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<p>The FBI has taken into custody a Minnesota man who was believed to be plotting a terrorist attack. Buford Rogers, 24, of Montevideo, was arrested Friday after authorities searched his home and found guns and explosive devices, according to an FBI news release.</p>

In the previous post, I noted that Darrell Issa’s witnesses in the House Oversight hearings on Benghazi would make life difficult for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Fox News reported late yesterday that one witness in particular will testify that Hillary purposefully cut out of the loop the State Department’s bureau for counter-terrorism as Benghazi burned — which will prompt all sorts of questions as to why any Secretary of State would make that decision: On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and...

Mark I. Thompson will make the allegation that Hillary Clinton "tried to cut the department's own counter-terrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making" as they responded to the Benghazi attacks. Thompson is a former Marine and the current deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's counter terrorism bureau. He will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to testify about the Benghazi attacks. Fox News is also reporting that ANOTHER official from counteroffensive made the same allegation "about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October." "You should...

(Reuters) - The number of names on a highly classified U.S. central database used to track suspected terrorists has jumped to 875,000 from 540,000 only five years ago, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) today announced a hearing, scheduled for May 9, to examine the Boston bombings and the implications for homeland security. Chairman McCaul: “Two weeks ago, our country was attacked by radical Islamist terrorists. Four lives were lost and hundreds of others were forever changed. As our nation recovers, it is imperative that we understand what happened, what signs may have been missed and what we can improve. “The Committee is currently examining the events leading up to the attack on our homeland, the genesis of this plot and the...

The White House issued an edict to scrub all law enforcement, intelligence and military teachings on Islam. The FBI ended up discarding pages of information that warned about the threat from the Brotherhood.... “There is no strategy in the FBI,” he told The Times. “At FBI headquarters, it is a daily fire drill. The threats come in, and they run around to deal with them and run them down. But because none of it can have anything to do with the Muslim Brotherhood’s movement in the U.S. or Islam, they never address the root cause and common investigative realities.”

President Obama and his lackeys in government still insist that the Fort Hood massacre was a case of "'workplace violence,' despite mountains of evidence [that] clearly proves the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror." Is the Obama administration now taking the same course with the Boston bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? How did our national security apparatus allow these brothers to slip under the radar? Two men murdered three people and injured over 175 at an international event in a great American city, and "avoid[ed] capture for three days." The daily activities of 1 million people were...

An important clarification from Senator Rand Paul, who made headlines for a rare talking filibuster challenging Barack Obama to explain the difference between using drones against American citizens overseas and using them in the United States. Neil Cavuto asked Paul about the distinction yesterday in light of the manhunt for American citizen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday, in which a drone or two with real-time infrared downlook capabilities above Watertown might have saved a little time. Paul told Cavuto that this wasn’t the use to which he objected: “If there’s a killer on the loose in a neighborhood, I’m not against...

A startling home-made video now shows the terrifying moments where Watertown residents were forced out of their homes at gunpoint as SWAT teams performed door-to-door searches as they hunted the second marathon bomber. While millions of Bostonians waited in their houses on Friday during the city-wide lockdown, the people of Watertown were faced with SWAT officers yelling at them to get out of the buildings immediately. At the time, the Boston police department and federal agents were barely criticized, but now many are concerned about the dangerous precedent that could lead to more police searches using the rationale of ‘exigent...

Canada to announce arrests after thwarting "major terrorist attack":CBCR Reuters – 19 mins ago TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian police and intelligence agencies are to announce multiple arrests on Monday after an operation to thwart a "major terrorist attack," the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said on Monday, citing unnamed "highly placed" sources.

Rather than what was hoped – that this was an isolated, spontaneous and inexplicable act by two troubled young men – it appears that the Boston bombing was part of a long term, well planned, large scale effort by Islamic terrorists with foreign ties to bring jihad to U.S. soil. And if the plot was that extensive, the two most important questions now are, how did the U.S. government fail to detect it, and what else do terrorists have planned for this country that we don’t know about?

'One of the brothers suspected of the Boston Marathon bombings had direct contact with Chechen terrorists – and was ‘monitored’ by investigators for five years. The Mail on Sunday has learned that the FBI put Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, under surveillance after receiving an explicit warning from the Russian intelligence services. But despite apparently telling his mother that Tamerlan was an ‘extremist’ leader, the FBI eventually discounted the possibility that he was a threat.'

An 18-year-old Chicago-area man accused of planning to join an al Qaeda-linked group fighting in Syria has been arrested by the FBI, the agency said on Saturday. Abdella Ahmad Tounisi of Aurora, Illinois, was taken into custody late on Friday as he prepared to board a plane at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport bound for Turkey, the FBI said in a statement. It added that Tounisi was a friend of Adel Daoud, an American accused of trying to stage a bombing outside a downtown Chicago bar last year. The agency said Tounisi had not been involved in that plot. Tounisiappeared before...

The unprecedented manhunt in Boston that concluded successfully Friday night earned law enforcement authorities the gratitude of the nation. But as relief replaces fear, the debate about what this episode means for the future is already beginning. And one of the most unsettling questions is whether the violence-related lockdown of a major U.S. city — an extraordinary moment in American history — sets a life-altering precedent. There are already worries that the effort to protect the people of Boston contained an element of overreaction. Local authorities told the city and nearby suburbs to “shelter in place” throughout the day and...

As news of last night’s incident in Watertown, Massachusetts spread, police from all over the North East converged, once again, on Boston. Along with them were elements of the National Guard and U.S. military. Though an official announcement has not been made, and likely will not be made, the entire Boston metropolitan area is now in complete lock-down in what can only be described as a de facto state of martial law. By all accounts, law enforcement and military personnel have classified Boston and surrounding towns a war-zone, especially after a gunfight yesterday evening that left one of the Boston...

Zubeidat K. Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston bombing suspects Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suggested Friday that the FBI had been surveilling her older son for several years prior to Monday's attack. In an interview with Russia Today Friday, Tsarnaeva said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got involved in "religious politics" five years ago, and that the FBI had previously contacted her about her son's activities. "He was controlled by the FBI, like for three, five years," she said. "They knew what my son was doing, they knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going [to], they used to...

* Throughout Boston and its surrounding suburbs — a metro area usually clogged and bustling on a weekday morning — residents found themselves ordered to stay in — or stay out — of their homes Friday morning, as police launched an unprecedented hunt for Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, an immigrant of Chechen origin who grew up in Cambridge and was identified in video footage from the site of Monday’s deadly attack. The major universities that are the city’s lifeblood shut down. The web of buses and squealing transit cars of the oldest underground subway in the nation ground to a...

Police source: 2 Russian nationals pulled over in Niagara Falls; 4 suspicious backpacks in the car, robot & bomb techs on scene.FBI is aware of the situation in Niagara Falls, they (sic) joint terrorism task force is working with NYSP.

On his radio program today, Glenn Beck stated that the original "person of interest" had an outstanding deportation order for suspected terrorist activity. A reporter for The Blaze uncovered this information and will report on his radio program and web site later this morning.

A letter addressed to President Obama containing what the Secret Service calls "a suspicious substance" was intercepted Tuesday at a mail screening facility, the agency said Wednesday. The FBI has since said that it preliminary tested positive for ricin.

In a Congress where gun control and immigration are king, and in an administration that hasn't issued a terror alert since replacing Bush's color-coded system. What was supposed to be a jam-packed week of controversial legislation on Capitol Hill was punctuated by moments of silence for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings and trepidation as security was tightened in the hours after the attack at key locales in Washington. (snip) The worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 was poised to dramatically shift the predefined agenda of the 113th Congress after a campaign season where the president said al-Qaeda...

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Monday evening pledged the full weight of the federal government to help protect Bostonians -- and Americans -- and to figure out who is responsible for the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. In a 3-minute address from the White House, Obama urged caution, saying “people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts.” Significantly, reflecting caution about the unknown motive for the attack, the president did not call the incident a terrorist attack.“But, make no mistake,” he said. “We will get to the bottom of this. And we will...

Vowing to hold those who were responsible for the Boston attackers "accountable,"

A law enforcement official says cellphone service has been shut down in the Boston area to prevent any potential remote detonations of explosives.

Security outside the White House was stepped up Monday afternoon following two explosions at the Boston Marathon. The Secret Service created a secure perimeter, pushing back members of the public back across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. One source confirmed to POLITICO that the increased security is related to the Boston incident

In an effort to clear up “misconceptions” that the Fusion Centers of the Department of Homeland Security spy on Americans, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis denied that they do this, instead saying that they’re only spying on “anti-government” Americans ... As has been reported, the DHS has released documents listing Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who support gun rights, who oppose the Federal Reserve, oppose illegal immigration and oppose abortion as “domestic extremists” and terrorists. Over the last year, the DHS has purchased nearly 2 billion rounds of mostly hollow point ammunition, more than 2,700 MRAP vehicles designed...

Back in 2007, when he was running for president, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush's expansive vision of executive power, saying, "I reject the view that the president may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security." The day after taking office in 2009, Obama declared that "my administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government." Those two positions went together, because secrecy requires power and power thrives in secrecy, as Obama himself has been demonstrating for the last four years. Three recent cases illustrate how breaking his promise of "the most transparent administration in...

Attorney General Eric Holder wrote Sen. Rand Paul,R-Ky., to confirm that President Obama does not have the authority to kill an American on U.S. soil in a non-combat situation, Obama’s spokesman announced today. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney quoted from the letter that Holder sent to Paul today. “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on an American soil?” Holder wrote, per Carney. “The answer is no.” Carney added that, “if the United States were under attack, there were an imminent threat,” the president has the authority...

More than a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a set of extraordinary and secretive surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency has been institutionalized, and they have grown. These special programs are conducted under the code name Ragtime, and are divided into several subcomponents, according to the new book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady. (I purchased a copy this morning.) The authors, both journalists who cowrote a previous book about special operations in the military, have dug deep into the code names and operational nitty gritty of the NSA's secretive...

MCLEAN, Va. — A top official with the Federal Aviation Administration reassured the public on Wednesday that, despite the fear and paranoia of some, no armed drones will be permitted to fly in U.S. airspace. “We currently have rules in the books that deal with releasing anything from an aircraft, period. Those rules are in place and that would prohibit weapons from being installed on a civil aircraft,” said Jim Williams, head of the FAA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office, in an address to the drone industry’s leading trade group meeting this week in Northern Virginia.

Amid the Administration’s rush to: apologize for and disregard America’s founding principles; financially and militarily support America’s enemies like Hamas and other Muslim Brotherhood entities (read “Egypt”); embrace noxious regimes like Iran; handle the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador in Benghazi in Carteresque fashion; shrink America’s nuclear capabilities as well as the fighting forces of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps; and host terrorists in the White House while simultaneously allowing known Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood operatives to serve inside DHS, it should be no surprise to readers that President Obama has nominated a John Brennan to be the next Director of...

FBI: Man Attempted To Bomb Bank, Trying To Set Off US Civil War By Pete Williams, NBC NewsFebruary 8, 2013 The FBI, ending a sting, says it has arrested a California man after he tried to set off what he thought was a car bomb at a bank in Oakland. Matthew Aaron Llaneza, 28, of San Jose, was arrested Friday morning, capping a months-long undercover investigation, the Justice Department said. Agents say he met last November with someone he thought was connected with the Taliban but who was actually an FBI agent. Prosecutors say Llaneza proposed car-bombing a bank in...

A Justice Department white paper, obtained by NBC News, states that it is lawful to kill a United States citizen if “an informed, high-level” government official decides that the target is a ranking Al Qaeda figure who poses “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” What standards must be met for the government to assassinate an American citizen? And does this deprive U.S. citizens of their constitutionally protected due process rights?

Random checks happen at stations across country. Passengers catching the 9:30 a.m. Amtrak train from Austin to Dallas were met with an unexpected surprise when they got to the station. Transportation Security Administration agents, Austin police officers, and the Department of Homeland Security were all waiting for them. ... Random security checks are voluntary ... The random check takes about 10-15 minutes and happens hundreds of times a day at bus, train, and subway stations across the country.

Prior to President Obama's first inauguration in 2009, a controversy erupted over reports that he intended to appoint John Brennan as CIA director. That controversy, in which I participated, centered around the fact that Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush's programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program. As a result, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration, issuing a bitter letter blaming "strong criticism in some quarters prompted by [his] previous service with the" CIA. This...

F.B.I. Counterterrorism Agents Monitored Occupy Movement, Records ShowBy MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and COLIN MOYNIHAN Published: December 24, 2012 WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation used counterterrorism agents to investigate the Occupy Wall Street movement, including its communications and planning, according to newly disclosed agency records. **SNIP** In the following months, F.B.I. personnel around the country were routinely involved in exchanging information about the movement with businesses, local law-enforcement agencies and universities. An October 2011 memo from the bureau’s Jacksonville, Fla., field office was titled Domain Program Management Domestic Terrorist. The memo said agents discussed “past and upcoming meetings” of...

In congressional testimony on January 20, the nation’s top intelligence official, Dennis Blair, acknowledged that the U.S. government mishandled the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian terrorist who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day. Specifically, Blair was not happy that Abdulmutallab was charged as a common criminal and read his rights, rather than being questioned by the elite interrogation unit announced by President Obama as a replacement for the CIA teams used by the Bush administration. “I’d been a part of the deliberations which established this high-value interrogation unit [HIG],” Blair explained at a...

Link only. Holder now has the right to keep dossiers on U.S. citizens. More here.

  "German Islamists Target Youth on the Internet" By Christoph Sydow 11/01/2012 "Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan." PHOTO CAPTION: "A growing community of German-speaking Islamists has developed on the Internet. Aiming to find new recruits, they glorify jihad and call for attacks on Germany. A new study warns that such online propaganda might foster a new generation of terrorists." SNIPPET: "International terrorist groups like al-Qaida recognized the importance of the Internet for recruiting new supporters early on." SNIPPET: "Intelligence services can also take advantage of the anonymity of Internet forums to deliberately plant false information or obtain insider...

CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG). "The CSG is the one group that's supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies," a high-ranking government official told CBS News. "They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon."

Another day, another step in the Obama administration's narrative collapse. Last night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the highest-ranking administration official to admit that the fairy tale of a "spontaneous" protest that "spun out of control" in Benghazi was untrue. Instead, Clinton went so far as to suggest that al-Qaeda had succeeded in striking an American diplomatic mission for the first time since the twin embassy bombings in 1998, while her husband was President: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday suggested there was a link between the Qaeda franchise in North Africa and the attack at the...

Air Force and Coast Guard aircraft will fly “intercept and identification” exercises over Washington tonight as part of efforts to prevent suicide aircraft attacks or other threats to the capital, a military spokesman said. The latest exercise of what the North American Aerospace Defense Command calls “Falcon Virgo” involves Civil Air Patrol Cessna-182 light aircraft and a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter between 11:30 p.m. Monday and 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, NORAD said in a statement. “We want to make sure people seeing these planes aren’t concerned,” said NORAD spokesman John Cornelio. “One of the reasons we put out notice of...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — It's an audiotape the New York Police Department hoped you would never hear. A building superintendent at an apartment complex just off the Rutgers University campus called the New Brunswick Police 911 line in June 2009. He said his staff had been conducting a routine inspection and came across something suspicious. "What's suspicious?" the dispatcher asked. "Suspicious in the sense that the apartment has about — has no furniture except two beds, has no clothing, has New York City Police Department radios." "Really?" the dispatcher asked, her voice rising with surprise. The caller, Salil Sheth, had...

How much does Barack Obama hate Israel and want to throw her under the bus? Here’s how much; the Obama administration not only excluded Israel from a new counterterrorism forum in Spain, it didn’t even mention Israel in its remarks. If there were ever a country that has dealt with murderous terrorist attacks over and over again, that country would be Israel. Here’s what Maria Otero, the State Department’s Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, said: Last September at the official launch of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, I had the privilege to introduce the premiere of a...

An Upstate man is in custody, accused by the FBI and local law enforcement as being part of a “domestic terrorist group” that broke into and took over a foreclosed home, according to a release by the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office. The home is listed as being valued at $2,599,000. A realtor checking on the home found a notice, apparently posted by the extremists, saying that they were taking possession of the home. The Sheriff's Office release said, “On April 24, a deputy responded to a report of a burglary at 112 White Violet Way in Sunset. A lock on...

The Feds have been forced to release their social network monitoring manual, which contains the list of words the government watches on social media and news sites. [snip] Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media, News Ever complain on Facebook that you were feeling “sick?” Told your friends to “watch” a certain TV show? Left a comment on a media website about government “pork?” If you did any of those things, or tweeted about your recent vacation in “Mexico” or a shopping trip to “Target,” the Department of Homeland Security may have noticed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats on Thursday urged the New York Police Department to purge its intelligence databases of information gleaned from its clandestine spying on Muslim neighborhoods. They also criticized the Obama administration for offering tepid responses to questions about whether it endorses such tactics.

The heat is on a U.S. official responsible for leaking details of al Qaeda's disrupted bomb plot to the Associated Press. On the Sunday talk shows, high-ranking officials in both chambers of Congress across both parties called for investigations and the prosecution of the man or woman who leaked details about the infiltration of al Qaeda's Yemen branch. Unlike previous situations, where government crackdowns on leakers has been criticized, this is appears to be a fairly clear-cut case of improper leaking. The mission, which resulted in the recovery of a sophisticated underwear bomb, was leaked to the AP before it...

Ah, I remember spending a solid month on this story back in spring 2009 when Obama and Cheney were having their war of words over enhanced interrogation. Porter Goss claimed that he and she were both briefed on waterboarding in September 2002 as members of the House intel committee, a hugely incendiary accusation given Pelosi’s status as Speaker and therefore an anti-torture liberal light. Pelosi contended that, in the NYT’s words, “the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.� Then, as the media turned up the...

 I want to live in a surveillance state. Big Brother, come cast your watchful eye over me and mine. I love you, bro. Seriously, when I saw the outcry over Government plans to gain access to telephone, email and internet, my initial reaction was: “You mean they can’t do that already?” I assumed, somewhat stupidly, that everything we said, typed or viewed was routinely monitored, and then filtered by some giant, super-secret computer tucked away in a heavily guarded subterranean basement of GCHQ: “Hodges has just said he wants to shoot another Liverpool player, sir.” “Oh, he’s always saying that, Jones....