Islamic radicals armed with Windows boxes and special point-and-click Al Qaeda software are planning to launch a cyber-jihad against Western e-commerce sites on November 11, according to internet security company Secure Computing. The Secret Service and DHS issued a threat notice about the looming attack Tuesday night, according to Secure Computing spokesman Rich Mullikin.

But, that alarming news comes as a surprise to Secret Service spokeswoman Kim Bruce who told THREAT LEVEL that this was "the first we are hearing of this." Mullikin said he would forward on the warning shortly. According to an email forwarded to THREAT LEVEL by Mullikin, a Secret Service employee named John Large sent an email to an unspecified email list with the subject line: Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad on the West. The body of the email was the full text of a short story from Debkafile, an Israel-based anti-terror news site known for sensational reports based on anonymous sources.

The Secret Service's Bruce says the article was on the American Society for Industrial Security's web site and "sent to members of the Miami Electronic Crimes Task Force members just as information of what is out in the public domain. The Secret Service has no comment on the article or the validity of the article."

Something tells me it is not necessary to take this seriously.

"We will never forget the victims of 11/11, who were unable to buy copies of Stephen Colbert's new book."

Terrorists with Jihad 2.0 Software to Terrorize Net on 11/11, maybe

From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

Looks familiar.

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Rita Katz and the SITE Institute have been mentioned on MemeStreams often.

Looks like someone at the White House toasted SITE's humint...

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

Stratfor does not think we will be seeing a spectacular summer terrorist attack.

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

The July 17 release of portions of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland" has generated a great deal of comment from Stratfor readers, many of whom contend it is at odds with our assessment published shortly before the contents of the NIE were leaked. In that report, we attempted to clarify what we mean when we refer to "al Qaeda" and we differentiate between the small al Qaeda core organization (what we call "al Qaeda prime"), the somewhat wider array of al Qaeda franchise organizations (such as al Qaeda in Iraq) and the broad assortment of grassroots jihadists who have no actual connection to the core organization. Our assessment also echoed an assertion we have been making for quite some time now -- that al Qaeda lacks the ability to pose a strategic threat to the United States.

It must be understood that al Qaeda and other jihadists still pose a tactical threat to the U.S. homeland. In other words, they can still kill Americans. In fact, in looking at the jihadist shift in operations abroad, attacks against smaller, softer targets have actually caused more fatalities than large-scale strikes against hard targets. However, attacks against low-level soft targets, such as the November 2005 hotel attacks in Amman, Jordan, and the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London, do not have the strategic impact of a 9/11-style attack.

A number of tactical and strategic considerations have led us to conclude that al Qaeda does not pose a strategic threat.

Tactical Realities

As long as the ideology of jihadism exists and jihadists embrace the philosophy of attacking the "far enemy," they will pose a threat on U.S. soil. Though the U.S. government has tightened visa and asylum restrictions since 9/11, those processes still contain holes. Furthermore, given that even small, repressive regimes have been unable to control their immigration, it is not surprising that a country as large as the United States, one that must deal with the open nature of U.S. society, cannot hermetically seal it borders to prevent terrorist operatives from entering. Jihadist operatives still can reach the United States illegally, by committing immigration fraud or slipping across the border. Legally, they can obtain visas, use operatives from visa-waiver countries or those who are U.S. citizens. Of course, people residing in the United States who decide to "go jihad" also pose a threat. While some, perhaps even most, of these jihadist operatives will be caught before they can enter, some inevitably will get into the country. There undoubtedly are such people -- both transnational and homegrown operatives -- in the United States right now. That is a tactical reality.

Another tactical reality is that the U.S. governmen... [ Read More (1.4k in body) ]

Al Qaeda and the Strategic Threat to the U.S. Homeland

The linked news video segment covers a woman in Utah who paints portraits of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq and sends them to their families. She makes no money for her efforts.

Artist paints the fallen

U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida's apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.
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On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a "gut feeling" about a new period of increased risk.

The news is in! In the absence of actionable intelligence, you gotta go with your gut...

WATCH OUT FOR THE TERRARISTS!

Chertoff said he is convinced that terrorists are regrouping. "Our edge is technology and the vigilance of the ordinary citizen," he said.

Hear that? Only you can stop the terrorism!

Viva technology! In Bush America, television watches you!

The Summer of Love^H^H^H^HTerror

I have to wonder to what lengths we might go in order to "keep it real" ...

One of the biggest challenges facing the United States in Asia is keeping the region’s leaders focused on the terrorist threat, a recently retired senior defense official told reporters here today.

That’s particularly important among nations that don’t see themselves as terrorist targets, said Richard Lawless, who retired last week after almost five years as deputy assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs.

“If we don’t keep people’s attitudes and eyes focused on the threat, they tend to drift away to other subjects,” he said. “And keeping people focused on that issue has been very tough.”

Lawless acknowledged that some Asian-Pacific countries “are just simply not impacted by terrorism.” Others have gone so long since experiencing a terrorist attack within their borders that they have shifted their attention elsewhere ...

... to things like individual rights, economic development, global free trade, eliminating poverty, fighting AIDS and reducing the risk of global pandemics, and so on. How dare they!

Just what is it going to take to instill fear, and maintain that fear, when some people have nothing to be afraid of?

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

The headline here has been revised, but I've used the original one that was on the article as it went out for distribution.

US Must Keep Terror Threat 'Real' to Other Nations, Official Says

A top special operations officer from Lebanon's Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans.

Ali Mussa Daqduq, an explosives expert, was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops, U.S. intelligence officials told CNN.

Something is going off here, and I think it's my bullshit detector. The reasons why the bullshit detector is going off are not entirely clear to me.. I think there is way more to this story.

The U.S. military declined official comment on Daqduq's arrest, as did the Iraqi government. But documents and forensic evidence, seen by members of the Iraqi government and shown to CNN, support the claims.

It's auspicious timing.. CI?

I've been thinking lately that this would be the time to create a link between the Iraqi insurgency, Hezbollah, and Iran in the public eye. It seems like a very Bushie thing to do. The first thing you do to your enemy is clearly define them and lump them all together, regardless of if it all actually fits. Are we about to see that game play out?

"I say clearly that we do not accept any logistic, financial, or any other kind of support from anyone outside the borders of Iraq," said Rassim al-Marwani, Sadr's cultural adviser.

That much, I have reason to believe is truthful, even if it is omitting much. In this context, "outside the borders of Iraq" can mean several things. If I had to guess, aid is accepted from anyone, at long as the strings attached only go to local tribes. In the absence of a state, these folks always revert to tribes when it comes to loyalties they are willing to honor and accept. And for that matter, the western concept of a nation-state is one of the things they are trying to reject. In that way, the Iran/Iraq border doesn't really matter all that much to them. When it comes down to it, they don't seem to like each other that much. They share beliefs, and not much else.

But then, I really have no idea what I'm talking about...

Officials: Captured Hezbollah agent helped plan deadly Karbala raid - CNN.com

Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who attack Turkey from bases there, two Turkish security officials said. Turkey's foreign minister denied its troops had entered Iraq.

Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, characterized the action as a "hot pursuit" raid that was limited in scope. They told The Associated Press it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks as Turkish troops built up their force along the border.

One official said the troops went less than two miles inside Iraq and were still there in late afternoon. "It is a hot pursuit, not an incursion," one official said.

Another official said by telephone it was "not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands." He also said the Turkish troops went into a remote, mountainous area.

The officials are based in southeast Turkey, where the military has been battling separatist Kurdish rebels since they took up arms in 1984.

The officials stood by their statement despite denials from Turkish and Iraqi officials.

Turkey's private NTV television quoted Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as saying reports of a cross-border operation were false.

"There is no such thing, no entry to another country. If such a thing happens, then we would announce it," Gul said. "We are in a war with terror, we will do whatever is necessary to fight terrorism."

Turkish CI operations in 'hot pursuit' of Kurdish sepratists

Five members of a the radical Islamic "scene" in Jersey were going to attempt to shoot up Fort Dix.

The Ocean and Monmouth area is my turf. I really take personal offense to terrorists wanting to shoot up the place.

The case began to take shape in January 2006, when an employee of a store told the FBI someone had brought a "disturbing" video to be duplicated, Christie said.

The video "depicted 10 young men who appeared to be in their early 20s shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic 'Allah Akbar,' " (Arabic for "God is Great"), according to an FBI affidavit filed with the criminal complaints.

Two paid informants infiltrated the group, one in March 2006 and the other in July. Both of them "consensually recorded" meetings and conversations, according to the affidavit, filed by Special Agent John J. Ryan.

One quote from the alleged recordings was defendant Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer saying, "My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers. ... This is exactly what we are looking for. You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place [up] and retreat completely without any losses."

The men are believed to have been "inspired" by international terrorist groups, but not directly linked to a specific organization, he said.

He said defendant Shain Duka was heard on tape saying, "We can do a lot of damage with seven people. We can do big things."

A law enforcement source told CNN the group played paintball and test fired weapons as part of their training.

The men had surveyed a number of bases but settled on Fort Dix because one of the defendants said he knew the base "like the back of his hand" because he had delivered pizza there, Christie said.

The six -- three of them brothers -- were arrested Monday night "as two of the defendants were meeting a confidential government witness to purchase three AK-47 automatic machine guns, and four semi-automatic M-16s to be used in an attack they had been planning from at least January 2006," according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said the three brothers involved, all with the last name Duka, were born in the former Yugoslavia and are illegally residing in the United States. It identified them as Eljvir, 23, Shain, 26, and Dritan, 28, and said the three operate businesses known as Qadr Inc., Colonial Roofing and National Roofing.

The other three men charged are Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan who is employed as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia; Serdar Tatar, 23, of Philadelphia, born in Turkey, whose last known employment was at a 7-Eleven; and Agron Abdullahu, 24, of Buena Vista Township, born in the former Yugoslavia and employed at a Shop-Rite Supermarket.

Radicals wanted to create carnage at Fort Dix