Wall Street Journal, 19 June 2010: What rankles Raymond W. Kelly? Two things, he tells me as we sip lukewarm coffee in his conference room on the 14th floor of One Police Plaza, the dilapidated police headquarters overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge.
The first, New York’s police commissioner tells me, is “incompetence,” an inescapable fact-of-life, or so it would seem, in any large bureaucracy (he has 50,000 employees). A second is the media’s tendency to downplay New York’s hard-won victories against terrorism—the failure or foiling of some 11 serious plots against the city since 2001—by describing the would-be perpetrators as incompetent or stupid.
Faisal Shahzad, who was indicted on Thursday for trying to blow up his SUV in Times Square last month, was not a stupid bumbler, Mr. Kelly says. “The people who interviewed, interrogated him said he is very smart, and has a very keen memory.” Federal law enforcement officials say they are making good use of that memory, using information he’s been providing to help target terrorist recruiters, handlers and facilitators in Pakistan, where Mr. Shahzad went for training. . . .
. . . . “It’s dangerous to write people off just because they’ve been arrested,” Mr. Kelly warns. “These cases are the result of intelligence information and excellent investigative work at all levels.”
Luck, too, has often played a role in the NYPD’s efforts to protect New York. But in our hour-long interview late last week, Mr. Kelly asserts that credit for keeping the city safe is due mainly to the counterterrorism empire that he has built, actively manages and staffed up with counterterror “stars” like David Cohen, the former CIA director of operations who oversees the city’s aggressive undercover and intelligence activities.
Apart from helping bring violent crime down to historic lows, Mr. Kelly’s fame is based on the counterterrorism plans he first sketched in 2002 on a piece of paper for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. That model has transformed the way that the NYPD and other large police forces in many cities now combat terror. By creating a local intelligence capability—complete with undercover agents, informants, analysts, a community mapping effort, a terrorism cyber-unit, a small army of linguists and even an overseas presence in 11 cities—Mr. Kelly’s counterterrorism force is widely regarded by experts as second only to the FBI in homeland defense intelligence.. . . .
The Independent, 25 Feb 10: A total of 201 people were arrested on suspicion of terrorism last year, Home Office figures showed today. Of those, 66 were eventually charged, 17 under terror laws. In the year ending September 2009 there were 200,444 people stopped and searched under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, down 12% on the previous year. The number of terrorism arrests is slightly up on last year, when 178 arrests were made. There have been 1,759 terrorism arrests since September 11 2001, the figures show. . . . .
New York Times, 22 Feb 10: The nation’s main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress. The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department. . . .
. . . . The new report found that the center’s planning arm did not have enough authority to do its main job of coordinating the White House’s counterterrorism priorities. The center’s planning operation is supposed to be staffed by representatives of various agencies, but not all of them send their best and brightest, the report said. It also cited examples in which the C.I.A. and the State Department did not even participate in some plans developed by the center that were later criticized for lacking important insights those agencies could offer. As a result, the center’s planning arm “has been forced to develop national plans without the expertise of some of the most important players,” the report determined. . . .
AP, 22 Feb 10: Australia intends to impose tougher visa checks on people from countries considered at high risk for terrorism as part of a 69 million Australian dollar ($62 million) counterterrorism plan released Tuesday.
The new visa requirements, which include mandatory collection of fingerprints and facial imaging data for visa applicants from 10 countries, would help keep terrorists from evading detection, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in releasing the government’s counterterrorism “white paper” in Canberra. “Terrorism has become a persistent and permanent feature of Australia’s security environment,” Rudd said. “Prior to the rise of jihadist terrorism, Australia was not a specific target. Now Australia is such a target.”
Under the plans, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship would begin collecting the fingerprints and facial images this year, and cross-check them with immigration and law enforcement databases in Australia and overseas, the report said. It does not name which countries would be subject to the new requirements. . . .
. . . . While the report says the primary terrorist threat to Australia comes from a global jihadist movement, including al-Qaida, it also cites a rise in the number of terrorists born or raised in Australia. The government notes the 2005 London suicide bombings carried out by British nationals as an example of the growing threat of locally generated terrorism in Western democracies. Of the 38 people Australia has prosecuted or are being prosecuted as a result of counterterrorism operations, 37 are Australian citizens, Attorney General Robert McClelland said. . . . .
Counter-Terrorism White Paper: Securing Australia – Protecting our Community (.pdf)
The report actually mentions the word ‘jihad’ or ‘jihadist’ 12 times and states, “The main source of international terrorism and the primary terrorist threat to Australia and Australian interests is from a global violent jihadist movement…..”
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
Washington Post, 29 Jan 10: Malaysia’s arrest of 10 terror suspects was part of a sweep targeting the hard-line Islamic sect often associated with al-Qaida, but any link to the Nigerian suspected in the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner remains unclear, a senior official said Friday. Malaysia’s home minister announced the arrests Wednesday under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, saying they were mainly foreigners linked to an international terrorist network and posed a security threat. He declined to give further details.
Activists said they included four men from Syria, two from Nigeria and one each from Yemen and Jordan. Jordanian and Syrian officials said they had been informed of the arrests and would cooperate in the investigation. The senior Malaysian official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the suspects were believed to be followers of the orthodox Wahhabi sect, which seeks to purify Islamic beliefs and supports the establishment of Muslim states based on Islamic laws. Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaida are believed to have been influenced by Wahhabi doctrines. . . .
