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U.S. and international air forces are becoming interested and open to utilizing off-the-shelf equipment in low-intensity, counter-insurgency and counter-drug operations in remote areas. The U.S. Navy is already evaluating an armed version of Embraer’s EMB-314 Super Tucano under a classified evaluation program known as ‘Imminent Fury’. The Navy is currently evaluating a single aircraft and is seeking a budget of $44 million to embark on a larger program. The Special Operations Command, Air Force and US Marine Corps are also interested in employing off the shelf assets for low-intensity Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and rapid target engagement. Armed Super Tucanos...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Armed men stole five small planes from a private airstrip in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa on Tuesday by overpowering a police officer and flying away, security forces said. The group of around 20 men stormed the small airstrip at dawn, seized the officer's gun, tied him up, filled the planes with fuel and flew off, said Emma Quiroz, spokeswoman for the government's anti-organized crime operations in Sinaloa. It was not clear if there was a link to drug gangs who use small aircraft to spirit cocaine through northern Mexico toward the United States. Quiroz's...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Compiling a list of suspicious incidents nationwide, including train derailments, chemical/oil refinery fires and or explosions, etc. Don't forget to include news link for source. Please send to my attention.

FBI Special Agent: Trained "Jihadists" are in OregonThe FBI knows of "jihadists" who have trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and are now living in Oregon, the agency's Oregon chief said in an exclusive Tuesday interview with The Associated Press. "We don't have an imminent threat that we're aware of. But I will say this: We have people here in Oregon that have trained in jihadist camps in bad areas. In the bad neighborhoods of the world," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Jordan. Asked what he meant by "bad neighborhoods," he said Afghanistan, as well as several other...

The wave of locusts that hit Israel over the weekend intensified Saturday evening, with a fresh swarm of relatively large locusts being spotted over the southern city of Eilat and with the insects reaching as far north as the southern section of the Dead Sea. Swarms of large locusts landed on Saturday evening near Faran in the Arava region and Neot Hakikar south of the Dead Sea. Agriculture Ministry workers have been scanning the area in order to find the exact location of the swarms. A wave of relatively large locusts was spotted flying over the southern city of Eilat...

The Transportation Security Administration issued an advisory on Friday that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on Nov. 1. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qa'ida may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If you see the aircraft, the TSA says you...

The Transportation Security Administration has issued an advisory that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft (similar in appearance to the aircraft shown above) was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on November 1st, 2004. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qaeda may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If...

Hijackers' Interest in Crop Dusters Still Puzzles Terrorism Investigators By JOHN J. FIALKA, TOM HAMBURGER and GARY FIELDS Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- Seven months before he crashed an airliner into the World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta was asking crop dusters in Florida an odd question about their planes: How far can they fly? Such aircraft normally aren't flown long distances. But this summer, a Middle Eastern man who gave his name as "Sam" hung around crop-dusting firms in Saskatchewan, Canada, for days -- and asked the same question. And sometime before he was arrested ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top al Qaeda planners of the Sept. 11 hijackings might have canceled the attack had they known that Zacarias Moussaoui -- chosen by Osama bin Laden as one of the pilots -- had been arrested, the commission investigating the attacks said on Thursday. The commission said news of Moussaoui's Aug. 16, 2001, arrest did not reach bin Laden and top al Qaeda planners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before Sept. 11. "According to (attack coordinator Ramzi bin al-Shaibah), had bin Laden and KSM learned prior to 9/11 that Moussaoui had been detained, they might have canceled the operation,"...

Posted on Sun, Apr. 21, 2002 BY JENNIFER BABSON jbabson@herald.com BOCA CHICA KEY - They worry about allergies and immune system difficulties and ailments yet to be diagnosed. A few bolted for points north; others shuttered windows and stayed inside. Word that the U.S. Army was conducting biological and chemical detection tests off Key West last week -- using a crop duster to spray what it says are benign substances over a small swath of the Gulf -- set alarm bells ringing for some on this island chain. ''Monday I had my house closed up all day and the air...

A BRITISH terror suspect held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay has confessed to plotting to kill Tony Blair in an anthrax strike on the Commons, it was claimed last night. Moazzam Begg, one of nine Britons detained at Camp Delta in Cuba, has agreed to plead guilty over an elaborate Al Qaeda plot as part of the deal returning him to the UK, his lawyer said. The 36-year- old father- of-three has allegedly confessed to planning to fly an unmanned plane from Suffolk to London and drop the bacteria over Westminster. The confession would be in exchange for a...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has questioned more than 3,000 pilots and aircraft owners, most of them in the past year, amid persistent concerns that terrorists might use crop-dusting planes to mount a biological or chemical attack, newly released documents show. The interviews have not produced any arrests, according to a senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, but have resulted in terrorism investigations that are still under way. The effort, outlined in documents submitted to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, is more extensive than previously disclosed and underscores how seriously the threat is viewed...

<p>The government seems hell-bent in its effort to limit the suspects in the anthrax mystery to a domestic loner. First, the FBI's behavioral analysis came up with the profile of a lone wolf based on its "exacting handwriting and linguistic analysis" of one letter that contained 18 words and another that contained 27 words. It suggested that the writer of these two letters was a single disgruntled American, not connected to the jihadist terrorists of Sept. 11 (even though the letter used the plural pronoun "we" and began with an underlined "9-11").</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — The FBI is working on a theory that a previously unmentioned man was meant to be the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Fox News has confirmed.</p> <p>"We are fairly confident we know who No. 20 is," a top law-enforcement official told USA Today, which first reported the story.</p>

A Second Attack Planned French Authorities: Moussaoui Plotted Another Series of Attacks By Brian Ross and David Scott Sept. 5— Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was part of a second wave of suicide hijackings planned for early 2002 in Europe and the United States, French intelligence authorities told ABCNEWS, and they say the U.S. Justice Department is making a mistake in identifying him as the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. <! -- begin print page / send page box --> Moussaoui is the only person charged by the United States government as an...

WASHINGTON - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant U.S. prosecutors have charged with complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, contends he was not part of that day's hijackings but was preparing for a later operation outside the United States, court papers revealed Tuesday. In a separate development in the case, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. ordered that the public and news media be admitted to portions of a June 3 court session to consider whether Moussaoui can interview an al-Qaida member also held as a prisoner. The government had argued the hearing should be closed because classified information would...

<p>WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Jailed Al-Qaida member Zacarias Moussaoui says he was part of a planned second-wave terrorist attack outside the United States after Sept. 11 2001, lawyers assisting him said in declassified documents made public Tuesday. The disclosure in papers unsealed by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., is the most detailed acknowledgment by Moussaoui that he was preparing to participate in an attack when he was detained in the Twin Cities on Aug. 16, 2001. He was taken into custody after arousing suspicious while learning to fly a jumbo jetliner at an Eagan flight school.</p>

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 25 — The government has asked a judge to dismiss all charges against terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, according to a motion released Thursday. Prosecutors said they made the extraordinary request to hasten an appeal challenging the defendant’s right to question al-Qaida prisoners.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States obtained a slightly altered indictment against accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, updating information on financial transactions that the government contends helped fund the terrorist attacks. An allegation in the original indictment that Moussaoui and alleged hijacker leader Mohammed Atta looked into how to use planes for crop-dusting also was removed. The new indictment, issued Wednesday, adds that suspected hijacker Fayez Ahmed used a credit card in Florida to obtain $4,900 from an account that Moussaoui has been linked to, according to the government. The new indictment also adds Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to...

The Saudi government paid off al-Qaida in exchange for immunity from terror attacks. Saudi princes knew in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks. Most of the Saudi officials who assisted al-Qaida all died mysteriously soon thereafter. The revelations in Gerald Posner's new book Why America Slept are an astonishing reminder of just how much we still don't know about Sept. 11 and its planning. But there is also plenty that we think we know but don't. I'm not talking about shoddy conspiracy theories (that Jews were warned not to show up for work at the World Trade Center, for example)...

Sources tell TIME that U.S. officials suspect that bin Laden conspirators may have been planning to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting planes Saturday, Sep. 22, 2001 New York -- U.S. law enforcement officials have found a manual on the operation of cropdusting equipment while searching suspected terrorist hideouts, government sources tell TIME magazine in an issue out on Monday, Sept. 24th. The discovery has added to concerns among government counterterrorism experts that the bin Laden conspirators may have been planning — or may still be planning —to disperse biological or chemical agents from a cropdusting plane normally used ...

FBI agents interrogating captured al-Qaeda operatives now suspect there was a plan to hijack a fifth jet on 11 September to attack the White House. Debriefings with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the terror plot, and its suspected chief financier, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, have led to the new theory. "Many, many people are saying many interesting things," a senior FBI official was reported as saying. The interviews are being conducted as part of the probe into alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui. Court papers from defence lawyers and a United States district judge show that prosecutors in the case are...

Concerns about egg whites to delay start of radar tests 2003-02-21 The Oklahoman Lingering concerns over the use of powdered egg whites in a series of chemical and biological tests in Canadian, Grady and McClain counties have led the U.S. Army and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to delay the start of the project, officials confirmed Thursday. The tests, which will use crop dusters to drop egg whites and four other substances believed to mock chemical or biological agents, were scheduled to begin Monday. Concerns about allergic reactions to the egg whites, many raised by residents during meetings last week...

Barely two weeks before his arrest outside an Eagan hotel, Zacarias Moussaoui inquired about the University of Minnesota's crop-dusting program, a move suggesting the terror suspect might have considered staying in the state for a year or more. Moussaoui e-mailed the university's Crookston, Minn., campus on July 31, 2001, seeking information on a "short course you offer to become a crop duster (6 month, 1 years max.)" Moussaoui made a fleeting reference to the e-mail in a court filing late last month in Alexandria, Va., where he is awaiting trial on six federal charges, including conspiracy to commit air piracy...

ARIS, July 25 — French intelligence officials say that Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged with crimes related to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, traveled to Afghanistan several times in the late 1990's to attend terrorist training camps and meet with Al Qaeda officials in Kandahar and Jalalabad.The French officials said they suspected, as do some American investigators, that Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen arrested on visa violations last August, was not meant to take part in the hijackings on Sept. 11. Instead, they said they believed Al Qaeda leaders planned to use him in a follow-up attack, perhaps...