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Pres. Obama should find time in his busy vacation schedule to drop a palm-trees-and-sandy-beaches thank you postcard to NBC. On this morning's Today, successive network staffers defended the administration's [mis]handling of the Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab matter. First, terrorism expert Roger Cressey [who usually plays it straight], claimed there wasn't enough information to "connect the dots" and move young Umar from the "watch list" to the "no-fly" list. Really? The guy's father, a respected international banker, was so concerned about his son's extremist Islamist views that he took the unusual measure of personally contacting the US embassy with a warning....

SCRANTON, Pa. - Shannen Rossmiller isn't a terrorist. She just plays one on the Internet. In the wee hours of the morning, while her family sleeps, the former Montana judge goes online and assumes the identity of a Muslim extremist — the better to strike up conversations with actual terrorists and, she hopes, ferret out their plans to harm the United States and its allies. Then the 38-year-old former Miss Congeniality and married mother of three feeds the intelligence she gathers to the FBI. Her moonlighting as a volunteer terrorist hunter has brought down two suspects in the United States...

by Mark Finkelstein August 10, 2006 - 07:58 There is a noteworthy MSM tendency to downplay the gravity of various terrorist acts by suggesting that they are local, home-grown incidents rather than forming part of international conspiracies. A recent example was the MSM's treatment of the Seattle Jewish center shootings in which an Muslim-American killed one woman and injured several others. To his credit, NBC terrorism expert Roger Cressey wouldn't let Matt Lauer sing that song when he tried it on this morning's Today show in connection with the plot to blow up in midflight planes originating in the UK....

Roger W. Cressey is President of Good Harbor Consulting, LLC, advising clients on homeland security, cybersecurity and counterterrorism issues. He has recently been retained by NBC as their terrorism analyst. Previously, Mr. Cressey served as Chief of Staff to the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board at the White House from November 2001 to September 2002. From November 1999 to November 2001, Mr. Cressey served as Director for Transnational Threats on the National Security Council staff, where he was responsible for coordination and implementation of US counter-terrorism policy. During this period, he managed the U.S. Government's response to the Millennium terror...

WASHINGTON – Despite a government crackdown, Al Qaeda continues to recruit members in U.S. prisons. U.S. officials said Al Qaeda’s recruitment has been facilitated by Muslim clergy with access to federal and state prisons. They said the organization has succeeded in winning new members despite tighter rules instituted by authorities since the Al Qaeda suicide attacks in September 2001. “These terrorists seek to exploit our freedom to exercise religion to their advantage by using radical forms of Islam to recruit operatives,” FBI counter-terrorism chief John Pistole said. “Unfortunately, U.S. correctional institutions are a viable venue for such radicalization and recruitment.”...

Avoiding attacking terrorist mastermind ...But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to...

<p>First, Mr. Miniter recycles old, false Sudanese claims that the Clinton White House declined access to Sudan's intelligence files on al Qaeda and that an unnamed CIA official declined an offer from Sudan in 1996 to turn Osama bin Laden over to the United States.</p>

New evidence revealsmuch larger 9-11 plot Al-Qaida might have commandeered 7 planes but some members were unable to enter U.S. Posted: November 7, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com New evidence leads some investigators to believe the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were part of a larger plot involving as many as seven passenger jets, according to ABC News. Documents seized in caves in Afghanistan recently were matched with visa applications indicating several al-Qaida terrorists tried unsuccessfully to enter the United States at about the same time as the 19 hijackers who carried out the...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An al Qaeda video, which appeared this week on an al Qaeda-affiliated Web site, shows the September 11, 2001, attack on New York's World Trade Center as filmed from an angle sources in Washington said they had not seen before.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — The following transcript documents a background briefing in early August 2002 by President Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke to a handful of reporters, including Fox News' Jim Angle. In the conversation, cleared by the White House on Wednesday for distribution, Clarke describes the handover of intelligence from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration and the latter's decision to revise the U.S. approach to Al Qaeda. Clarke was named special adviser to the president for cyberspace security in October 2001. He resigned from his post in January 2003.</p>

9/11 Commission member, former Navy Secretary John Lehman ripped ex-terrorism czar Richard Clarke Wednesday afternoon for cashing in on this week's public hearings into America's worst disaster by using the forum to peddle his book. "When you and I first served together [in the Reagan administration] I had been a fan of yours," Lehman began when his turn to question Clarke came. "When you agreed to spend this much time with us, as you say, 15 hours, I was very hopeful." Of Clarke's private testimony before the Commission, Lehman said, "I thought you let the chips fall where they may...