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Algerian Group Suspected of Planning US Attacks.

FIREBRAND Muslim cleric Mohammed Omran reckons the Howard Government should give him an Order of Australia for helping ASIO, instead of trying to silence his extreme views. Sheik Omran -- who has been attacked by John Howard and moderate Islamic leaders for denying Muslims were behind the September 11 attacks -- claims to have foiled a terror plot to bomb the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. He said he should be awarded a "Queen's medal" for his regular contact with the domestic intelligence agency. The firebrand imam has also warned that any moves to jail him or shut down his association...

AL-QAEDA is recruiting suicide bombers who are infected with the AIDS virus, according to documents revealed to the Sunday Mirror. Terror chiefs are also targeting fanatics who suffer other lethal blood diseases such as hepatitis and dengue fever in order to increase their "kill rate" from an explosion. The chilling new threat is revealed in papers distributed to British military camps in Iraq and across Europe. Under the heading "HIV/Hepatitis" the document states: "There is evidence that terrorists might be deliberately recruiting volunteers with diseases that are spread by blood transference." Experts have found that bones and other blood-spattered fragments...

A report commissioned in mid-1999 by Rep. Curt Weldon (R) looks into possible Chinese front companies in the US seeking technology for the Chinese military. Dr. Eileen Preisser and Michael Maloof are commissioned to make the report. Dr. Preisser, who runs the Information Dominance Center at the US Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and will later become closely tied to Able Danger, uses LIWA's data mining capabilities to search unclassified information. According to Maloof, their results show Chinese front companies in the US posing as US corporations that acquire technology from US defense contractors. When the study is completed...

Instead, what we have is a kind of antiterror version of France's pre-World War II Maginot Line; an expensive, highly visible static defense against a nimble adversary. Congress loves it because it offers the chance to throw money at domestic constituencies, and liberals love it because it allows them to sound hawkish on terror without having to fire a shot. The rest of us, however, need to be realistic about its abilities. This is especially the case as Congress becomes increasingly unserious about the domestic threat. It says something about the current state of play that Mr. Bush must now...

Scooop.net (www.scooop.net), a next-generation media site based on democratic voting principles and active participation of its members, released the results of its weekly “Hot Topics” survey held last week which asked whether the U.S. government has “gone too far” regarding the domestic war on terror. When asked whether the U.S. should authorize the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency to provide surveillance of U.S. citizens concerning the war on terror, almost 50% of women said yes. Men who were surveyed were not so willing to allow the government the right to monitor U.S. citizens. Of those men surveyed, 56.2%...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a chronic problem. The controversy over President Bush's decision to bypass FISA warrants in the electronic surveillance of al Qaeda operatives has highlighted the act's limitations. But FISA has been a problem ever since it became law in 1978. Congress passed and President Carter signed the bill regulating electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence collection in the wake of an extended, post--Watergate debate about the so--called "imperial presidency." The debate was given added urgency by reports and official investigations of indiscriminate snooping in this country by elements of the U.S. intelligence community. However, like...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate. A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined. The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests...

Just over a week ago, the New York Times revealed the shocking news that the Bush administration has been spying on the international communications of suspected terrorists, thus setting off a rippling artificial scandal in the Times private reflecting pool, the increasingly stagnant mainstream media. Not to be outdone, U.S. News and World Report put on its water wings Friday and tried to create a splash of it own, by reporting that the same renegade Bush administration has been monitoring radiation levels in the public air -- without a warrant! Gasp! The power-mad Bushies have done this in a diabolical...

WASHINGTON, July 16, 2002 -- Military and civilian personnel who leak classified data are putting national security at risk and the practice must stop, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a memo to all members of the department. "I have spoken publicly and privately countless times about the dangers of leaking classified information," the secretary wrote. "It is wrong. It is against the law. It costs the lives of Americans. It diminishes our country's chances for success." Rumsfeld amplified his remarks during an interview on CNBC July 15. "Every once in a while, there are people in the United States...

FINALLY, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle - if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16 when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al-Qaeda suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that [President] Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was not the program Mr....

WASHINGTON - A classified radiation monitoring program, conducted without warrants, has targeted private U.S. property in an effort to prevent an al-Qaida attack, federal law enforcement officials confirmed Friday. While declining to provide details including the number of cities and sites monitored, the officials said the air monitoring took place since the Sept. 11 attacks and from publicly accessible areas — which they said made warrants and court orders unnecessary. U.S. News and World Report first reported the program on Friday. The magazine said the monitoring was conducted at more than 100 Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area —...

According to National Planning Scenarios complied by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, an improvised nuclear bomb going off in an American city is not a farfetched idea. In fact, it's the number one risk to the nation. Nuclear physicists using a Defense Department computer program to calculate the consequences of a nuclear attack on downtown Portland found that casualties would be surprisingly high. While few people think Portland could be a terrorist target, experts say think again, including the head of Oregon Emergency Management. Director Ken Murphy says, "We don't ever want to think we're not a target because...

The United States has warned of possible terrorist attacks against its interests in the Middle East and North Africa, and has cautioned American citizens to be vigilant about their security in those areas. In a statement posted Saturday on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait's website, the State Department says potential attacks could include bombings, hijackings, hostage taking, kidnappings and assassinations. It also warned that chemical and biological agents must be considered a possible threat. The State Department singled out Westerners, oil workers and U.S. contractors working with the military as potential targets. The statement pointed to last month's bombings of...

A Delhi bus driver who saved the lives of around 70 passengers when he took a bomb from his vehicle during last month's terror attacks has been speaking of his experience. More than 60 people were killed and hundreds were injured when three bombs exploded in busy shopping districts in the Indian capital on 29 October. Among the wounded was Kuldeep Singh, who carried a bomb off his bus after it was found by one of the passengers. Mindful of the fact that the bus was fuelled by highly-explosive compressed gas, he urged the 70 passengers to flee while he...

Rome, 24 Nov. (AKI) - A message menacing Western leaders including Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlsuconi appeared on an Islamist website on Thursday. The message - whose authenticity has yet to be verified - threatens to "decapitate" US president George W. Bush, Britain's prime minister Tony Blair, Berlusconi, Japan's prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and Australian premier John Howard. A section of the message - which reveals a good knowledge of Italian affairs on the part of its author- attacks Berlusconi, announcing: "the plan for his abduction has been laid - it only needs the go-ahead to be given." "Our appointment...

Amman, Jordan — Jordanian police said Friday they had rounded up 120 people, mainly Iraqis and Jordanians, in a nationwide hunt for those behind the triple Amman hotel bombings. The toll rose to at least 60 on Friday with the death of Syrian-American filmmaker Mustapha Akkad, whose 34-year-old daughter was also killed in the bombings. Mr. Akkad, who was 75 and lived in Los Angeles, had suffered serious injuries and a heart attack in the attack. He was the producer of the Halloween horror movies. The death toll included the three suicide bombers. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu...

Australia foils major attack Mon Nov 7, 2005 03:52 PM ET SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian authorities foiled what they believed to be a large-scale terrorist attack, arresting 15 people during raids in the country's two biggest cities of Sydney and Melbourne, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported on Tuesday. "I am satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack, or the launch of a large-scale terrorist attack here in Australia," New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney told ABC radio. The arrests come less than a week after Prime Minster John...

Government counterterrorism officials gave new details on Friday of what the White House said was a foiled 2002 plot to fly hijacked airplanes into targets on the West Coast, but their account suggested that the Bush administration might not have understood the dimensions of the plot until two major terror suspects were caught in 2003. Both suspects, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, had been involved in plans for such an attack, they said. President Bush referred obliquely to the planning in a speech on Thursday, when he said the United States and its partners had...

Palestinians fired another Kassam rocket at the western Negev town of Sderot on Tuesday night. The rocket landed in one of the town's neighborhoods, fortunately causing no injuries or damage. For in-depth focus on the post-pullout situation in and around Gaza, check out SPECIAL REPORT: GAZA UPHEAVALEarlier, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned terror groups against further shooting. "We'll hit them and hit them and hit them until they understand that Israel will not accept shooting into its borders," Mofaz said during a visit to IDF units on the border with Gaza. "This artillery battery behind me is not just for...