Hostage drill at NJ school features mock 'Christian terrorists'

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/news/3774563/detail.html
Iraqi Caught With San Diego School Crisis Plan
Man Suspected To Have Links To Terrorism
POSTED: 1:37 pm PDT September 30, 2004

UPDATED: 2:34 pm PDT September 30, 2004

SAN DIEGO — An Iraqi man with suspected links to terrorism had a computer disk containing crisis planning information for San Diego and other school districts when he was arrested by U.S. authorities in Iraq, 10News reported.

The man’s intentions were not known, and there was no indication that schools in San Diego or any other district were targets for terrorism, according to San Diego law enforcement officials.

The public report, “Practical Information on Crisis Planning, A Guide for Schools and Communities,” was downloaded from the U.S. Department of Education Web site.

The arrest was reported to the San Diego FBI office and the San Diego Unified School District last week. Parents and schools were not informed because it was determined there was not a threat.

“The clear message is that your children are safe and our schools are very well prepared, as well as our school district,” San Diego School District Police Chief Don Braun said.

San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne echoed the sentiment that public notification was not necessary.

“If we’re going to warn people it has got to be something we’ve authenticated, it’s specific and you need to know this information,” Lansdowne said.

The school district did take one precaution by denying access to the emergency plans on its Web site, according to 10News.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=4582

Bush’s Predecessor Didn’t ‘Put Much of a Dent’ in Bin Laden Network

Clinton Was Warned: Terrorists in U.S.

Posted Jul 23, 2004

The massive report released July 22 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reveals that the Clinton Administration was warned in early 2000 that U.S. borders were open to terrorists and that terrorist sleeper cells had already penetrated the United States.

The warning came in a memo written by National Security Council aide Richard Clarke after al Qaeda had failed in its Millenium Plot, which included plans to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International airport on Jan. 1, 2000. That attack was foiled when terrorist Ahmed Ressam panicked and ran as he was pat-searched by a Customs agent at Port Angeles, Wash., where Ressam had arrived from Canada via ferry.

A search of Ressam’s rental car turned up the bomb he intended to use in Los Angeles.

Clarke made recommendations on how the United States could combat the al Qaeda threat. His memo said U.S. efforts thus far had “not put too much of a dent” in Osama bin Laden’s network.

In summarizing Clarke’s Jan. 11, 2000, memo, the 9/11 commission, says, “If the United States wanted to ‘roll back’ the threat, disruption would have to proceed at ‘a markedly different tempo.’ Second, ‘sleeper cells’ and ‘a variety of terrorist groups’ had turned up at home.”

National Security Council staff advised the Clinton Administration to promote CIA efforts to go after al Qaeda, crack down on terrorists in the United States, and bolster immigration enforcement.

“The NSC staff advised [National Security Adviser Sandy] Berger that the United States had only been ‘nibbling at the edges’ of Bin Laden’s network and that more terror attacks were a question not of ‘if’ but rather ‘when’ and ‘where,’” says the 9/11 commission report. “The Principals Committee met March 10, 2000, to review possible new moves. The principles ended up agreeing that the government should take three major steps. First, more money should go to the CIA to accelerate its efforts to ‘seriously attrit’ al Qaeda. Second, there should be a crackdown on foreign terrorist organizations in the United States. Third, immigration law enforcement should be strengthened, and the INS should tighten controls on the Canadian border (including stepping up U.S-Canada cooperation).”

The Clinton Administration failed to respond aggressively. CIA counterterrorism funding became bogged down in an internal fight in the administration. “The FBI operated a web of informants, conducted electronic surveillance, and had opened significant investigations in a number of field offices,” the report continues. But “on a national level . . . the FBI never used the information to gain a systematic or strategic understanding of the nature and extent of al Qaeda fundraising.”

On the immigration front, among Clarke’s recommendations were “creating an interagency group to target illegal entry,” “imposing tighter controls on student visas,” and “taking legal action to prevent terrorists from coming to the United States and to remove those already here, detaining them while awaiting removal proceedings.”

Concludes the commission: “These proposals were praiseworthy in principle. In practice, however, they required action by weak, chronically underfunded executive agencies and powerful congressional committees, which were more responsive to well-organized interest groups than to executive branch interagency committees.”

http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/70259.htm

AL QAEDA’S VIDEOTAPED SCHEME TO MASSACRE SCHOOLKIDS

By AL GUART

PHOTO EXCLUSIVE:
A masked murder gang uses an abandoned school in Afghanistan to simulate an exercise in which terrorists shoot at cut-out targets (above) representing teachers and kids.
- PBN News/Random House

March 9, 2003 — EXCLUSIVE

HEAVILY armed al Qaeda thugs practiced storming a school, shooting children and taking hostages in a videotaped training exercise, The Post has learned.

The terror rehearsal took place under the mandate of al Qaeda’s operations chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan March 1, is being interrogated by U.S. authorities at a secret location as the United States tries to learn of other attacks he may have been plotting.

The taped training attack was conducted at an abandoned school in Mir Bach Kot, Afghanistan, north of Kabul, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity before coalition forces overthrew the Taliban regime in 2001. The video shows bullet-ridden blackboards and cut-out targets in classrooms, apparently representing students and teachers, said former Green Beret Keith “Jack” Idema.

Idema found the tapes in an abandoned house while he was in Afghanistan in November 2001 as an adviser to anti-Taliban force, the Northern Alliance.

“Knowing al Qaeda trained to take out a presidential motorcade or an office building is scary, but nothing is more frightening than their training to take over a school,” said Idema. “In a classroom in a camp near Jalalabad, we found little desks with bullet holes in them and the backs of the chairs each had seven or eight bullet holes in them. They were definitely aiming to hit critical mass.”

Idema, whose travels in post-9/11 Afghanistan are part of a new Random House book, “The Hunt for bin Laden,” said he gave copies of the tapes to the military and CIA within weeks of their discovery. Last week, government officials told The Post they believed the tapes were authentic.

But FBI spokesman John Iannarelli said no credible evidence of a specific threat to American schools has surfaced to date.

Segments of the videotapes viewed by The Post featured a hostage-taking exercise and three scenarios where masked men, armed with AK-47s, pistols and hand grenades, storm a school-like brick building. In one attack, which takes just eight minutes to execute, two gunmen rappel from the roof onto a window ledge of the building and wait for the go-ahead on a two-way radio.

“Two of the kidnappers are sitting in the cafeteria,” a narrator says in Arabic.

At the command “move!” a janitor sweeping a hallway inside drops his broom and pulls out a gun. Others burst into rooms, fire automatic weapons and bark English commands at a group of children and adults, apparently locals and other camp residents co-opted for the exercise.

“Sit,” a hooded terrorist yells to the children, who shriek in horror. “Don’t move, don’t move,” he says. The children are made to kneel and place their hands on the walls while adults stand with hands raised and are frisked.

The armed thugs then herd their captives down the hallways as they shout in English, “Go in here!” and “Don’t move!” Some hostages are then ordered to the roof.

“I don’t want to go,” one sham victim pleads in Arabic.

“Go before I kill you,” a rifle-toting thug barks back.

The camera then zooms in on a terrorist, who stomps on a child.

On the rooftop, a lookout announces the arrival of police. A terrorist then drags a “hostage” to the ledge for display.

Other training exercises shown on the tapes include an attack at a mock golf outing where the “caddies” drop their bags, pull out guns and shoot at a dais. The narrator announces in Arabic, “This is how we will kill the world leaders.”

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