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Top-Level Turnover Makes it Harder For DHS to Stay On Top of Evolving Threats

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Photo Credit: Jim Watson / AFP / Getty ImagesAn exodus of top-level officials from the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is undercutting the agency’s ability to stay ahead of a range of emerging threats, including potential terrorist strikes and cyberattacks, according to interviews with current and former officials.

Over the past four years, employees have left DHS at a rate nearly twice as fast as in the federal government overall, and the trend is accelerating, according to a review of a federal database.

The departures are a result of what employees widely describe as a dysfunctional work environment, abysmal morale, and the lure of private SECURITY COMPANIES paying top dollar that have proliferated in Washington since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The department’s terrorism intelligence arm, for example, has cycled through six directors during the Obama administration, decimating morale and contributing to months-long delays in releasing intelligence reports, according to interviews and government reports.

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Australia Thwarts Beheading Plot, says Islamic State Threat Persists

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Photo Credit: Joel Carret / European Pressphoto AgencyAuthorities in Australia have charged a 22-year-old Sydney resident with preparing to sow terror in the country by seizing a person at random and beheading him in a videotaped execution, Australian media reported Thursday.

Omarjan Azari exhibits “an unusual level of fanaticism,” Prosecutor Michael Allnutt told a Sydney court in a successful attempt to deny bail for the bearded young man, who is facing a possible life sentence.

The plot to carry out a random terrorist attack was foiled after a four-month surveillance operation revealed a network of violent Muslim extremists allegedly being directed by a former Australia resident, Mohammad Ali Baryalei, now a major figure in the Islamic State militant group in Syria, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. Raids carried out in two Australian cities Thursday resulted in more than a dozen arrests, officials said.

Authorities expressed concern over the scores of Australians being drawn into the violent culture of Islamic State, which has seized broad swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and proclaimed it a Muslim “caliphate” ruled by a harsh and medieval version of Sharia, or Islamic law.

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Colorado Teenager Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Support ISIS

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Photo Credit: Joshua TrujilloA 19-year-old suburban Denver woman who federal authorities say intended to wage jihad despite their repeated attempts to stop her pleaded guilty Wednesday to trying to help the Islamic State militant group in Syria under a plea deal that requires her to help authorities find others with the same intentions.

Shannon Conley, appearing in a striped jail jumpsuit and a brown and black headscarf, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. She said nothing except noting that she understood the plea and its ramifications.

The agreement says she must cooperate with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and provide information about other people in Colorado and elsewhere looking to help terrorists abroad. If she cooperates, prosecutors have promise to ask for a reduction in her sentence but the decision would ultimately would be up to a judge.

Conley was arrested in April while trying to board a flight at Denver International Airport that she hoped would ultimately get her to Syria, authorities said. She was charged with trying to help a terrorist organization and could face up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.

The trained nurse’s aide from Arvada, Colorado, told agents from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force that if she couldn’t fight with the Islamic State group, she hoped to use her nursing skills to help the extremists, according to court documents.

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DHS Asks Stores to Watch Customers Behavior for Terrorist Signs

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Photo Credit: APHomeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said his department will be issuing new guidance to retailers this week giving them pointers on how to spot potential terrorists among their customers by looking at what they’re buying.

While saying the government cannot prohibit sales of some everyday materials, Mr. Johnson said retailers should be trained to look for anyone who buys a lot from what he described as a “long list of materials that could be used as explosive precursors.”

He said it was an extension of the “If you see something, say something” campaign launched by his predecessor, former Secretary Janet Napolitano, which tries to enlist average Americans to be aware of their immediate environment.

“We can’t and we shouldn’t prohibit the sale of a pressure cooker. We can sensitize retail businesses to be on guard for suspicious behavior by those who buy this kind of stuff,” Mr. Johnson said during a question-and-answer session after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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West Point Report Describes Islamic State Threat as Crisis 4 Years in the Making

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A new report from the West Point counterterrorism center challenges the notion that the Islamic State only recently became a major terror threat, describing the network’s gains in Iraq as a crisis four years in the making.

Meanwhile, Fox News has learned that top aides to President Obama expect the threat from the organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to outlast Obama’s time in office.

The details underscore the challenge facing the U.S. government and its allies as the president and military advisers weigh how — and where — to confront the Islamist militant forces.

“ISIL did not suddenly become effective in early June 2014: it had been steadily strengthening and actively shaping the future operating environment for four years,” the report from the West Point center said.

The report said that the “shattering” of Iraq’s security forces in June is a “case-in-point, the result of years of patient preparatory operations.”

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Terrorists’ Handbook: In Rhetoric and Tactics, ISIS Sounds a Lot Like an al-Qaeda Manual

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

By Joel Gehrke.

President Obama may not have a strategy for defeating the Islamic State, but the Islamic State has a strategy for the U.S. In fact, that strategy is set out, in part, in an al-Qaeda manual recently translated for the benefit of the U.S. military.

A guerrilla war proceeds in phases, according to Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin’s A Practical Course for Guerrilla War, a strategic and tactical guide to mujahideen intent on establishing “a pure Islamic system free from defects and infidel elements.” It was written after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.


The first phase is “attrition (strategic defense),” the time for carrying out attacks, “spectacular operations, which will create a positive impact.” The terrorists use the attacks as a recruitment tool and a morale boost for potential jihadis.

Phase two is the time of “relative strategic balance,” when the jihadis build an army to hold territory that has been wrested from the incumbent regime. “There the mujahidin will set up base camps, hospitals, sharia courts, and broadcasting stations, as well as a jumping-off point for military and political actions,” al-Muqrin writes.

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Photo Credit: CBS

Photo Credit: CBS

Al Qaeda Reportedly Targeting The Air Force Academy

By CBS4.

Al Qaeda is reportedly targeting the Air Force Academy. An online Al Qaeda magazine is threatening more attacks on the U.S. and Colorado Springs could be a target.

It’s parents weekend at the Air Force Academy. Each car entering the campus was inspected for any possible sign of a threat.

The Al Qaeda English language online magazine is now suggesting targets for Lone Wolf terror attacks. Among them listed are Times Square, Las Vegas and the Air Force Academy.

Even the CBS4 news vehicles drew attention, “They told me to tell you guys to go back into the parking lot area. It’s a security issue,” one Air Force Academy security officer said.

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FBI National Domestic Threat Assessment Omits Islamist Terrorism

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats, despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting—both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.

Instead, the internal FBI intelligence report concluded in its 2013 assessment published this month that the threat to U.S. internal security from extremists is limited to attacks and activities by eight types of domestic extremist movements—none motivated by radical Islam.

They include anti-government militia groups and white supremacy extremists, along with “sovereign citizen” nationalists, and anarchists. Other domestic threat groups outlined by the FBI assessment include violent animal rights and environmentalist extremists, black separatists, anti- and pro-abortion activists, and Puerto Rican nationalists.

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Huge Rise in US Terror Watch List in Recent Years

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

The number of people on the government’s database of known or suspected terrorists has doubled in recent years, according to new information released by the National Counterterrorism Center. From March 2010 to the end of 2013, the number has gone from 550,000 to roughly 1.1 million people.

The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a huge, classified database of people known to be terrorists, those who are suspected of having ties to terrorism, and in some cases those who are related to or are associates of known or suspected terrorists. It feeds to smaller lists that restrict peoples’ abilities to travel on commercial airlines to or within the U.S.

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US Official: ISIL Is 'No Longer a Terrorist Organization–It's a Full-Blown Army'

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

By now, we all know how wrong President Obama was when he repeatedly said on the campaign trail in 2012 that al Qaeda is on the path to defeat. Indeed, it seems like we’ve got a much bigger problem on our hands. According to top U.S. officials, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is “worse than al Qaeda.”

Via The Hill (emphasis mine):

“It is al Qaeda in its doctrine, ambition and increasingly, in its threat to U.S. interests,” Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary of state, told lawmakers at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. “In fact, it is worse than al Qaeda.”

McGurk said the group, which splintered off from its parent, al Qaeda in Iraq, had strengthened its capabilities and was “no longer a terrorist organization. It is a full-blown army.”

Elissa Slotkin, acting principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy, added that the group has threatened: “We’re coming for you, Barack Obama.”

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Could a Brain Scan Protect U.S. Troops from Insider Attacks? (+video)

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Photo Credit: DefenseOne

Photo Credit: DefenseOne

A Pentagon report, revealed by The New York Times over the weekend, showed that the American troops working alongside Iraqi forces were at risk of harm from Sunni extremists who had infiltrated the Iraqi Army (and, perhaps, from the pro-Iranian Shiite militias that effectively are the Army.) On Monday, Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters that “it would be imprudent, irresponsible not to think about the insider threat.” The threat is real in Afghanistan as well where insider threats, so-called “green-on-blue” attacks, have killed several U.S.troops in recent years.

So, if you’re a U.S. soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan today, how do you determine whether or not the Iraqi or Afghan soldier next to you is going to give up your location to the enemy at the first chance? One solution, developed by a former Army counterintelligence agent, is scanning the brains of Iraqi troops for signs of potential betrayal.

Veritas Scientific, based in Virginia, markets a truth detection system called HandShake for soldiers to diagnose the trust-worthiness of people they may have to work with. The technology was developed by Derrell Small, who served as a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent in 2003 and 2004.

Here’s a brief introduction from the Veritas website:

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