National Post/Michael Ross and ‘Ishmael Jones’, 11 Jan 10: . . . . .Meeting with walk-ins is considered low-level work. Depending on the number of management layers, the CIA officer interviewing the bomber’s father may have had to get the approval of as many as four to six managers before the information was released and sent to CIA headquarters. Nigeria is in the CIA’s Africa division, 
but counterterrorism is in another division. The bomber’s last known address was London, in a separate division, and he had recently been in Dubai, yet another division. Each division has countless branches, chiefs and deputy chiefs. The weeks between the father’s November disclosure and the Dec. 25 bombing attempt clearly weren’t enough time for the information to make its way through this torturous bureaucracy.
There are so many managers and administrators, in so many separate and loosely organized chains of command, that not only is acquiring the intelligence a stroke of luck, but getting it to where it needs to go, on time, is almost impossible. This is in sharp contrast to the Israeli intelligence community, which has worked to eliminate unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and implemented clear lines of communication and guidelines for inter-agency intelligence sharing. The Mossad’s organizational culture scorns bureaucracy because it recognizes the danger in excessive layers of management. . . . .
“Ishmael Jones” is a former deep-cover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture
AP, 11 Jan 10: A Defense Department review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, has found the doctors overseeing Maj. Nidal Hasan’s medical training repeatedly voiced concerns over his strident views on Islam and his inappropriate behavior, yet continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks.
The picture emerging from the review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one of supervisors who failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist, according to information gathered during the internal Pentagon investigation and obtained by The Associated Press. The review has not been publicly released. Hasan, 39, is accused of murdering 13 people on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, the worst killing spree on a U.S. military base.
What remains unclear is why Hasan would be advanced in spite of all the worries over his competence. . . . .
. . . . In telling episodes from the latter stages of Hasan’s lengthy medical education in the Washington, D.C., area, he gave a class presentation questioning whether the U.S.-led war on terror was actually a war on Islam. And fellow students said he suggested that Shariah, or Islamic law, trumped the Constitution and he attempted to justify suicide bombings.
Yet no one in Hasan’s chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. Had they, Hasan’s fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.
Instead, in July 2009, Hasan arrived in central Texas, his secret clearance intact, his reputation as a weak performer well known, and Army authorities believing that posting him at such a large facility would mask his shortcomings.
Four months later, according to witnesses, he walked into a processing center at Fort Hood where troops undergo medical screening, jumped on a table with two handguns, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire. Thirteen people were killed in the spree and dozens more were wounded. . . . .
Courthouse News Service, 11 Jan 10: The Defense Intelligence Agency accused an intelligence officer with a decorated military past of “consorting with known Communist agents” in the early ’90s and fired him without due process, John Dullahan claims in Federal Court. And he says a simple typographical error contributed to his headaches. Dullahan, an Irish immigrant who worked his way up the ranks in the U.S. Army to become a politico-military adviser for Eastern Europe to Gen. Colin Powell, says the DIA used three false polygraph tests to fire him, and used “national security” as a pretext. . . . .
. . . . .Dullahan claims he played an “important and distinguished role in U.S. military relations” with Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to an adviser position to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell, from 1990 to 1992. Dullahan says Powell awarded him with a Defense Meritorious Service Medal for his work in U.S.-Eastern European military relations. During this time, he says, the FBI began watching and photographing him while he met his foreign counterparts from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary for visits and working lunches. He says the visits were to “facilitate planning official exchanges and support Department of Defense policy formulation.”
In 1990, he says, the FBI told him he was believed to be “consorting with known Communist agents,” but took no action against him until the events that led to his termination, which began in late 2008. In 1997, Dullahan says, he returned to the DIA as a civilian employee, successfully passing a polygraph exam in the process, but in 2008 a different polygraph examiner accused him of meeting “Soviet handlers” while on official trips to Europe, including trips with Gen. Powell.. . . . .
Silicon India, 10 Jan 10: At the time of recession, when most of the top IT companies slashed lakhs of jobs; techies took another step to earn money and joined different terrorists groups across the world. Indian security agencies say that the recruitment of techies was maximum in 2009 when recession hit the world.
According to the research done by, European sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, who surveyed over 400 terrorists, including 25 men involved in the 9/11 attack, found that 44 percent were engineers. Intelligence Bureau (IB) said that that recruiting techies for terror operations has become quite a common phenomenon world over. It was first started by the Al Qaeda when it undertook the 9/11 attack. However, the Lashkar was quick to pick up this plan and gradually the Students Islamic Movement of India and the Indian Mujahideen, too, followed suit.
Among all the terrorist groups, the tech cell of the Lashkar and the Al Qaeda is probably the most important wing. Al-Qaeda tops the list with over 400 techies while the Lashkar has nearly 200. These groups hire these engineers mainly for bombing, hijacking and also hacking operations. IB sources said that last year Laskar had picked up nearly 60 techies. Cadres in the sleeper cells have worked round the clock last year to pick up techies who were desperate and looking for jobs. Security experts say that the recruiters wait a long time until the person becomes desperate for a job. These groups take advantage commitments that these techies have and later with a blend of religious brainwashing they manage to attract them into the fold.
In the current situation, the bigger problem is that these terrorist groups may use them to launch a cyber war which is deadlier than any other form of an attack since it can cripple the entire economy.
REPORT: Engineers of Jihad
We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world….and that engineers alone
are strongly over-represented among violent groups . . .
American Spectator, 10 Jan 10: Americans who remain blithely unaware of the subtle, sophisticated techniques radical Islamists have used to successfully penetrate U.S. institutions should be introduced to a new documentary that explores the historical development of Jihad.
The film calls attention to a 15 page document FBI agents uncovered back in 2003 authored by the Muslim Brotherhood that outlines goals and strategies for radical Islamists operating inside the U.S. The movement’s infiltration of American society includes a variety of avenues such as the manipulation of academic institutions by way of large donations, the establishment of secret communities and training camps and the radicalization of prisons and mosques, the documentary shows. . . .
