Threat Matrix: 2009

Previous ^ | 2009 | Freeper TMers

[Cindy]

Correcting myself again (no coffee yet)...

Keep AQIM on the list...snippet from the WTOP article:

“A U.S. intelligence source with knowledge about the situation says “it is a credible threat, which also includes Germans in North Africa.””

[Oorang]

Thank you both for the info and pings. I know this article/threat was directed at a variety of countries but I’m afraid the U.S. is being viewed as a much weaker and more vunerable country these days thanks to our (non)leadership. This is not a good sign.

[Cindy]

OPINION:

I agree Oorang.

[Godzilla]

With all the other clutter, the WOT is taken a back burner and it is very likely that jihadi’s may use this opportunity to get under the radar (so to speak) and try to launch something with everything mis-directed to other things.

[callmejoe]

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6169

US, German intel: Al Qaeda plots multiple attacks on US-, Israel-bound airliners
DEBKAfile Special Report

July 7, 2009, 9:54 PM (GMT+02:00)

Western anti-terror agencies have warned that a large group of 15-20 al Qaeda terrorists, trained in Pakistan and Algeria to hijack and blow up airliners, deployed secretly in at least six European and Middle East countries in early July. They are standing ready to carry out multiple terrorist attacks.

The terrorists are believed to have landed in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey and Egypt.

The dates to watch, local authorities were warned, were July 4, July 7, the fourth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks on the British transport system in which 52 people died, and July 8-9, when the G8 summit meets in the Italian town of L’Aqila. US president Barack Obama will fly in from talks with Russian leaders in Moscow.

Al Qaeda planners, say the Western sources, know it is extremely hard to break through the massive security cordons protecting summit leaders. They are therefore planning to hijack passenger planes of airlines belonging to the targeted states and blow them up in mid-air.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report the first specific red alert on Saturday, July 4, referred to the possible hijack of Turkish Airways planes taking of from Turkish airports for US destinations or Tel Aviv. Special precautionary measures were put in place at both ends of their routes.

The alert is still in force.

[Oorang]

NYPD gets radiation detectors to search for bombs
July 05, 2009

NEW YORK — The US Department of Homeland Security has given three state-of-the-art radiation detectors to the New York Police Department to patrol city streets in search of dirty bombs and other nuclear threats. The 450,000-dollar worth Advanced Spectroscopic Portal Monitors will be placed in three SUVs on Wednesday at entrances to tunnels, bridges and tollbooths, the Daily News reports.

The detectors had been purchased by DHS' National Nuclear Detection Office for use at the nation's ports, but officials concluded they weren't strong enough to penetrate ship containers, police sources said. Officials believe they will be able to detect radioactive isotopes emanating from a dirty bomb in the back of a car. "We think they'll be useful getting hits on vehicles on the road," a NYPD official said.

Excerpted

http://www.policeone.com/police-technology/articles/1852913-NYPD-gets-radiation-detectors-to-search-for-bombs/

25 vehicles fitted with explosives enter major cities (Pakistan)
Tuesday, July 07, 2009

LAHORE: Twenty-five explosive-laden vehicles have reportedly entered various major cities of the country, as the intelligence services launched search operations across all four provinces, a private TV channel reported on Monday.

According to the channel, the vehicles could target sensitive government installments and other important buildings. The channel cited a notification issued by the Interior Ministry stating that suicide bombers along with the vehicles had entered Peshawar, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Quetta and Karachi.

Excerpted

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\07\07\story_7-7-2009_pg1_4

[Rushmore Rocks]

Many on FR ridicule Debka, but more often than not, they are spot on. I’ve been a bit concerned about the G8 Summit. Now, even more so.

[Rushmore Rocks]

And I’m ALWAYS ceoncerned about Pakistan.

Thanks for the ping.

[Cindy]

Duly noted...thanks Oorang.

[Oorang]

German charged with al-Qaida membership for allegedly procuring equipment, funds
July 7, 09

BERLIN — A German man of Turkish heritage has been charged with membership in al-Qaida on allegations that he helped procure equipment and funds for the terrorist group, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Sermet I., 31, whose last name was not given in line with German privacy laws, was charged with membership in a foreign terrorist organization and violating German export laws. He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. The suspect's attorney was on vacation and could not be reached for comment. A trial has not yet been scheduled.

Sermet I. was arrested Feb. 6 at Stuttgart airport as he entered the country and was charged June 19, prosecutors said. They did not say where he was travelling from. He is alleged to have supplied range finders and other items with possible military applications, along with cash, to Aleem N., a German of Pakistani origin who was arrested in Germany in February 2008. Aleem N. is then accused of then having transported the equipment and money to al-Qaida contacts in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Excerpted

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hPNyC-0jVFWICHkg4eBThjbb2eGg

[callmejoe]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1890027/posts?page=271#271

[Oorang]

From your link...U.S. officials said that an al Qaeda-connected cell in southwest Germany had been under 24-hour surveillance since the beginning of the year after some of its members were detected conducting surveillance on the headquarters of the U.S. European Command at Patch Barracks, near Stuttgart. The cell, officials said, is made up of members of the Islamic Jihad Group, a violent terrorist organization based in Uzbekistan. .

Thanks much for the reminder Joe. Quite handy that you could find your links from two years ago so quickly. I wish I could :-)

[callmejoe]

Thanks. But sometimes I’d trade an ability to dig up old links or obscure news trivia for an end to forgetting where I put my keys, getting to the grocery store and then forgetting half the list I had memorized, then rolling out of the store realizing I forgot where I parked the car.

Hoping everybody in Germany stays safe. But this might be like 2001 where we think it is coming from one direction and we get hit from the other. The Hamburg cell was in Germany but it migrated here.

Another summer 2001 parallel . . .

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/warnings/index.html#codered

(1-19 = 11/9?)

Code Red was a worm with multiple variants that first appeared in July 2001 and ultimately affected nearly 300,000 computers in the U.S. Exploiting a hole in Microsoft’s IIS Web servers, it was time sensitive based on the date: From days 1-19 of the month the worm would propagate; from days 20-27 it would launch a denial of service attack against a particular site, and from day 27 through the end of the month the worm would “sleep,” dormant in the computer. In Code Red’s first variation, the affected computers were programmed to launch a denial of service attack against the White House Web site at a certain date and time. If the assault worked, the hundreds of thousands of pings would have overwhelmed the Internet in nanoseconds. Richard Clarke, the president’s adviser for cyberspace security, worked with the nation’s Internet providers to thwart the attack by blocking traffic to the White House site. Other Web sites were shut down, however, and replaced by a message that read “Hacked by Chinese.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/interviews/dick.html

The Nimda attack. How did you hear about it, what was it about? What is the significance?

Nimda was actually more significant, but Nimda frankly didn’t get media attention, mainly because Nimda occurred right after Sept. 11. It was another example of the public/private sector cooperation. I was the director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. I was up to my neck in responding to the events of Sept. 11 through the command post there at the headquarters. Then right on top of that, the Nimda virus struck.

Fortunately, we had built the kind of communication with the private sector that we were sharing information, pushing information out to the NIPC as to what the corrective actions were. Even with all of that, it proliferated across the world at a far greater rate than Code Red did. It rattled the Internet. But again, demonstrated the flexibility of the Internet — it didn’t come down, but it rattled significantly. It caused billions of dollars of damage, and we still don’t know who proliferated that virus.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56709E20090709

South Korea, U.S. Web sites down for 3rd day on attack
Wed Jul 8, 2009 11:34pm EDT

[WestCoastGal]

I agree, and thanks for the pings and info.

[Oorang]

Taliban may hijack airplanes to repeat 9/11, warns Pak intelligence
July 9, 2009

Lahore - Pakistan intelligence authorities have warned that the Taliban may hijack airplanes to carry out a terror strike similar to 9/11. Quoting from an intelligence report, a private television channel said that some detained Taliban operatives have revealed that their associates often use commercial airlines operating in the country to travel from place to another, and are on the look out to hijack the airliners to repeat the September 11, 2001 incident.

Intelligence agencies have also asked the concerned authorities to implement certain fundamental changes in the security procedures for commercial airliners to ensure safety of passengers and avoid any untoward incident, The Daily Times reports. Airplanes have become more susceptible to be used for terror strikes ever since the 9/11 incident when four commercial aircrafts of a US airliner were hijacked by Al-Qaeda and deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon building in Washington.

http://www.aniin.com/v_Details.asp?StoryID=9724

Egypt nabs Palestinian-led terror cell
Jul 9, 2009

Egyptian authorities have arrested 25 al-Qaida-linked terrorists on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships crossing the Suez Canal. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said the new cell was led by a Palestinian and included 24 Egyptians, mostly engineers and technicians. They planned to use mobile phones to detonate explosives against ships crossing the Canal, the statement said.

The group learned how to make car bombs through communicating with al-Qaida terrorists on jihadi Web sites, according to an Interior Ministry statement. The detainees confessed to funding their activities through contributions from Islamic charities abroad and in one case robbed a jewelry store and murdered its Coptic Christian owner.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443766207&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[Rushmore Rocks]

Thanks, O. I’ve noticed in the past year or so, (and we travel a lot with our business.) that airline security has been rather lax. I fear that they don’t remember 9/11. Just last month, on a trip to South America, I got through security with a bottle of water (a no-no) and they didn’t even make me turn on my laptop computer.(another no-no.).....just made me take off my shoes and expose my bunions for all to see! IMHO, TSA is a joke. Several years ago, the security was so tight that I almost started to enjoy the “pat-downs”.

[Velveeta]

***TM Ping***

Ayman Al-Zawahiri Appeals to Pakistanis to Wage Jihad: American Crusader Interference Endangers Pakistan; If Infidel Enemy Enters a Muslim Country, All Inhabitants Must Mobilize For Jihad – Which Can Motivate Umma to Establish Caliphate

The following is the transcript of an audio message by Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. In it, Al-Zawahiri states that Pakistan is greatly endangered by the U.S., that Muslims are being targeted by a new Crusade, “from Algeria to East Turkistan and from Somalia to Chechnya - and Pakistan... is at the heart of that,” and that “the only hope of saving Pakistan from this disastrous fate is Jihad.” He adds that the Islamic Jihad, which “the West labels as Islamic terrorism,” is capable of “motivating and mobilizing the Muslim umma to liberate its occupied territories, reclaim its stolen resources, get rid of its corrupt, secular, and tyrannical regimes, and establish its caliphate.” The message was posted on the Internet on July 15, 2009.

To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2182.htm.

To view the full report, visit http://www.memrijttm.org/content/en/report.htm?report=3421&param=APT.

To read the report or view this clip you must be a member of the Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor Project (JTTM). To register as a JTTM subscriber, visit http://subscriptions.memri.org/content/en/member_registr_jttm.htm.

[SlowBoat407]

Still here. Thanks for the ping.

[Velveeta]

[Velveeta]

7/15/2009 Zawahiri English text:

My Muslim brothers and sisters in Pakistan,

I believe that every honest and sincere Muslim in Pakistan should seriously contemplate – at this moment – Pakistan’s present state and expected future, because the blatant American Crusader interference in Pakistan’s affairs, or to be precise, the American Crusader manipulation of Pakistan’s destiny, has reached such an extent that it now poses a grave danger to Pakistan’s future and very existence.

It is evident that Pakistan is deeply involved in a fierce internal struggle between two forces.

The first one represents the Islamic values of and is defending the dignity and independence of the Muslim Ummah; confronting – with strength and courage – the American aggression against Pakistan and Afghanistan; and defeating the traitors who transgress against the blood, honor and dignity of the Muslims for the sake of the invading and aggressive Crusader forces. It also symbolizes the Muslim Ummah’s rejection of all forms of external aggression, occupation of its territories, theft of its resources and interference in its affairs. This force is also persisting in and carrying on the long and continuing struggle of the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent to establish Pakistan as a political entity standing as a citadel of Islam in the subcontinent: an entity ruled by Shariat as the supreme undisputed law and realizing by offering shelter and support to Muslims victimized by the aggressive anti-Islamic forces; and by abstaining from providing any form of cooperation, help or support to the infidels against Muslims. This force is the real hope for achieving the goal of establishing a true Pakistan, a goal which, after sixty years of separation from India, has yet to be achieved.

The second force comprises a clique of corrupt politicians and a junta of military officers who are fighting to remain on the American pay list by employing Pakistan’s entire military and all its resources in the American Crusade against Islam, and turning Pakistan’s military and security organizations into hunting dogs in the modern Crusade.

continues at link courtesy of Casey at IH:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90826