PA To Start Sex-Offender Court; DA Seeks GPS Tracking

FBI Says It Thwarts Terrorist Bombing In Oregon

The FBI says it thwarted an attempted terrorist bombing in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square before the city's annual tree-lighting Friday night, reports The Oregonian.  A Somali-born U.S. citizen, thinking he was going to ignite a bomb, drove a van to the corner of the square and attempted to detonate it. However, the supposed explosive was a dummy that FBI operatives supplied to him.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested 18 minutes before the tree lighting was to occur, on an accusation of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. The arrest was the culmination of a long-term undercover operation, during which Mohamud had been monitored for months as his alleged bomb plot developed. "The threat was very real," said Oregon's FBI agent in charge Arthur Balizan. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale."

"To Walk the Earth in Safety"

The State Department released their annual report, "To Walk the Earth in Safety," about its worldwide weapons eradication program in mine clearance and destruction assistance. Th U.S. works in 32 countries to destroy weapons, as well as implement programs to assist conflict survivors and inform area residents of potential risks from unexploded munitions.

Read the report here.

Use The Crime Report for more information on international criminal justice.

FBI Only Justice Department Agency Said Ready For Mass Terror Attack

The FBI appears to be ready for a chemical, biological or radiological terrorist attack, but the rest of the Justice Department "is not prepared," according to a blistering audit from the department's inspector general reported by the Washington Post. IG Glenn Fine singled out the department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for particular scorn, suggesting that the bureau was only dimly aware that it had been designated Justice's "lead coordinator" in responding to an attack with weapons of mass destruction.

Small-Scale Terrorism Like NYC Case Harder To Head Off

The weekend car-bomb attempt in New York City's Times Square is the latest in a series of plots against U.S. targets that experts say may indicate a shift to small-scale strikes that are harder to head off, reports the Wall Street Journal. Over the past year, at least eight times, people linked to radical Islamic thought attempted or carried out attacks on targets in the U.S. The list includes the failed Christmas Day bombing on a Detroit-bound airliner, the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood in Texas, three bomb plots foiled by the FBI last September, and earlier plots broken up last spring and summer.

The biggest challenge for law-enforcement is that small groups or lone operators may have few formal connections with al Qaeda or other large terrorist organizations, Islamic or otherwise; they simply sympathize with such groups' larger aims. That makes it harder to spot plots through intercepted communications or other methods in early stages. "The more people are out there trying, the greater the chances one of them will get through," said Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security now heading the Washington, D.C.-based security firm Chertoff Group. It is unclear whether the Times Square plot had links to Islamic or domestic extremism.

Terror Plot Figure Made Notes On Bombmaking

The central figure in a widening inquiry into a possible plot to detonate explosives in the U.S. had been trained in weapons and explosives in Pakistan and had made nine pages of handwritten notes on how to make and handle bombs, the New York Times reports. Court papers released after the arrests in Colorado of Najibullah Zazi and his father, as well as that of an imam in New York City, showed that during a search of the younger Zazi’s rental car on Sept. 11, agents found a laptop computer containing an image of the notes.

"It is important to note that we have no specific information regarding the timing, location, or target of any planned attack,” said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security. Veteran counterterrorism officials are convinced the plot was potentially serious, based largely on their emerging suspicions about Zazi, his training in explosives, his travel to Pakistan tribal areas where Al Qaeda is influential, and the apparent ease of his movements within the U.S.

Bomb Parts Get Past U.S. Building Security

Investigators smuggled bomb parts through checkpoints at 10 federal buildings as part of a test that showed gaping holes in security caused by inattentive and poorly trained guards, says a Government Accountability Office study reported by National Public Radio. ompanied Senate testimony Wednesday. The GAO report, citing substantial security vulnerabilities in training for guards, said components for an improvised explosive device passed through security checkpoints at facilities including congressional offices as well as agencies such as the Departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said yesterday in a hearing on the subject that the lapses were "the broadest indictment of a federal agency I have ever heard." "This is really serious stuff," he added. Gary Schenkel, director of the Federal Protective Service, told senators that the report "caused us all grave concern" and that it was "purely a lack of oversight on our part."

Terrorism

As a topic of research and training expertise, terrorism has boomed since Sept. 11, 2001. Not coincidentally, the spigot of both government and private funding has been flowing wide open into the field. Thousands of potential sources now claim expertise in terrorism, from academics to think tanks to expert witnesses to for-profit firms that hawk anti-terrorism law enforcement or consumer products. (A Stanford University sociologist put together a research paper on the burgeoning subject—not terrorism, but terrorism experts: “The Rise of the Terrorism Expert: The Emergence of a New Field of Expertise.”) As always, journalists should be aware of the motivations of potential sources. This source list includes the RAND Corporation, the vast California-based nonprofit has one of the world’s largest and most venerable terrorism research divisions, with dozens of experts on staff who can speak to a number of terrorism-related topics. It might be a good place to start in the non-government sector.