Posts Tagged ‘Homeland Security’

 

The Terrorism Enhancement: An obscure law stretches the definition of terrorism, and metes out severe punishments.

There’s no doubt about it: Daniel McGowan is a criminal. In January 2001, he stood lookout while other members of a radical environmentalist group set fire to the offices of the Superior Lumber Co. in the tiny southwestern Oregon town of Glendale. In statement issued after the fire, McGowan justified the after-hours assault, calling Superior […]

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DHS "well on our way" to preparing for transition

In a discussion about surveillance cameras in New York City this morning, Diane Rehm devoted some air time to turnover and vacancies in the senior ranks of the Homeland Security Department. (See yesterday’s post.) DHS Spokesman Russ Knocke joined by phone, and said that, in April, the department was permitted to hire an additional 73 […]

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Trouble in DHS’ Upper Ranks

A congressional report out this morning leads off with a story I wrote about the Homeland Security Department’s reliance on politically appointed leaders. Spencer Hsu has a good piece in this morning’s Washington Post about that report and the administration’s failure to fill about a quarter of the top leadership posts at DHS, “creating a […]

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Most Dangerous Theory

As details emerge in the case of Andrew Speaker, the 31-year-old runaway groom with a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, more questions arise about whether the nation’s defenses against biological agents, as well as terrorists, are in proper working order, and whether health and homeland-security officials have truly adapted to the unpredictable nature of such threats. […]

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The Coming Storm

On November 2, 2004, top officials from the Homeland Security Department held a small Election Night party at a Washington restaurant to watch the presidential election returns come in on television. Nearly every leader there owed his job to the man then fighting for his own job — George W. Bush. The department was almost […]

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Shadow Hunters

It started with a phone call. On April 23, 2004, a Friday, a man calling himself “Al” contacted the Homeland Security Department in Washington. He claimed that he knew a group of terrorists who were going to blow up a building. Al knew this, he said, because he was once a member of Al Qaeda. […]

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Intelligence Designs

In the spring of 2000, a year and a half before the 9/11 attacks, Erik Kleinsmith made a decision that history may judge as a colossal mistake.Then a 35-year-old Army major assigned to a little-known intelligence organization at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, Kleinsmith had compiled an enormous cache of information — most of it electronically […]

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The Private Spy Among Us

To help the government track suspected terrorists and spies who may be visiting or residing in this country, the FBI and the Defense Department for the past three years have been paying a Georgia-based company for access to its vast databases that contain billions of personal records about nearly every person — citizens and noncitizens […]

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The Forgotten War

Underequipped. Underfunded. Overshadowed. Life on the front lines of the drug war.“If you’ve got anything to say, say it now!” Chris Fertig stammered while being electrocuted. Fertig, a Coast Guard lieutenant junior grade, had been riding shotgun in a stubby, 22-foot boat with inflatable sides, plowing through rough Caribbean seas at a neck-snapping 35 knots. […]

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