Career bureaucrats are prepping “for what could be the biggest test they would ever face: responding to a large-scale disaster — such as a terrorist attack or natural calamity — during the presidential transition,” Federal Times’ Gregg Carlstrom recounts — as The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick has a senior intel analyst warning anew of a heightened election-season risk of attack. “This vital election may well be the biggest decision of your life [because] we possibly will never survive the financial and military actions of our enemies,” Jack L. Key hyperventilates for News By Us.

Homies: DHS has established its own counterintel division, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press’ Eileen Sullivan. A Hong Kong man died last month of undiagnosed, untreated cancer after a year in ICE detention facilities, The New York Times’ Nina Bernstein spotlights. “Richard Mangogna came out of retirement to lead DHS’ IT team as the department braces for its first presidential administration transition,” Federal Computer Week’s Ben Bain leads. A computer specialist for DHS has been arrested “for being one the nation’s most prolific disseminators of child pornography,” The Washington Examiner’s Freeman Klopott reveals.

Poly-ticks: The old saw “that bad economic times will deliver the White House to Democrats may not hold if people start viewing the downturn as, essentially, a national security crisis that can’t be entrusted to a novice,” Politico’s Glenn Thrush suggests. Because the next president could return to square one on prosecuting terrorists, it was no coincidence “the U.S. military jurors at Guantanamo timed the prison sentence they gave Osama bin Laden’s driver to end just before President Bush’s term does,” Reuters’ Jane Sutton is told. Check, if you like, the Austin American-Statesman’s Bob Deans on the depth of the two candidates’ foreign policy benches.

McBama: “Will Russia’s aggressive retaliation against Georgia have much resonance for voters?” The Chicago Tribune asks — even as BuzzFlash terms the GOP contender’s reaction “a frightening foretaste of John McCain’s warlike foreign policy,” and The New York Sunhears a McCain spokesman denouncing the Obama camp’s criticism of a top aide’s lobbying for the Georgian government as “bizarrely in sync with the Kremlin.” What we have here is a “3:00 a.m. moment,” Politico, finally, pronounces. “My opponent, interestingly, opposed the [surge] in Iraq yet basically wants . . . to have that strategy, which he said failed in Iraq, in Afghanistan,” John McCain tells Stars and Stripes — which plan Obama defends in his own S&S interview as “part of a more comprehensive focus on what I consider to be the central front on terrorism.”

State and local: The NYPD’s proposal to envelop the rebuilt World Trade Center in an all-encompassing security zone accessible to specially screened vehicles via five “sally ports” is prompting “mixed reactions,” Newsday reports — while the Times comments that “the whole country will lose something very valuable if the site . . . is turned into a walled fortress.”Another NYPD plan would track and scan every vehicle that enters Manhattan itself, the Times also tells.DHS grants to Connecticut “will go up by 42 percent this year. That sounds good. But the actual amount is reported to be a little under $15 million. That doesn’t sound like much,” The Stamford Advocate weighs. As Hurricane Katrina’s third anniversary approaches, work is ahead of schedule on a $221 million Mississippi-wide emergency radio system, The Hattiesburg American mentions.

Follow the money: Security-related concerns about Sharia-compliant banking may stem from a lack of understanding, stereotyping and/or a “conflation” of Islamic finance with hawala money transfers, CRSsuggests — as BusinessWeek hails what is billed as the world’s first Islamic debit MasterCard. “Somali pirates are investing heavily in trafficking the narcotic khat . . . as they seek to spend big profits from ransom payments after months of attacks,” Reuters reviews. A federal judge last week denied defense attorneys’ request to delay the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance retrial, The Dallas Morning Newsnotes. An accused North African terror cell rolled up in Italy last weekend allegedly financed ops with collections from phony car accident insurance claims, BBC News relates.

Bio-terrible: Since biowarfare research began booming in 2001, “bioweapons agents have been mishandled in a number of incidents . . . Even more worrying are the security risks,” Elissa D. Harris cautions in The New York Times — while Randall J. Larsen suggests in The Wall Street Journal that if an Army researcher is the anthrax culprit, “then the threat of bioterrorism is far more troubling than we have imagined.” DHS will be at the University of Georgia tomorrow for the last of five community hearings in states seeking to host its planned biodefense lab, The Athens Banner-Herald relates — while The Red and Black reads Georgia’s chances as dwindling. Comments The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the apparent role of pork in DHS’s siting plans: “While Mississippi’s scores may not be stellar, its political connections are dazzling.”

Know nukes: The NRC deems “remote and speculative” the likelihood of a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant causing a severe accident, The Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer reports — while San Diego’s KNSD News covers a drill last week honing readiness for a radiation release from the San Onofre nuke. Energy has subjected only one major U.S. city to an aerial background radiation survey — needed for threat detection comparison readings — while DOE and DHS bicker over jurisdiction, a Common Voice essay says. Tehran “knows full well that Israel has an arsenal widely thought to include as many as 200 nuclear warheads . . . and enough apocalyptic psyches to retaliate” against an Iranian nuclear strike, a Washington Post op-ed asserts. “The cost to the world of a single act of nuclear terrorism . . . would be incalculable,” a former president of Mexico writes in a YaleGlobal essay urging more bite for the U.N.’s watchdog.

Coming and going: Despite TSA assurances that starkly revealing security scans of air passengers are confidential and quickly disposed of, privacy advocates remain unconvinced, The Boston Globespotlights. Investigators are treating the disappearance and recovery of a laptop containing personal info on 33,000 registered travelers enrolled with Clear as a theft, The San Francisco Chronicle recounts. One arrival at a Las Vegas hackers convention pointedly flew out without showing an ID, though she did cover the “Global Hacking Permit 230291” sticker on her laptop “with a photo of two adorable puppies,” IDG News Service says — and see the Globe, again, on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s securing an injunction to keep MIT hackers from unveiling e-ticketing security problems.

Terror tech: The U.K. plans to use unmanned drones currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for counterterror and police ops in Britain, The Independent informs. A new technique can make a fingerprint tell what the subject has touched — like drugs, explosives or poisons, the Times relays from a journal article. Radio frequency jammers have cut off most of the remotely detonated bombs in Iraq, but their antennas are a giveaway, Danger Room notes — while Stars and Stripes dissects the sharp drop in explosively formed penetrator attacks. New work on “metamaterials” moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have obvious security applications, AP reports. New Yorkers will soon be able to upload video or photo evidence of evildoing directly to the NYPD, a move welcomed on by civil liberties groups, Reuters reports.

Cyberia: Russia’s foray into Georgia was launched “in conjunction with cyberattacks that disabled much of [its] ability to present their side of what is going on,” NetworkWorld notes — and see ZDNet. “If you’re wondering whether the cyberbattles being waged in Eastern Europe are happening in the United States as well, you can stop wondering: They are,” a Dark Readingarticle affirms. “Because you can’t see a cyber attack the public doesn’t grasp the significance of the threat. The government tries to raise awareness, but it generally talks in vague terms about all the terrible things a cyberterrorist could do,” The Wall Street Journal gripes. “Congress needs to set the rules for how border agents can delve into travelers’ laptops,” the Post opines.

Courts and rights: A Muslim student pleaded guilty yesterday to nine attempted first-degree murder counts for having driven a rented SUV into a crowd on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in 2006, The Raleigh News & Observer reports. A European court has granted a Brit accused of hacking into classified U.S. files a two-week stay on his extradition to these shores, BBC News notes.If the Pentagon plans on holding al Qaeda chauffeur Salim Hamdan indefinitely, “what, then, was the point of putting him on trial in the first place?” a FindLaw commentary questions — while NPR quotes a juror saying the man just didn’t seem like a terrorist, and The National of Abu Dhabi has Hamdan’s brother accusing the United States of unfairly targeting Yemenis.

Over there:The Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers’ “public diplomacy machinery” in the United States “is well oiled, having its tentacles all over the U.S. polity,” The Asian Tribuneasserts — while another ATitem identifies ex-deputy A.G. Bruce Fine as a “terrorist lawyer” for representing Tamils Against Genocide, cast as a Liberation Tigers “front group.” Islamic militants trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan are planning attacks in Germany, although no imminent threat is evident, Deutsche Welle quotes the nation’s police chief. Al Qaeda’s North Africa wing has called for a holy war in Mauritania to establish Islamic rule after a military coup, Reuters reports.

Words elude us: “Gasoline prices rose to a record-high four expletives per gallon Monday, a rate of fuel-price-related cursing not seen since the 1979 energy crisis sparked a nationwide obscenity boom,” The Onion reports. “Two years ago it seemed impossible that a gallon of gasoline would go as high as goddamn-sh**-a**-b***s," said commodities trader Philip Roan, adding that refined petroleum is up nearly 100 percent from c***-f*** last March. ‘Considering the unrest in the Middle East and growing global energy demands, fuel prices may well reach d***-a**-Christ-f***-hell in as little as six months.’ The unprecedented jump in swearing rates has reportedly prompted an increase in the number of Americans riding m***********g bicycles.” Click to Onion Network News for: “Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty is ‘Totally Badass.’”