Combatting Homegrown Terrorism With Fusion Centers and Terror Watch Lists

Combatting Homegrown Terrorism With Fusion Centers

September 23, 2010

The Washington Independent - Secretary Janet Napolitano and other officials from the Department of Homeland Security testified today on the growing threat of homegrown terrorists and small-scale attacks.

There’s a growing chorus from the homeland security community on this trend, and Napolitano testified that although for many years Al Qaeda and its allies seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to stage an attack on the dramatic scale of 9/11, these days, a looser network of groups is more willing to resort to tactics like planting IEDs:

It is clear that the threat of al Qaeda-style terrorism is not limited to the al-Qaeda core group, or organizations that have close operational links to al Qaeda. While al Qaeda continues to threaten America directly, it also inspires its affiliates and other groups and individuals who share its violent ideology and seek to attack the United States claiming it is in the name of Islam – a claim that is widely rejected.

One of the ways DHS is approaching this threat is by beefing up the country’s network of fusion centers — groups that fuse local law enforcement work with national-level intelligence. Napolitano has made the centers a major focus of the department’s FY11 grant cycle. The idea is, as Napolitano said today, is that

“In an environment where operatives may not have close links to international terrorist organizations – and where they may, in fact, be based within this country – these levels of law enforcement may be the first to notice something suspicious.”

Fusion centers don’t have the strongest records of keeping their focus on international terrorist organizations, though. As G.W. Schulz reports for the Center for Investigative Reporting:

One of the nation’s oldest fusion centers, known as the El Paso Intelligence Center, accidentally caused a California couple that owns a flight training school to be falsely held at gunpoint by police for the second time. Twice now EPIC has failed to clean up incorrect data that led authorities to believe a plane owned by the pair was stolen.

In Maryland, a fusion center and DHS ended up labeling a peace group as terrorists. Anti-abortion activists have also come under suspicion.

Despite these sorts of missteps, the number of fusion centers is only growing: there are currently 72 scattered across the country.

Mission Creep: TSA to Implement “Secure Flight” On November 1

September 29, 2010

Infowars.com - On November 1, boarding an aircraft in the United States will become more intrusive. That’s when the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration will begin enforcing something called “Secure Flight.”

In June, DHS boss Janet Napolitano announced that:

“100 percent of passengers traveling within the United States and its territories are now being checked against terrorist watchlists through the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Secure Flight program,” as recommended by the 9/11 white wash commission.

Under the program, destined to be a bureaucratic nightmare, TSA goons wearing blue latex gloves will prescreen a passenger’s name, date of birth, and gender against government watchlists for domestic and international flights, according to a TSA press release.

“Individuals found to match watchlist parameters will be subjected to secondary screening, a law enforcement interview or prohibition from boarding an aircraft, depending on the specific case.”

If you think only Muslims and shady characters from Yemen or Pakistan will be double checked, think again. Recall the nightmare experienced by Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, two peace activists who were detained in San Francisco in September, 2002, a couple weeks after the first anniversary of the day we were told cave-dwelling Muslims made NORAD stand down. The pair were searched and interrogated after the TSA claimed their names resembled “those of suspected criminals or terrorists,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported son September 27, 2010.

“One detainment forced a group of 20 Wisconsin anti-war activists to miss their flight, delaying their trip to meet with congressional representatives by a day. That case and others are raising questions about the criteria federal authorities use to place people on the list — and whether people who exercise their constitutional right to dissent are being lumped together with terrorists,” the newspaper also reported.

Meanwhile, supposed terrorists are allowed to board planes, for instance Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the fizzle pants non-bomber. It was no secret Abdulmutallab had “multiple communications” with Islamic extremists in Londonistan, the home base of MI6 groomed patsies, dupes, and mental deficeints.

Abdulmutallab was also allowed to get a visa, just like Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was on a terrorist watch list at the time and would later as a star patsy be convicted in the first WTC bombing case. In 2006, investigative reporters discovered that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency specialized in deliberately keeping some suspected terrorists off the US international no-fly list. In order to make sure its dupes and patsies are allowed to travel unrestricted, the CIA has operatives inside the Federal Air Marshal Service.

It is not a coincidence the absurdly over-hyped fizzle pants non-bombing was staged on Christmas day over Detroit as Congress was talking about reforming the Constitution nullifying Patriot Act. Moreover, in the months following the orchestrated event, the government’s no-fly list doubled, from about 3,400 people to about 6,000 people, a senior intelligence official told USA Today in March.

The TSA also used the Times Square non-bombing to tweak its no-fly list procedures.

“The Transportation Security Administration has implemented a new rule requiring airlines to check the no-fly list within two hours after being notified of a special update,” Fox News reported after Faisal Shahzad’s cobbled together barbeque canister bomb failed to explode.

The Secure Flight program was not designed to prevent terrorists from boarding planes. It will be implemented next month as part of an effort to expand the government control grid and get commuters acclimated to submitting to absurd mandates that are obviously unconstitutional.

As Paul Joseph Watson noted earlier today, the government is moving forward in its efforts to impose its police state control and submission grid on the American people. It has now moved its naked body scanner technology from airports to the streets and highways of America.

“Body and vehicle scanners are just one tool authorities plan to implement on a widespread basis as part of our deepening decline into a hi-tech militarized police state,” writes Watson. “The implementation of ‘Checkpoint USA’, where citizens are routinely stopped, searched and radiated by federal VIPER teams is further evidence of how America is crumbling into a Soviet-style police state where the presumption of innocent until proven guilty is abolished and the 4th amendment eviscerated.”

Secure Flight is yet another step in that direction. It may appear innocuous, but is in fact designed to get citizens accustomed to government officials micromanaging every aspect of their daily lives, be it at the airport or at the local mall.