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by wintler2 » Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:19 am
by 82_28 » Sun Nov 07, 2010 8:02 am
By MATT APUZZO, EILEEN SULLIVAN and DAVID RISING
The Associated Press
The woman stepped off Hadda Street into a pair of courier offices in Yemen's capital. In FedEx and UPS storefronts tucked along shopping centers and travel agencies in San'a, she mailed two Hewlett-Packard printers to the United States.
She used a fake name, address and phone number. She paid in cash and then disappeared.
Hidden inside each printer was a bomb powerful enough to down an airplane.
Authorities believe it was the most sophisticated effort yet by al-Qaida in Yemen to strike inside the U.S. Though details are still emerging, a senior U.S. official said evidence points to a plot to blow up cargo planes inside the U.S., either on runways or over American cities.
Alerted to the plot by Saudi intelligence, security officials chased the two packages across five countries, trying frantically during the next two days to prevent an explosion that could have come at any moment.
Several times, the explosive packages were in plain sight. Twice, a bomb was aboard a passenger plane. Once, authorities were just minutes too late to stop a cargo jet with a bomb from departing for its next destination.
The pursuit — recounted by officials in the U.S., Britain, Yemen, Germany and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) — shows that even when the world's counterterrorism systems work, preventing an attack is often a terrifyingly close ordeal.
Upgraded devices
For al-Qaida, the two bombs were a significant upgrade over the small device that failed to detonate inside a passenger's underwear on a U.S.-bound jet last Christmas. This time, the bombers packed four times the explosives.
Instead of relying on a suicide bomber to ignite the fuse, the bomb maker wired these devices to explode using the alarm function of two cellphones. The phones were wired to syringes full of lead azide, a powder that takes only a small electric charge to explode.
The printer cartridges were filled with PETN, an industrial explosive that, when X-rayed, would resemble the cartridge's ink powder. Used in heavy construction, PETN is stable enough to endure the jostling of a trans-Atlantic flight but extremely volatile if triggered by a small explosion.
Bomb experts say the cellphone alarm probably would have started a series of events that would trigger the PETN.
U.S. counterterrorism officials believe it was the work of al-Qaida's master bomb maker in Yemen, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri
UPS and FedEx employees screened the packages in Yemen, according to two U.S. officials who, like most people interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity.
In Yemen, cargo screening is done manually, one official said. Employees looked at the contents of the packages but never took the printers apart.
Both packages were cleared for delivery.
It was a breakdown in the first line of defense in the cargo system. The U.S. doesn't inspect international packages until they arrive, relying instead on shipping companies to do the screening.
The addresses on the packages were outdated locations for two Chicago synagogues. The recipients were figures from the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, historic episodes in which Christians persecuted Muslims.
For these reasons, officials believe al-Qaida never intended the bombs to be delivered and hoped instead for an airplane explosion.
The packages were dropped off Wednesday, Oct. 27. The FedEx bomb was loaded aboard a passenger jet, a Qatar Airways plane that seats 144.
It left Yemen on Oct. 28, for Doha, Qatar. The UPS bomb left Yemen that same evening, headed to Cologne, Germany.
Saudis tip off CIA
As Thursday evening turned to Friday morning in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the CIA station received an urgent call from Saudi intelligence. Two bombs were being shipped from Yemen, bound for the United States. One was UPS, the other FedEx, and the Saudis had the tracking numbers.
Some details about the tip were withheld at the request of intelligence and administration officials who said revealing them would jeopardize national security.
A senior CIA official in Riyadh relayed the tip to the agency's headquarters in Virginia, where it was early Thursday evening.
CIA officials called the White House, and homeland-security adviser John Brennan briefed President Obama, who was in his living quarters.
The FBI called FedEx and UPS, which had participated in a government terrorism drill in August. The exercise: a homemade bomb slipped onto a cargo plane.
U.S. and Saudi authorities put Europe on alert. Britain's intelligence division, MI6, also received a tip through its office in Yemen.
U.S. authorities had been monitoring steady intelligence on a possible attack like this since early September, a U.S. official said. In early October, the U.S. received a general tip from the Saudis about a possible al-Qaida effort to down airplanes, intelligence officials said.
Also in late September, authorities intercepted a package from Yemen containing papers, books and other items sent to a Chicago-area Muslim bookstore, a senior U.S. official said. At the time, counterterrorism officials thought perhaps the package included coded messages or was intended to set up contact with allies in Chicago, the official said.
Now, investigators believe al-Qaida just wanted to track the package and see how long it took to get into the U.S., so it could time its bombs more effectively.
The official did not identify the bookstore, but FBI and IRS investigators have recently taken an interest in IQRA International Educational Foundation, a nonprofit Islamic foundation that runs a Chicago-area bookstore.
Financial manager Wahaj Ahmed said last week that IRS auditors showed up about a month ago to inspect the books. That was around the time the group received a FedEx envelope from a company wanting to do business with IQRA.
The company was based in Yemen, he said.
The FBI arrived a few days ago, asking questions about the envelope.
"They said anything emanating from that area, they were tracking it," Ahmed said.
Rush to stop plane
Officials in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, summoned the local liaison for Germany's Federal Criminal Police to discuss the bombs.
When the meeting began, a senior German official said, it was 1:34 a.m. Friday in Germany and the UPS bomb was sitting at the airport in Cologne, waiting to leave for England.
The liaison officer called Germany and authorities rushed to stop the plane. At 2:40 a.m., police ordered that the package could not leave the country.
It was too late.The cargo plane had taken off 36 minutes earlier.
There had never been a chance to spot the bomb in Germany. UPS is among several "safe" companies, German officials said, so the package wasn't inspected.
The plane was on its way to central England. On the ground, officials didn't know for sure whether a bomb was on board, and if so, when it would go off.
It is a 90-minute flight from Cologne to East Midlands, England.
Intelligence briefed
At the White House, Brennan began calling U.S. intelligence leaders to brief them.
The FBI called Jewish organizations in the Chicago area, a U.S. official said, and placed two locations under surveillance.
When the UPS plane landed in England, it was just after 10 p.m. Thursday in Washington and 3 a.m. Friday in England. The bombs had begun their journey more than 24 hours earlier and neither had been found.
British investigators were waiting for the plane, tipped off by Saudi, U.S. and German officials. Leicestershire police set up a security perimeter and pulled the package off the plane.
Police searched the plane, and even the printer, for hours but found nothing.
Pauline Neville-Jones, British minister of state security, was briefed, and Brennan spoke with British Deputy Security Adviser Ollie Robbins. At 10 a.m. local time, after nearly seven hours of searching, police concluded there was no explosive.
The UPS plane was cleared for takeoff to Philadelphia, and on to Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Dubai
While British police were searching the UPS package, the FedEx bomb arrived in Dubai aboard a passenger plane from Qatar, where it had spent the night.(ed. stupid, stupid writing)
Dubai police, having been tipped off, discovered the bomb shortly after it arrived, according to a U.A.E. official security source.
As investigators in Dubai got the first look at al-Qaida's deadly device, the sun was coming up Friday morning in Washington.
The U.S. banned all inbound cargo from Yemen. (how much cargo does the US get from Yemen as it is?)
At 8:30 a.m. in Washington, the government alerted all cargo carriers: Someone is trying to ship explosives from Yemen into the U.S., and we don't know how many there are.
One more look
In England, police had given the all-clear for the plane to take off. But before it could leave for Philadelphia, British officials were told about the discovery in Dubai and were urged to look again.
Brennan and Robbins spoke by phone a second time, and Dubai officials told British police by phone exactly how to locate the bomb.
At 2 p.m. local time, nearly 12 hours after the UPS bomb arrived in England, police put the security perimeter back in place and resumed the search.
Brennan and Robbins talked a third time, then Brennan called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a crucial but sometimes unreliable ally in the U.S.-led effort to wipe out al-Qaida.
At the White House, the plot was a centerpiece of Obama's morning security briefing.
Exactly when police in England discovered the bomb remains unclear, but authorities there removed the security perimeter and left the airport at 5:30 p.m. local time.
By then the search was on for all packages coming out of Yemen. FBI and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials boarded cargo planes in Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., on Friday, pulling out packages and searching for bombs.
TSA said the searches were done "out of an abundance of caution." But at the White House and in capitals around the world, the question was more urgent. Are there more bombs?
Jewish leaders alerted
Homeland Security officials alerted Jewish leaders around the country, through what's known as the Secure Community Network, that synagogues should be on the lookout for suspicious packages from Yemen.
UPS, FedEx and Mideast-based shipper Aramex halted all shipments out of Yemen.
As Obama prepared to address the nation, two U.S. fighter jets escorted Emirates Flight 201 into New York. The flight was from Dubai, and investigators feared packages from Yemen may have been on board.
Obama called the plot a "credible terrorist threat against our country." Though he stopped short of blaming al-Qaida in Yemen, he singled out the group and pledged again to destroy it.
That night, in an unusual move, Brennan released a statement thanking Saudi Arabia for a tip that "helped underscore the imminence of the threat emanating from Yemen."
Tech-smart terrorism
Al-Qaida in Yemen is easily the most tech-savvy of al-Qaida's affiliate groups. So, intelligence officials monitored jihadist websites for days, waiting for some claim of responsibility.
Al-Qaida in Yemen sent word Friday on a jihadist website that it had been behind the plot.
"Our advanced explosives give us the opportunity to detonate them in the air or after they have reached their final target, and they are designed to bypass all detection devices," the statement said.
Even though the bombs never exploded, al-Qaida declared itself victorious for slipping its bombs past security.
It pledged there would more bombs, on more planes.
by Dradin Kastell » Sun Nov 07, 2010 10:58 am
AL QAEDA PLANS TERROR OUTRAGE FOR CHRISTMAS
Sunday November 7,2010
By James Fielding: Exclusive
AL QAEDA'S chief bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri is understood to be planting explosives in gifts bound for Britain, Europe and the US. They would be timed to explode once the toys are in stores.
Intelligence chiefs believe Al Qaeda warlords in Yemen plan to smuggle in their deadly cargo aboard freight ships after airport security was tightened following the failed ink cartridge bomb attacks 10 days ago.
British surveillance experts in Afghanistan and their American colleagues uncovered the latest threat last week.
They intercepted conversations between terrorists from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group responsible for the ink bombs, revealing they were planning a spectacular hit for the festive season. Its leader, American- born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and his right-hand man al-Asiri are aiming to use sea ports because they believe security there is more relaxed.
With so much Christmas stock arriving in the UK, they are confident their toy bombs can remain undetected.
An MI5 officer told the Sunday Express: “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula see the festive season as their ideal time to strike because of its importance in the Christian calendar.
“The bombs found at East Midlands Airport and Dubai escaped scrutiny until the last moment. It would be much easier to plant a similar bomb inside a Christmas toy.”
The Metropolitan Police have plans to deal with terror attacks but a spokesman said yesterday: “We never discuss matters of security.”
Al Qaeda is rumoured to have control of at least 23 ships, nicknamed “Osama bin Laden’s navy”, registered in the names of companies that support the terror group. MI5 and MI6 agents fear the vessels could be used to ferry toys filled with the same powerful explosive used in the ink bombs and last year’s failed Christmas Day underpants bomb plot on an airliner.
Meanwhile, it emerged last night that security chiefs are using sophisticated surveillance techniques to try to track Al Qaeda-trained terrorists involved with the ink bombs plot whom they believe have returned to Britain from the Middle East.
by Simulist » Sun Nov 07, 2010 12:54 pm
AlicetheKurious wrote:IS ISRAEL CONTROLLING PHONY TERROR NEWS?
Posted on 31. Dec, 2009 by Editor in Health and Medicine
Who says Al Qaeda takes credit for a bombing? Rita Katz. Who gets us bin Laden tapes? Rita Katz. Who gets us pretty much all information telling us Muslims are bad? Rita Katz? Rita Katz is the Director of Site Intelligence, primary source for intelligence used by news services, Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA. What is her qualification? She served in the Israeli Defense Force. She has a college degree and most investigative journalists believe the Mossad "helps" her with her information. We find no evidence of any qualification whatsoever of any kind. A bartender has more intelligence gathering experience.
Nobody verifies her claims. SITE says Al Qaeda did it, it hits the papers. SITE says Israel didn’t do it, that hits the papers too. What does SITE really do? They check the internet for "information," almost invariably information that Israel wants reported and it is sold as news, seen on American TV, reported in our papers and passed around the internet almost as though it were actually true. Amazing.
Do we know if the information reported comes from a teenager in Seattle or a terror cell in Jakarta? No, of course not, we don’t have a clue. Can you imagine buying information on Islamic terrorism from an Israeli whose father was executed as a spy by Arabs?
It is quite likely that everything you think you know about terror attacks such as the one in Detroit or whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead comes from Rita Katz. Does she make it all up? We don’t know, nobody knows, nobody checks, they simply buy it, print it, say it comes from Site Intelligence and simply forget to tell us that this is, not only a highly biased organization but also an extremely amateur one also.
Is any of this her fault, Rita's? No. She is herself, selling her work. The blame is not Site Intelligence, it is the people who pass on the information under misleading circumstances.
Imagine if a paper carried a story like this:
Reports that Al Qaeda was responsible for bombing the mosque and train station were given to us by an Israeli woman who says she found it on the internet.
This is fair. Everyone should be able to earn a living and information that comes from Israel could be without bias but the chances aren’t very good. In fact, any news organization, and most use this service, that fails to indicate that the sources they use are "rumored" to be a foreign intelligence service with a long history of lying beyond human measure, is not to be taken seriously.
Can we prove that SITE Intelligence is the Mossad? No. Would a reasonable person assume it is? Yes.
Would a reasonable person believe anything from this source involving Islam or the Middle East? No, they would not.
SITE’s primary claim to fame other than bin Laden videos with odd technical faults is their close relationship with Blackwater. Blackwater has found site useful. Blackwater no longer exists as they had to change their name because of utter lack of credibility.
What can be learned by examining where our news comes from? Perhaps we could start being realistic and begin seeing much of our own news and the childish propaganda it really is.
Propaganda does two things:
1. It makes up phony reasons to justify acts of barbaric cruelty or insane greed.
2. It blames people for things they didn’t do because the people doing the blaming really did it themselves. We call these things "false flag/USS Liberty" incidents.
Next time you see dancing Palestinians and someone tells you they are celebrating a terror attack, it is more likely they are attending a birthday party. This is what we have learned, perhaps this is what we had best remember.
From an AFP article on Site Intelligence:Rita Katz and S.I.T.E. are set to release yet another "aL-Qaeda" tape
Despite a massive manhunt by the world’s intelligence agencies, BL seems to evade their combined efforts, staying on the run. But he still has time to drop into his recording studio and cook up a fresh tape for the likes of Rita Katz and her outfit called S.I.T.E. SITE is staffed by TWO people, Katz and a Josh Devon.
WASHINGTON (AFP) The head of the Al-Qaeda network Osama bin Laden is expected to release a taped message on Iraq, a group monitoring extremist online forums said Thursday. The 56-minute tape by the hunted militant is addressed to Iraq and an extremist organization based there, the Islamic State of Iraq, said the US-based SITE monitoring institute, citing announcements on "jihadist forums."
It said the release was "impending" but did not say whether the message was an audio or video tape. Despite a massive manhunt and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head, he has evaded capture and has regularly taunted the United States and its allies through warnings issued on video and audio cassettes. Source: ME Times
Yes, despite a massive manhunt by the world’s intelligence agencies, BL seems to evade their combined efforts, staying on the run. But he still has time to drop into his recording studio and cook up a fresh tape for the likes of Rita Katz and her outfit called S.I.T.E. SITE is staffed by TWO people, Katz and a Josh Devon.
Yet these two individuals manage to do what the ENTIRE combined assets of the world’s Western intelligence can’t:
Be the first to obtain fresh video and audio tapes from Al-Qaeda with Bin Laden making threats and issuing various other comments. If BL appears a bit "stiff" in the latest release, that’s because he is real stiff, as in dead.
How is it that a Jewish owned group like S.I.T.E. can outperform the world’s best and brightest in the intelligence field and be the first to know that a group like al-Qaeda is getting ready to release another tape?
How is it possible that Rita Katz and S.I.T.E. can work this magic? Maybe looking at Katz’s background will help:
Rita Katz is Director and co-founder of the SITE Institute. Born in Iraq, her father was tried and executed as an Israeli spy, whereupon her family moved to Israel [the move has been described as both an escape and an emigration in different sources]. She received a degree from the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, and is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. She emigrated to the US in 1997.
Katz was called as a witness in the trial, but the government didn’t claim she was a terrorism expert. During the trial it was discovered that Katz herself had worked in violation of her visa agreement when she first arrived in America in 1997.
She also admitted to receiving more than $130,000 for her work as an FBI consultant on the case. Link
by AlicetheKurious » Sun Nov 07, 2010 1:31 pm
Simulist wrote:This not only deserves its own thread, but it also deserves as much exposure as it can possibly get.
by Simulist » Sun Nov 07, 2010 2:15 pm
by wintler2 » Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:45 pm
by Hammer of Los » Sun Nov 07, 2010 9:34 pm
by JackRiddler » Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:31 pm
by Nordic » Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:01 pm
JackRiddler wrote:This thread is good, the spin-off superfluous and agenda-driven.
by AhabsOtherLeg » Wed Nov 10, 2010 4:49 pm
82_28 wrote:The AP is running with this story as of now for their Sunday readership in their fleet of newspapers -- I've seen the story on the front pages of numerous outlets so far. I've never read such a long way to write the word "bullshit" in all my life.
..."While British police were searching the UPS package, the FedEx bomb arrived in Dubai aboard a passenger plane from Qatar, where it had spent the night."
Dradin Kastell wrote:This is Britain's Daily Express today. They really are turning on the heat...AL QAEDA PLANS TERROR OUTRAGE FOR CHRISTMAS
Sunday November 7,2010
By James Fielding: Exclusive
AL QAEDA'S chief bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri is understood to be planting explosives in gifts bound for Britain, Europe and the US. They would be timed to explode once the toys are in stores.
“The bombs found at East Midlands Airport and Dubai escaped scrutiny until the last moment. It would be much easier to plant a similar bomb inside a Christmas toy.”
Al Qaeda is rumoured to have control of at least 23 ships, nicknamed “Osama bin Laden’s navy”, registered in the names of companies that support the terror group.
by JackRiddler » Sun Nov 21, 2010 1:28 am
November 20, 2010
Qaeda Branch Aimed for Broad Damage at Low Cost
By SCOTT SHANE
In a detailed account of its failed parcel bomb plot last month, Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen said late Saturday that the operation cost only $4,200 to mount, was intended to disrupt global air cargo systems and reflected a new strategy of low-cost attacks designed to inflict broad economic damage.
The group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, released to militant Web sites a new edition of its English-language magazine, called Inspire, devoted entirely to explaining the technology and tactics in the attack, in which toner cartridges packed with explosives were intercepted in Dubai and Britain. The printers containing the cartridges had been sent from Yemen’s capital, Sana, to out-of-date addresses for two Chicago synagogues.
The attack failed as a result of a tip from Saudi intelligence, which provided the tracking numbers for the parcels, sent via United Parcel Service and FedEx.
But the Qaeda magazine said the fear, disruption and added security costs caused by the packages made what it called Operation Hemorrhage a success.
“Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us,” the magazine said.
It mocked the notion that the plot was a failure, saying it was the work of “less than six brothers” over three months. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’ ” the group wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”
The magazine included photographs of the printers and bombs that the group said were taken before they were shipped, as well as a copy of the novel “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens that it said it had placed in one package because the group was “very optimistic” about the operation’s success.
The magazine also gave a detailed account of the construction and disguise of the explosives. Three private organizations that track militants’ communications said they had no doubt the account was authentic. Ben Venzke, who runs IntelCenter, a Virginia company that discovered the 23-page “special issue” of Inspire on the Web on Saturday night, said the magazine showed the growing savvy of the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen in both operations and messaging.
“In the last year, we’ve seen a much greater sophistication from A.Q.A.P., and Inspire is sort of the tip of the spear,” Mr. Venzke said.
Mr. Venzke said that in many years of closely following terrorist groups’ public statements, IntelCenter had never seen “such a detailed accounting of the philosophy, operational details, intent and next steps following a major attack.” He called it “a far cry from the days of shadowy claims and questions as to who was actually responsible.”
The magazine said that it had adopted a “strategy of a thousand cuts.”
“To bring down America we do not need to strike big,” it said. “In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect.”
The magazine repeated a claim from the group that it was responsible for the Sept. 3 crash of a U.P.S. jet in Dubai that killed the two pilots. Investigators in the United Arab Emirates concluded that the pre-crash fire was not caused by an explosion, and intelligence officials are skeptical about the Qaeda claim, noting that the group probably would have claimed it as a success at the time.
The new issue of Inspire asserts that because the Sept. 3 crash was not attributed to terrorism, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula decided to remain silent about it to increase chances that future parcel bombs would go undetected. But nothing in the magazine showed inside knowledge of what caused the crash.
The magazine has the same flashy graphics, idiomatic English and cocky attitude as were shown in the first two issues, released online in the summer and fall. Intelligence officials have said they believe it is largely the work of Samir Khan, an American citizen who moved to Yemen from North Carolina last year. It may also reflect the influence of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric who is now active in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula consists mainly of Saudis and Yemenis and is believed to have close ties to Osama bin Laden and the terrorist network’s central leadership in Pakistan. It initially focused on plotting against the Saudi monarchy and the Yemeni government and continues to carry out attacks in the region. The group trained and equipped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last Dec. 25, and its rhetoric has increasingly echoed the central Qaeda goal of attacking the United States.
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