1415--At the council of Constance, John Hus and John Wycliffe are condemned as heretics.
1493--Pope Alexander V gives most of the New World to the Spanish Empire in the papal bull Inter Caetera
1904--The United states begins construction of the Panama Canal.
1942--The Battle of the Coral Sea begins.
1961--The Freedom Riders begin a bus tour of the American South.
1979--Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1990--Latvia declares independence from the Soviet Union.
Monday, May 3, 2010
3 May in History
1802--Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.
1946--International Military Tribunal begins in Tokyo for 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
1970--National Guard troops fire upon students at Kent State University, Ohio. May they rest in peace.
1946--International Military Tribunal begins in Tokyo for 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
1970--National Guard troops fire upon students at Kent State University, Ohio. May they rest in peace.
Another Bullet Dodged in New York City
This article is from the Heritage Foundation:
Another Bullet Dodged in New York
This past Saturday evening at 6:28 p.m., a white male in his 40s drove a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder into Times Square, parked, departed the vehicle, and slipped down a nearby alley. Within minutes a t-shirt street vendor alerted authorities about smoke emanating from the vehicle and, after pedestrians had been cleared from the area, a bomb squad discovered that the SUV was packed with what was intended to be lethal incendiary materials.
The device inside the SUV has since been described by investigators as "at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to explosives." The large amounts of fertilizer surrounding the gas and propane tanks in the car was good for growing plants but bad for explosions; it was not the ammonium nitrate grade that can explode. Still if the propane and gas had ignited, the SUV would have exploded in half, spraying shrapnel with enough force to kill innocent pedestrians enjoying a warm summer evening in a busy Times Square.
On Sunday, the Pakistani Taliban posted a YouTube video created on April 30th claiming responsibility for the attack. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "So far, there is no evidence that any of this has anything to do with one of the recognized terrorist organizations," and New York police Commissioner Ray Kelly noted that the same group had falsely taken credit for previous attacks on U.S. soil.
Whether Saturday's failed attack turns out to be connected to Islamic radicalism or is the work of a lone wolf, there have now been 31 foiled terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, eleven in New York City alone. Yesterday's plot was foiled by sheer luck and quick-thinking civilians. But luck is not an adequate strategy for protecting a nation. Continuing to stop acts of terrorism requires vigilance in finding and stopping people from doing this before they launch their attack. Effective intelligence collection, information-sharing and counter-terrorism operations are the best tools we have, making investigative authorities such as those granted under the PATRIOT Act so very important.
Unfortunately this Congress and this President have repeatedly prioritized politics over security. Instead of providing stability and confidence in the intelligence community by seeking long-term renewal of key investigatory authorities authorized under the USA Patriot Act, President Obama has settled for a six-month extension tacked on to the Defense appropriations bill. Such a move is unfortunate given that the PATRIOT Act provides just the type of investigative tools the United States needs for the foreseeable future. If our political leaders are serious about preventing terrorist attacks in the United States, they need to stop the delaying and renew the crime-stopping, lifesaving provisions of the act.
Another Bullet Dodged in New York
This past Saturday evening at 6:28 p.m., a white male in his 40s drove a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder into Times Square, parked, departed the vehicle, and slipped down a nearby alley. Within minutes a t-shirt street vendor alerted authorities about smoke emanating from the vehicle and, after pedestrians had been cleared from the area, a bomb squad discovered that the SUV was packed with what was intended to be lethal incendiary materials.
The device inside the SUV has since been described by investigators as "at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to explosives." The large amounts of fertilizer surrounding the gas and propane tanks in the car was good for growing plants but bad for explosions; it was not the ammonium nitrate grade that can explode. Still if the propane and gas had ignited, the SUV would have exploded in half, spraying shrapnel with enough force to kill innocent pedestrians enjoying a warm summer evening in a busy Times Square.
On Sunday, the Pakistani Taliban posted a YouTube video created on April 30th claiming responsibility for the attack. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "So far, there is no evidence that any of this has anything to do with one of the recognized terrorist organizations," and New York police Commissioner Ray Kelly noted that the same group had falsely taken credit for previous attacks on U.S. soil.
Whether Saturday's failed attack turns out to be connected to Islamic radicalism or is the work of a lone wolf, there have now been 31 foiled terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, eleven in New York City alone. Yesterday's plot was foiled by sheer luck and quick-thinking civilians. But luck is not an adequate strategy for protecting a nation. Continuing to stop acts of terrorism requires vigilance in finding and stopping people from doing this before they launch their attack. Effective intelligence collection, information-sharing and counter-terrorism operations are the best tools we have, making investigative authorities such as those granted under the PATRIOT Act so very important.
Unfortunately this Congress and this President have repeatedly prioritized politics over security. Instead of providing stability and confidence in the intelligence community by seeking long-term renewal of key investigatory authorities authorized under the USA Patriot Act, President Obama has settled for a six-month extension tacked on to the Defense appropriations bill. Such a move is unfortunate given that the PATRIOT Act provides just the type of investigative tools the United States needs for the foreseeable future. If our political leaders are serious about preventing terrorist attacks in the United States, they need to stop the delaying and renew the crime-stopping, lifesaving provisions of the act.
30 Terrorist Plots Foiled: How the System Worked
This article is from the Heritage Foundation:
30 Terrorist Plots Foiled: How the System WorkedPublished on April 29, 2010 by Jena Baker McNeill , James Carafano, Ph.D. and Jessica Zuckerman Abstract: In 2009 alone, U.S. authorities foiled at least six terrorist plots against the United States. Since September 11, 2001, at least 30 planned terrorist attacks have been foiled, all but two of them prevented by law enforcement. The two notable exceptions are the passengers and flight attendants who subdued the "shoe bomber" in 2001 and the "underwear bomber" on Christmas Day in 2009. Bottom line: The system has generally worked well. But many tools necessary for ferreting out conspiracies and catching terrorists are under attack. Chief among them are key provisions of the PATRIOT Act that are set to expire at the end of this year. It is time for President Obama to demonstrate his commitment to keeping the country safe. Heritage Foundation national security experts provide a road map for a successful counterterrorism strategy.
In 2009, at least six planned terrorist plots against the United States were foiled. This has led some to wonder whether the U.S. is experiencing the results of a resurgence in terrorism. However, these latest acts were not a new phenomenon: At least 30 terrorist plots against the U.S. have been foiled since 9/11. It is clear that terrorists continue to wage war against America.
President Barack Obama, however, took office determined to shed the idea of a war on terrorism. Besides an obvious change in lexicon—from the "global war on terror" to "overseas contingency operation" and from "terrorism" to "man-made disaster"—there were even more consequential actions, including the decision to prosecute foreign terrorists in U.S. civilian courts, dismantlement of the CIA's interrogation abilities, lackadaisical support for the PATRIOT Act, and an attempt to shut down Guantanamo Bay within President Obama's first year in the White House. The danger of this new attitude was revealed all too quickly by the near-miss airline bomb plot of Christmas Day 2009.
Undoubtedly, the nation wants to be successful in fighting terrorists. The U.S. counterterrorism system has worked successfully in the past, as demonstrated by the foiled plots, and it can work successfully in the future. But continued success requires the White House and Congress to work together to ensure that the military, law enforcement, and intelligence community have the tools they need to defend the country. At the same time, it is essential that the Administration lay out its counterterrorism strategy to the American people, including next steps for aviation security, visa security, and intelligence and information sharing.
Terrorism and the Obama Administration
Homeland security and counterterrorism were relatively unexamined issues during the 2008 presidential campaign. Terrorism was not in the forefront of Americans' minds; the downward-spiraling economy and lost jobs were understandably front and center.
The discovery of the Zazi plot in September 2009 served as the first in a series of wake-up calls to the nation on the state of national security. Najibullah Zazi was arrested after purchasing large quantities of chemicals from beauty supply stores in a plot to detonate TATP bombs on the New York City subway. This plot was considered extremely serious and was in the later stages of development when Zazi was apprehended—which made the plot deeply troubling to many Americans.
Shortly thereafter, in November 2009, were the Fort Hood shootings. This attack, perpetrated by Major Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army psychologist, was not a foiled plot. Hasan went on a shooting rampage, killing 12 and wounding 31. Evidence demonstrates that he was in communication with al-Qaeda via the Internet before the attack and that the U.S. government had what should have been damaging intelligence on Major Hasan before the incident occurred.
While still questioning what led to the failure to act on the known intelligence in the case of the Fort Hood shootings, the U.S. experienced a near-miss attack on Christmas Day 2009. That day, Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—whose own father had alerted U.S. consulate officials in Nigeria to his son's radical leanings—attempted to detonate a bomb on a Northwest flight landing in Detroit. His bomb failed to ignite, and passengers restrained him so that he could not try again.
The startling failure of authorities to connect the dots and bring together valuable pieces of information has led Americans to question whether authorities were doing what needed to be done to keep them safe. Specifically, questions center on whether the homeland security system worked, why it worked in the past, and whether it will work in the future.
How the System Has Worked
Based on public information, the U.S. has foiled at least 30 terrorist attacks since 9/11. In two cases, the outcome was the result of sheer luck. The foiling of the rest was the result of good law enforcement and effective intelligence gathering and information sharing.
1. Richard Reid, December 2001. A British citizen and self-professed follower of Osama bin Laden trained in Afghanistan, Reid hid explosives inside his shoes before boarding a flight from Paris to Miami on which he attempted to light the fuse with a match. Reid was caught in the act and apprehended on board the plane by the flight attendants and passengers. FBI officials took Reid into custody after the plane made an emergency landing at Boston's Logan International Airport.[1]
In 2003, Reid was found guilty on charges of terrorism, and a U.S. federal court sentenced him to life imprisonment.[2]
2. Jose Padilla, May 2002. U.S. officials arrested Padilla in May 2002 at O'Hare airport in Chicago as he returned to the United States from Pakistan, where he met with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and received al-Qaeda instructions and training.[3] Upon his arrest, he was initially charged as an enemy combatant and for planning to use a dirty bomb (an explosive laced with radioactive material) in an attack against America.[4]
Prior to his conviction, Padilla brought a case against the federal government claiming that he had been denied the right of habeas corpus (the right of an individual to petition against unlawful imprisonment). In a 5-to-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the case against him had been filed improperly.[5] In 2005, the government indicted Padilla for conspiring against the U.S. with Islamic terrorist groups.
In August 2007, Padilla was found guilty by a civilian jury after a three-month trial. He was later sentenced by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to 17 years and four months in prison.[6] Padilla continues to attempt to have his conviction overturned.[7]
3. Lackawanna Six, September 2002. When the FBI arrested Sahim Alwan, Yahya Goba, Yasein Taher, Faysal Galab, Shafal Mosed, and Mukhtar al-Bakri, the press dubbed them the "Lackawanna Six," the "Buffalo Six," or the "Buffalo Cell." Five of the six had been born and raised in Lackawanna, New York.[8] These six American citizens of Yemeni descent were arrested for conspiring with terrorist groups. They had stated that they were going to Pakistan to attend a religious training camp but instead attended an al-Qaeda jihadist camp.
All six pled guilty in 2003 to providing support to al-Qaeda. Goba and al-Bakri were sentenced to 10 years in prison, Taher and Mosed to eight years, Alwan to nine and a half years, and Galab to seven years.[9] Mosed and Galab have since completed their sentences and have been released.[10]
Recent reports indicate that Jaber Elbaneh, one of the FBI's most wanted and often considered to be a seventh member of the Lackawanna cell, has been captured in Yemen. It remains to be seen, however, whether he will be tried in the U.S., since the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Yemen.[11]
4. Iyman Faris, May 2003. Faris is a naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from Kashmir, who was living in Columbus, Ohio. He was arrested for conspiring to use blowtorches to collapse the Brooklyn Bridge, a plot devised after meetings with al-Qaeda leadership including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.[12] The New York City Police Department learned of the plot and increased police surveillance around the bridge. Faced with the additional security, Faris and his superiors canceled the attack.[13]
Faris pled guilty to conspiracy and providing material support to al-Qaeda and was later sentenced in federal district court to 20 years in prison, the maximum allowed under his plea agreement.[14]
5. Virginia Jihad Network, June 2003. Eleven men were arrested in Alexandria, Virginia, for weapons counts and for violating the Neutrality Acts, which prohibit U.S. citizens and residents from attacking countries with which the United States is at peace. Four of the 11 men pled guilty. Upon further investigation, the remaining seven were indicted on additional charges of conspiring to support terrorist organizations. They were found to have connections with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-i-Taiba, a terrorist organization that targets the Indian government. The authorities stated that the Virginia men had used paintball games to train and prepare for battle. The group had also acquired surveillance and night vision equipment and wireless video cameras.[15] Two more individuals were later indicted in the plot: Ali al-Timimi, the group's spiritual leader, and Ali Asad Chandia.
Ali al-Timimi was found guilty of soliciting individuals to assault the United States and sentenced to life in prison. Ali Asad Chandia received 15 years for supporting Lashkar-i-Taiba.[16] Randall Todd Royer, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, Yong Ki Kwon, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, Muhammed Aatique, and Donald T. Surratt pled guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years and 10 months to 20 years. Masoud Khan, Seifullah Chapman, and Hammad Adur-Raheem were found guilty and later sentenced to prison terms ranging from 52 months to life.[17] Both Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem and Sabri Benkhala were acquitted at trial.[18]
6. Nuradin M. Abdi, November 2003. Abdi, a Somali citizen living in Columbus, Ohio, was arrested and charged in a plot to bomb a local shopping mall. Abdi was an associate of convicted terrorists Christopher Paul and Iyman Faris and admittedly conspired with the two to provide material support to terrorists. Following his arrest, Abdi admitted to traveling overseas to seek admittance to terrorist training camps, as well as to having met with a Somali warlord associated with Islamists.
Abdi has since pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, one of the four counts for which he was indicted. He was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in jail per the terms of a plea agreement.[19]
7. Dhiren Barot, August 2004. Seven members of a terrorist cell led by Barot were arrested for plotting to attack the New York Stock Exchange and other financial institutions in New York, Washington, and Newark, New Jersey. They were later accused of planning attacks in England. The plots included a "memorable black day of terror" that would have included detonating a dirty bomb.[20] A July 2004 police raid on Barot's house in Pakistan yielded a number of incriminating files on a laptop computer, including instructions for building car bombs.[21]
Dhiren Barot pled guilty and was convicted in the United Kingdom for conspiracy to commit mass murder and sentenced to 40 years.[22] However, in May 2007, his sentence was reduced to 30 years.[23] His seven co-conspirators were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 to 26 years on related charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause explosion.[24]
8. James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj, August 2004. James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj, both reportedly self-radicalized, were arrested for plotting to bomb a subway station near Madison Square Garden in New York City before the Republican National Convention.[25] An undercover detective from the New York City Police Department's Intelligence Division infiltrated the group, providing information to authorities, and later testified against Elshafay and Siraj.[26]
Siraj was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Elshafay, a U.S. citizen, pled guilty and received a lighter, five-year sentence for testifying against his co-conspirator.[27]
9. Yassin Aref and Mohammad Hossain, August 2004. Two leaders of a mosque in Albany, New York, were charged with plotting to purchase a shoulder-fired grenade launcher to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat.[28] An investigation by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and local police contributed to the arrest. With the help of an informant, the FBI set up a sting that lured Mohammed Hossain into a fake terrorist conspiracy. Hossain brought Yassin Araf, a Kurdish refugee, as a witness. The informant offered details of a fake terrorist plot, claiming that he needed the missiles to murder a Pakistani diplomat in New York City. Both Aref and Hossain agreed to help.[29]
Aref and Hossain were found guilty of money-laundering and conspiracy to conceal material support for terrorism and were sentenced to 15 years in prison.[30]
10. Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat, June 2005. Umer Hayat, a Pakistani immigrant, and Hamid Hayat, his American son, were arrested in Lodi, California, after allegedly lying to the FBI about Hamid's attendance at an Islamic terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
Hamid was found guilty of providing material support to terrorists and providing false statements to the FBI.[31] He was sentenced to 24 years in prison for these acts.[32] Umer's trial ended in a mistrial. He later pled guilty to lying to customs agents in his attempt to carry $28,000 into Pakistan and was sentenced to "time served."[33]
11. Levar Haley Washington, Gregory Vernon Patterson, Hammad Riaz Samana, and Kevin James, August 2005. The members of the group were arrested in Los Angeles and charged with conspiring to attack National Guard facilities, synagogues, and other targets in the Los Angeles area. Kevin James allegedly founded Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS), a radical Islamic prison group, and converted Levar Washington and others to the group's mission. The JIS allegedly planned to finance its operations by robbing gas stations. After Washington and Patterson were arrested for robbery, police and federal agents began a terrorist investigation, and a search of Washington's apartment revealed a suspicious target list.[34]
James and Washington pled guilty in December 2007. James was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Washington to 22 years. Patterson received 151 months, while Samana was found unfit to stand trial and was initially detained in a federal prison mental facility. He was later sentenced to 70 months in jail.[35]
12. Michael C. Reynolds, December 2005. Michael C. Reynolds was arrested by the FBI and charged with involvement in a plot to blow up a Wyoming natural gas refinery; the Transcontinental Pipeline, a natural-gas pipeline from the Gulf Coast to New York and New Jersey; and a Standard Oil refinery in New Jersey.[36] He was arrested while trying to pick up a $40,000 payment for planning the attack.[37] Shannen Rossmiller, his purported contact, was a Montana judge who was working with the FBI. The FBI later found explosives in a storage locker in Reynolds's hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.[38] Reynolds claimed that he was working as a private citizen to find terrorists.[39]
Reynolds was convicted of providing material support to terrorists, soliciting a crime of violence, unlawful distribution of explosives, and unlawful possession of a hand grenade. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.[40]
13. Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi, and Zand Wassim Mazloum, February 2006. Amawi, El-Hindi, and Mazloum were arrested in Toledo, Ohio, for "conspiring to kill or injure people in the Middle East" and providing material support to terrorist organizations. The three men allegedly intended to build bombs for use in Iraq and verbally threatened attacks against President George W. Bush.[41] The investigation was begun with the help of an informant who was approached to help to train the group.[42]
In June 2008, all three were convicted of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism against Americans overseas, including U.S. military personnel in Iraq, and other terrorism-related violations. Amawi was sentenced to 20 years, el-Hindi to 13 years, and Mazloum to approximately eight years.[43]
14. Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, April 2006. Ahmed and Sadequee, from Atlanta, Georgia, were accused of conspiracy, having discussed terrorist targets with alleged terrorist organizations. They allegedly met with Islamic extremists in the U.S. and gathered videotape surveillance of potential targets in the Washington, D.C., area, including the U.S. Capitol and the World Bank headquarters, and sent the videos to a London Islamist group. Ahmed is said also to have traveled to Pakistan with the goal of joining Lashkar-e-Taiba.[44]
Both men were indicted for providing material support to terrorist organizations and pled not guilty.[45] In June 2009, a federal district judge found Ahmed "guilty of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists here and overseas."[46] Ahmed was subsequently sentenced to 13 years in jail. Sadequee was also found guilty and sentenced to 17 years.[47]
15. Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustine, June 2006. Seven men were arrested in Miami and Atlanta for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, FBI offices, and other government buildings around the country. The arrests resulted from an investigation involving an FBI informant. Allegedly, Batiste was the leader of the group and first suggested attacking the Sears Tower in December 2005.[48]
All of the suspects pled not guilty. On December 13, 2007, Lemorin was acquitted of all charges, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the other six. [49] The second trial ended in a mistrial in April 2008.[50] In the third trial, the jury convicted five of the men on multiple conspiracy charges and acquitted Herrera on all counts. On November 20, 2009, the five were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 13.5 years, with Batiste receiving the highest sentence.[51]
16. Assem Hammoud, July 2006. Conducting online surveillance of chat rooms, the FBI discovered a plot to attack underground transit links between New York City and New Jersey. Eight suspects including Assem Hammoud, an al-Qaeda loyalist living in Lebanon, were arrested for plotting to bomb New York City train tunnels. Hammoud, a self-proclaimed operative for al-Qaeda, admitted to the plot.[52] He was held by Lebanese authorities but was not extradited because the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon. In June 2008, Lebanese authorities released him on bail.[53] He is awaiting trial before a Lebanese military court.
17. Liquid Explosives Plot, August 2006. British law enforcement stopped a terrorist plot to blow up 10 U.S.-bound commercial airliners with liquid explosives.[54] Twenty-four suspects were arrested in the London area. The style of the plot raised speculation that al-Qaeda was behind it, but no concrete evidence has established a link.
The United Kingdom initially charged 15 of the 24 arrested individuals on charges ranging from conspiring to commit murder to planning to commit terrorist acts.[55] Eventually, in April 2008, only eight men were brought to trial. In September, the jury found none of the defendants guilty of conspiring to target aircraft but three guilty of conspiracy to murder.[56] The jury was unable to reach verdicts on four of the men. One man was found not guilty on all counts.[57]
18. Derrick Shareef, December 2006. Shareef was arrested on charges of planning to set off hand grenades in a shopping mall outside Chicago. Shareef reportedly acted alone and was arrested after meeting with an undercover Joint Terrorism Task Force agent. FBI reports indicated that the mall was one of several potential targets, including courthouses, city halls, and government facilities. Shareef, however, settled on attacking a mall in the days immediately preceding Christmas because he believed it would cause the greatest amount of chaos and damage.[58] Shareef was also found to have connections to convicted terrorist Hassan Agujihaad, who was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and later sentenced to 35 years in prison.[59]
19. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, March 2007. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured in Pakistan in 2003, was involved in a number of terrorist plots and is one of the most senior bin Laden operatives ever captured.[60] He is being held at the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. In March 2007, Mohammed admitted to helping plan, organize, and run the 9/11 attacks and also claimed responsibility for planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the bombings of nightclubs in Bali in 2002 and a Kenyan hotel. He has stated that he was involved in the decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and took responsibility for helping to plan the failed shoe-bomb attack by Richard Reid, along with plots to attack Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf, Big Ben, various targets in Israel, the Panama Canal, Los Angeles, Chicago, the Empire State building, and U.S. nuclear power stations. He had also plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul II and former President Bill Clinton.
In December 2008, Mohammed and his four co-defendants (Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and Walid Bin Attash) told the military tribunal judge that they wanted to confess and plead guilty to all charges.[61] The judge has approved the guilty plea of Mohammed and two co-defendants but has required mental competency hearings before allowing the other two conspirators to plead guilty. In November 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Mohammed would be relocated to the United States to face civilian trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, although this relocation has yet to occur.
20. Fort Dix Plot, May 2007. Six men were arrested in a plot to attack Fort Dix, a U.S. Army post in New Jersey. The plan involved using assault rifles and grenades to attack and kill U.S. soldiers. Five of the alleged conspirators had conducted training missions in the nearby Pocono Mountains. The sixth helped to obtain weapons. The arrests were made after a 16-month FBI operation that included infiltrating the group. The investigation began after a store clerk alerted authorities after discovering a video file of the group firing weapons and calling for jihad. The group has no known direct connections to any international terrorist organization.[62]
In December 2008, five of the men were found guilty on the conspiracy charges but were acquitted of charges of attempted murder.[63] Four were also convicted on weapons charges. The five men received sentences ranging from 33 years to life plus 30. The sixth co-defendant pled guilty to aiding and abetting the others in illegal possession of weapons and was sentenced to 20 months in jail.[64]
21. JFK Airport Plot, June 2007. Four men plotted to blow up "aviation fuel tanks and pipelines at the John F. Kennedy International Airport" in New York City. They believed that such an attack would cause "greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks." Authorities stated that the attack "could have caused significant financial and psychological damage, but not major loss of life."[65]
Russell Defreitas, the leader of the group, was arrested in Brooklyn. The other three members of the group—Abdul Kadir, Kareem Ibrahim, and Abdel Nur—were detained in Trinidad and extradited in June 2008. Kadir and Nur have links to Islamic extremists in South America and the Caribbean. Kadir was an imam in Guyana, former member of the Guyanese Parliament, and mayor of Linden, Guyana. Ibrahim is a Trinidadian citizen, and Nur is a Guyanese citizen. The men pled not guilty to the charges and are awaiting trial.[66]
22. Hassan Abujihaad, March 2008. Hassan Abujihaad, a former U.S. Navy sailor from Phoenix, Arizona, was convicted of supporting terrorism and disclosing classified information, including the location of Navy ships and their vulnerabilities, to Barbar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, the alleged administrators of Azzam Publication Web sites (the London organization that provided material support and resources to terrorists). Abujihaad was arrested in March 2007 and pled not guilty to charges of supporting terrorism in April 2007. In May 2008, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 10 years in prison.[67] Both Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan are being held in Britain on anti-terrorism charges and are fighting extradition to the U.S.[68]
23. Christopher Paul, June 2008. Christopher Paul is a U.S. citizen from Columbus, Ohio. He joined al-Qaeda in the 1990s and was involved in conspiracies to target Americans in the United States and overseas. In 1999, he became connected to an Islamic terrorist cell in Germany, where he was involved in a plot to target Americans at foreign vacation resorts. He later returned to Ohio and was subsequently arrested for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction—specifically, explosive devices—"against targets in Europe and the United States." Paul pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.[69]
24. Synagogue Terror Plot, May 2009. On May 20, 2009, the New York Police Department announced the arrest of James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen for plotting to blow up area Jewish centers and shoot down planes at a nearby Air National Guard Base.[70] The four had attempted to gain access to Stinger missiles and were caught in the act of placing bombs in the buildings and in a car. (The bombs were duds, because undercover agents sold the four defendants fake explosives as part of an ongoing sting operation). All four men have pled not guilty and are awaiting trial.[71]
25. Najibullah Zazi, September 2009 . Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghani, was arrested after purchasing large quantities of chemicals used to make a TATP bomb, the same type of weapon used in the 2005 bombing of the London Underground and the 2001 shoe-bomb plot. Zazi had traveled to Pakistan, where he received instruction in bomb-making and attended an al-Qaeda training camp. Zazi allegedly planned to detonate TATP bombs on the New York City subway.[72]
Najibullah Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, was also indicted for obstructing justice by helping his son cover up plans for his attack. Najibullah pled guilty and remains in jail, while Mohammed pled not guilty and has been freed on bail.[73] Zazi's guilty plea was the result of a plea bargain, and he awaits sentencing on June 25, 2010, while Mohammed awaits trial.
At least three other individuals have since been arrested on allegations of traveling overseas with Zazi to receive terrorist training and making false statements to authorities.[74] One of them, New York religious leader Ahmad Afzali, has pled guilty to charges of lying to federal agents about informing Zazi that he was being investigated by authorities.[75] Zarein Ahmedzay has also pled guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in the foiled plot.[76]
26. Hosam Maher Husein Smadi , September 2009 . Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian, was apprehended in an attempt to plant a bomb in a Dallas skyscraper. Originally identified through FBI monitoring of extremist chat rooms, Smadi was arrested and charged after agents posing as terrorist cell members gave Smadi a fake bomb, which he later attempted to detonate.[77] Smadi has pled not guilty, and trial is set to begin on June 7, 2010.[78]
27 . Michael Finton , September 2009 . Finton, an American citizen, was arrested on September 23 by undercover FBI agents after attempting to detonate a car bomb filled with what he believed to be close to one ton of explosives outside of the Paul Findley Federal Building and Courthouse in downtown Springfield, Illinois. Evidence presented against Finton has shown that he expressed a desire to become a jihadist fighter and was aware that his planned attack would cause civilian injuries. He has been arrested on charges of attempted murder of federal employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Finton has since pled not guilty, although court orders for mental competency training have delayed the case.[79]
28. Tarek Mehanna and Ahmad Abousamra, October 2009. Mehanna, previously indicted for lying to the FBI about the location of terrorist suspect Daniel Maldonado, was arrested on October 21, 2009, on allegations of conspiracy to kill two U.S. politicians, American troops in Iraq, and civilians in local shopping malls. Abousamra, his co-conspirator, remains at large in Syria. However, both were indicted on charges of providing and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, and conspiracy to provide false information to law enforcement.[80]
The two men are not believed to be associated with any known terrorist organization.[81] Both face sentences of up to life in prison if convicted.[82]
29. The Christmas Day Bomber, 2009. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian engineering student living in London, boarded a plane from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then flew from Amsterdam to the U.S. when he attempted to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear as the plane began to land. The device ignited but failed to detonate, and passengers moved quickly to stop Abdulmutallab from trying again, leading to his arrest by U.S. authorities upon landing in Detroit. The bomb, containing the explosives PETN and TATP, was similar to the failed device used by Richard Reid in 2001.
Media accounts following the plot indicate that Abdulmutallab admits involvement with al-Qaeda in Yemen. Abdulmutallab has since pled not guilty to six terrorism charges and remains in custody awaiting further trial.[83]
30. Raja Lahrasib Khan, March 2010. Chicago taxi driver Raja Lahrasib Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani decent, was arrested by the Chicago FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for two counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. According to the charges, Khan was affiliated with Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of the al-Qaeda–linked extremist group Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami in Kashmir, and has previously been indicted in the U.S. on terrorism charges.[84]
Khan originally transferred $950 to Pakistan, to be delivered to Kashmiri, and later attempted to send nearly $1,000 provided to him by an undercover agent to Kashmiri by having his son carry the money to England, where Khan then planned to rendezvous with him and carry the money the rest of the way to Pakistan. His son was stopped by government agents at Chicago O'Hare International Airport before leaving the country. The criminal complaint filed against Khan also alleges that he had discussed plans to bomb an unnamed sports stadium in the United States.
Khan has since pled not guilty. If convicted, Khan faces up to 15 years in prison for each count of providing material support.[85]
How to Keep the System Working
As Senator Susan Collins (R–ME) noted in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, "we dodged a bullet in the skies above Detroit on Christmas Day."[86] Nevertheless, 28 of the 30 terrorist plots outlined above were thwarted by the vigilance of the U.S. law enforcement, and intelligence communities, proving that the system can counter the terrorist threat.
It is time for the White House to demonstrate its commitment to the long war against terrorism. Doing so will require support for the nation's counterterrorism tools. It will require an aviation and transportation security system that does not focus exclusively on spending money, but rather on producing smart security—cost-effective, respectful of civil liberties, and mindful of legitimate economic interests. It will also require the continued development of top-notch intelligence analysts, robust information sharing from federal to state and local law enforcement and between federal agencies, and strong partnerships with other nations.
Specifically, the Administration and Congress should:
Make key provisions of the PATRIOT Act permanent. Immediately following September 11, 2001, efforts were made to bring intelligence capabilities in line with the new nature of the terrorist threat. Such efforts were embodied in the passage of the PATRIOT Act and in the subsequent amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enhanced the legal and investigatory tools available to law enforcement in national security and counterterrorism. The tools provided by these acts have been vital in thwarting many of the 30 plots discussed above. Nevertheless, key provisions of the PATRIOT Act expired in December 2009. Congress has since extended these provisions until the end of 2010; further steps must be taken to ensure their permanence.
Increase visa coordination. America's first line of defense is its borders. Careful screening of those who wish to cross them allows for the opportunity to apprehend terrorists and other criminals before they enter the country. Visa decisions thus have key homeland security implications, yet very little coordination occurs between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State on visa affairs. This relationship and coordination must be enhanced through implementation of programs such as the Visa Security Office program, which would place homeland security officials in consular offices overseas.
Develop a detainment framework for terrorist detainees. Since his presidential campaign, President Obama has highlighted the issue of terrorist detention with calls to close Guantanamo Bay within one year of his taking office. However, issues of detainment go beyond debate centered solely on Gitmo. The Christmas Day bomber was another example of how the lack of a lawful detainment framework inhibits the collection of intelligence from captured suspects. The question is not only what will be done with those currently held at Guantanamo, but also what is to be done with future detainees.
To answer this latter question, the Administration must develop a U.S. detention policy for detainees who cannot be tried safely in federal courts. This framework must be based on the principles of Article 5 of the Geneva Convention, which outlines protections for prisoners of war, as well as periodic review of detention. Such a policy would allow for a legal framework for detention and interrogation, as well as for the increased security of the United States and its allies, by preventing belligerents from returning to armed conflict.
Improve the Terrorist Watch List. In order to serve as an effective tool to counter the terrorist threat, the Terrorist Watch List (TWL) must not be hindered by political pressures to keep the list small. Instead, it must be allowed to encompass those who truly pose a potential risk to the United States. The "no-fly" list should instead function as the smaller, more inclusive list of high-risk threats. Coupled with a robust redress process, these lists can be used effectively to stop the bad guys from entering the country and allow legitimate travelers to move freely. Restrictions that prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from using the TWL to stop suspected terrorists at the airport screening line must be removed.
Define priorities for aviation security. Immediately after the Christmas Day 2009 attack, the reaction of the Administration and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was to place added security on travelers from 14 nations designated as high-risk. While this policy has since been rescinded in a technical sense, the Department of Homeland Security has yet to release new screening rules that would emphasize intelligence gathering and information sharing (with law enforcement and foreign partners) as the most effective means of stopping terrorism.
In its FY 2011 budget request, the Department of Homeland Security has intensified introduction of the high-tech Advanced Imaging Technologies (AIT, or full-body scanners), among other technologies to screen passengers. These technologies can be effective, but the Administration should lay out a decisive strategy for aviation security that focuses on stopping terrorists before they reach the screening line.
Expand the Visa Waiver Program. The Visa Waiver Program allows citizens of member nations to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. While some have argued that this program decreases security, member nations agree to more stringent and robust security measures than apply to non-member nations so that travelers from these nations provide greater information to the United States through Passenger Name Records (PNR) than would otherwise be the case. Not only does this allow for the easier identification of potentially dangerous individuals before they reach U.S. shores, but it allows for consular resources to be focused on higher-risk nations. The White House must call on Congress to provide DHS with the authorities necessary to expand the VWP—specifically, decoupling VWP from the biometric air exit requirement—which would allow the Visa Waiver Program to include new member countries.
The U.S. has a system that, if supported appropriately, can work to stop terrorism, but continuing this success requires a strong and decisive counterterrorism strategy—with leadership from the highest levels.
Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies; James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the Davis Institute and Director of the Allison Center; and Jessica Zuckerman is a Research Assistant in the Allison Center at The Heritage Foundation.
30 Terrorist Plots Foiled: How the System WorkedPublished on April 29, 2010 by Jena Baker McNeill , James Carafano, Ph.D. and Jessica Zuckerman Abstract: In 2009 alone, U.S. authorities foiled at least six terrorist plots against the United States. Since September 11, 2001, at least 30 planned terrorist attacks have been foiled, all but two of them prevented by law enforcement. The two notable exceptions are the passengers and flight attendants who subdued the "shoe bomber" in 2001 and the "underwear bomber" on Christmas Day in 2009. Bottom line: The system has generally worked well. But many tools necessary for ferreting out conspiracies and catching terrorists are under attack. Chief among them are key provisions of the PATRIOT Act that are set to expire at the end of this year. It is time for President Obama to demonstrate his commitment to keeping the country safe. Heritage Foundation national security experts provide a road map for a successful counterterrorism strategy.
In 2009, at least six planned terrorist plots against the United States were foiled. This has led some to wonder whether the U.S. is experiencing the results of a resurgence in terrorism. However, these latest acts were not a new phenomenon: At least 30 terrorist plots against the U.S. have been foiled since 9/11. It is clear that terrorists continue to wage war against America.
President Barack Obama, however, took office determined to shed the idea of a war on terrorism. Besides an obvious change in lexicon—from the "global war on terror" to "overseas contingency operation" and from "terrorism" to "man-made disaster"—there were even more consequential actions, including the decision to prosecute foreign terrorists in U.S. civilian courts, dismantlement of the CIA's interrogation abilities, lackadaisical support for the PATRIOT Act, and an attempt to shut down Guantanamo Bay within President Obama's first year in the White House. The danger of this new attitude was revealed all too quickly by the near-miss airline bomb plot of Christmas Day 2009.
Undoubtedly, the nation wants to be successful in fighting terrorists. The U.S. counterterrorism system has worked successfully in the past, as demonstrated by the foiled plots, and it can work successfully in the future. But continued success requires the White House and Congress to work together to ensure that the military, law enforcement, and intelligence community have the tools they need to defend the country. At the same time, it is essential that the Administration lay out its counterterrorism strategy to the American people, including next steps for aviation security, visa security, and intelligence and information sharing.
Terrorism and the Obama Administration
Homeland security and counterterrorism were relatively unexamined issues during the 2008 presidential campaign. Terrorism was not in the forefront of Americans' minds; the downward-spiraling economy and lost jobs were understandably front and center.
The discovery of the Zazi plot in September 2009 served as the first in a series of wake-up calls to the nation on the state of national security. Najibullah Zazi was arrested after purchasing large quantities of chemicals from beauty supply stores in a plot to detonate TATP bombs on the New York City subway. This plot was considered extremely serious and was in the later stages of development when Zazi was apprehended—which made the plot deeply troubling to many Americans.
Shortly thereafter, in November 2009, were the Fort Hood shootings. This attack, perpetrated by Major Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army psychologist, was not a foiled plot. Hasan went on a shooting rampage, killing 12 and wounding 31. Evidence demonstrates that he was in communication with al-Qaeda via the Internet before the attack and that the U.S. government had what should have been damaging intelligence on Major Hasan before the incident occurred.
While still questioning what led to the failure to act on the known intelligence in the case of the Fort Hood shootings, the U.S. experienced a near-miss attack on Christmas Day 2009. That day, Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—whose own father had alerted U.S. consulate officials in Nigeria to his son's radical leanings—attempted to detonate a bomb on a Northwest flight landing in Detroit. His bomb failed to ignite, and passengers restrained him so that he could not try again.
The startling failure of authorities to connect the dots and bring together valuable pieces of information has led Americans to question whether authorities were doing what needed to be done to keep them safe. Specifically, questions center on whether the homeland security system worked, why it worked in the past, and whether it will work in the future.
How the System Has Worked
Based on public information, the U.S. has foiled at least 30 terrorist attacks since 9/11. In two cases, the outcome was the result of sheer luck. The foiling of the rest was the result of good law enforcement and effective intelligence gathering and information sharing.
1. Richard Reid, December 2001. A British citizen and self-professed follower of Osama bin Laden trained in Afghanistan, Reid hid explosives inside his shoes before boarding a flight from Paris to Miami on which he attempted to light the fuse with a match. Reid was caught in the act and apprehended on board the plane by the flight attendants and passengers. FBI officials took Reid into custody after the plane made an emergency landing at Boston's Logan International Airport.[1]
In 2003, Reid was found guilty on charges of terrorism, and a U.S. federal court sentenced him to life imprisonment.[2]
2. Jose Padilla, May 2002. U.S. officials arrested Padilla in May 2002 at O'Hare airport in Chicago as he returned to the United States from Pakistan, where he met with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and received al-Qaeda instructions and training.[3] Upon his arrest, he was initially charged as an enemy combatant and for planning to use a dirty bomb (an explosive laced with radioactive material) in an attack against America.[4]
Prior to his conviction, Padilla brought a case against the federal government claiming that he had been denied the right of habeas corpus (the right of an individual to petition against unlawful imprisonment). In a 5-to-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the case against him had been filed improperly.[5] In 2005, the government indicted Padilla for conspiring against the U.S. with Islamic terrorist groups.
In August 2007, Padilla was found guilty by a civilian jury after a three-month trial. He was later sentenced by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to 17 years and four months in prison.[6] Padilla continues to attempt to have his conviction overturned.[7]
3. Lackawanna Six, September 2002. When the FBI arrested Sahim Alwan, Yahya Goba, Yasein Taher, Faysal Galab, Shafal Mosed, and Mukhtar al-Bakri, the press dubbed them the "Lackawanna Six," the "Buffalo Six," or the "Buffalo Cell." Five of the six had been born and raised in Lackawanna, New York.[8] These six American citizens of Yemeni descent were arrested for conspiring with terrorist groups. They had stated that they were going to Pakistan to attend a religious training camp but instead attended an al-Qaeda jihadist camp.
All six pled guilty in 2003 to providing support to al-Qaeda. Goba and al-Bakri were sentenced to 10 years in prison, Taher and Mosed to eight years, Alwan to nine and a half years, and Galab to seven years.[9] Mosed and Galab have since completed their sentences and have been released.[10]
Recent reports indicate that Jaber Elbaneh, one of the FBI's most wanted and often considered to be a seventh member of the Lackawanna cell, has been captured in Yemen. It remains to be seen, however, whether he will be tried in the U.S., since the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Yemen.[11]
4. Iyman Faris, May 2003. Faris is a naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from Kashmir, who was living in Columbus, Ohio. He was arrested for conspiring to use blowtorches to collapse the Brooklyn Bridge, a plot devised after meetings with al-Qaeda leadership including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.[12] The New York City Police Department learned of the plot and increased police surveillance around the bridge. Faced with the additional security, Faris and his superiors canceled the attack.[13]
Faris pled guilty to conspiracy and providing material support to al-Qaeda and was later sentenced in federal district court to 20 years in prison, the maximum allowed under his plea agreement.[14]
5. Virginia Jihad Network, June 2003. Eleven men were arrested in Alexandria, Virginia, for weapons counts and for violating the Neutrality Acts, which prohibit U.S. citizens and residents from attacking countries with which the United States is at peace. Four of the 11 men pled guilty. Upon further investigation, the remaining seven were indicted on additional charges of conspiring to support terrorist organizations. They were found to have connections with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-i-Taiba, a terrorist organization that targets the Indian government. The authorities stated that the Virginia men had used paintball games to train and prepare for battle. The group had also acquired surveillance and night vision equipment and wireless video cameras.[15] Two more individuals were later indicted in the plot: Ali al-Timimi, the group's spiritual leader, and Ali Asad Chandia.
Ali al-Timimi was found guilty of soliciting individuals to assault the United States and sentenced to life in prison. Ali Asad Chandia received 15 years for supporting Lashkar-i-Taiba.[16] Randall Todd Royer, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, Yong Ki Kwon, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, Muhammed Aatique, and Donald T. Surratt pled guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years and 10 months to 20 years. Masoud Khan, Seifullah Chapman, and Hammad Adur-Raheem were found guilty and later sentenced to prison terms ranging from 52 months to life.[17] Both Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem and Sabri Benkhala were acquitted at trial.[18]
6. Nuradin M. Abdi, November 2003. Abdi, a Somali citizen living in Columbus, Ohio, was arrested and charged in a plot to bomb a local shopping mall. Abdi was an associate of convicted terrorists Christopher Paul and Iyman Faris and admittedly conspired with the two to provide material support to terrorists. Following his arrest, Abdi admitted to traveling overseas to seek admittance to terrorist training camps, as well as to having met with a Somali warlord associated with Islamists.
Abdi has since pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, one of the four counts for which he was indicted. He was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in jail per the terms of a plea agreement.[19]
7. Dhiren Barot, August 2004. Seven members of a terrorist cell led by Barot were arrested for plotting to attack the New York Stock Exchange and other financial institutions in New York, Washington, and Newark, New Jersey. They were later accused of planning attacks in England. The plots included a "memorable black day of terror" that would have included detonating a dirty bomb.[20] A July 2004 police raid on Barot's house in Pakistan yielded a number of incriminating files on a laptop computer, including instructions for building car bombs.[21]
Dhiren Barot pled guilty and was convicted in the United Kingdom for conspiracy to commit mass murder and sentenced to 40 years.[22] However, in May 2007, his sentence was reduced to 30 years.[23] His seven co-conspirators were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 to 26 years on related charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause explosion.[24]
8. James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj, August 2004. James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj, both reportedly self-radicalized, were arrested for plotting to bomb a subway station near Madison Square Garden in New York City before the Republican National Convention.[25] An undercover detective from the New York City Police Department's Intelligence Division infiltrated the group, providing information to authorities, and later testified against Elshafay and Siraj.[26]
Siraj was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Elshafay, a U.S. citizen, pled guilty and received a lighter, five-year sentence for testifying against his co-conspirator.[27]
9. Yassin Aref and Mohammad Hossain, August 2004. Two leaders of a mosque in Albany, New York, were charged with plotting to purchase a shoulder-fired grenade launcher to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat.[28] An investigation by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and local police contributed to the arrest. With the help of an informant, the FBI set up a sting that lured Mohammed Hossain into a fake terrorist conspiracy. Hossain brought Yassin Araf, a Kurdish refugee, as a witness. The informant offered details of a fake terrorist plot, claiming that he needed the missiles to murder a Pakistani diplomat in New York City. Both Aref and Hossain agreed to help.[29]
Aref and Hossain were found guilty of money-laundering and conspiracy to conceal material support for terrorism and were sentenced to 15 years in prison.[30]
10. Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat, June 2005. Umer Hayat, a Pakistani immigrant, and Hamid Hayat, his American son, were arrested in Lodi, California, after allegedly lying to the FBI about Hamid's attendance at an Islamic terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
Hamid was found guilty of providing material support to terrorists and providing false statements to the FBI.[31] He was sentenced to 24 years in prison for these acts.[32] Umer's trial ended in a mistrial. He later pled guilty to lying to customs agents in his attempt to carry $28,000 into Pakistan and was sentenced to "time served."[33]
11. Levar Haley Washington, Gregory Vernon Patterson, Hammad Riaz Samana, and Kevin James, August 2005. The members of the group were arrested in Los Angeles and charged with conspiring to attack National Guard facilities, synagogues, and other targets in the Los Angeles area. Kevin James allegedly founded Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS), a radical Islamic prison group, and converted Levar Washington and others to the group's mission. The JIS allegedly planned to finance its operations by robbing gas stations. After Washington and Patterson were arrested for robbery, police and federal agents began a terrorist investigation, and a search of Washington's apartment revealed a suspicious target list.[34]
James and Washington pled guilty in December 2007. James was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Washington to 22 years. Patterson received 151 months, while Samana was found unfit to stand trial and was initially detained in a federal prison mental facility. He was later sentenced to 70 months in jail.[35]
12. Michael C. Reynolds, December 2005. Michael C. Reynolds was arrested by the FBI and charged with involvement in a plot to blow up a Wyoming natural gas refinery; the Transcontinental Pipeline, a natural-gas pipeline from the Gulf Coast to New York and New Jersey; and a Standard Oil refinery in New Jersey.[36] He was arrested while trying to pick up a $40,000 payment for planning the attack.[37] Shannen Rossmiller, his purported contact, was a Montana judge who was working with the FBI. The FBI later found explosives in a storage locker in Reynolds's hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.[38] Reynolds claimed that he was working as a private citizen to find terrorists.[39]
Reynolds was convicted of providing material support to terrorists, soliciting a crime of violence, unlawful distribution of explosives, and unlawful possession of a hand grenade. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.[40]
13. Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi, and Zand Wassim Mazloum, February 2006. Amawi, El-Hindi, and Mazloum were arrested in Toledo, Ohio, for "conspiring to kill or injure people in the Middle East" and providing material support to terrorist organizations. The three men allegedly intended to build bombs for use in Iraq and verbally threatened attacks against President George W. Bush.[41] The investigation was begun with the help of an informant who was approached to help to train the group.[42]
In June 2008, all three were convicted of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism against Americans overseas, including U.S. military personnel in Iraq, and other terrorism-related violations. Amawi was sentenced to 20 years, el-Hindi to 13 years, and Mazloum to approximately eight years.[43]
14. Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, April 2006. Ahmed and Sadequee, from Atlanta, Georgia, were accused of conspiracy, having discussed terrorist targets with alleged terrorist organizations. They allegedly met with Islamic extremists in the U.S. and gathered videotape surveillance of potential targets in the Washington, D.C., area, including the U.S. Capitol and the World Bank headquarters, and sent the videos to a London Islamist group. Ahmed is said also to have traveled to Pakistan with the goal of joining Lashkar-e-Taiba.[44]
Both men were indicted for providing material support to terrorist organizations and pled not guilty.[45] In June 2009, a federal district judge found Ahmed "guilty of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists here and overseas."[46] Ahmed was subsequently sentenced to 13 years in jail. Sadequee was also found guilty and sentenced to 17 years.[47]
15. Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustine, June 2006. Seven men were arrested in Miami and Atlanta for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, FBI offices, and other government buildings around the country. The arrests resulted from an investigation involving an FBI informant. Allegedly, Batiste was the leader of the group and first suggested attacking the Sears Tower in December 2005.[48]
All of the suspects pled not guilty. On December 13, 2007, Lemorin was acquitted of all charges, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on the other six. [49] The second trial ended in a mistrial in April 2008.[50] In the third trial, the jury convicted five of the men on multiple conspiracy charges and acquitted Herrera on all counts. On November 20, 2009, the five were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 13.5 years, with Batiste receiving the highest sentence.[51]
16. Assem Hammoud, July 2006. Conducting online surveillance of chat rooms, the FBI discovered a plot to attack underground transit links between New York City and New Jersey. Eight suspects including Assem Hammoud, an al-Qaeda loyalist living in Lebanon, were arrested for plotting to bomb New York City train tunnels. Hammoud, a self-proclaimed operative for al-Qaeda, admitted to the plot.[52] He was held by Lebanese authorities but was not extradited because the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon. In June 2008, Lebanese authorities released him on bail.[53] He is awaiting trial before a Lebanese military court.
17. Liquid Explosives Plot, August 2006. British law enforcement stopped a terrorist plot to blow up 10 U.S.-bound commercial airliners with liquid explosives.[54] Twenty-four suspects were arrested in the London area. The style of the plot raised speculation that al-Qaeda was behind it, but no concrete evidence has established a link.
The United Kingdom initially charged 15 of the 24 arrested individuals on charges ranging from conspiring to commit murder to planning to commit terrorist acts.[55] Eventually, in April 2008, only eight men were brought to trial. In September, the jury found none of the defendants guilty of conspiring to target aircraft but three guilty of conspiracy to murder.[56] The jury was unable to reach verdicts on four of the men. One man was found not guilty on all counts.[57]
18. Derrick Shareef, December 2006. Shareef was arrested on charges of planning to set off hand grenades in a shopping mall outside Chicago. Shareef reportedly acted alone and was arrested after meeting with an undercover Joint Terrorism Task Force agent. FBI reports indicated that the mall was one of several potential targets, including courthouses, city halls, and government facilities. Shareef, however, settled on attacking a mall in the days immediately preceding Christmas because he believed it would cause the greatest amount of chaos and damage.[58] Shareef was also found to have connections to convicted terrorist Hassan Agujihaad, who was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and later sentenced to 35 years in prison.[59]
19. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, March 2007. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured in Pakistan in 2003, was involved in a number of terrorist plots and is one of the most senior bin Laden operatives ever captured.[60] He is being held at the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. In March 2007, Mohammed admitted to helping plan, organize, and run the 9/11 attacks and also claimed responsibility for planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the bombings of nightclubs in Bali in 2002 and a Kenyan hotel. He has stated that he was involved in the decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and took responsibility for helping to plan the failed shoe-bomb attack by Richard Reid, along with plots to attack Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf, Big Ben, various targets in Israel, the Panama Canal, Los Angeles, Chicago, the Empire State building, and U.S. nuclear power stations. He had also plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul II and former President Bill Clinton.
In December 2008, Mohammed and his four co-defendants (Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and Walid Bin Attash) told the military tribunal judge that they wanted to confess and plead guilty to all charges.[61] The judge has approved the guilty plea of Mohammed and two co-defendants but has required mental competency hearings before allowing the other two conspirators to plead guilty. In November 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Mohammed would be relocated to the United States to face civilian trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, although this relocation has yet to occur.
20. Fort Dix Plot, May 2007. Six men were arrested in a plot to attack Fort Dix, a U.S. Army post in New Jersey. The plan involved using assault rifles and grenades to attack and kill U.S. soldiers. Five of the alleged conspirators had conducted training missions in the nearby Pocono Mountains. The sixth helped to obtain weapons. The arrests were made after a 16-month FBI operation that included infiltrating the group. The investigation began after a store clerk alerted authorities after discovering a video file of the group firing weapons and calling for jihad. The group has no known direct connections to any international terrorist organization.[62]
In December 2008, five of the men were found guilty on the conspiracy charges but were acquitted of charges of attempted murder.[63] Four were also convicted on weapons charges. The five men received sentences ranging from 33 years to life plus 30. The sixth co-defendant pled guilty to aiding and abetting the others in illegal possession of weapons and was sentenced to 20 months in jail.[64]
21. JFK Airport Plot, June 2007. Four men plotted to blow up "aviation fuel tanks and pipelines at the John F. Kennedy International Airport" in New York City. They believed that such an attack would cause "greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks." Authorities stated that the attack "could have caused significant financial and psychological damage, but not major loss of life."[65]
Russell Defreitas, the leader of the group, was arrested in Brooklyn. The other three members of the group—Abdul Kadir, Kareem Ibrahim, and Abdel Nur—were detained in Trinidad and extradited in June 2008. Kadir and Nur have links to Islamic extremists in South America and the Caribbean. Kadir was an imam in Guyana, former member of the Guyanese Parliament, and mayor of Linden, Guyana. Ibrahim is a Trinidadian citizen, and Nur is a Guyanese citizen. The men pled not guilty to the charges and are awaiting trial.[66]
22. Hassan Abujihaad, March 2008. Hassan Abujihaad, a former U.S. Navy sailor from Phoenix, Arizona, was convicted of supporting terrorism and disclosing classified information, including the location of Navy ships and their vulnerabilities, to Barbar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, the alleged administrators of Azzam Publication Web sites (the London organization that provided material support and resources to terrorists). Abujihaad was arrested in March 2007 and pled not guilty to charges of supporting terrorism in April 2007. In May 2008, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 10 years in prison.[67] Both Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan are being held in Britain on anti-terrorism charges and are fighting extradition to the U.S.[68]
23. Christopher Paul, June 2008. Christopher Paul is a U.S. citizen from Columbus, Ohio. He joined al-Qaeda in the 1990s and was involved in conspiracies to target Americans in the United States and overseas. In 1999, he became connected to an Islamic terrorist cell in Germany, where he was involved in a plot to target Americans at foreign vacation resorts. He later returned to Ohio and was subsequently arrested for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction—specifically, explosive devices—"against targets in Europe and the United States." Paul pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.[69]
24. Synagogue Terror Plot, May 2009. On May 20, 2009, the New York Police Department announced the arrest of James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen for plotting to blow up area Jewish centers and shoot down planes at a nearby Air National Guard Base.[70] The four had attempted to gain access to Stinger missiles and were caught in the act of placing bombs in the buildings and in a car. (The bombs were duds, because undercover agents sold the four defendants fake explosives as part of an ongoing sting operation). All four men have pled not guilty and are awaiting trial.[71]
25. Najibullah Zazi, September 2009 . Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghani, was arrested after purchasing large quantities of chemicals used to make a TATP bomb, the same type of weapon used in the 2005 bombing of the London Underground and the 2001 shoe-bomb plot. Zazi had traveled to Pakistan, where he received instruction in bomb-making and attended an al-Qaeda training camp. Zazi allegedly planned to detonate TATP bombs on the New York City subway.[72]
Najibullah Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, was also indicted for obstructing justice by helping his son cover up plans for his attack. Najibullah pled guilty and remains in jail, while Mohammed pled not guilty and has been freed on bail.[73] Zazi's guilty plea was the result of a plea bargain, and he awaits sentencing on June 25, 2010, while Mohammed awaits trial.
At least three other individuals have since been arrested on allegations of traveling overseas with Zazi to receive terrorist training and making false statements to authorities.[74] One of them, New York religious leader Ahmad Afzali, has pled guilty to charges of lying to federal agents about informing Zazi that he was being investigated by authorities.[75] Zarein Ahmedzay has also pled guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in the foiled plot.[76]
26. Hosam Maher Husein Smadi , September 2009 . Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian, was apprehended in an attempt to plant a bomb in a Dallas skyscraper. Originally identified through FBI monitoring of extremist chat rooms, Smadi was arrested and charged after agents posing as terrorist cell members gave Smadi a fake bomb, which he later attempted to detonate.[77] Smadi has pled not guilty, and trial is set to begin on June 7, 2010.[78]
27 . Michael Finton , September 2009 . Finton, an American citizen, was arrested on September 23 by undercover FBI agents after attempting to detonate a car bomb filled with what he believed to be close to one ton of explosives outside of the Paul Findley Federal Building and Courthouse in downtown Springfield, Illinois. Evidence presented against Finton has shown that he expressed a desire to become a jihadist fighter and was aware that his planned attack would cause civilian injuries. He has been arrested on charges of attempted murder of federal employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Finton has since pled not guilty, although court orders for mental competency training have delayed the case.[79]
28. Tarek Mehanna and Ahmad Abousamra, October 2009. Mehanna, previously indicted for lying to the FBI about the location of terrorist suspect Daniel Maldonado, was arrested on October 21, 2009, on allegations of conspiracy to kill two U.S. politicians, American troops in Iraq, and civilians in local shopping malls. Abousamra, his co-conspirator, remains at large in Syria. However, both were indicted on charges of providing and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, and conspiracy to provide false information to law enforcement.[80]
The two men are not believed to be associated with any known terrorist organization.[81] Both face sentences of up to life in prison if convicted.[82]
29. The Christmas Day Bomber, 2009. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian engineering student living in London, boarded a plane from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then flew from Amsterdam to the U.S. when he attempted to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear as the plane began to land. The device ignited but failed to detonate, and passengers moved quickly to stop Abdulmutallab from trying again, leading to his arrest by U.S. authorities upon landing in Detroit. The bomb, containing the explosives PETN and TATP, was similar to the failed device used by Richard Reid in 2001.
Media accounts following the plot indicate that Abdulmutallab admits involvement with al-Qaeda in Yemen. Abdulmutallab has since pled not guilty to six terrorism charges and remains in custody awaiting further trial.[83]
30. Raja Lahrasib Khan, March 2010. Chicago taxi driver Raja Lahrasib Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani decent, was arrested by the Chicago FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for two counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. According to the charges, Khan was affiliated with Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of the al-Qaeda–linked extremist group Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami in Kashmir, and has previously been indicted in the U.S. on terrorism charges.[84]
Khan originally transferred $950 to Pakistan, to be delivered to Kashmiri, and later attempted to send nearly $1,000 provided to him by an undercover agent to Kashmiri by having his son carry the money to England, where Khan then planned to rendezvous with him and carry the money the rest of the way to Pakistan. His son was stopped by government agents at Chicago O'Hare International Airport before leaving the country. The criminal complaint filed against Khan also alleges that he had discussed plans to bomb an unnamed sports stadium in the United States.
Khan has since pled not guilty. If convicted, Khan faces up to 15 years in prison for each count of providing material support.[85]
How to Keep the System Working
As Senator Susan Collins (R–ME) noted in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, "we dodged a bullet in the skies above Detroit on Christmas Day."[86] Nevertheless, 28 of the 30 terrorist plots outlined above were thwarted by the vigilance of the U.S. law enforcement, and intelligence communities, proving that the system can counter the terrorist threat.
It is time for the White House to demonstrate its commitment to the long war against terrorism. Doing so will require support for the nation's counterterrorism tools. It will require an aviation and transportation security system that does not focus exclusively on spending money, but rather on producing smart security—cost-effective, respectful of civil liberties, and mindful of legitimate economic interests. It will also require the continued development of top-notch intelligence analysts, robust information sharing from federal to state and local law enforcement and between federal agencies, and strong partnerships with other nations.
Specifically, the Administration and Congress should:
Make key provisions of the PATRIOT Act permanent. Immediately following September 11, 2001, efforts were made to bring intelligence capabilities in line with the new nature of the terrorist threat. Such efforts were embodied in the passage of the PATRIOT Act and in the subsequent amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enhanced the legal and investigatory tools available to law enforcement in national security and counterterrorism. The tools provided by these acts have been vital in thwarting many of the 30 plots discussed above. Nevertheless, key provisions of the PATRIOT Act expired in December 2009. Congress has since extended these provisions until the end of 2010; further steps must be taken to ensure their permanence.
Increase visa coordination. America's first line of defense is its borders. Careful screening of those who wish to cross them allows for the opportunity to apprehend terrorists and other criminals before they enter the country. Visa decisions thus have key homeland security implications, yet very little coordination occurs between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State on visa affairs. This relationship and coordination must be enhanced through implementation of programs such as the Visa Security Office program, which would place homeland security officials in consular offices overseas.
Develop a detainment framework for terrorist detainees. Since his presidential campaign, President Obama has highlighted the issue of terrorist detention with calls to close Guantanamo Bay within one year of his taking office. However, issues of detainment go beyond debate centered solely on Gitmo. The Christmas Day bomber was another example of how the lack of a lawful detainment framework inhibits the collection of intelligence from captured suspects. The question is not only what will be done with those currently held at Guantanamo, but also what is to be done with future detainees.
To answer this latter question, the Administration must develop a U.S. detention policy for detainees who cannot be tried safely in federal courts. This framework must be based on the principles of Article 5 of the Geneva Convention, which outlines protections for prisoners of war, as well as periodic review of detention. Such a policy would allow for a legal framework for detention and interrogation, as well as for the increased security of the United States and its allies, by preventing belligerents from returning to armed conflict.
Improve the Terrorist Watch List. In order to serve as an effective tool to counter the terrorist threat, the Terrorist Watch List (TWL) must not be hindered by political pressures to keep the list small. Instead, it must be allowed to encompass those who truly pose a potential risk to the United States. The "no-fly" list should instead function as the smaller, more inclusive list of high-risk threats. Coupled with a robust redress process, these lists can be used effectively to stop the bad guys from entering the country and allow legitimate travelers to move freely. Restrictions that prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from using the TWL to stop suspected terrorists at the airport screening line must be removed.
Define priorities for aviation security. Immediately after the Christmas Day 2009 attack, the reaction of the Administration and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was to place added security on travelers from 14 nations designated as high-risk. While this policy has since been rescinded in a technical sense, the Department of Homeland Security has yet to release new screening rules that would emphasize intelligence gathering and information sharing (with law enforcement and foreign partners) as the most effective means of stopping terrorism.
In its FY 2011 budget request, the Department of Homeland Security has intensified introduction of the high-tech Advanced Imaging Technologies (AIT, or full-body scanners), among other technologies to screen passengers. These technologies can be effective, but the Administration should lay out a decisive strategy for aviation security that focuses on stopping terrorists before they reach the screening line.
Expand the Visa Waiver Program. The Visa Waiver Program allows citizens of member nations to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. While some have argued that this program decreases security, member nations agree to more stringent and robust security measures than apply to non-member nations so that travelers from these nations provide greater information to the United States through Passenger Name Records (PNR) than would otherwise be the case. Not only does this allow for the easier identification of potentially dangerous individuals before they reach U.S. shores, but it allows for consular resources to be focused on higher-risk nations. The White House must call on Congress to provide DHS with the authorities necessary to expand the VWP—specifically, decoupling VWP from the biometric air exit requirement—which would allow the Visa Waiver Program to include new member countries.
The U.S. has a system that, if supported appropriately, can work to stop terrorism, but continuing this success requires a strong and decisive counterterrorism strategy—with leadership from the highest levels.
Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies; James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the Davis Institute and Director of the Allison Center; and Jessica Zuckerman is a Research Assistant in the Allison Center at The Heritage Foundation.
After Detroit: A Presidential To-Do List for Plugging Gaps in Stopping Terroriist Travel
This article is from the Heritage Foundation:
After Detroit: Presidential To-Do List for Plugging Gaps in Stopping Terrorist TravelPublished on December 30, 2009 by James Carafano, Ph.D. The problem in stopping terrorist travel to the U.S. is not airport screening per se. Trying to turn every airport into another Maginot Line or Fort Knox is going to fail sooner or latter. Instead, the best way to stop terrorist plots is to frustrate them before they get started—thwarting the 2006 London-based conspiracy to smuggle liquid explosives on U.S.-bound international flights is a good example of just how effective such a preemptive strategy can be.
Until the terrorists are rooted out, however, the free nations under threat from global terrorism have to do a better job at thwarting terrorist travel. Would-be murderers like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the Detroit-bound Christmas bomber) should not be allowed near an airliner. At the very least, such suspicious travelers should never be able move freely without greater scrutiny, inspection, and surveillance than the average airline passenger. Adopting some long-overdue common-sense initiatives—ones that have been frustrated by interagency and international cooperation squabbles—could help close security gaps. In order to enact such a sensible security agenda, however, more leadership from the White House is needed.
A Six Step Program
Here is short “to do” list of measures on which the Administration could take immediate action:
Step 1: Improve Visa Security Coordination Between the Departments of State and Homeland Security. Serious questions have been raised over why Abdulmutallab’s visa was not revoked or why there was not additional follow-up and interaction with the National Counterterrorism Center—measures that might have placed him on a “no-fly” list.
By law, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is supposed to set security policies for the State Department Consular Affairs offices that issue visas. That has never happened because of squabbling between the two departments. Likewise, embassies have been reluctant to accept visa security officers from Homeland Security who could work with the consular officers in identifying security gaps and threats. Presently, only the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia is required by law to have visa security officers present.
At the very least, other “high-risk” traveler countries should be required to have them as well. The White House should press both departments to put these programs back on the fast track.
Step 2: Put More Air Marshals in the Skies and in Airports. Air marshals provide another layer of deterrence against terrorism. In addition, giving these marshals real-time access to databases (both while they are on the ground and in the air) will offer an additional capacity to screen flight manifests for suspicious passengers. An alert air marshal might have flagged Abdulmutallab for more scrutiny or spotted malicious behavior before the would-be bomber tried to bring down the plane.
Currently, armed U.S. air marshals cover only a fraction of international flights bound for the states, and few other countries have air marshal programs. The U.S. force should be expanded, and the White House should press allies to establish or expand their programs.
Step 3: Move the “Secure Flight” Program Faster. Secure Flight is a program that would flag suspicious passengers for additional screening on domestic flights. Although Abdulmutallab’s flight originated from overseas, the 9/11 hijackers all left from U.S. airports.
The U.S. could certainly see that the type of attack tried by Abdulmutallab originate from a small rural airport in the United States. Secure Flight might flag such a passenger for additional screening. Bombs like the one carried by Abdulmutallab would likely be found in a “pat-down” in secondary screening. Therefore, the White House should work with Congress, the private sector, and DHS to speed up deployment of Secure Flight.
Step 4: Step Up the Implementation of Real ID. The Real ID program sets standards for U.S. driver’s licenses. Again, if a Detroit-style attack were tried domestically, Real ID–compliant licenses would help keep malicious actors attempting to use fraudulent, stolen, or altered licenses from breezing through security check points.
As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, improving the surety of licenses must be a high priority. Yet many states are far from ready to implement Real ID. Rather than trying to alter or gut the program, the White House should work with federal agencies and the states to implement Real ID as quickly as practical.
Step 5: Expand the Visa Waiver Program. It might sound like exempting more countries from the requirements that their citizens must have a visa to fly to the U.S. would increase the risk of terrorism—but that assumption is wrong.
States that participate in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) actually have to agree to a more robust level of information sharing on travelers than states from which America requires visas. Nigeria, for example, (where Abdulmutallab hailed from) is not a VWP country. So, for example, Nigeria does not have to supply the U.S authorities with Passenger Name Records (PNR), which provides the itinerary and other important identifying information. In contrast, data obtained under the VWP (including PNR data) makes it much easier to identify potential malicious travelers and prevent them from coming to the United States. At the same time, the Consular Affairs resources from these countries that do not pose a threat (like Poland) can be shifted to countries of greater concern, like Nigeria (which would not qualify for VWP).
The White House needs to press Congress to give it the additional authorities necessary to appropriately expand the VWP to friendly nations that pose little threat and are willing to cooperate with the U.S. in making international travel safer and more efficient and improve the enforcement of immigration laws.
Step 6: End the 100 Percent Visa Interview Requirement. By law, everyone applying for a visa has to have an interview. That actually makes Americans less safe.
Consular office resources are stretched thin by being forced to interview everyone rather than focusing on “high-risk” travelers. Abdulmutallab might never have gotten a visa if the interviewer had spent more time with him.
The White House should work with the Congress to repeal the 100 percent interview mandate and instead replace it with a “risk-based” system to direct interviews toward the individuals most likely to be malicious actors or violate U.S. immigration laws.
Thwarting Terrorist Travel
None of these steps are silver bullets. None of them will gain the White House great accolades from politicians or pundits. All, however, would make material contributions to thwarting terrorist travel. All of them would make more effective use of the resources at America’s disposal. None of them would require spending billions of dollars on more airport security. None of them would impinge on the freedoms or liberties of the average traveler. All of them would make the skies safer.
If the White House needs some problems to “fix,” these would make a good start. The Administration should get started.
James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Davis Institute, at The Heritage Foundation.
After Detroit: Presidential To-Do List for Plugging Gaps in Stopping Terrorist TravelPublished on December 30, 2009 by James Carafano, Ph.D. The problem in stopping terrorist travel to the U.S. is not airport screening per se. Trying to turn every airport into another Maginot Line or Fort Knox is going to fail sooner or latter. Instead, the best way to stop terrorist plots is to frustrate them before they get started—thwarting the 2006 London-based conspiracy to smuggle liquid explosives on U.S.-bound international flights is a good example of just how effective such a preemptive strategy can be.
Until the terrorists are rooted out, however, the free nations under threat from global terrorism have to do a better job at thwarting terrorist travel. Would-be murderers like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the Detroit-bound Christmas bomber) should not be allowed near an airliner. At the very least, such suspicious travelers should never be able move freely without greater scrutiny, inspection, and surveillance than the average airline passenger. Adopting some long-overdue common-sense initiatives—ones that have been frustrated by interagency and international cooperation squabbles—could help close security gaps. In order to enact such a sensible security agenda, however, more leadership from the White House is needed.
A Six Step Program
Here is short “to do” list of measures on which the Administration could take immediate action:
Step 1: Improve Visa Security Coordination Between the Departments of State and Homeland Security. Serious questions have been raised over why Abdulmutallab’s visa was not revoked or why there was not additional follow-up and interaction with the National Counterterrorism Center—measures that might have placed him on a “no-fly” list.
By law, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is supposed to set security policies for the State Department Consular Affairs offices that issue visas. That has never happened because of squabbling between the two departments. Likewise, embassies have been reluctant to accept visa security officers from Homeland Security who could work with the consular officers in identifying security gaps and threats. Presently, only the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia is required by law to have visa security officers present.
At the very least, other “high-risk” traveler countries should be required to have them as well. The White House should press both departments to put these programs back on the fast track.
Step 2: Put More Air Marshals in the Skies and in Airports. Air marshals provide another layer of deterrence against terrorism. In addition, giving these marshals real-time access to databases (both while they are on the ground and in the air) will offer an additional capacity to screen flight manifests for suspicious passengers. An alert air marshal might have flagged Abdulmutallab for more scrutiny or spotted malicious behavior before the would-be bomber tried to bring down the plane.
Currently, armed U.S. air marshals cover only a fraction of international flights bound for the states, and few other countries have air marshal programs. The U.S. force should be expanded, and the White House should press allies to establish or expand their programs.
Step 3: Move the “Secure Flight” Program Faster. Secure Flight is a program that would flag suspicious passengers for additional screening on domestic flights. Although Abdulmutallab’s flight originated from overseas, the 9/11 hijackers all left from U.S. airports.
The U.S. could certainly see that the type of attack tried by Abdulmutallab originate from a small rural airport in the United States. Secure Flight might flag such a passenger for additional screening. Bombs like the one carried by Abdulmutallab would likely be found in a “pat-down” in secondary screening. Therefore, the White House should work with Congress, the private sector, and DHS to speed up deployment of Secure Flight.
Step 4: Step Up the Implementation of Real ID. The Real ID program sets standards for U.S. driver’s licenses. Again, if a Detroit-style attack were tried domestically, Real ID–compliant licenses would help keep malicious actors attempting to use fraudulent, stolen, or altered licenses from breezing through security check points.
As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, improving the surety of licenses must be a high priority. Yet many states are far from ready to implement Real ID. Rather than trying to alter or gut the program, the White House should work with federal agencies and the states to implement Real ID as quickly as practical.
Step 5: Expand the Visa Waiver Program. It might sound like exempting more countries from the requirements that their citizens must have a visa to fly to the U.S. would increase the risk of terrorism—but that assumption is wrong.
States that participate in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) actually have to agree to a more robust level of information sharing on travelers than states from which America requires visas. Nigeria, for example, (where Abdulmutallab hailed from) is not a VWP country. So, for example, Nigeria does not have to supply the U.S authorities with Passenger Name Records (PNR), which provides the itinerary and other important identifying information. In contrast, data obtained under the VWP (including PNR data) makes it much easier to identify potential malicious travelers and prevent them from coming to the United States. At the same time, the Consular Affairs resources from these countries that do not pose a threat (like Poland) can be shifted to countries of greater concern, like Nigeria (which would not qualify for VWP).
The White House needs to press Congress to give it the additional authorities necessary to appropriately expand the VWP to friendly nations that pose little threat and are willing to cooperate with the U.S. in making international travel safer and more efficient and improve the enforcement of immigration laws.
Step 6: End the 100 Percent Visa Interview Requirement. By law, everyone applying for a visa has to have an interview. That actually makes Americans less safe.
Consular office resources are stretched thin by being forced to interview everyone rather than focusing on “high-risk” travelers. Abdulmutallab might never have gotten a visa if the interviewer had spent more time with him.
The White House should work with the Congress to repeal the 100 percent interview mandate and instead replace it with a “risk-based” system to direct interviews toward the individuals most likely to be malicious actors or violate U.S. immigration laws.
Thwarting Terrorist Travel
None of these steps are silver bullets. None of them will gain the White House great accolades from politicians or pundits. All, however, would make material contributions to thwarting terrorist travel. All of them would make more effective use of the resources at America’s disposal. None of them would require spending billions of dollars on more airport security. None of them would impinge on the freedoms or liberties of the average traveler. All of them would make the skies safer.
If the White House needs some problems to “fix,” these would make a good start. The Administration should get started.
James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Davis Institute, at The Heritage Foundation.
The Cargo-Screening Clog: Why the Maritime Mandate Needs to Be Re-Examined
This article is from the Heritage foundation:
The Cargo-Screening Clog: Why the Maritime Mandate Needs to Be Re-examined Published on January 13, 2010 by Jena Baker McNeill and Jessica Zuckerman Abstract: Cargo must be checked -- but it is impossible to screen 11.6 million containers every year without bringing the global economy to its knees. How to avoid the paralyzing cargo clog of the Department of Homeland Security's mandate for 100 percent cargo screening? Heritage Foundation homeland security policy analysts Jena Baker McNeill and Jessica Zuckerman lay out a smart plan for risk-based screening -- which can keep the country safe and prosperous at the same time.
On January 4, 2007, Congress passed the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act. Included in the bill's provisions was a mandate that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) scan 100 percent of maritime cargo entering the United States by 2012.
Given the fact that approximately 11.6 million cargo containers enter U.S. ports each year, this mandate could cripple the ability of the private sector to move goods on time. Avoiding this scenario will require the U.S. government to take a hard look at the efficacy of this requirement and find a workable alternative that takes into account available technologies, supply chain realities, and involves a realistic look at the threats facing the nation. This new approach should involve the following elements:
A risk-based, not a blanket, approach to cargo scanning;
Proliferation of the Container Security Initiative in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) collaborates with foreign nations in a risk-based approach to improve security practices abroad;
Enhancements in Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) to encourage best practices for cargo security performed by the private sector;
Expansion of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to create a multilateral, voluntary effort of nations to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction without jeopardizing U.S. sovereignty;
Continued support for the "10 Plus 2" cargo reporting requirements, which allow the CBP to obtain more knowledge about the contents of cargo in a flexible, economical manner; and
Greater reliance on the Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade in order to build relationships with allies while increasing port and cargo security through the creation and implementation of international security standards, and facilitating Trade and economic and social development.
Cargo in the United States
The U.S. is highly dependent on foreign imports for a wide variety of goods from cars to cell phones, among other consumer items -- and foreign nations are equally reliant on exports from the U.S. Ninety percent of these items move around the world in cargo containers.[1] This fact serves to make the United States a world leader in container traffic, with 32,000 maritime cargo containers entering U.S. ports each day for a total of 11.6 million containers a year.[2] Although 90 percent of these containers enter through the 10 highest-volume ports, there are more than three hundred ports in the U.S.[3] These realities make for a wide web of infrastructure, and a workforce that employs hundreds of thousands.
Maritime Domain as Target. Given its role in world productivity, the maritime cargo industry has long been associated with the potential for acts of terrorism -- fears of which were greatly elevated after 9/11. One year before, "the Interagency Commission on Crime and Security in U.S. Seaports noted the vulnerability of U.S. seaports to terrorism."[4] Fears over such a maritime attack have largely focused on whether terrorists might place a nuclear device in a cargo container and successfully pass it across our borders through the maritime transport system.
America's economy relies on the smooth movement of goods in and out of the United States -- which most often occurs by sea. Therefore, the consequences of such an attack would be enormous and could bring the supply chain to a halt. A RAND Corporation study on the efficacy of the 100 percent scanning mandate cited a Booz Allen simulation which found that a mere indicated threat of an attack on maritime cargo interests could cause $58 million in losses. An actual attack would be significantly worse and would likely have many associated casualties.
Experts have repeatedly argued over the "nuke in a suitcase" scenario. The nation is not exempt from the possibility of nuclear weapons reaching U.S. soil. But the probability that one would arrive through cargo is somewhat unlikely because there are simply too many risks involved for terrorists in constructing such a bomb and developing a method of getting it into a cargo container, only to later allow it to pass through the hands of security officials. Nevertheless, the maritime domain remains a vulnerable target for terrorism and is a domain worth protecting.
Congress Abandons Risk. For several years, the solution to this vulnerability was for the CBP to "analyze cargo manifest information for each container to decide which to target for closer inspection [but] only a small percentage have their contents physically inspected by CBP."[5] This approach recognized that some cargo was higher risk because of its contents, origin, and other attributes, as indicated through the cargo's detailed manifest, but that not all cargo represents a threat and was instead likely to be legitimate goods moving from place to place. This process of analyzing the attributes, such as contents and origin of the cargo container, is commonly known as cargo "screening," and represents a truly risk-based approach to cargo security.
Immediately after September 11, two risk-based cargo security measures were enacted by Congress to further strengthen cargo security -- the Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Customs-Trade Partnership against Terrorism (C-TPAT). These were later followed by the "10 Plus 2" requirement.
Container Security Initiative. The Container Security Initiative was announced in January 2002. The program requires that all companies handling U.S.-bound cargo present a shipping manifest to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP officers stationed at foreign ports 24 hours before cargo departure. This manifest information is then transmitted to the U.S. National Targeting Center-Cargo (NTCC). There, full-time "targeters" and analysts at the NTCC support the anti-terrorism efforts of the CBP and assess the risk associated with the manifest cargo. In partnership with the host customs organizations, foreign-stationed CBP and ICE officers then examine the cargo deemed to be high-risk through the manifest analysis conducted by the National Targeting Center by means of either non-intrusive inspection (NII) or x-ray scans.[6] This NII and x-ray "scanning" normally occurs in a fixed location. The process is not a speedy one, which is why it has historically only been used for the high-risk cargo. A RAND study indicated that scanning itself can take up to 15 minutes per 8x8x20-foot container, and that any subsequent physical inspection could take up to four hours longer.[7] As of mid-2008, CSI was successfully screening about 86 percent of all U.S.-bound cargo at 58 foreign seaports.[8]
The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. C-TPAT was born before CSI in November 2001. What makes C-TPAT unique is that it is entirely voluntary and operates as a partnership with the international Trade community. In order to become a member of C-TPAT, a company submits a profile outlining its security measures. The CBP then compares the company's security levels with the expected minimum levels of the particular sector of Trade in which the company falls. Besides achieving compliance with minimum security requirements, a company must also have a strong history of compliance with all related customs laws and regulations in order to gain membership.[9] These requirements allow CBP to ensure that participating companies are implementing the highest level of security measures, thereby lowering their level of risk.
Once a company's security has been validated and it has been granted membership, C-TPAT companies receive the benefit of facing fewer physical, NII, and x-ray inspections allowing the streamlining of sales and transport. In terms of national security, through C-TPAT, CBP is able to validate the security of these participating companies, and therefore shift its focus to other higher-risk cargo. C-TPAT also helps to institute security partnerships within the global Trade community, creating shared goals of improving supply-chain security -- while maintaining supply-chain efficiency. As of May 2008, there were more than 8,400 companies around the world that were C-TPAT members.[10] C-TPAT membership accounts for 96 percent of cargo traffic within the U.S., allowing CBP to verify the security of the vast majority of maritime cargo that travels throughout the country.[11]
10 Plus 2. Additionally, cargo shippers must currently comply with "10 Plus 2" -- the Importer Security Filing and Additional Carrier Requirements. "10 Plus 2" calls for importers and ocean carriers to submit 12 points of information to Customs and Border Protection. This information is to be provided 24 hours before U.S.-bound containers are loaded onto a carrier vessel. The "10" refers to the Importer Security Filing (ISF-10), the 10 data points provided by the importers, while the "2" refers to the vessel stow plans and container status messages (CSMs) provided by the carriers. This rule adds security by allowing CBP to better identify high-risk containers through analysis of these 12 additional points of data. At the same time, the measure is of very little hindrance to the maritime cargo industry, as it calls for the reporting of information that is already routinely collected and for no new technologyto be purchased and employed.
The 2007 Mandate and SAFE Ports Act. Despite the success of these risk-based programs, the possibility that terrorists could obtain a nuclear device and place it in a cargo container was and is an idea that has continued to gain speed, and has led to significant policy changes.
Facing growing political pressure, Congress began to move away from the idea of a risk-based approach. The move toward 100 percent scanning began in 2006 with the Security and Accountability for Every (SAFE) Port Act. The SAFE Port Act changed everything with the creation of the Secure Freight Initiative (SFI), a pilot program to test the implementation of 100 percent cargo scanning which would later be mandated by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Act of 2007. Instead of pre-screening cargo and then scanning and inspecting that deemed to be high-risk, 100 percent cargo scanning calls for the scanning of each and every cargo container that has passed through foreign ports to the United States.
The Secure Freight Initiative pilot operates at five ports with full implementation at three, Port Qasim, Pakistan; Puerto Cortés, Honduras; and Southampton, United Kingdom, and limited implementation at two, Busan, Korea, and Salah, Oman. The highest volume of U.S. cargo containers handled at any full-implementation port, however, was only 77,707 containers in 2006 at Puerto Cortés, a mere fraction of the volume seen yearly in the U.S. With the Secure Freight Initiative pilot occurring only at such low-volume ports, the true challenges to 100 percent scanning in the high-volume global environment have yet to been seen.
While the SFI showed that 100 percent screening could be effective in low volume, "high-risk" ports, such as Qasim, Pakistan, such screening proved to be riddled with numerous logistical issues at higher-volume ports, such as Hong Kong and Singapore.[12] Nevertheless, one year later, in 2007 before final results of the pilot were even assessed, Congress stipulated that 100 percent cargo scanning become fully implemented at all 700 foreign ports handling U.S.-bound cargo within five years.
The Problem with 100 Percent Scanning. The 100 percent scanning mandate was met with immediate opposition from the private sector, which faced daunting financial obligations and logistical hurdles. Since 2007, the landscape has remained the same, and limited progress has been made toward the 100 percent screening mandate. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stated in recent testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee that the mandate has proven problematic and that DHS would be unlikely to meet the 2012 deadline. Furthermore, Members of Congress, such as Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME), also continue to question the efficacy of this mandate. The reasons for this backlash are many.
Logistics, Technology, and Infrastructure. At a fundamental level, the technologynecessary to truly scan 100 percent of the maritime cargo entering the United States is not currently available. The problem is one of scale. While the basic technologyexists, the expanded technologynecessary for performing this function on such a broad scale does not. At the seven ports where the Secure Freight Initiative pilot was implemented, the scanning technology itself repeatedly proved to be problematic.
First, the mere placement of scanners proved a logistical problem as many ports were not built with a natural bottleneck through which all cargo passes. Transshipments only further exacerbated this problem, as cargo that passes through these ports only as an intermediary stop often does not follow the same path as other cargo. Once the technologywas installed, it encountered multiple problems, such as incompatibility with previous technologies, frequent outages due to weather, and the fact that many ports do not have sufficient communication infrastructure to transmit electronic data to the NTCC.
Cost was also a major problem inherent in the mandate. A single x-ray scanner, the most common technologyused for cargo screening, has a price tag of $4.5 million, plus an estimated annual operating cost of $200,000, not to mention the cost of the personnel required to run the equipment and examine the results at roughly $600,000 per year.[13]
No Additional Security. High-risk cargo is designated as such based on such factors as questionable or suspicious information on ship manifests -- including in large part whether the cargo originated from a reliable partner country which is far less likely to smuggle hazardous material into the U.S. This does not mean that terrorists would not find a way around this risk-based approach -- but if continually calibrated to represent an accurate picture of risks facing the nation -- this approach could be quite successful.
The current mandate, however, confuses the public into thinking that 100 percent scanning will equal 100 percent security. The reality is that no scanning system will ever be perfect. And for all the attempts to predict what terrorists might do next, the fact is that they are creative and their plans are continually evolving. It simply is not feasible to child-proof the maritime domain.
In fact, it is much more likely that a false sense of security will be created, based on the idea that 100 percent scanning can catch all threats. Error is bound to happen, especially when the amount of data analysts at the NTCC are given to examine is exponentially increased. Making policy on the idea of perfection is destined to fail and could well place the country in the same position it was on September 11, 2001. The U.S. needs to be flexible enough to respond to threats while not creating a stovepipe mentality around pre-determined threat scenarios.
Clogs the Supply Chain . The supply chain and global economy rely on the ability to move goods to where they are needed quickly and efficiently. The RAND Corporation has estimated that the 100 percent scanning mandate would cause, on average, a five-and-a-half hour delay per container;[14] and the World Customs Organization (WCO) estimates that the economic effects on the United States would be around $500 billion in total profit loss.[15] The worst scenario is that this mandate could lead to "buy European" behavior in which companies simply stop shipping goods to America and instead do business with countries that have more expedited supply chains.
Damaged Relationships with U.S. Allies. At a basic level, the 100 percent cargo scanning measure gives American allies the impression that the U.S. cannot trust them to adequately perform security screening and that they are not a true partner in global commerce. Perhaps more alarming, however, is that not allowing goods into America unless they have been scanned has caused America's allies to view this measure as protectionist and a barrier to trade. Previously, the United States had encouraged its friends abroad to adopt voluntary security practices based on risk; so this mandate is seen as an about-face on policy -- to the great frustration of U.S. allies. The worldwide, commonly accepted practice is to adopt a risk-based method of cargo screening -- standards recommended by the WCO. The WCO's Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade describes best practices for cargo security and many nations have adopted these recommendations. However, the U.S. has reversed course with this new mandate, hindering progress to adoption of the WCO standards by all partners.
U.S. security cannot come at the cost of economic prosperity; the two must instead be intertwined. U.S. Trade and security relationships with our allies must recognize that we must treat our allies as partners in order to create willingness among them to work towards international cargo security and ensure that such measures do not have negative effects on Trade and the economy.
A New Way Forward for Cargo Security
Instead of focusing on this highly unworkable mandate, Congress and DHS should re-examine the mandate, looking for a workable alternative that achieves security goals without disrupting the supply chain. A new approach should include the following elements:
Rethink the 100 Percent Cargo Scanning Mandate. Congress and DHS need to take a realistic look at the efficacy of the 100 percent cargo scanning mandate. A first step might be to commission a Government Accountability Office study over the next year on whether this mandate is the best means by which to ensure the safety of cargo entering the United States.
Further Develop the Container Security Initiative. The Container Security Initiative is an integral piece of an effective cargo security strategy because it takes into account supply-chain and infrastructure realities. CSI is risk-based, meaning that resources are dedicated to the cargo that is most likely to be a real threat to Americans, as determined by manifest analysis, instead of spreading scarce resources across the entire maritime cargo domain. DHS should strengthen this program and ensure its continuance, placing it at the forefront of cargo security strategy -- expanding to additional ports and clearly communicating expectations to the maritime shipping industry.
Enhance C-TPAT. This initiative identifies companies that employ best practices in their security measures. By taking the focus off companies that are already taking the right kinds of security measures, the U.S. can devote precious resources to tackling those that do not. C-TPAT puts the private sector in the driving seat. In order to strengthen the program, DHS should continue to increase validation of required security measures among participating partners to ensure that they are taking the right steps towards the security of the maritime cargo.
Expand the Proliferation Security Initiative. This voluntary multilateral effort of some 90 countries protects U.S. sovereignty while implementing proper interdiction efforts around the globe. The U.S. should encourage other countries to join in this effort and expand PSI while preserving the unique sovereignty-based attributes of the program in which participating nations are able to meet levels of security through their own existing policies rather than internationally proscribed measures. PSI helps to prevent a suitcase-nuke scenario by ensuring that multiple nations, from all points in the supply chain, are seeking to prevent it from ever getting in the wrong hands.
Keep 10 Plus 2. 10 Plus 2 is a flexible alternative to 100 percent scanning because it simply requires the private sector to submit importer, vessel, and container information to Customs and Border Protection for review before the vessel arrives in the United States. While any regulatory scheme does impose some burden, especially on smaller private-sector participants, 10 Plus 2 allows the CBP to focus screening efforts by making more informed choices about what cargo deserves further inspection. DHS, for its part, should move forward with implementing a 10 Plus 2 final rule and continue to work with the private sector to ensure that 10 Plus 2 remains responsive and able to adapt to private sector realities and the evolving risk to the cargo domain.
Rely on the Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade. This framework recognizes that many of our allies already have proper security measures in place at their ports. By giving acknowledgment to these trusted ports, the framework promotes both security and international partnerships. The U.S. should return to its past as a leader in risk-based cargo practices. U.S. programs such as C-TPAT and CSI can be great examples of the success of these types of programs. The Framework recognizes that the global supply chain needs to work on security concerns and remains useful as a neutral, non-U.S.-led means of proliferating proper cargo practices.
Recognize That Staying Informed Is a Work in Progress. As the principal oversight authority over DHS, Congress needs to continually educate itself about the security risks facing the nation. The mentality that the U.S. should create massive, economy-killing legislation to address each and every potential threat just simply is a poor approach to homeland security. Assessing "risk" requires a measure of "threat and the intent, capabilities, resources, and activities of possible threat actors" as well as "our vulnerability to the threat" and the "consequences if that threat materializes."[16] Congress should ensure that sound risk-management principles are interwoven into any homeland security legislation.
Getting cargo security right is so important because getting it wrong would jeopardize the very framework that supports the global economy. Real security means choosing policies that not only keep Americans safe, but also keep them free and prosperous. The 100 percent scanning mandate does none of these well.
Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. Jessica Zuckerman is a Research Assistant in the Allison Center. The authors would like to thank intern Kathleen Someah for her assistance.
The Cargo-Screening Clog: Why the Maritime Mandate Needs to Be Re-examined Published on January 13, 2010 by Jena Baker McNeill and Jessica Zuckerman Abstract: Cargo must be checked -- but it is impossible to screen 11.6 million containers every year without bringing the global economy to its knees. How to avoid the paralyzing cargo clog of the Department of Homeland Security's mandate for 100 percent cargo screening? Heritage Foundation homeland security policy analysts Jena Baker McNeill and Jessica Zuckerman lay out a smart plan for risk-based screening -- which can keep the country safe and prosperous at the same time.
On January 4, 2007, Congress passed the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act. Included in the bill's provisions was a mandate that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) scan 100 percent of maritime cargo entering the United States by 2012.
Given the fact that approximately 11.6 million cargo containers enter U.S. ports each year, this mandate could cripple the ability of the private sector to move goods on time. Avoiding this scenario will require the U.S. government to take a hard look at the efficacy of this requirement and find a workable alternative that takes into account available technologies, supply chain realities, and involves a realistic look at the threats facing the nation. This new approach should involve the following elements:
A risk-based, not a blanket, approach to cargo scanning;
Proliferation of the Container Security Initiative in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) collaborates with foreign nations in a risk-based approach to improve security practices abroad;
Enhancements in Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) to encourage best practices for cargo security performed by the private sector;
Expansion of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to create a multilateral, voluntary effort of nations to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction without jeopardizing U.S. sovereignty;
Continued support for the "10 Plus 2" cargo reporting requirements, which allow the CBP to obtain more knowledge about the contents of cargo in a flexible, economical manner; and
Greater reliance on the Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade in order to build relationships with allies while increasing port and cargo security through the creation and implementation of international security standards, and facilitating Trade and economic and social development.
Cargo in the United States
The U.S. is highly dependent on foreign imports for a wide variety of goods from cars to cell phones, among other consumer items -- and foreign nations are equally reliant on exports from the U.S. Ninety percent of these items move around the world in cargo containers.[1] This fact serves to make the United States a world leader in container traffic, with 32,000 maritime cargo containers entering U.S. ports each day for a total of 11.6 million containers a year.[2] Although 90 percent of these containers enter through the 10 highest-volume ports, there are more than three hundred ports in the U.S.[3] These realities make for a wide web of infrastructure, and a workforce that employs hundreds of thousands.
Maritime Domain as Target. Given its role in world productivity, the maritime cargo industry has long been associated with the potential for acts of terrorism -- fears of which were greatly elevated after 9/11. One year before, "the Interagency Commission on Crime and Security in U.S. Seaports noted the vulnerability of U.S. seaports to terrorism."[4] Fears over such a maritime attack have largely focused on whether terrorists might place a nuclear device in a cargo container and successfully pass it across our borders through the maritime transport system.
America's economy relies on the smooth movement of goods in and out of the United States -- which most often occurs by sea. Therefore, the consequences of such an attack would be enormous and could bring the supply chain to a halt. A RAND Corporation study on the efficacy of the 100 percent scanning mandate cited a Booz Allen simulation which found that a mere indicated threat of an attack on maritime cargo interests could cause $58 million in losses. An actual attack would be significantly worse and would likely have many associated casualties.
Experts have repeatedly argued over the "nuke in a suitcase" scenario. The nation is not exempt from the possibility of nuclear weapons reaching U.S. soil. But the probability that one would arrive through cargo is somewhat unlikely because there are simply too many risks involved for terrorists in constructing such a bomb and developing a method of getting it into a cargo container, only to later allow it to pass through the hands of security officials. Nevertheless, the maritime domain remains a vulnerable target for terrorism and is a domain worth protecting.
Congress Abandons Risk. For several years, the solution to this vulnerability was for the CBP to "analyze cargo manifest information for each container to decide which to target for closer inspection [but] only a small percentage have their contents physically inspected by CBP."[5] This approach recognized that some cargo was higher risk because of its contents, origin, and other attributes, as indicated through the cargo's detailed manifest, but that not all cargo represents a threat and was instead likely to be legitimate goods moving from place to place. This process of analyzing the attributes, such as contents and origin of the cargo container, is commonly known as cargo "screening," and represents a truly risk-based approach to cargo security.
Immediately after September 11, two risk-based cargo security measures were enacted by Congress to further strengthen cargo security -- the Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Customs-Trade Partnership against Terrorism (C-TPAT). These were later followed by the "10 Plus 2" requirement.
Container Security Initiative. The Container Security Initiative was announced in January 2002. The program requires that all companies handling U.S.-bound cargo present a shipping manifest to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP officers stationed at foreign ports 24 hours before cargo departure. This manifest information is then transmitted to the U.S. National Targeting Center-Cargo (NTCC). There, full-time "targeters" and analysts at the NTCC support the anti-terrorism efforts of the CBP and assess the risk associated with the manifest cargo. In partnership with the host customs organizations, foreign-stationed CBP and ICE officers then examine the cargo deemed to be high-risk through the manifest analysis conducted by the National Targeting Center by means of either non-intrusive inspection (NII) or x-ray scans.[6] This NII and x-ray "scanning" normally occurs in a fixed location. The process is not a speedy one, which is why it has historically only been used for the high-risk cargo. A RAND study indicated that scanning itself can take up to 15 minutes per 8x8x20-foot container, and that any subsequent physical inspection could take up to four hours longer.[7] As of mid-2008, CSI was successfully screening about 86 percent of all U.S.-bound cargo at 58 foreign seaports.[8]
The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. C-TPAT was born before CSI in November 2001. What makes C-TPAT unique is that it is entirely voluntary and operates as a partnership with the international Trade community. In order to become a member of C-TPAT, a company submits a profile outlining its security measures. The CBP then compares the company's security levels with the expected minimum levels of the particular sector of Trade in which the company falls. Besides achieving compliance with minimum security requirements, a company must also have a strong history of compliance with all related customs laws and regulations in order to gain membership.[9] These requirements allow CBP to ensure that participating companies are implementing the highest level of security measures, thereby lowering their level of risk.
Once a company's security has been validated and it has been granted membership, C-TPAT companies receive the benefit of facing fewer physical, NII, and x-ray inspections allowing the streamlining of sales and transport. In terms of national security, through C-TPAT, CBP is able to validate the security of these participating companies, and therefore shift its focus to other higher-risk cargo. C-TPAT also helps to institute security partnerships within the global Trade community, creating shared goals of improving supply-chain security -- while maintaining supply-chain efficiency. As of May 2008, there were more than 8,400 companies around the world that were C-TPAT members.[10] C-TPAT membership accounts for 96 percent of cargo traffic within the U.S., allowing CBP to verify the security of the vast majority of maritime cargo that travels throughout the country.[11]
10 Plus 2. Additionally, cargo shippers must currently comply with "10 Plus 2" -- the Importer Security Filing and Additional Carrier Requirements. "10 Plus 2" calls for importers and ocean carriers to submit 12 points of information to Customs and Border Protection. This information is to be provided 24 hours before U.S.-bound containers are loaded onto a carrier vessel. The "10" refers to the Importer Security Filing (ISF-10), the 10 data points provided by the importers, while the "2" refers to the vessel stow plans and container status messages (CSMs) provided by the carriers. This rule adds security by allowing CBP to better identify high-risk containers through analysis of these 12 additional points of data. At the same time, the measure is of very little hindrance to the maritime cargo industry, as it calls for the reporting of information that is already routinely collected and for no new technologyto be purchased and employed.
The 2007 Mandate and SAFE Ports Act. Despite the success of these risk-based programs, the possibility that terrorists could obtain a nuclear device and place it in a cargo container was and is an idea that has continued to gain speed, and has led to significant policy changes.
Facing growing political pressure, Congress began to move away from the idea of a risk-based approach. The move toward 100 percent scanning began in 2006 with the Security and Accountability for Every (SAFE) Port Act. The SAFE Port Act changed everything with the creation of the Secure Freight Initiative (SFI), a pilot program to test the implementation of 100 percent cargo scanning which would later be mandated by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Act of 2007. Instead of pre-screening cargo and then scanning and inspecting that deemed to be high-risk, 100 percent cargo scanning calls for the scanning of each and every cargo container that has passed through foreign ports to the United States.
The Secure Freight Initiative pilot operates at five ports with full implementation at three, Port Qasim, Pakistan; Puerto Cortés, Honduras; and Southampton, United Kingdom, and limited implementation at two, Busan, Korea, and Salah, Oman. The highest volume of U.S. cargo containers handled at any full-implementation port, however, was only 77,707 containers in 2006 at Puerto Cortés, a mere fraction of the volume seen yearly in the U.S. With the Secure Freight Initiative pilot occurring only at such low-volume ports, the true challenges to 100 percent scanning in the high-volume global environment have yet to been seen.
While the SFI showed that 100 percent screening could be effective in low volume, "high-risk" ports, such as Qasim, Pakistan, such screening proved to be riddled with numerous logistical issues at higher-volume ports, such as Hong Kong and Singapore.[12] Nevertheless, one year later, in 2007 before final results of the pilot were even assessed, Congress stipulated that 100 percent cargo scanning become fully implemented at all 700 foreign ports handling U.S.-bound cargo within five years.
The Problem with 100 Percent Scanning. The 100 percent scanning mandate was met with immediate opposition from the private sector, which faced daunting financial obligations and logistical hurdles. Since 2007, the landscape has remained the same, and limited progress has been made toward the 100 percent screening mandate. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stated in recent testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee that the mandate has proven problematic and that DHS would be unlikely to meet the 2012 deadline. Furthermore, Members of Congress, such as Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME), also continue to question the efficacy of this mandate. The reasons for this backlash are many.
Logistics, Technology, and Infrastructure. At a fundamental level, the technologynecessary to truly scan 100 percent of the maritime cargo entering the United States is not currently available. The problem is one of scale. While the basic technologyexists, the expanded technologynecessary for performing this function on such a broad scale does not. At the seven ports where the Secure Freight Initiative pilot was implemented, the scanning technology itself repeatedly proved to be problematic.
First, the mere placement of scanners proved a logistical problem as many ports were not built with a natural bottleneck through which all cargo passes. Transshipments only further exacerbated this problem, as cargo that passes through these ports only as an intermediary stop often does not follow the same path as other cargo. Once the technologywas installed, it encountered multiple problems, such as incompatibility with previous technologies, frequent outages due to weather, and the fact that many ports do not have sufficient communication infrastructure to transmit electronic data to the NTCC.
Cost was also a major problem inherent in the mandate. A single x-ray scanner, the most common technologyused for cargo screening, has a price tag of $4.5 million, plus an estimated annual operating cost of $200,000, not to mention the cost of the personnel required to run the equipment and examine the results at roughly $600,000 per year.[13]
No Additional Security. High-risk cargo is designated as such based on such factors as questionable or suspicious information on ship manifests -- including in large part whether the cargo originated from a reliable partner country which is far less likely to smuggle hazardous material into the U.S. This does not mean that terrorists would not find a way around this risk-based approach -- but if continually calibrated to represent an accurate picture of risks facing the nation -- this approach could be quite successful.
The current mandate, however, confuses the public into thinking that 100 percent scanning will equal 100 percent security. The reality is that no scanning system will ever be perfect. And for all the attempts to predict what terrorists might do next, the fact is that they are creative and their plans are continually evolving. It simply is not feasible to child-proof the maritime domain.
In fact, it is much more likely that a false sense of security will be created, based on the idea that 100 percent scanning can catch all threats. Error is bound to happen, especially when the amount of data analysts at the NTCC are given to examine is exponentially increased. Making policy on the idea of perfection is destined to fail and could well place the country in the same position it was on September 11, 2001. The U.S. needs to be flexible enough to respond to threats while not creating a stovepipe mentality around pre-determined threat scenarios.
Clogs the Supply Chain . The supply chain and global economy rely on the ability to move goods to where they are needed quickly and efficiently. The RAND Corporation has estimated that the 100 percent scanning mandate would cause, on average, a five-and-a-half hour delay per container;[14] and the World Customs Organization (WCO) estimates that the economic effects on the United States would be around $500 billion in total profit loss.[15] The worst scenario is that this mandate could lead to "buy European" behavior in which companies simply stop shipping goods to America and instead do business with countries that have more expedited supply chains.
Damaged Relationships with U.S. Allies. At a basic level, the 100 percent cargo scanning measure gives American allies the impression that the U.S. cannot trust them to adequately perform security screening and that they are not a true partner in global commerce. Perhaps more alarming, however, is that not allowing goods into America unless they have been scanned has caused America's allies to view this measure as protectionist and a barrier to trade. Previously, the United States had encouraged its friends abroad to adopt voluntary security practices based on risk; so this mandate is seen as an about-face on policy -- to the great frustration of U.S. allies. The worldwide, commonly accepted practice is to adopt a risk-based method of cargo screening -- standards recommended by the WCO. The WCO's Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade describes best practices for cargo security and many nations have adopted these recommendations. However, the U.S. has reversed course with this new mandate, hindering progress to adoption of the WCO standards by all partners.
U.S. security cannot come at the cost of economic prosperity; the two must instead be intertwined. U.S. Trade and security relationships with our allies must recognize that we must treat our allies as partners in order to create willingness among them to work towards international cargo security and ensure that such measures do not have negative effects on Trade and the economy.
A New Way Forward for Cargo Security
Instead of focusing on this highly unworkable mandate, Congress and DHS should re-examine the mandate, looking for a workable alternative that achieves security goals without disrupting the supply chain. A new approach should include the following elements:
Rethink the 100 Percent Cargo Scanning Mandate. Congress and DHS need to take a realistic look at the efficacy of the 100 percent cargo scanning mandate. A first step might be to commission a Government Accountability Office study over the next year on whether this mandate is the best means by which to ensure the safety of cargo entering the United States.
Further Develop the Container Security Initiative. The Container Security Initiative is an integral piece of an effective cargo security strategy because it takes into account supply-chain and infrastructure realities. CSI is risk-based, meaning that resources are dedicated to the cargo that is most likely to be a real threat to Americans, as determined by manifest analysis, instead of spreading scarce resources across the entire maritime cargo domain. DHS should strengthen this program and ensure its continuance, placing it at the forefront of cargo security strategy -- expanding to additional ports and clearly communicating expectations to the maritime shipping industry.
Enhance C-TPAT. This initiative identifies companies that employ best practices in their security measures. By taking the focus off companies that are already taking the right kinds of security measures, the U.S. can devote precious resources to tackling those that do not. C-TPAT puts the private sector in the driving seat. In order to strengthen the program, DHS should continue to increase validation of required security measures among participating partners to ensure that they are taking the right steps towards the security of the maritime cargo.
Expand the Proliferation Security Initiative. This voluntary multilateral effort of some 90 countries protects U.S. sovereignty while implementing proper interdiction efforts around the globe. The U.S. should encourage other countries to join in this effort and expand PSI while preserving the unique sovereignty-based attributes of the program in which participating nations are able to meet levels of security through their own existing policies rather than internationally proscribed measures. PSI helps to prevent a suitcase-nuke scenario by ensuring that multiple nations, from all points in the supply chain, are seeking to prevent it from ever getting in the wrong hands.
Keep 10 Plus 2. 10 Plus 2 is a flexible alternative to 100 percent scanning because it simply requires the private sector to submit importer, vessel, and container information to Customs and Border Protection for review before the vessel arrives in the United States. While any regulatory scheme does impose some burden, especially on smaller private-sector participants, 10 Plus 2 allows the CBP to focus screening efforts by making more informed choices about what cargo deserves further inspection. DHS, for its part, should move forward with implementing a 10 Plus 2 final rule and continue to work with the private sector to ensure that 10 Plus 2 remains responsive and able to adapt to private sector realities and the evolving risk to the cargo domain.
Rely on the Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade. This framework recognizes that many of our allies already have proper security measures in place at their ports. By giving acknowledgment to these trusted ports, the framework promotes both security and international partnerships. The U.S. should return to its past as a leader in risk-based cargo practices. U.S. programs such as C-TPAT and CSI can be great examples of the success of these types of programs. The Framework recognizes that the global supply chain needs to work on security concerns and remains useful as a neutral, non-U.S.-led means of proliferating proper cargo practices.
Recognize That Staying Informed Is a Work in Progress. As the principal oversight authority over DHS, Congress needs to continually educate itself about the security risks facing the nation. The mentality that the U.S. should create massive, economy-killing legislation to address each and every potential threat just simply is a poor approach to homeland security. Assessing "risk" requires a measure of "threat and the intent, capabilities, resources, and activities of possible threat actors" as well as "our vulnerability to the threat" and the "consequences if that threat materializes."[16] Congress should ensure that sound risk-management principles are interwoven into any homeland security legislation.
Getting cargo security right is so important because getting it wrong would jeopardize the very framework that supports the global economy. Real security means choosing policies that not only keep Americans safe, but also keep them free and prosperous. The 100 percent scanning mandate does none of these well.
Jena Baker McNeill is Policy Analyst for Homeland Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. Jessica Zuckerman is a Research Assistant in the Allison Center. The authors would like to thank intern Kathleen Someah for her assistance.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
A Different Foreign Policy
I don't always agree with Ron Paul, but there are interesting and worthwhile points in this article, which appeared on the Campaign for Liberty website:
'Mr. Speaker, Peace Is Always Superior to War'
By Anthony Gregory
View all 24 articles by Anthony Gregory
Published 05/01/10
Printer-friendly version
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship by Ron Paul (Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 2007); 372 pages; $19.95.
"Mr. Speaker, peace is always superior to war," said Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the House floor on September 18, 2002, six months before President Bush took America to war with Iraq. This viewpoint comes through consistently in his foreign-policy speeches to Congress, spanning the years 1976 to 2006, now collected together in his book A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.
Whereas Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, often derive their hawkish and dovish positions from partisan calculation, the winds of political opinion, or the urgings of special interests and domestic constituencies, and not by a set of coherent principles or deep understanding of the economics and history of American foreign policy, Ron Paul is different. From the Reagan years through the Clinton years and past the aftermath of 9/11, Paul has consistently upheld the Jeffersonian principles of nonintervention, peace, honest diplomacy, and free trade as the path to American security, freedom, and more harmonious relations with the rest of the world.
One theme he has often stressed is the irrationality of U.S. policy abroad, most clearly demonstrated by America's shifting alliances and commitments to both sides of various squabbles. The United States has had commitments to both Britain and Argentina, both Israel and the Arab states, both Greece and Turkey, and so on, regardless of any conflicts that may arise between the two allied interests. One decade, the U.S. government will be supporting the Taliban or Saddam Hussein and the next decade it will be at all-out war with the former ally.
Given that Ron Paul's audience has been his fellow members of Congress as well as the general American population, his speeches do not always rise to the level of detail of academic foreign-policy books. But this is only fitting, and the speeches still make an extraordinarily inspiring and interesting read.
We see here a man doing all he can to reverse the tide of American interventionism, against the warmongering inertia of both parties, and if his words at times become somewhat repetitive it is only because he is tirelessly repeating the neglected truths and wisdom of the noninterventionist strain traditional to America. These truths need to be heard, and although his 30 years' worth of speeches may at times become frustrating to read, in light of how much his words have been ignored, we can only be enthralled by how boldly and heroically he has persisted in his mission to educate his compatriots.
Although Paul presents his message in clear, accessible language, he demonstrates a level of sophisticated understanding of foreign policy that is hard to imagine any other federal legislator remotely approaching. This knowledge and his willingness to share it have allowed him to serve as a sort of oracle, warning his fellow members in Congress of the trouble yet to come if the foolish policy of perpetual intervention isn't reversed. In this light, A Foreign Policy of Freedom is a great resource for the historian, compiling the primary-source documentation of the one American congressman who saw the full danger of U.S. intervention far before 9/11.
U.S. intervention in Lebanon
One of the best examples of this comes in his dissent from Reagan's policy toward Lebanon. In voting against one of those many seemingly innocuous congressional resolutions condemning foreign violence, Paul warned on June 17, 1981,
Since when have the people of the United States become the guarantor of Lebanon? Such a promise could require the use of troops.... [This] resolution could be used to justify who-knows-what use of dollars and lives in a future conflict or peacekeeping operation.
On September 28, 1982, Paul continued his warnings when civilian massacres in Lebanon inspired Congress to draft more resolutions, which Paul saw as potentially very dangerous:
Condemning the killing is fine. But the fact that our policies can lead to and even promote the killing is a more crucial issue than any public pronouncement of this kind.... Congressional resolutions -- House Concurrent Resolution 409 and House Resolution 159 -- are actually congressional stamps of approval for extensive presidential decisions to intervene with the use of troops, the use of dollars, the use of weapons. And once we are bogged down in a crisis like this one, it is difficult to withdraw gracefully.
Seven months later, the American embassy in Lebanon was bombed, and Paul accordingly intoned,
What do we do? I believe that with this attack on U.S. territory, and the death of American citizens, the time to answer that question has arrived.... [We] must remove our troops from the region immediately.
Throughout September of 1983, Paul repeated his words of caution several times, prophetically warning,
It is with great risk that we remain in Lebanon and with the chance that significant escalation of the conflict will come on the heels of some unforeseen incident.
His warnings were ignored and a month later Hezbollah bombed U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 American servicemen. Finally, Reagan did what Paul had long suggested and pulled out of Lebanon.
Paul's steadfast opposition to intervention
Paul has embraced a philosophy of no entangling alliances; no foreign aid; no involvement in such international bodies as the UN, NATO, IMF, or the World Bank; and no unprovoked intervention; and has applied it to all regional squabbles. In this book we see his principled opposition to U.S. meddling in Grenada, in El Salvador, in Turkey, and in the Balkans. As the Cold War was in its final stages, we see the congressman repeatedly pointing out the irony of U.S. foreign aid and funding to communist regimes that American politicians complain about when they harass American allies. In 1999, during the Bosnia interventions under Clinton, Paul repeated his warning that "too often our support finds its way into the hands of both warring factions." By the time of the Kosovo war, this seemed especially fitting as the United States had once again switched sides, backing the Kosovars, against whom the United States had in 1992 "supported an arms embargo ... essentially making it impossible for [them] to defend themselves against Serbia." In that same speech, Paul predicted, in his warnings about assisting Muslim fundamentalists,
When a foreign war comes to our shores in the form of terrorism, we can be sure that our government will explain the need for further sacrifice of personal liberties to win this war against terrorism as well.
And this is perhaps where Paul shines brightest. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he had warned about the Middle Eastern interventions, support of bin Laden, and especially the horribly brutal treatment of Iraq, including the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. He warned of the hatred this would cause. Starting in 1998, he began speaking strongly against a forthcoming second war with Iraq -- five years before the war began, and seven or eight years before most Democrats began seeing the folly of the war. Thus, when 9/11 hit, he was prepared to speak forcibly and intelligently on the ways intervention leads to blowback, and was willing to do so despite the incredible unpopularity of his position.
Paul explained that a full-blown invasion and occupation of Afghanistan would fail to achieve much of value and would only incite further anti-American hatred. But his admonitions soon after 9/11 about war with Iraq are perhaps most profound to read in retrospect. By September 2002, he was asking very politically incorrect questions:
Is it not ... true that we are willing to bomb Iraq now because we know it cannot retaliate, which just confirms that there is no real threat? ... Is it not true that the intelligence community has been unable to develop a case tying Iraq to global terrorism at all, much less the attacks on the United States last year? ... Would an attack on Iraq not just confirm the Arab world's worst suspicions about the U.S., and isn't this what bin Laden wanted? ... Are we prepared for possibly thousands of American casualties in a war against a country that does not have the capacity to attack the United States? ... Is it not true that preventive war is synonymous with an act of aggression, and has never been considered a moral or legitimate U.S. policy?
In another speech, Paul seemed to foresee the next several years precisely:
The euphoria associated with the dreams of grandiose and painless victories [will be] replaced by the stark reality of death, destruction, and economic pain.
During all the warmongering before Shock and Awe, Paul had expressed his worries about the moral and legal implications of preemptive, undeclared war; the hypocrisy of waging war for a United Nations that didn't back the war; and the popularly underestimated costs in lives, liberties, and wealth. As the war began and the occupation commenced, he continued his important role in exposing the reality of the phony elections, the corporate and economic motivations behind the war, the neoconservative ideology as it related to post-9/11 policy, the lies of progress, and assorted wartime propaganda. Whether the war was popular or not at any given time, he continued to speak the truth for all who would listen. By the end of the book, we see him giving similar warnings about Iran, against which the propaganda is now leveled to drum up support for yet another poorly conceived and aggressive war.
War and the decline of liberty
Congressman Paul deeply laments the decline of liberty at home, as the war on terror is waged. He speaks almost alone against the USA PATRIOT Act, military tribunals, violations of habeas corpus, and consolidation of bureaucratic power. He makes the unpopular point that, had the pilots been armed on 9/11, the terror attack would have probably been a failure. He defends constitutional limits on power when they are most important and most in peril. In watching the nation he loves relinquish its liberty, he says, "It's frightening to see us doing to ourselves what even bin Laden never dreamed he could accomplish with his suicide bombers."
Some of his most passionate talk is in regard to conscription, which we have been lucky enough not to see reemerge. "Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man!" he exclaims.
It's said that the 18-year-old owes it to his country. Hogwash! It just as easily could be argued that a 50-year-old chicken-hawk, who promotes war and places the danger on innocent young people owes a heck of a lot more to the country than the 18-year-old being denied his liberty for a cause that has no justification.
Foreign and domestic policy
Paul explains, over and over, how foreign policy relates to domestic policy, and so we see his consistent advocacy of free markets, sound money, small government, and personal freedom. He particularly takes aim at the regressive effects of inflation, which redistributes money from poor to rich, most commonly at wartime. He also shows time and again his commitment to liberty in areas not appreciated by nearly anyone of either party. As early as 1984, he was attacking the drug war as a brutal and counterproductive policy advanced hypocritically by politicians "legally hooked on alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, aspirin, and valium" and taking particular offense that "harmless elderly women, having committed no act of violence," had been arrested for "raising marijuana in the yard to use for relief of severe arthritic pain."
Prescient, patient, and patriotic, Ron Paul, with his love of liberty, comes through wonderfully in his speeches, but perhaps best of all in his firm dedication to restoring the sane, noninterventionist foreign policy that is the bulwark of any constitutional republic worthy of the name. Capturing the sophistication, consistency, and wisdom of his views, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship is a great book on the foreign policy of a free society, explained by a humble and venerable American statesman commenting on three decades of unfolding history, not just from the sidelines but in the chambers of policymaking, somehow not letting such influence taint his profound devotion to liberty and peace.
This article originally appeared in the September 2007 edition of Freedom Daily. Copyright © 2007 Future of Freedom FoundationÂ
'Mr. Speaker, Peace Is Always Superior to War'
By Anthony Gregory
View all 24 articles by Anthony Gregory
Published 05/01/10
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A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship by Ron Paul (Lake Jackson, Texas: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, 2007); 372 pages; $19.95.
"Mr. Speaker, peace is always superior to war," said Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the House floor on September 18, 2002, six months before President Bush took America to war with Iraq. This viewpoint comes through consistently in his foreign-policy speeches to Congress, spanning the years 1976 to 2006, now collected together in his book A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.
Whereas Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, often derive their hawkish and dovish positions from partisan calculation, the winds of political opinion, or the urgings of special interests and domestic constituencies, and not by a set of coherent principles or deep understanding of the economics and history of American foreign policy, Ron Paul is different. From the Reagan years through the Clinton years and past the aftermath of 9/11, Paul has consistently upheld the Jeffersonian principles of nonintervention, peace, honest diplomacy, and free trade as the path to American security, freedom, and more harmonious relations with the rest of the world.
One theme he has often stressed is the irrationality of U.S. policy abroad, most clearly demonstrated by America's shifting alliances and commitments to both sides of various squabbles. The United States has had commitments to both Britain and Argentina, both Israel and the Arab states, both Greece and Turkey, and so on, regardless of any conflicts that may arise between the two allied interests. One decade, the U.S. government will be supporting the Taliban or Saddam Hussein and the next decade it will be at all-out war with the former ally.
Given that Ron Paul's audience has been his fellow members of Congress as well as the general American population, his speeches do not always rise to the level of detail of academic foreign-policy books. But this is only fitting, and the speeches still make an extraordinarily inspiring and interesting read.
We see here a man doing all he can to reverse the tide of American interventionism, against the warmongering inertia of both parties, and if his words at times become somewhat repetitive it is only because he is tirelessly repeating the neglected truths and wisdom of the noninterventionist strain traditional to America. These truths need to be heard, and although his 30 years' worth of speeches may at times become frustrating to read, in light of how much his words have been ignored, we can only be enthralled by how boldly and heroically he has persisted in his mission to educate his compatriots.
Although Paul presents his message in clear, accessible language, he demonstrates a level of sophisticated understanding of foreign policy that is hard to imagine any other federal legislator remotely approaching. This knowledge and his willingness to share it have allowed him to serve as a sort of oracle, warning his fellow members in Congress of the trouble yet to come if the foolish policy of perpetual intervention isn't reversed. In this light, A Foreign Policy of Freedom is a great resource for the historian, compiling the primary-source documentation of the one American congressman who saw the full danger of U.S. intervention far before 9/11.
U.S. intervention in Lebanon
One of the best examples of this comes in his dissent from Reagan's policy toward Lebanon. In voting against one of those many seemingly innocuous congressional resolutions condemning foreign violence, Paul warned on June 17, 1981,
Since when have the people of the United States become the guarantor of Lebanon? Such a promise could require the use of troops.... [This] resolution could be used to justify who-knows-what use of dollars and lives in a future conflict or peacekeeping operation.
On September 28, 1982, Paul continued his warnings when civilian massacres in Lebanon inspired Congress to draft more resolutions, which Paul saw as potentially very dangerous:
Condemning the killing is fine. But the fact that our policies can lead to and even promote the killing is a more crucial issue than any public pronouncement of this kind.... Congressional resolutions -- House Concurrent Resolution 409 and House Resolution 159 -- are actually congressional stamps of approval for extensive presidential decisions to intervene with the use of troops, the use of dollars, the use of weapons. And once we are bogged down in a crisis like this one, it is difficult to withdraw gracefully.
Seven months later, the American embassy in Lebanon was bombed, and Paul accordingly intoned,
What do we do? I believe that with this attack on U.S. territory, and the death of American citizens, the time to answer that question has arrived.... [We] must remove our troops from the region immediately.
Throughout September of 1983, Paul repeated his words of caution several times, prophetically warning,
It is with great risk that we remain in Lebanon and with the chance that significant escalation of the conflict will come on the heels of some unforeseen incident.
His warnings were ignored and a month later Hezbollah bombed U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 American servicemen. Finally, Reagan did what Paul had long suggested and pulled out of Lebanon.
Paul's steadfast opposition to intervention
Paul has embraced a philosophy of no entangling alliances; no foreign aid; no involvement in such international bodies as the UN, NATO, IMF, or the World Bank; and no unprovoked intervention; and has applied it to all regional squabbles. In this book we see his principled opposition to U.S. meddling in Grenada, in El Salvador, in Turkey, and in the Balkans. As the Cold War was in its final stages, we see the congressman repeatedly pointing out the irony of U.S. foreign aid and funding to communist regimes that American politicians complain about when they harass American allies. In 1999, during the Bosnia interventions under Clinton, Paul repeated his warning that "too often our support finds its way into the hands of both warring factions." By the time of the Kosovo war, this seemed especially fitting as the United States had once again switched sides, backing the Kosovars, against whom the United States had in 1992 "supported an arms embargo ... essentially making it impossible for [them] to defend themselves against Serbia." In that same speech, Paul predicted, in his warnings about assisting Muslim fundamentalists,
When a foreign war comes to our shores in the form of terrorism, we can be sure that our government will explain the need for further sacrifice of personal liberties to win this war against terrorism as well.
And this is perhaps where Paul shines brightest. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he had warned about the Middle Eastern interventions, support of bin Laden, and especially the horribly brutal treatment of Iraq, including the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. He warned of the hatred this would cause. Starting in 1998, he began speaking strongly against a forthcoming second war with Iraq -- five years before the war began, and seven or eight years before most Democrats began seeing the folly of the war. Thus, when 9/11 hit, he was prepared to speak forcibly and intelligently on the ways intervention leads to blowback, and was willing to do so despite the incredible unpopularity of his position.
Paul explained that a full-blown invasion and occupation of Afghanistan would fail to achieve much of value and would only incite further anti-American hatred. But his admonitions soon after 9/11 about war with Iraq are perhaps most profound to read in retrospect. By September 2002, he was asking very politically incorrect questions:
Is it not ... true that we are willing to bomb Iraq now because we know it cannot retaliate, which just confirms that there is no real threat? ... Is it not true that the intelligence community has been unable to develop a case tying Iraq to global terrorism at all, much less the attacks on the United States last year? ... Would an attack on Iraq not just confirm the Arab world's worst suspicions about the U.S., and isn't this what bin Laden wanted? ... Are we prepared for possibly thousands of American casualties in a war against a country that does not have the capacity to attack the United States? ... Is it not true that preventive war is synonymous with an act of aggression, and has never been considered a moral or legitimate U.S. policy?
In another speech, Paul seemed to foresee the next several years precisely:
The euphoria associated with the dreams of grandiose and painless victories [will be] replaced by the stark reality of death, destruction, and economic pain.
During all the warmongering before Shock and Awe, Paul had expressed his worries about the moral and legal implications of preemptive, undeclared war; the hypocrisy of waging war for a United Nations that didn't back the war; and the popularly underestimated costs in lives, liberties, and wealth. As the war began and the occupation commenced, he continued his important role in exposing the reality of the phony elections, the corporate and economic motivations behind the war, the neoconservative ideology as it related to post-9/11 policy, the lies of progress, and assorted wartime propaganda. Whether the war was popular or not at any given time, he continued to speak the truth for all who would listen. By the end of the book, we see him giving similar warnings about Iran, against which the propaganda is now leveled to drum up support for yet another poorly conceived and aggressive war.
War and the decline of liberty
Congressman Paul deeply laments the decline of liberty at home, as the war on terror is waged. He speaks almost alone against the USA PATRIOT Act, military tribunals, violations of habeas corpus, and consolidation of bureaucratic power. He makes the unpopular point that, had the pilots been armed on 9/11, the terror attack would have probably been a failure. He defends constitutional limits on power when they are most important and most in peril. In watching the nation he loves relinquish its liberty, he says, "It's frightening to see us doing to ourselves what even bin Laden never dreamed he could accomplish with his suicide bombers."
Some of his most passionate talk is in regard to conscription, which we have been lucky enough not to see reemerge. "Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man!" he exclaims.
It's said that the 18-year-old owes it to his country. Hogwash! It just as easily could be argued that a 50-year-old chicken-hawk, who promotes war and places the danger on innocent young people owes a heck of a lot more to the country than the 18-year-old being denied his liberty for a cause that has no justification.
Foreign and domestic policy
Paul explains, over and over, how foreign policy relates to domestic policy, and so we see his consistent advocacy of free markets, sound money, small government, and personal freedom. He particularly takes aim at the regressive effects of inflation, which redistributes money from poor to rich, most commonly at wartime. He also shows time and again his commitment to liberty in areas not appreciated by nearly anyone of either party. As early as 1984, he was attacking the drug war as a brutal and counterproductive policy advanced hypocritically by politicians "legally hooked on alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, aspirin, and valium" and taking particular offense that "harmless elderly women, having committed no act of violence," had been arrested for "raising marijuana in the yard to use for relief of severe arthritic pain."
Prescient, patient, and patriotic, Ron Paul, with his love of liberty, comes through wonderfully in his speeches, but perhaps best of all in his firm dedication to restoring the sane, noninterventionist foreign policy that is the bulwark of any constitutional republic worthy of the name. Capturing the sophistication, consistency, and wisdom of his views, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship is a great book on the foreign policy of a free society, explained by a humble and venerable American statesman commenting on three decades of unfolding history, not just from the sidelines but in the chambers of policymaking, somehow not letting such influence taint his profound devotion to liberty and peace.
This article originally appeared in the September 2007 edition of Freedom Daily. Copyright © 2007 Future of Freedom FoundationÂ
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