Free Republic

The U.S. government can kill an American citizen abroad if that person is plotting to attack Americans and U.S. authorities can't apprehend them, according to a newly declassified government memo. The document laid out the legal rationale for a drone-missile strike that killed terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. The 2010 memo, which a court released Monday, has been at the heart of a debate about the legality of the U.S. government ordering deadly force from a drone against a U.S. citizen overseas. The strike...

A 58-year-old airport worker was charged Friday with allegedly planning a suicide bombing at a passenger terminal at the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport in Kansas. The suspect, Terry Lee Loewen, an avionics technician who lives in Wichita, was arrested earlier in the day as he attempted to use his security pass to drive a vehicle that he thought contained explosives onto the tarmac at the airport, law enforcement officials said at a news conference in Wichita. In fact, the car contained only dummy explosives. U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Loewen spent months developing a plan to drive a carload of explosives...

"Nigerian Terror Suspect Flown to New York for Trial, Accused of Recruiting, Training for Al-Qaida Federal authorities say Lawal Babafemi received al-Qaida money to recruit English-speaking people to engage in acts of terror against America" SNIPPET: "A Nigerian terror suspect accused of trying to help al-Qaida in Yemen was flown to New York to appear Friday in a federal courtroom. Lawal Babafemi is accused of training with members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and using his English skills to help publish the terrorist magazine "Inspire." Judge John Gleason ordered Babafemi, also known as "Ayatollah Mustafa," held without bail." SNIPPET:...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama is facing demands in court to reveal more about the U.S. drone program, despite his speech addressing it on Thursday and his government's acknowledgement a day earlier that four Americans have died in drone strikes. Civil liberties advocates, news organizations and the families of those who died have brought lawsuits in New York, Washington and Oakland, California, challenging the government's refusal to provide information. Now that the drone program's existence has at last been confirmed, government lawyers on Wednesday indicated they would abandon their previous arguments, which did not confirm or deny the drone program....

The US attorney general has acknowledged four US citizens were killed in drone strikes since 2011. The US specifically targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, Eric Holder wrote in a letter to the Senate judiciary panel. Awlaki's 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, Samir Khan and Jude Mohammad were "not specifically targeted by the US". The disclosure of the killings in Yemen and Pakistan marks the first formal public acknowledgement of the US citizen deaths in drone strikes. "The president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified," Mr Holder wrote. 'Continuing threat' America's top law enforcement official...

One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm...

FBI Knew Fort Hood Shooter Was Islamist CBNNews.com Saturday, July 21, 2012 Texas Rep. Michael McCaul claimed political correctness stopped the FBI from launching what may've been a lifesaving investigation into Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, almost a year before his deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood. After reviewing an independent report by former FBI Director William Webster, McCaul revealed the department knew about disturbing emails between Hasan and a known terrorist, but was reluctant to act. Hasan's 2009 shooting spree left 13 people dead. McCaul, a Texas Republican, said Hasan e-mailed al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki 18 times and expressed...

Reprinted from PeaceandTolerance.org. “This is alarming, but I’d need to see a smoking gun.” That’s what a Boston Rabbi said after we’d spent an hour in his office walking him through mounds of evidence that linked the leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) to terrorism and hate speech against Jews and Christians. He wouldn’t speak publicly about the radical leadership of the ISB mosque, he explained, for fear of giving offense, for fear of breaking with a certain understanding about these things, for fear of being labeled a bigot. For 10 years, this reluctance to speak honestly about...

The FBI has revealed that they now know the identity of the American known as Misha who helped radicalize the Boston bombing suspects. Family members of dead bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev have described Misha as the guiding influence in the elder bomber developing radicalized views. Speculation as to who Misha is has varied wildly in the past week, with some suggesting he is the mastermind behind the marathon bombings while others believe he could be a Russian spy - sent to identify and keep tabs on young men like Tamerlan who are at risk of turning to militant Islam. To date...

Since 2010, al-Qaeda has apparently been publishing an English-speaking magazine called Inspire meant to attract Muslims into extremism and teach them how to wreak massive amounts of violence onto innocent people. “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” reads one of the headlines. At first, Americans laughed at Inspire and didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. But then we realized just how powerful this propaganda could be considering the relationship the average Muslim has with the American people these days. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman described the purpose of Inspire as “getting frustrated Muslim youth to buy into al-Qaeda’s...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

New documents obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act about Anwar al-Awlaki reveal that his banking activity and other links to several 9/11 hijackers were known to the FBI weeks before he was invited to lunch at the Pentagon during an “outreach” to Muslims. The documentation was obtained by Judicial Watch, the government watchdog agency that investigates and reports on government corruption. “The more we learn about Anwar al-Awlaki, the more questions arise not only about his activities before and after 9/11, but also about the al-Qaida operational and support network still active in the United States,” said Judicial...

How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America’s Cross Hairs By MARK MAZZETTI, CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON — One morning in late September 2011, a group of American drones took off from an airstrip the C.I.A. had built in the remote southern expanse of Saudi Arabia. The drones crossed the border into Yemen, and were soon hovering over a group of trucks clustered in a desert patch of Jawf Province, a region of the impoverished country once renowned for breeding Arabian horses. A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks....

A convicted Saudi felon who was sentenced to 28 years in prison after being convicted by a Colorado jury for imprisoning his housekeeper and holding her as a sex slave could soon be released from prison. Homaidan al-Turki, a Saudi citizen whose 2006 case made headlines and triggered national outrage when he was arrested for imprisoning and sexually abusing his maid in the basement of his Aurora home, has asked to be repatriated to Saudi Arabia under the terms of a bilateral treaty. If the Hickenlooper administration agrees to the request, al-Turki could return to Saudi Arabia after serving less...

How to Become a Drone Target

SNIPPET: "A seventh man, aged 20, was arrested on Thursday and continues to be questioned." SNIPPET: "Irfan Nasser, 30, from Sparkhill, and Irfan Khalid, 26, from Sparkbrook, are accused of travelling to Pakistan for terrorism training, including bomb making, and weapons and poison making; as well making a martyrdom video and planning a bombing campaign. Ashik Ali, 26, from Balsall Heath, and Rahi Ahmed, 25, from Moseley, face charges related to planning a bombing campaign in the UK, including constructing a home-made explosive device for terrorist acts and stating an intention to be suicide bombers. Two other suspects - Bahader...

A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Wednesday to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote. “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born Islamic cleric killed in a US drone attack in Yemen last year, had been in American custody at least twice but was released, according to a human rights group. Judicial Watch, an accountability watchdog group, said it had learned this through Freedom of Information lawsuits it filed with the US government. It said documents from the US embassy in Yemen indicate Awlaki was held for at least eight months between late 2006 and mid 2007. But the documents do not say how long he was held or why he was he was freed. Back in October...