Free Republic

HE was told not to grow a beard, wear Islamic clothing or show any sign of religious devotion. During his recruitment as a soldier in the global jihad, Assem Hammoud was told to act like a typical young, secular Lebanese man and warned not to attract attention, a senior Lebanese security official said. Hammoud was an ideal recruit because he did not have any apparent ties to militants. "He had no criminal history, and no history of involvement with militant groups," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He was living a normal life, far from any...

One of these days, if you lose a son, a daughter, a cousin or a good friend in a terrorist attack, blame whoever perpetrated the deed first, but secondly blame The New York Times, whose irresponsibility may have enabled the killers to obtain necessary financing. This story on how the government tracks terrorist funding likewise hurts the paper while also hurting America as a whole by telling the enemy how he might be found out. Said Tony Snow, presidential press secretary, the Times and other papers that broke the story "ought to think long and hard about whether a public's...

In what police described as a random attack, Paul Schrum, a 62-year-old medical supplies salesman from Pikesville, was shot dead while watching a movie at Loews Valley Center 9 in Owings Mills. About 20 minutes into the film, police said, the gunman stood, told everyone to get on the floor and fired four shots. [snip] The suspect is a 24-year-old man, a 2000 graduate of Mount Hebron High School in Howard County and a 2005 graduate of Loyola College, where he majored in biology. Mujtaba Rabbani Jabbar's family home is a house valued at more than $1 million in one...

The New York Times reports today that before his death, top al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi trained about 300 foreign fighters in Iraq and sent them back to their home countries, where they awaited orders to carry out strikes. But the paper makes no mention of Zarqawi's most ambitious foreign attack plot, which nearly succeeded two years ago: a weapons of mass destruction strike that intelligence officials estimated would have killed 20,000. The death toll planned by Zarqawi would have far exceeded the destruction wrought by Osama bin Laden on Sept. 11. The April 2004 attack, which was...

Terror cell 'was planning nerve gas attack on capital' By Andrew Alderson, Sean Rayment and Patrick Hennessy (Filed: 04/06/2006) Terrorists were planning a chemical attack in London similar to the outrage on the Tokyo underground, according to police and the security services. MI5 operatives suspect that al-Qa'eda sympathisers intended to produce a nerve agent - probably sarin - and release it in a confined space, such as a tube carriage, to maximise the number of casualties. The sarin attack on three railway lines in the Japanese capital killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000 in March 1995. It was...

An Indonesian police raid which killed two militants appears to have foiled a terrorist attack in the late planning stage, a United States intelligence think tank believes. The raid, conducted with the help of Australian Federal Police (AFP) in the Javanese town of Binangun on Saturday, followed a fresh Australian travel alert issued on April 20 warning of a possibly imminent terrorist attack somewhere in Indonesia. In its analysis, private sector intelligence group Stratfor said the raid was aimed at Noordin Mohammad Top, one of South-East Asia's most wanted, who is believed responsible for a series of bombings, including the...

COUNTER-terrorism police have indicated more arrests could follow the dramatic raids that foiled a potential terror attack on home soil. Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said yesterday the arrests of three Melbourne men on Friday night had overcome a genuine threat. "We believe (these) arrests have significantly disrupted the activities of a group alleged to be making arrangements to carry out a terrorist act in Australia," she said. The Australian Federal Police's counter-terrorism manager, Assistant Commissioner Frank Prendergast, said Operation Pendennis, which led to the raids, was complex. He declined to say whether more arrests were imminent, but said: "We don't...

Per a FoxNews Alert: New tape shows Zawahiri threatening attacks against the U.S. because of the Mohammed cartoons. Mention was made of "another 9-11, another Madrid." The tape appears to be authentic, according to Fox. No link yet.

RIYADH, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda suicide bombers in Saudia Arabia used two tonnes (4,400 lb) of explosives in their foiled attack on the world's largest oil processing plant, the Saudi Interior Ministry said on Sunday. A ministry statement said each of the two pick-up trucks used in Friday's attack carried one tonne of an explosive made with ammonium nitrate. There were also unspecified quantities of other explosives including nitroglycerine and RDX. Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia vowed more attacks after the foiled raid which caused a massive explosion at the gate of the site in eastern Saudi Arabia,...

A day after a foiled attack against Saudi Arabia's vital oil infrastructure, an Al Qaeda branch warned in an Internet statement Saturday that there would be more suicide bombings. "There are more like them who are racing toward martyrdom and eager to fight the enemies of God," the posting said. ADVERTISEMENT A successful strike on the Abqaiq complex, near Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf coast, would be devastating. Nearly two-thirds of the country's oil flows through the facility for processing before export. Friday's attack, which was repelled by Saudi security services, demonstrated the country's success in putting tough security around the...

RIYADH (Reuters) - A failed al Qaeda attack on a Saudi oil facility this week may have seemed poorly planned, but determined militants, boosted by experience in Iraq, will keep the key oil sector in their sights, analysts said on Saturday. Security police killed suicide bombers riding what appeared to be cars of the Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco as they tried to drive into the heart of the world's biggest oil processing plant at Abqaiq on Friday. An al Qaeda statement later said the radical Islamist network headed by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden was behind the attempt to penetrate...

Death Wish By Oliver North February 10, 2006 "[T]he president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." So reads "S.J. Res. 23," a Joint Resolution of the Congress, sponsored by then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and signed into law on Sept. 18, 2001, seven days after the most devastating attack...

Its pretty good video that goes into several of al-Qaeda's other 2002 attack plots.

The Bush administration will tell the Senate today that the National Security Agency's programme for terrorist surveillance has been badly distorted by media reports, and that the scheme is a strictly limited one aimed at al-Qaeda members and affiliated groups. In the first Senate hearing on the controversial programme, which was set up secretly in 2002 and revealed publicly in December, Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general, will say that the press accounts "are in almost every case, in one way or another, misinformed, confused or wrong," according to Time magazine, which has obtained documents outlining the planned testimony. "Contrary to the...

President Bush on Wednesday will try to boost the morale of National Security Agency workers carrying out his controversial eavesdropping program. While critics call it a domestic spying program, the White House calls it a "terrorist surveillance program." After receiving harsh criticism from civil liberties groups and Democrats when news of the program was leaked by The New York Times, defending the program is a top priority of the Bush administration. The president on Wednesday will visit behind closed doors with employees of the super-secretive agency — which traditionally conducts only overseas surveillance. He will then make some remarks to...

Updated: 2:21 p.m. ET Jan. 20, 2006 WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is opening a campaign to push back against criticism of its domestic spying program, ahead of congressional hearings into whether President Bush has the legal authority to eavesdrop on Americans. President Bush will visit the ultra-secret National Security Agency on Wednesday, underscoring his claim that he has the constitutional authority to let intelligence officials listen in on international phone calls of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists. “We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said about Bush’s trip...

The former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit says bin Laden’s “truce” offer comes from a long-established Muslim tradition of warfare -- sending a clear signal to the United States that an al Qaeda attack is more than likely. Twenty-two-year CIA veteran Michael Scheuer, who wrote “Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror,” says bin Laden has offered his final warning before launching his next strike. “Warning your enemy before you attack him is very much a tradition in Islam from the prophet to the times when Saladin was fighting the Crusaders, he would...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans. F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans'...

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...