Terrorism News Articles

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The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over. By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, [President Bush] and his administration have long since become comedy fodder. June's scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a "full ground war" and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots. Dick Cheney...will always be the man who told us that Iraqis would greet our troops as liberators and that the insurgency was in its last throes in May 2005. The administration's constant refrain that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terror is not only false but has now also backfired politically: only 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism. As its fifth anniversary arrives, 9/11 itself has been dwarfed by the mayhem in Iraq, where more civilians are now killed per month than died in the attack on America. This country remains a country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and...even the center right. It's hard to ignore the tragic reality that...botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11.

Looking for signs of "stress, fear and deception" among the hundreds of passengers shuffling past him at Orlando International Airport one day last month, security screener Edgar Medina immediately focused on four casually dressed men trying to catch a flight to Minneapolis. One of the men, in particular, was giving obvious signs of trying to hide something, Medina said. After obtaining the passengers' ID cards and boarding passes, the Transportation Security Administration officer quickly determined the men were illegal immigrants traveling with fake Florida driver's licenses. They were detained. The otherwise mundane arrests Aug. 13 illustrated an increasingly popular tactic in the government's effort to fight terrorism: detecting lawbreakers or potential terrorists by their behavior. The TSA has embraced the strategy, training 600 of its screeners ... in detection techniques. The TSA's teams are the most publicly acknowledged effort by the government or the private sector to come up with strategies and technology to detect lawbreakers or terrorists before they commit a crime. Other technologies under development or being deployed include machines that detect stress in voices and software that scans video images to match the faces of passengers with those of known terrorists. The government is testing other technology that can see through clothing with ... electromagnetic waves. TSA's growing reliance on detecting behavior and the close study of passengers' expressions concerns civil liberties groups and members of Congress. "The problem is behavioral characteristics will be found where you look for them," said John Reinstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

Anyone who follows technology or military affairs has heard the predictions for more than a decade. Cyberwar is coming. Although the long-announced, long-awaited computer-based conflict has yet to occur, the forecast grows more ominous with every telling: an onslaught is brought by a warring nation, backed by its brains and computing resources; banks and other businesses in the enemy states are destroyed; governments grind to a halt; telephones disconnect. Industrial remote-control technologies known as Scada systems, for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition ... allow remote monitoring and control of operations like manufacturing production lines and civil works projects like dams. So security experts envision terrorists at a keyboard remotely shutting down factory floors or opening a dam’s floodgates to devastate cities downstream. But how bad would a cyberwar really be — especially when compared with the blood-and-guts genuine article? And is there really a chance it would happen at all? Whatever the answer, governments are readying themselves for the Big One. The United States is arming up. Robert Elder, commander of the Air Force Cyberspace Command, told reporters ... that his newly formed command, which defends military data, communications and control networks, is learning how to disable an opponent’s computer networks and crash its databases. “We want to go in and knock them out in the first round,” he said, as reported on Military.com.

The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policy makers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal. At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. When interrogators engage in waterboarding, prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning. One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Another section would apply the legislation retroactively. The initiative is "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations." Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration."

The House, displaying a foreign affairs solidarity lacking on issues like Iraq, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution, which was passed on a 410-8 vote, also condemns enemies of the Jewish state. House Republican leader John Boehner cited Israel's "unique relationship" with the United States as a reason for his colleagues to swiftly go on record supporting Israel in the latest flare-up of violence in the Mideast. Yet as Republican and Democratic leaders rally behind the measure in rare bipartisan fashion, a handful of lawmakers have quietly expressed reservations that the resolution was too much the result of a powerful lobbying force and attempts to court Jewish voters.

Note: It's interesting to note that very few major media picked up this revealing story.

Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on Wednesday warned that the global battle for control of energy resources could become the modern equivalent of the 19th century "great game" the conflict between the UK and Tsarist Russia for supremacy in central Asia. "The great game is developing again," he told a meeting of the US-India Business Council. "The amount of energy is finite, up to now in relation to demand, and competition for access to energy can become the life and death for many societies. It would be ironic if the direction of pipelines and locations become the modern equivalent of the colonial disputes of the 19th century." The two nuclear superpowers, the US and Soviet Union, navigated the cold war because they made "the same calculations", Mr Kissinger said. "When nuclear weapons spread to 30 or 40 countries and each conducts a calculation, with less experience and different value systems, we will have a world of permanent imminent catastrophe."

Note: Here is one of the key power players, openly promoting their plan: keep people polarized and in a state of perpetual fear (you must believe the world is in a state of permanent imminent catastrophe). For an excellent summary of the plans of the power elite and what we can do about it, click here.

The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues. Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants. In the current lawsuit, Jose Padilla, now serving a 17-year sentence for conspiring to aid Islamic extremist groups, accuses Yoo of devising legal theories that justified what he claims was his illegal detention and abusive interrogation. The Justice Department represented Yoo until June, when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the suit could proceed. The department then bowed out, citing unspecified conflicts, and was replaced by a government-paid private lawyer. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was ... held for three years and eight months in a Navy brig, where, according to his suit, he was subjected to sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and stress positions, kept for lengthy periods in darkness and blinding light, and threatened with death to himself and his family.

Note: For lots more on government attacks on civil liberties, click here.

The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department records. The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations. Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006. That number marks the peak of generally steady increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI. The data "raise troubling questions about the bureau's investigation of criminal matters involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists," the report said. It noted that prosecutions in traditional FBI investigations since 2001—including drug cases, white collar crimes and organized crimes—have decreased while the number of agents and other employees has risen. "So with more special agents, many more intelligence analysts, and many fewer prosecutions the question must be asked: What is the FBI doing?" the report said.

Note: With the current administration's frequent claims to be tough on terrorism, does this make any sense? Could it be that some of the accused are being protected from prosecution?

If we believe what we see in the media, the world is on fire. The impression we get is that conflicts are increasing all around the globe while the stockpile of deadly weapons constantly expands. All this is very troubling—and quite untrue. The exhaustive Human Security Report offers a very different picture of our world. The 2005 report finds clear evidence that the world is becoming a more peaceful place. Myth 1: War is spreading. Yes, the number of armed conflicts increased sharply after World War II, but has just as sharply declined since 1991. In the last 15 years...the number of armed conflicts and wars actually fell at least 40 percent. The number of genocides and political murders declined by no less than 80 percent. In 1950, the average conflict claimed the lives of 38,000 people, while in 2002 that figure was 600, a decline of 98 percent. Myth 2: The weapons arsenal is increasing. International arms trade fell 33 percent between 1990 and 2000, and as a percentage of the value of the world economy, defence spending declined from 4.2 to 2.7 percent. Myth 3: Civilians are the vast majority of war victims. In the most recent wars, civilians account for somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of deaths. Myth 4: Women are the primary victims of war. War continues to be waged by men, against men. Ninety percent of the victims are men. Myth 5: Terrorism is the biggest threat in the world. Over the past 30 years, an average of slightly less than 3,000 people have died at the hands of terrorists each year. The chance of being a victim of terrorism remains exceptionally small. Between alleged and real threats, there is often little correlation.

60 Minutes, in collaboration with the National Security News Service, has obtained the secret list used to screen airline passengers for terrorists and discovered it includes names of people not likely to cause terror, including the president of Bolivia, people who are dead and names so common, they are shared by thousands of innocent fliers. The "data dump" of names from the files of several government agencies, including the CIA, fed into the computer compiling the list contained many unlikely terrorists. These include...Nabih Berri, Lebanon's parliamentary speaker, and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. It also includes the names of 14 of the 19 dead 9/11 hijackers. But the names of some of the most dangerous living terrorists or suspects are kept off the list. The 11 British suspects recently charged with plotting to blow up airliners with liquid explosives were not on it, despite the fact they were under surveillance for more than a year. Even if the list is made more accurate, it won't help thousands of innocent travelers who share a common name on the list and who get detained, sometimes for hours, when they attempt to fly. Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson are some of those names.

CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing. The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The anxieties stem partly from public controversy about a system of secret CIA prisons in which detainees were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including temperature extremes and simulated drowning. The White House contends the methods were legal, but some CIA officers have worried privately that they may have violated international law. Bush last week called for Congress to approve legislation drafted by the White House that would exempt CIA officers and other federal civilian officials from prosecution for humiliating and degrading terrorism suspects. Agency officials said that interest has been stoked over the years by the $2 million legal bill incurred by CIA officer Clair George before his 1992 conviction for lying to Congress about the Iran-contra arms sales; by the Justice Department's lengthy investigation of CIA officers for allegedly lying to Congress about the agency's role in shooting down a civilian aircraft in 2001 in Peru; and by other events. One former intelligence official said CIA officers have recently expressed concern that lawsuits will erupt if details of the agency's internal probe of wrongdoing related to the September 2001 attacks become public.

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday. The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration. Israel's request for expedited delivery of the satellite and laser-guided bombs was described as unusual by some military officers, and as an indication that Israel still had a long list of targets in Lebanon to strike. The new American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it only after being promised anonymity. Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel.

The latest "let's scare everyone" campaign is in full swing now, because the president's approval ratings go up every time the threat level reaches red. With the enthusiastic cooperation of the media, the government has managed to convince us that we are surrounded on every side by crazed bomb throwers and that we must at all times be vigilant and allow the government "to do its job," which is code for "anything it wants." Here's a headline from the Houston Chronicle: "Latest terror scares show airport threat lingers." That's like saying, "Latest false alarms show fire threat lingers." Since the object of terrorism is to spread terror, the "latest terror scares" demonstrate only that the government is abetting the work of terrorists. Here's my favorite story, as reported by the Associated Press: "A United Airlines flight...was delayed because a small boy said something inappropriate, according to a government official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. 'He didn't want to fly,' the official said." I hope that small boys do not hear about this. Mad at Mommy? You can turn her airplane around! Listen to the people interviewed at airports. "It's worth it," they say, patiently standing in line. Is it worth it to, say, raise taxes to pay for better veterans benefits? Maybe it's easier to be afraid. Maybe it's easier to blame the shadowy forces of international terrorism for everything that's scary or evil or mean. Maybe it's easier than saying that poverty has killed more people than the terrorists have; that preventable diseases have killed more children than the terrorists have; that the rights we don't fight for are the rights we lose.

In 2002, [a] German-born molecular geneticist startled the scientific world by creating the first live, fully artificial virus in the lab. It was a variation of the bug that causes polio. The virus was made wholly from nonliving parts, using equipment and chemicals on hand. The most crucial part, the genetic code, was picked up for free on the Internet. The new technology opens the door to new tools for defeating disease and saving lives. But today, in hundreds of labs worldwide, it is also possible to transform common intestinal microbes into killers. Or to resurrect bygone killers, such the 1918 influenza. New techniques...allow the creation of synthetic viruses in mere days. Hardware unveiled last year by a Harvard genetics professor can churn out synthetic genes by the thousands, for a few pennies each. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declined so far to police the booming gene-synthesis industry. "It would be possible -- fully legal -- for a person to produce full-length 1918 influenza virus or Ebola virus genomes," said Richard H. Ebright, a biochemist and professor at Rutgers University. "It is also possible to advertise and to sell the product." Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government budgets nearly $8 billion annually -- an 18-fold increase since 2001 -- for the defense of civilians against biological attack. Billions have been spent to develop and stockpile new drugs, most of them each tied to a single, well-known bioterrorism threat, such as anthrax. If successful, [each] drug is a solution for just one disease threat out of a list that is rapidly expanding to include man-made varieties.

Note: The government research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, has been secretly developing this technology for decades. For serious questions on the role of secret government projects in deadly disease creation and dissemination, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/resources#emerging or click here.

The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN. The US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient. The command force in Iraq...and the overseeing US general, had claimed "not to have ... received any weapons from Bosnia." A Nato official.. told Amnesty: "There is no tracking mechanism to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands." The Moldovan air firm which flew the cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm, Aerocom, [was] named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago. The Pentagon commissioned the US security firms Taos and CACI - which is known for its involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq - to orchestrate the arms purchases and shipments.

Indonesian police or military officers may have played a role in the 2002 Bali bombing, the country's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid says. In an interview with SBS's Dateline program, on the third anniversary of the bombing that killed 202 people, Mr Wahid says he has grave concerns about links between Indonesian authorities and terrorist groups. While he believed terrorists were involved in planting one of the Kuta night club bombs, the second, which destroyed Bali's Sari Club, had been organised by authorities. Asked who he thought planted the second bomb, Mr Wahid said: "The orders...came from within our armed forces not from the fundamentalist people." Timsar Zubil, who set off three bombs in Sumatra in 1978, told the program intelligence agents had given his group a provocative name - Komando Jihad - and encouraged members to commit illegal acts. "We may have deliberately been allowed to grow," he said. Another terrorism expert, George Aditjondro, said a bombing in May this year that killed 23 people...had been organised by senior military and police officers.

Note: This information strengthens the whistleblower testimony of WantToKnow.info founder Fred Burks in a Jakarta terror trial last January reported in the international press. For more, click here.

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas. "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war." [Watch video of Robertson's comments at link above] Robertson, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, called Chavez "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly." "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability." Robertson accused Chavez, a left-wing populist with close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of trying to make Venezuela "a launching pad for Communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent." "This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen," he said.

Note: If a prominent Muslim calls for the assassination of a Western leader, he is almost certain to be labeled a terrorist and placed on the most wanted list.

President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged previously secret CIA prisons around the world. The announcement from Bush was the first time the administration had acknowledged the existence of CIA prisons, which have been a source of friction between Washington and some allies in Europe. European Union lawmakers said the CIA was conducting clandestine flights in Europe to take terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities. When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections. Former CIA officials said Mr Bush's hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going.

The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland. The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. "These are the stakes," the ad concludes. "Vote November 7." The ad displays an array of quotes from bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, that include bin Laden's Dec. 26, 2001 vow that "what is yet to come will be even greater." The ad also cites al-Zawahri's claim to have obtained "some suitcase bombs," followed by a scene that appears to show a nuclear explosion. Despite al-Zawahri's claim, portable nuclear devices are believed to be particularly difficult to produce and elusive to rogue regimes and terror groups.

Note: Promoting fear is the easiest way to cause people to feel powerless and surrender their freedoms and tax dollars to those in power. Click here for more.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.