DHS policies don’t require suspicion of wrongdoing for agents to indefinitely take computers and share contents with other agencies for decryption, The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima notes. President Bush has inked an executive order rejigging the 16 agencies composing the “intelligence community,” The Associated Press’ Pamela Hess reports — while The Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman has solons protesting they were left in the dark about the changes.

Feds: Just as Justice was preparing to charge him in the 2001 anthrax mailings, one of the nation’s top biodefense researchers apparently committed suicide, the Los Angeles Times’ David Willman records. The Minnesota emergency response exec fired for taking an unauthorized, state-paid trip to Washington during last year’s bridge disaster, now works for DHS, The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy recount. DHS and a Texas university yesterday ended a standoff when the former altered plans to run the border fence through the campus, The San Antonio Express-News’ Lynn Brezosky relates. “Grave threats to our national security may now include the mass privatization of U.S. intelligence and military operations,” Chalmers Johnson comments in Salon.

McBama: To counter McCain’s charge that he disdains troops, Barack Obama should name vet-friendly Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, as his veep, The Dallas Morning News’ Michael Landauer blogs. For the first time, John McCain this week left the door open on an Iraq withdrawal timetable, Xinhua says — while The Waco Tribune-Herald’s John Young insists the reason “McCain appears to be a gaffe a minute on Iraq is not that he is bumbling [rather] he is defending a policy based on falsehoods.” Obama is “trying to cover dishonesty with dishonesty as he defends his stance on Iraq,” Commentary’s Peter Wehner pushes — as Patrick Buchanan demands in Human Events why Obama thinks an Afghan surge will win “a war in which we have failed to prevail after seven years of fighting?” Though McCain attacks Obama’s “Sept. 10th mindset,” a Pentagon-funded study favors a law-enforcement approach to terror, TPM’s Greg Sargent finds significant. The counterterrorism partnership that Obama urged last week between the United States and Europe already exists, Eric Egland observes in The New York Times.

Side by side: “On one issue — who’d be tougher on al Qaeda — McCain and Obama are one-upping each other in rhetoric [which] may be giving a green light to the current president,” The Christian Science Monitor warns — and see The Carpetbagger Report. “Obama’s strategy for prosecuting the ‘war on terror’ is based on questionable, and potentially flawed premises — ones shared with McCain,” Asia Times asserts.“Which candidate would do a better job fighting terrorism abroad and protecting Americans at home?” Scripps Howard News Service asks, unleashing two columnists to hash it out. “It’s clear that regardless of who becomes president, the United States will still be involved in at least one expensive foreign war,” Times of the Internet contends. See also, a Reuters factbox comparing the two candidates’ military stances.

State and local: Comprising law enforcers and state and federal intel analysts, Iowa’s intelligence fusion center has six regional offices and nearly 50 staffers, The Iowa Independent spotlights. While the centers vary widely, “one constant is the ire they’ve raised among civil liberties and privacy advocates,” The Minnesota Independent, relatedly, leads. A three-day no-notice mass casualty airport disaster workshop in Guam ended today, The Pacific Daily Newsnotes. Escalating his feud with the local sheriff, Phoenix’s mayor invites the national media to scrutinize Joe Arpaio’s immigration crackdown, The Arizona Republic reports.

Chasing the dime: “Homeland security stocks may offer some security during this period of stock market volatility, but selectivity remains essential,” Homeland Security Today handicaps. In its first significant foray into the homeland security arena, BAE Systems has paid $1 billion for security tech specialist Detica, The Financial Times tells. “It is unprecedented for a military firm to get such a strong presence in civilian affairs,” but that’s the terror-era trend, The Inquirer, relatedly, analyzes. DHS, meantime, has awarded GenVec Inc. $6.6 million to complete a foot-and-mouth vaccine, MarketWatch relays. Anti-terror financing strictures force nonprofits “to operate within a legal regime that harms charitable programs” and undermines their independence, OpEdNews quotes a white paper.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Canadian police are unlikely to lay charges after a suspicious package turned out to relate to a burgeoning hobby called geocaching, The Ottawa Citizen says. “The overriding question is whether the United States is ‘ready’ for a bioterror attack. The answer could well rely on the ‘other’ question of what bio-agent and what’s the source?” ThreatsWatch leads. Billions spent on biodefense, “may have distracted researchers from the fight against infectious diseases,” The FT, again, adds. A dead cat in South Korea is the first mammal there known to be infected with the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus, Agence France-Presse reports. The Indiana National Guard is notifying 600 soldiers that they may have drunk carcinogen-tainted water in Iraq, The Indianapolis Star relays.

Coming and going: A young man traveling by Greyhound was stabbed and beheaded by a stranger, The Toronto Globe and Mailmentions. When travelers leave loose change at checkpoints, it goes into “the giant piggy bank of the TSA” to finance security improvements, The Boston Globespotlights. After the baggage conveyor shut down at American Airlines’ new JFK terminal, TSA was manually screening all bags, New York’s ABC 7 says. While Registered Traveler “has its perks, some argue that the program takes valuable security lanes away from other travelers who are still paying the same TSA taxes,” The Rebel Yell surveys — and see American Chronicle on Fast Lane Option, belated competitor to Steve Brill’s Clear.

Border wars: “In the absence of a clear federal policy on immigration, states and cities are enacting draconian and constitutionally questionable laws,” a New York Times contributor comments. A program to speed up U.S. border crossings from British Columbia with a high-tech driver’s licence is winning favor, The Toronto Globe and Mail mentions. With some 1.3 million illegals having left the U.S. since immigration reform’s 2007 failure, a new study predicts a halving of the undocumented population in five years, The Christian Science Monitor mentions — while the L.A. Times scopes an ICE plan to allow noncriminal illegal immigrants with final deportation orders to surrender rather than face arrest and detention.

Courts and rights: A U.S. military judge ruled yesterday that prosecutors can use a disputed interrogation to support their case against Osama bin Laden’s ex-driver, BBC Newsnotes — and The New York Times has the prosecution resting its case and the court then going into secret session. A detainee assaulted Guantanamo’s commander with a “cocktail” of bodily fluids yesterday, AP reports. British spook agencies got “mixed up in wrongdoing” by cooperating with U.S. interrogators in the abuse of a U.K. resident now held at Gitmo, The Guardian has a high court hearing this week.

Over there: A Thai court has postponed until September an extradition hearing for a suspected Russian arms dealer facing U.S. terror charges, Al Jazeera relates. A Syrian who attempted to make bombs for terror attacks was handed seven years by a Brit court Wednesday, AFP reports. Two alleged Indonesian terror leaders were headed to Iraq to seek help from al Qaeda, AP has a seized laptop showing. An al Qaeda field commander who escaped a U.S. prison in Afghanistan was killed in a recent U.S. bombing there, Reuters hears the group announcing. In a statement to a Greek newspaper, a previously unknown terror group claims three earlier bombings, AP recounts.

Kulture Kanyon: Robert Wilhite’s facsimile of the Nagasaki A-bomb “is 135 pounds of molded poplar, mahogany, and airplane-grade spruce plywood. It’s more a thing of beauty than an instrument of horror,” the L.A. Times’ Bob Pool spotlights. In his latest novel, “Spook Country” (Berkley) William Gibson “abandons science fiction to consider our fragmented post-9/11 world,” Elsa Dixler capsule reviews in The New York Times. As a rhetoritician, Osama bin Laden “is mesmerizing, framing the perceived frustrations of many Arabs in his use of classical Arabic, including the recitation of medieval-style poetry,” the Daily Newsof Cairo’s Bernard Haykel reviews. “Artists from Manipal sculpted clay to depict the evils of terrorism [sending] a strong message to the people about the need for awareness of such issues that plague the nation,” India’s Daiji World blurbs.

Straight to video: “Could Saturday’s heartless serial bombings in Ahmedabad have been influenced by the recently released Hindi film ‘Contract’?” an AINS feature asks. “Reading both Jane Mayer’s stunning ‘The Dark Side’ and Philippe Sands’ ‘The Torture Team,’ I quickly realized that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of FOXtelevision’s ‘24’: Jack Bauer,” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick writes. “The Virtual Army Experience has been touring amusement parks, air shows and county fairs . . . [b]ut critics don’t like the idea of the military using giant videogames as a recruiting tool,” The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph De Avila spotlights. Alongside “the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics — short version: the United States can do whatever it wants if it just has willpower,” Outside the Beltway’s Steven Taylor comments, consider Andrew Klavan’s WSJ piece comparing Batman to Bush and proclaiming “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.) a “conservative movie about the war on terror.”

Driven to distraction: “Nearly seven years have passed since that terrible day in the fall of 2001, and . . . trial proceedings begun for none other than Osama Bin Laden’s personal driver,” Ridiculopathy reports. “The trial of Salim Hamdan sends a clear message to the Islamo-fascists who seek to destroy America’s way of life: Kill thousands of U.S. citizens, and we will detain your driver. No exceptions. No ‘I didn’t really mean it, give me another chance,’ either. We detain your driver. That’s it. Not messing around . . . All of this should give any evil-doer a reason to pause a moment and think: ‘Sure, I could acquire a dirty bomb and strike out against the Great Satan, but then I’d have to spend weeks looking for a new driver, interviewing applicants, blah blah blah, then another two months training them. Even after all that, it would take months or even years to get to know the new guy. Ugh. It’s just not worth it. Let’s get some frozen yogurt.’”