Al Qaeda's Anwar al-Awlaki killed in Yemen

From: http://www.cbsnews.com/

This Oct. 2008 file photo provided by Muhammad ud-Deen, shows radical American-Yemeni Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. (CBS)


WASHINGTON - An American-born cleric killed in Yemen played a "significant operational role" in plotting and inspiring attacks on the United States, U.S. officials said Friday, as they disclosed detailed intelligence to justify the killing of a U.S. citizen.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born radical Islamic preacher who rose to the highest level of al Qaeda's franchise in Yemen, was killed in a CIA-directed strike upon his convoy, carried out with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command's firepower, according to a counterterrorist official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

U.S. officials considered al-Awlaki a most-wanted terror suspect, and added his name last year to the kill or capture list - making him a rare American addition to what is effectively a U.S. government hit-list.
In remarks at the White House Friday morning, President Barack Obama called the death of the jihadist cleric a "major blow" to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and praised the United States' successful alliance with Yemen's security forces.

"This is further proof that al Qaeda and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world," Mr. Obama said. "Working with Yemen and our other allies and partners, we will be determined, we will be deliberate, we will be relentless, we will be resolute in our commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans, and to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security."

Obama: Awlaki death "major blow" to terror
Obama, GOP leaders praise killing of Awlaki

Al-Awlaki was suspected of inspiring or helping plan numerous attacks on the United States, including the Christmas 2009 attempt to blow up a jetliner.

Following the strike, a U.S. official said al-Awlaki specifically directed the man accused of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Dec. 25, 2009 to detonate an explosive device over U.S. airspace to maximize casualties.

The official also said al-Awlaki had a direct role in supervising and directing a failed attempt to bring down two U.S. cargo aircraft by detonating explosives concealed inside two packages mailed to the U.S. The U.S. also believes Awlaki had sought to use poisons, including cyanide and ricin, to attack Westerners.

Who was Anwar al-Awlaki?
Multiple terror plots linked to Anwar al-Awlaki

Video: Anwar al-Awlaki urges attacks on Americans

The U.S. and counterterrorism officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.

Four individuals were killed in Friday's attack, according to U.S. officials. Yemen's Defense Ministry said another American militant was killed in the same strike alongside al-Awlaki. Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani heritage who produced the English-language al Qaeda Web magazine Inspire that proselytized attacks against the United States. U.S. officials said they believed Khan, from North Carolina, was in the convoy carrying al-Awlaki that was struck by the same U.S. military unit that got Osama bin Laden, but that they were still trying to confirm his death.

2nd U.S. jihadist reported dead in drone attack
A look at al Qaeda's Web magazine

Al-Awlaki had been under observation for three weeks while they waited for the right opportunity to strike, one U.S. official said.

His death will deal al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula a serious blow, says CBS News terrorism analyst Juan Zarate, particularly his work to draw young Muslims into the jihadi mindset.

"His role as a propagandist actually will be very difficult to fill," says Zarate.

The cleric known for fiery anti-American rhetoric and use of the Internet to spread his message was suspected of inspiring the mass shooting at Fort Hood Army base in Texas in 2009, and taking a more direct role in the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner and the planning of other attacks on Americans.

He is the most prominent al Qaeda figure to be killed since bin Laden.

Special Section: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden
Pictures: Terror attacks since 9/11

Word from the U.S. of his death comes after the government of Yemen reported that al-Awlaki was targeted and killed Friday about five miles from the town of Khashef, some 87 miles from the capital Sanaa.
U.S. counterterrorism officials said that counterterrorism cooperation between the U.S. and Yemen has improved in recent weeks, allowing the U.S. to gather better intelligence on al-Awlaki's movements. The ability to better track him was a key factor the successful strike, U.S. officials said. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Al-Awlaki's death is the latest in a run of high-profile kills for Washington under President Barack Obama. But the killing raises questions that the death of other al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, did not.

Al-Awlaki is a U.S. citizen who had not been charged with any crime. Civil liberties groups have questioned the government's authority to kill an American without trial.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned the drone attack on Awlaki, saying, "The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law.

"As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts," Jaffer said. "The government's authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the President - any President - with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country." Al-Awlaki's father filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming his son's civil rights were violated by the U.S. call for his killing.

A federal court dismissed Nasser al-Awlaki's suit on Dec. 7, 2010, on the grounds that he had no legal standing to challenge the targeting of his son.

U.S. officials have said they believe al-Awlaki inspired the Fort Hood shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas.

Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who pleaded guilty to the May 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt, said he was "inspired" by al-Awlaki after making contact over the Internet.

Al-Awlaki also is believed to have had a hand in mail bombs addressed to Chicago-area synagogues, packages intercepted in Dubai and Europe in October 2010.

Al-Awlaki's death "will especially impact the group's ability to recruit, inspire and raise funds as al-Awlaki's influence and ability to connect to a broad demographic of potential supporters was unprecedented," said terrorist analyst Ben Venzke of the private intelligence monitoring firm, the IntelCenter.

But Venzke said the terror group al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) will remain the most dangerous regional arm "both in its region and for the direct threat it poses to the U.S. following three recent failed attacks," with leader Nasir al-Wahayshi still at large.

Venzke said al-Awlaki was due to release a new article in the next issue of the terror group's magazine, justifying attacking civilians in the West.

"The article, which may already have been completed, was announced by the al Qaeda group on Tuesday as being entitled, 'Targeting Populations of Countries at War with Muslims,'" he said.

Could crows have caught Osama bin Laden?

From: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/could-crows-have-caught-osama-bin-laden

These smart birds may have been used in the hunt for the world's most famous terrorist.

Photo: LucinaM/Flickr

A full week after Osama bin Laden was killed, it might be time to give some credit to crows and ravens. Yes, you read that right. Crows and ravens.

For a few years, the University of Washington has been training and studying crows and ravens to test their ability to recognize human faces. As it turns out, the birds are really good at it. A few experiments by professor John Marzluff and some folks on campus wearing caveman masks revealed that the birds could not only recognize the individual “cavemen,” but would also swarm them on the University of Washington campus.

This drew the attention of the military, which contacted Marzluff and then gave him some funding to find out if the birds could be used to track down bin Laden. “[Crows and ravens] have a long -term memory, very acute discrimination abilities, and if a group of crows knew bin Laden as an enemy, they would certainly indicate his presence when they next saw him,” said Marzluff in a recent interview.

As it turns out, crows are smart on several levels. Researchers in New Zealand discovered that the birds can use tools to get food, and that the birds can teach their children to use tools through “home schooling.”

We will never know if birds had anything to do with bin Laden’s death. Those details, like the pictures of bin Laden and the identity of the Navy Seals who killed him, are unlikely to become public. So next time you see a black bird, consider that it might be more heroic than you think. And if you have a guilty conscience, you might want to hide your face. After all, you wouldn’t want the bird to tip off the authorities.

Also on MNN: Titanium fangs? The technology behind the dog that helped capture bin Laden

Terrorism: Bin Laden just blended in

From: http://theweek.com/

Jack Ohman Copyright 2011 Tribune Media Services

Chilling aerial photos of 9/11 attack released

From: http://news.yahoo.com

 

AP – This photo taken Sept. 11, 2001 by the New York City Police Department and obtained by ABC News, which …

By ULA ILNYTZKY and COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press Writers 

NEW YORK – A trove of aerial photographs of the collapsing World Trade Center was widely released this week, offering a rare and chilling view from the heavens of the burning twin towers and the apocalyptic shroud of smoke and dust that settled over the city.

The images were taken from a police helicopter — the only photographers allowed in the airspace near the skyscrapers on Sept. 11, 2001. They were obtained by ABC after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency that investigated the collapse.

The chief curator of the planned Sept. 11 museum pronounced the pictures "a phenomenal body of work."
The photos are "absolutely core to understanding the visual phenomena of what was happening," said Jan Ramirez of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. They are "some of the most exceptional images in the world, I think, of this event."

In some of the pictures, the tops of the nearby Woolworth Building and other skyscrapers can just be seen above the enormous cloud of debris, gray against a clear blue sky. Gray clouds billow through the streets of the financial district and shroud the 16 acres where the towers had stood just moments before.
Buildings can hardly be seen at all in one image — just dust clouds hanging over the Hudson River at the southern tip of Manhattan.

One close-up shows orange flames and black smoke pouring from the upper floors of the north tower, the first hit by a hijacked plane.

"I almost didn't realize what I was seeing that day," Greg Semendinger, the former New York Police Department detective who took the 12 pictures posted on ABC's site, told The Associated Press. "Looking at it now it's amazing I took those pictures. The images are ... stunning."

The attack and the collapse of the World Trade Center were well documented on live TV and amateur video. But more than eight years after the nation's deadliest terror attack, the images still had the power to shock and disturb. They were an instant sensation on the Internet.

"Some survivors may find these pictures too painful to look at," said Richard Zimbler, president of the WTC Survivors Network. "But they are an important part of the historical record."

ABC said NIST gave the network 2,779 pictures on nine CDs. The network posted 12 pictures on its Web site Monday. ABC initially said some of the photographs posted had never been seen before, but later backed off that assertion

Semendinger said Wednesday that he had previously e-mailed some of the pictures to friends who later posted them on the Internet. Also, nine of the images were published in a book called "Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of Sept. 11" without his consent. The book was a tribute to the officers who were killed that day.

Semendinger was first in the air in a search for survivors on the rooftop. He said he and his pilot watched the second plane hit the south tower from the helicopter.

"We didn't find one single person. It was surreal," he said. "There was no sound. No sound whatsoever, but the noise of the radio and the helicopter. I just kept taking pictures."

He took three rolls of film with his Minolta camera, plus 245 digital shots. Semendinger said that he gave the digital images to the 9/11 Commission that investigated the attack, and that the commission evidently released the pictures to NIST.

Glenn Corbett, a fire science expert who sat on an advisory committee during the NIST probe, said the photos did not yield any new information for investigators.

"I don't see anything here that's new," he said. "These are common photos. ... It just reinforces things we know, that debris spread over a large area and the resultant dispersion of toxins and human remains."
Ramirez said the museum, slated to open in 2012, saw a selection of the photos at police headquarters several years ago. They are extremely important because the NYPD helicopter had the clearance to be up in the air in lower Manhattan only moments after the first tower was hit, and stayed in the area for the remainder of the day, she said.

The museum hopes to get a complete set of the photos.

"We've had our sights set on this body of visual evidence for several years," Ramirez said.

This EMP Cannon Stops Cars Almost Instantly

From: http://gizmodo.com/
By: Rosa Golijan, rgolijan@gizmodo.com.

We've heard of electromagnetic pulses cutting steel in milliseconds, but apparently they can also be used to stop moving cars just as fast. The cannon demonstrated in the video here is still a prototype, but it definitely seems to work.

The idea is that an electromagnetic pulse would be used to disable a car's microprocessors, chips, and whatever other electronics are keeping it running. The final "cannon" system, built by Eureka Aerospace, will apparently a bit smaller and lighter than what we see in the video—it'll be suitcase-sized and about 50 pounds—and it will "stop cars in their tracks up to 656 feet (200 m) away."


I wish they tested that cannon on a moving car, but it does just what it should by disabling the car's electrical system. Only trouble is that even once the system is perfected and in use it can still be foiled easily: By using a pre-1970s car which doesn't "rely on microprocessors." Whoops. [Flight Global via Pop Sci]

Anne Frank diary offends Lebanon's Hezbollah

http://news.yahoo.com/

AFP/HO/File – Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by …

by Natacha Yazbeck Natacha Yazbeck

BEIRUT (AFP) – Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by the militant group Hezbollah claiming the classic work promotes Zionism.

The row erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of "The Diary of Anne Frank" were included in the textbook used by a private English-language school in western Beirut.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar television channel ran a report slamming the book for focusing on the persecution of Jews.

"What is even more dangerous is the dramatic, theatrical way in which the diary is emotionally recounted," said the report aired last week and also published on the station's website.

It questioned how long Lebanon would "remain an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education."

A member of the school board, Jimmy Shoufani, told AFP the school dropped the textbook from its curriculum after the controversy erupted. He asked that the school not be identified.

Hezbollah officials could not reached for comment.

In the Al-Manar report, party MP Hussein Hajj Hassan had criticized the school for showing poor judgement in picking out its textbooks.

"These respected, established schools are teaching the so-called tragedy this girl lived, and yet they are ashamed to teach the tragedy of the Lebanese people, the tragedy of the Palestinian people... the tragedy of the people of the south under the hands of Zionist occupation," he told Al-Manar.

Paris-based organisation Aladdin's Project, which fights Holocaust denial and first translated Anne Frank's diary into Arabic, issued a statement condemning Hezbollah's "intimidation campaign."

Hezbollah fought a devastating war with the Jewish state in 2006. It has since refused to surrender its weapons arguing they are necessary to fight Israel, which withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after close to two decades of occupation.

The militant party last month also took aim at another textbook used in a leading private school in Beirut in which Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas are referred to as "terrorist organisations".

The chapter in question is usually blanked out by Lebanon's censorship bureau, but an uncensored copy purchased by a student abroad apparently sparked the uproar.

Lebanon, which remains technically at war with Israel, bans the import of products from the Jewish state.

Attorney Naim Kalaani, a member of a committee to ban Zionist products, told Al-Manar that use of the book was a violation of Lebanon's penal code and "tantamount to a step toward normalisation" in ties with Israel.

However journalist and criminologist Omar Nashabe rejected such arguments as unfounded.

"The law talks about the state of Israel -- the Israeli flag, Israeli institutions, the Israeli entity, as a nation," Nashabe told AFP.

"Besides Anne Frank is not Israeli," he added. "Anne Frank is part of world literature."

He also pointed out that Frank's diary was available online.

Frank wrote the diary while her family hid from Nazi police and sympathizers in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 to 1944.

She later died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, and the diary was published posthumously.

FBI arrest four in alleged plot to bomb Bronx synagogues, shoot down plane

BY Michael Daly, Alison Gendar and Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Keivom/News

James Cromitie is the alleged leader of the plot, the criminal complaint states.

Keivom/News

David Williams was one of three others busted with Cromitie.

The FBI and NYPD busted a four-man homegrown terror cell Wednesday night that was plotting to blow up two Bronx synagogues while simultaneously shooting a plane out of the sky, sources told the Daily News.

The idea was to create a "fireball that would make the country gasp," one law enforcement said.

Little did they know the plastic explosives packed into their car bombs and the plane-downing Stinger missile in their backseat were all phony - supplied by undercover agents posing as Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda.

"If there can be any good news from this terror scare it's that this group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early, and not connected to another terrorist group," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism, foreign or domestic."

The suspects - three U.S.-born citizens and one Haitian immigrant - at least three of whom were said to be jailhouse converts to Islam, were angry about the deaths of Muslims in Afghanistan, sources told The News.

"They wanted to make a statement," a law enforcement source said. "They were filled with rage and wanted to take it out on what they considered the source of all problems in America - the Jews."

The group's alleged ringleader, James Cromitie, according to the complaint, discussed targets with an undercover agent. "The best target [the World Trade Center] was hit already," he allegedly told the agent. Later, he rejoiced in a terrorist attack on a synagogue.

"I hate those motherf-----s, those f---ing Jewish bastards. . . . I would like to get [destroy] a synagogue."

The men allegedly parked car bombs wired to cell phones outside the Riverdale Temple and nearby Riverdale Jewish Center. They were also heading to Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, Orange County, when the law swooped in on them.

Sources said their plan was to shoot down a cargo plane headed to Iraq or Afghanistan with a surface-to-air guided missile while simultaneously calling the cell phones and blowing up the Riverdale synagogues.

Sources said the four men were arrested after a year-long investigation that began when an informant connected to a mosque in Newburgh said he knew men who wanted to buy explosives.

FBI agents supplied them with what they billed as C-4 plastic explosives and a Stinger missile.

The weaponry was all phony.

"The bombs had been made by FBI technicians," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "They were totally inert."

Witnesses said an NYPD 18-wheeler blocked a black SUV on Independence Ave. in Riverdale and then officers broke in the darkened windows and yanked out the four men from inside the car.

Among those arrested was Cromitie, of Newburgh, who is the son of an Afghan immigrant and his African-American wife.

Cromitie, who also called himself Abdul Rahman, has served a long stretch in prison.

David Williams, Onta Williams and Leguerre Payen - his alleged henchmen - were busted with him. Cromitie allegedly recruited them at the Newburgh mosque.

The undercover informant who promised to arm them posed as a member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an anti-India Pakistani group with connections to Al Qaeda, said Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the New York FBI field office.

"This shows the real risks we face from homegrown terror and jailhouse converts, and the need for constant vigilance," said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.).

The four alleged terrorists are expected to be arraigned Thursday in White Plains Federal Court.

"These guys were angry, they had intent and they were searching for capacity," a senior federal law enforcement official told The News. But, the official added, "It's not exactly Al Qaeda."

Richard Williams, who identified himself as Onta Williams' uncle, said he doesn't believe his nephew would be involved in the plot.

"I spoke to him last week, he gave no indication that anything was wrong," Williams told The News Wednesday night outside his Newburgh home.

Mayor Bloomberg hailed the joint investigation that took down the wanna-be mass murderers.

"While the bombs these terrorists attempted to plant tonight were - unbeknownst to them - fake, this latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism," Bloomberg said.

agendar@nydailynews.com

With Joe Kemp in Newburgh, N.Y., Kerry Burke in New York and James Gordon Meek in Washington

Were the Mumbai Terrorists Fueled by Coke?

By BRUCE CRUMLEY Bruce Crumley – Thu Dec 4, 12:20 pm ET

Play Video Australia 7 News – Mumbai: Were they warned?

Did the jihadists who tore up Mumbai last week rely on party drugs usually associated with Western decadence to stay awake and alert throughout their three-day killing spree? Britain's Telegraph newspaper suggests that they did, citing unidentified officials claiming physical evidence shows the assailants used cocaine and other stimulants to sustain their violent frenzy. And if the notion of self-anointed holy warriors on a coke binge sounds incongruous, the report also maintains that the killers imbibed the psychedelic drug LSD while fighting advancing security forces.

"We found injections containing traces of cocaine and LSD left behind by the terrorists, and later found drugs in their blood," the Telegraph was told by one official, whose nationality and relation to the investigation were not specified. "This explains why they managed to battle the commandos for over 50 hours with no food or sleep." (See the terrorism in Mumbai.)

The hallucinogenic and sensory-distorting effects of LSD make it an unlikely combat drug, even for kamikaze assailants who were, after all, seeking to kill as many people as possible before their own inevitable death. But the suggestion that the Mumbai jihadists may have amped themselves up on stimulants typically forbidden by their strict Salafist brand of Islam strikes some experts as plausible, particularly within the twisted jihadist logic in which holy ends justify impious means.

"We've never seen instances of operatives using drugs in attacks before, but we've also never seen the kind of open-ended, insurgent-style strike of civilian targets by Islamists prior to Mumbai," says Jean-Louis BruguiÈre, who retired this year as France's chief counterterrorism investigator to take a top post in the transatlantic Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. BruguiÈre had no information to confirm or deny the reported cocaine binge by the Mumbai assailants, but he believes that discounting it out of hand would be naive.

"Why wouldn't attackers do something forbidden by their religious practice - to take drugs or anything else - that could help them achieve what they consider the far more important goal of their plot in striking a blow for God?" BruguiÈre asks. "Adepts of the Takfir wal-Hijra sect will adopt what Islam considers impure behavior of enemy societies, like drinking alcohol, eating pork and wild living, to better prepare attacks for those same societies. That's what Mohamed Atta and the other 9/11 attackers did while plotting in the U.S. If terrorists feel jihad justifies impious acts to prepare strikes, why wouldn't that rationalization also apply to carrying attacks out?"

Independent French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard is a little more skeptical of the report, however, at least as far as it claimed some of the fighters had used narcotics to numb themselves to pain as death approached. Though he understands the strategic logic of assailants using stimulants to overcome fatigue as their attack wears on - conventional armies, including the U.S. military, have used stimulants to counter combat fatigue - he does not believe the stern Salafist prohibition of soporifics would be ignored as the end loomed.

"We're talking about people who think they're killing for God and who are certain they'll attain paradise by slaying innocent people. The most powerful drug they could ever find is already in their head before the attack starts," says Jacquard. "There's a very strong antidrug culture among Salafists - most don't even use tobacco. And extremists with any drug experience usually say Islam is what allowed them escape it."

The Telegraph story also quotes an official saying traces of steroids had been found in the bloodstreams of Mumbai attackers - something the unnamed source says "isn't uncommon in terrorists." If so, it's a well-kept secret that runs counter to jihadists' disdain of external "impurities" being used to attain physical fitness they often extol. But for BruguiÈre, wrangling over those kinds of details is simply a counterproductive attempt to create a precise, predictable stereotype of a terrorist in what is, in fact, a diverse, rapidly changing, amorphous milieu of extremists. (Read Mumbai's Terror Is Over, but Panic Persists.)

"It's now clear the Mumbai group was connected to the Pakistan-supported Lashkar-e-Taiba, but it takes a while before we know how close and structured that relationship was and how much autonomy the attacking unit was operating with," BruguiÈre says. "LeT is keen to export its fight throughout the region and world but will do so in loose relationships with myriad extremist movements out there. Some will use car explosions, others kamikaze bombers, and others insurgent terrorists who - just maybe - decide to use drugs to keep their strike going longer. If we want to prepare for the way we may be attacked next, we have to start considering all the ways we haven't been attacked yet, as well as the ones we know."

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.