN that few flights were protected by air marshals,” CNN’s Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston lead. The GOP lobbyist accused of influence peddling in relation to the Bush library has vacated his seat on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, United Press International’s Shaun Waterman informs. “The FBI earned its reputation hunting down bank robbers and other outlaws in the heyday of Bonnie and Clyde,” but as its 100^th anniversary nears, the bureau “focuses on vigilance and anticipating the worst,” a CNN team, again, notes. “Congress’ commitment to the [oversight] status quo threatens the DHS’s ability to identify and respond effectively to security threats,” Jena McNeil maintains in a Heritage Backgrounder — and see National Journal’s Chris Strohm on “turmoil” within the House homeland panel’s majority staff.

Poly-ticks: “In every issue-by-issue polling analysis . . . Obama crushes McCain across the board, except on the ‘protect us from terrorism’ bugaboo. But in this election terrorism is rarely even among the top three national concerns,” P.M. Carpenter comments for BuzzFlash.On Iraq policy, Americans continue to side with Obama and McCain in roughly equal numbers, with 47 percent of those polled saying they trust McCain more to handle the war, and 45 percent having more faith in Obama, The Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman and Jon Cohen analyze. The McCain campaign accuses Obama of “wanting American deaths [in Iraq] because it will help them politically,” but in 2004, he “actually said that the specter of a lethal terrorist attack on American soil would help the GOP,” Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent slams. Obama yesterday promised to shift the “single-minded” U.S. focus on Iraq to a threatening “terrorist sanctuary” in tribal Pakistan, Agence France-Presse’s Stephen Collinson recounts.

The company we keep: The non-inclusion of Sen. Joe Biden in his upcoming foreign-policy-honing jaunt suggests Obama is not considering the Delaware Dem as a veep choice, the Los Angeles Times’ Louise Roug blogs. The Dem contender will be accompanied on his Middle East tour by Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican dissident whom Dem Jewish groups regard as weak on Israel and soft on terrorism, Haaretz’s Shmuel Rosner adds. “In Iran, the Carter administration helped bring down one of the United States’ greatest allies and infiltrated [sic] modern terrorism,” Slater Bakhtavar writes in The Conservative Voice, disdaining Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Holbrooke’s advisory role to Obama. “No, Obama’s fist bump was not a secret show of solidarity to Hezbollah. It’s really a secret show of solidarity to Hamas. Just kidding!” Slate’s Christopher Beam — dangerously, apparently — teases.

State and local: Georgia-Pacific has declared its Florida toilet-paper plant not bound by a controversial employee gun-rights law, “citing a Homeland Security exemption because the company handles barge-loads of explosive fuel,” The Miami Heraldmentions. Thanks to the Great Plains Joint Regional Training Center, Kansas National Guard troops no longer have to spend months in another state training before overseas deployments, The Lawrence Journal-World relates — while another Journal-World report has the Kansas Guard still burdened by Iraq-related equipment shortages. “The storms that flooded and battered Iowa this summer probably will be remembered as the worst natural disaster ever to hit the state, but experts say it’s too soon to tell how Iowa’s pain will rank nationally,” The Des Moines Register leads.

Follow the money: A Canadian defendant used an Ottawa-area woman to funnel money to colleagues in Britain as part of an alleged terrorist financing scheme, The Canadian Press cites testimony at the former software designer’s trial. Federal prosecutors last week opposed a move to clear twogroups named as unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism-financing case, reaffirming their belief in their ties to Middle Eastern terrorists, AP reports. Despite the disruption of the terrorist financing network set up in the Philippines by a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, another set of connections has taken its place, The Philippine Daily Inquirer is told by an anti-terrorism officer. Accusing twobanks of helping finance terror attacks, a group of American, Canadian and Israeli alleged victims of Hezbollah rockets have sued them for $650 million, AP relates.

Bugs ‘n bombs: An underground circuit fire is being blamed for a blackout that struck downtown Vancouver on Monday, shutting off traffic lights, nixing automatic banking machines and even affecting the Internet, The Toronto Globe and Mail tells.A Massachusetts man is charged with trying to rob a convenience store armed with a fake grenade, The Cape Cod Times tells. Although the probability of an attack on Colorado’s Dillon Dam is debatable, “experts say [the] devastation following a dam failure would be catastrophic, ravaging the community and permanently altering a wide geography,” The Summit Daily News spotlights. “Fox News has found a fresh terrorism threat to be panicked about — the menace of electromagnetic pulses,” The Raw Story leads — and see The Wall Street Journal on the same.

Coming and going: Georgia’s governor said Monday he believes concealed-carry guns should be allowed in the non-secure areas of Atlanta’s airport, the Journal-Constitution recounts. Two F-16 fighters escorted a small plane to a landing at the Bay City (Texas) airport last week at the request of DHS, The Bay City Tribune tells. “More and more, screeners’ attitudes observed at airports across the country have shown marked chinks in their professionalism — from the way passengers are treated to screening mechanics,” Homeland Security Today suggests. After L.A.’s transit agency yesterday announced a $16 million security grant, an L.A. Times blogger raises the question of “how fare-beating motivated turnstiles have suddenly turned into terrorist traps.” Although there are fewer airliner-threatening shoulder-fired missiles circulating than at the end of the Cold War, “security experts warn that the danger that they will be used by terrorist groups remains high,” U.S. News notes.

Terror tech: That said, General Dynamics announces having successfully tested a weapons system to protect aircraft operating from military and civilian airfields against shoulder-launched missiles, Navy Times tells. During a four-day conference on global catastrophic risks at Oxford University, mavens of morbidity “will talk about topics including nuclear terrorism and what to do if a large asteroid were to be on a collision course with our planet,” CNN says. The U.S. nuclear arsenal “doesn’t really deter terrorism, as we learned in 9/11. I don’t know how it would deter a smuggled nuclear weapon set off by terrorists in an American or European city,” an author-expert tells The Toronto Star. “Explaining how the Hi-Fi Digimonster works has been the stuff of hard mental slogging . . . at the terrorism trial of a 29-year-old computer programmer, The Ottawa Sun leads.

Gizmotronica:Oak Ridge National Lab can now detect explosives at better than 20 yards using new photoacoustic spectroscopy methods involving a laser and a device that converts reflected light into sound, Government Computer News notes. “Killer robots which can change their shape to squeeze under doors and through cracks in walls to track their prey are moving from the realms of science fiction to the front line in the fight against terrorism,” Scotland on Sunday enthuses. Is the Army’s new XM1063 Non-Lethal Personnel Suppression Projectile “a stink bomb, a banana skin, or a bad trip? It’s hard to know,” David Hambling demands in The Guardian — and see Jason Sigger’s Danger Roomremarks. Dozens of partygoers at an outdoor rave near Moscow were partially blinded when a laser light show burned their retinas, an incident surely noted by airline pilots wary of being lased in their cockpits, New Scientist notes. The Philippine president’s security team defends her with unbreakable fighting umbrellas, Gadget Lab relates.

Courts and rights: Justice yesterday urged a judge to allow the first Guantanamo war crimes trial to begin next week in a case involving Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Reuters reports — while the Post has that defendant testifying yesterday that a female interrogator elicited information from him using offensive sexual behavior. From simple logistics like paper, computers and law libraries, to strict secrecy rules on viewing evidence, Gitmo defense attorneys say the tribunals are stacked against defendants who face the death penalty, Reuters also relates. Mexican authorities released from jail a man suspected of running over and killing a Border Patrol agent because U.S. officials never asked that he be held or sought his extradition, the Mexican Embassy tells The Washington Times.

Just not funny: “Representatives from al Qaeda have expressed deep anger and offense over this week’s cover of The New Yorker that appears to depict Barack Obama and his wife dressed as terrorists celebrating America’s downfall in the Oval Office,” Ridiculopathy reports. “‘The illustration made us look stupid,’ complained spokesman Wagin G. Hadd. ‘First of all, we would never fist-bump like that. It’s pretty lame. Plus, Michelle Obama was wearing her AK-47 all wrong. The infidels at The New Yorker just have no respect for accuracy — or gun safety.’ Republicans have said repeatedly that Obama is the favored candidate among the terrorist community, but Hadd reported that in truth al Qaeda leadership has been less than impressed with the Illinois senator. Like most political junkies, Hadd was enamored of Obama back in the spring of this year but has recently become disenchanted with the candidate’s lack of specificity.” See also, in The Borowitz Report: “Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself.”