AD
The referenced source essay is at http://doaskdotell.com/content/terorism.htm and it appears in the new DADT sequel book.
This file was started on the evening of
Before we go on with the running footnotes blog, here is
the latest on CIVILIAN PREPAREDNESS:
Wall Street Journal
article
· Checklists with emergency tips: Department of Homeland Security; America Prepared Campaign
·
Preparedness for Weapons of Mass Destruction (
·
The
· The Rand Corporation: “Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terror Attacks”
When I was in the Army (late 60s) and stationed at the
Pentagon for a while, part of my job was to survey and read literature like
this with respect to nuclear war. My impression from all the evidence is that
the chemical and biological threats are overstated, but the practical economic
and long term health effect of a radiological attack would be great indeed and
could be difficult to stop. And the concern over small “loose nukes” from the
fall of the
Moussaoui
Also, on
For four years, in my three books and on this web site, I have advanced the notion of reduced government, individual freedom and appropriate individual accountability, even to the point of our willingness to question our personal goals.
Some may feel that these arguments have become irrelevant
today. We must pull together as a nation, just as we did after
Indeed, this may well be, in lives lost from just two of the
hijacked plane crashes, the most catastrophic event in our history. Although we
don’t know for sure yet, the number of fatalities here in one city may
outnumber the deaths in the Vietnam War, and they may be comparable to the
deaths of the first ten years of the AIDS epidemic. (Rev.
And come together we must. But we must take a look at the message sent by terrorists. What they want is to force our government to take repressive actions against its own people, possibly, in the warped view of terrorists, to start some kind of left-wing revolution.
In some ways, I wonder how this was possible, how such a technologically crude attack could have escaped normal airport security in four instances. Obviously, the terrorists want to create a situation where Americans cannot move freely without unacceptable costs or downstream risks, and where the American economy can no longer have the confidence of political stability and physical security it needs to prosper. It’s easy to imagine other attacks that could really be far worse, but we shouldn’t elaborate here. It is important for our government to identify the culprits promptly and restore some confidence pf safety and stability, even before financial markets reopen and even airports reopen.
In the ensuring weeks, there will be moralizing calls for Americans to give up their individualistic life styles—in exchange not just for more security but also for more “moral” collective values. There will be talk of reduced flights and prohibitive prices, gasoline rationing, perhaps attempts to clamp down on unsupervised speech on the Internet, and on and on. We saw this kind of talk in the 1970s during the Arab oil embargo. The moralizing would extend to consideration of personal sexual lifestyles in the 1980s and 1990s as we faced the AIDS crisis and then other controversies. .
There is something disturbing about all of this—the charge
by some groups around the world that Americans lead self-serving lifestyles
that exploit others around the world and that blaspheme religion
especially. In truth, some of this may
be related to specific problems in our past foreign policy. For example, in the
past it was “politically” acceptable and advantageous, in macroscopic views, to
allow
Consider what terrorists envision—an authoritarian world, ruled by an elite (possibly religious) chosen by its own rules, and no more fair or egalitarian than any other. They can hide this with the “guilty conscience” problem. We shouldn’t be so attached to our devices, we shouldn’t be so technologically interconnected, we should be more family-centered or more people-centered—but all to server someone else’s agenda, which is what makes all of this so unacceptable to me.
That’s my take. There is no retreat from the proper debate of individual rights.
EFFICIENT
First, the warnings of possible or even likely future
homeland attacks from American officials right before President Bush ordered
major strikes on Oct. 7 must be taken seriously. On Friday Oct 5
What is clear is that the
President George W. Bush said Saturday “We’re at war.” Up through World War I, war was often a conflict between states, with eviction of the defeated state’s government from power. However, in modern times war has increasingly been about ideology, ways of life, religion, and points of view. Sometimes, as with the War Between the States, it could be about a conflict between economic and moral interests. Often it has been fought in the name of religion.
In the post-Cold War era, war is becoming increasingly tied to attacks on personal values and lifestyles. So terrorism is definitely “war. “ Although terrorism may be, as noted above, may develop out of what others see as “imperialism,” it is also directed at the lifestyles and expressive freedoms of ordinary citizens and holds citizens who use these freedoms in contempt.
Much has been written about the unity of our country during
World War II, and even to a large extent during the
Gulf War, and our disunity over
Terrorism invokes a different paradigm, because the restriction of personal liberties would play into the hands of the terrorists in a way that it does not in a conventional state-system war. It is essential to restrict personal freedoms only when credible threats can be perceived from the exercise of these freedoms, not just hypothetical “what if” scenarios.
One possibility would be to severely restrict the mobility of citizens, with restrictions on who can fly, gasoline rationing, closing of public transportation in many areas, and the like. However these measures, above those listed above and similar measures proposed by others, specifically directed at known threats can often be effectively and efficiently implemented with little loss of mobility by a better-educated public.
A subtle problem may occur with speech, especially with the advent of the Internet and low-cost publishing, which can allow ordinary individuals to make themselves into minor celebrities with very little cost and without “rising through the ranks.” During World War II and even during the early days of the Cold War there was a lot of talk about the responsibility that ordinary citizens have to avoid disclosure of information that could aid the enemy. Sometimes specific facts, which by themselves are atomic, meaningless and unclassified, become valuable to an enemy when edited, assembled and interpreted in one place. Could this possibility surface with ordinary citizens using the Internet? Another related issue would be, could the expression of opinions critical of government handling of the new “war” give aid and comfort to the enemy? This could, because of the mechanics of publicity with the new technology, become particularly pertinent for persons whose employment somehow involves the military or other major government functions, even if their job duties are not in themselves sensitive.
This last point is not trivial. Libertarians have been critical of American
foreign policy as interventionist and even oppressive of peoples in whom we
have no morally defendable stake (again, this gets back to oil interdependence
and the political problems around supporting
In a democracy, free speech and constructive, civilized
dissent must always be accepted. This puts us on edge, because other societies
do not respect the value of debate and speech (as it undermines religious or political
authority) and may, in a superficial fashion, interpret debate as a sign of
lack of support for our fighting men and women.
We had this issue in
But because we are dealing with terrorism and a particularly focused attack on individual expressive rights, it is vital that we maintain our free flow of debate and unclassified information. However speakers will have to know where to draw the line. In the Internet age, it is possible for ordinary citizens to stumble upon unusual sensitive information that they should not publish but should share with authorities.
I remain committed to participating in and supporting debate in many personal expressive areas that concern me. Even as I often point out the subtle “moral” problems with the way individuals (myself included) set personal priorities, I remain committed to the idea that some individual rights must not be bartered away by politicians, even in difficult times such as these. For me, in particular, that means that I cannot accept the idea that a person’s sexuality or intimate interests should be appropriated for someone else’s purposes.
Likewise, however, I pledge that I will be cautious with any sensitive information that may be shared with me (inadvertently or not). When necessary, specific information is held in confidence and share with appropriate authorities.
I personally want to
express my support to men and women in uniform who will be defending and
repairing the homeland, and going on dangerous missions, possibly protracted,
to apprehend the perpetrators of this horrible event and of all entities that
have supported them.
AD
It seems that we face an enemy, Osama bin Laden, who stands with the “baddest of the bad” – Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein. Here is a psychopath who for no reason other than his own power – an egomaniacal desire to destroy civilization on his own-- will train young teenage boys to become suicidal killers. It is hard to fathom the network of terrorists, how, whatever their religious underpinnings, would come to enjoy western lifestyles for several years and still respond to some invisible call for suicide. This is not the sinister plotting of a Clive Cussler novel; it seems to come out of Dean Koontz. The drones are truly monsters. I have known well-to-do young people become violent in challenging the system (back in my post Vietnam days) with “moralistic” leftist ideology opposing the “exploitation” of the “fat, decadent middle class” but I rather think that politics (anti-Israel) and ideology are probably beyond these new terrorist cyborgs right out of “V’.
It may be easier to eradicate bin Laden and many of the
terrorist cells abroad than the President says, and it may be easier to do
defensively in the
The biggest problems may be diplomatic and political rather
than just military. For spectacular
successes, including bringing bin Laden to justice alive, may instigate other
undiscovered cells and may instigate political instability in moderate Islamic
states, especially those upon whom we depend for our driving habits. The worst future damage to our economy could
come from political developments that lead to another oil embargo,
or even terrorist acts against shipping on the high seas or even in coastal
port areas (including the
The hatred of Americans that is drilled into the recruits (often without girlfriends) seems to be mostly collectivist politics, but the totalitarian clerics indeed are threatened by the ease with which western culture filters into their lands through the mass media and now the Internet. Now, information comes not just from corporate enterprises but from individuals with their own agendas—a potentially even bigger cultural threat. The information age would give younger generations the chance to learn about freedom wherever they are. The idea of “asking and telling” (“Show and Tell”) or “Do Ask Do Tell” now potentially spreads to the arena of international diplomacy.
Here is a link to an English translation of Osama bin
Laden’s video released on
http://www.msnbc.com/news/639389.asp
At one point, he seems to indicate that the Sept. 11 attacks
were punishment “from God” for non-Muslims occupying Muslim territories
supposedly to support Western materialistic lifestyles or for political
reasons. (His idea of religion does not allow for free will.) He regards any American
“taxpayer” as an accomplice in what he describes as a crime against Islam. But while he seems to be appealing to a third
world indignation (in a classically collectivist sense in which religion is
used as a surrogate for economic class or race) about American wealth and
disposable income (well pointed out in Rolling
Stone and other places), he is simply offering an authoritarian theocratic
world in which he would be the center of power. But his dichotomy of “infidels”
v. “believers” is striking and uncompromising—and misleading, as he hijacks one
of the world’s great faiths to feed his own sociopathic and oddly defensive
ego. There was a time, before the Crusades, when Muslim culture was
technologically the most advanced in
CIVIL LIBERTIES (note
There is a tremendous amount of debate in the press as to the new balance that must be struck between civil liberties and security. Much has been written about ethnic profiling and about wiretapping, pen-registers, and various other surveillance and detention measures that may trample upon the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. For example, individual citizens might not be allowed to encrypt their emails so that only the intended recipients can read them.
There will be a shift away from laissez-faire entrepreneruialism and a greater emphasis on security, which will necessarily lead to even more consolidation and scale in business. We have many concerns. One is the possible suppression of individual artistic and political content, which has to date been facilitated by wide-open but risk-intensive and infrastructure-dependent technologies. Another is the breakdown of newer traditions of non-discrimination in employment, which will have to become more security conscious. Obviously there can be issues of ethnic origin, but also down the road of lifestyle. For gays and lesbians, there will be a certain threat of a backslide to tie policies of the early Cold War era, that looked upon gays as character-deficient and therefore untrustworthy. Issues like gays in the military and same-sex marriage—issues that bear upon the capacity of gays to shoulder their fair share of social obligations as dues for first-class citizenship—become more pressing than ever.
Email sent to Ted Koppel and
Mr. Koppel: I am watching your Nightline broadcast interview with Mr. Spertzel.
I am quite alarmed about the variations
among the preparations used in the various attacks, culminating in the attack
against Mr. Daschle, so cunningly prepared that apparently it must have come
from
One question is what
you have posed in previous Nightlines-
what if a “Daschle-like” [that is, very small particle size] preparation is
released on a subway? Perhaps it already
has been, but we have to hope that even so the concentration of spores would
not produce a wide epidemic as your previous programs proposed. The incubation
period is perhaps longer than what was reported in your earlier broadcast (Oct
5) and there may be more time for treatment. But 8000 or so weaponized
spores would fit into one period in this email--according to the
One question then is whether the transit police in NY, DC, San Francisco, London, Paris, etc. (even Bilbao) are watching carefully enough to shut down systems immediately should any incident be noticed. I wonder this, but it was not mentioned in your broadcast.
But what the
terrorists may be trying to do ultimately is to force the U.S to attack
JBoushka@aol.com
http://www.doaskdotell.com
Mr. Koppel did an interview with Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson Wed Oct 17, and the government offered assurances that
it could “respond” and provide sufficient
antibiotics quickly after such a speculated attack. The possibility of
the future need for emergency widespread smallpox vaccination is being
discussed, with mention of an NIH study on dilution of existing vaccine
stocks. However, the government has
warned doctors to look for the possibility of (highly lethal) Ebola or
For USPS recommendations regarding the mail, see http://www.usps.com/news/2001/press/pr01_1010tips.htm
For the best medical coverage on this, I recommend
For the best coverage of
The Libertarian Party has issued a press release suggesting that the terrorist assaults –especially the prospect of “retail terrorism” which the LP maintains cannot be controlled or prevented defensively – might not have happened if it were not for what it sees as inappropriate and meddlesome U.S. foreign policy, especially with respect to Israel and oil supplies. I believe that this position tends to suggest that “terrorism works” or that “might makes right: and that this position could contradict the usual libertarian position against non-aggression. Furthermore, even though American foreign policy apparently plays a large role in the negative reactions of much of the Islamic world, terrorist attacks can occur domestically and can occur because of hatred of differences and diversity, because of a negation of multi-culturalism and “peaceful co-existence”. For example, some people feel that the propagation of modern ideas through the broadcast media and Internet by itself is a threat, even without an aggressive foreign policy, so a pacifist foreign policy would not necessarily prevent attacks.
The LP foreign policy arguments actually lead down an interesting path. For example, it appears that Saudi Arabia has supported extremist Islamic schools run by madrassas in other countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, indoctrinating young men and even boys (generally from poor backgrounds) in the most extreme interpretations of the Koran, which some people try to use to justify anti-Western violence. It seems that a government that we depend upon as an ally to safeguard oil supplies is engaging, not just in repressing some of its own people, but in encouraging anti-Western violence from outside its borders. Furthermore, the indoctrination exploits a vulnerability of disadvantaged young males, “untamed” by either women or intellectual culture, towards group affiliations and militancy—a subject discussed elsewhere on this site.
The Electron Frontier Foundation now provides a disturbing report of an increase in Internet and media censorship related to terrorism, not al of it started by government. Here is the reference:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism_militias/antiterrorism_chill.html
One point of EFF’s page is that censorship based on subject matter or even political viewpoint alone (violence, terrorism, extremism, advocacy of “jihad”), instead of the specific mechanics of content (that is, explicit pornography, photographic images of graphic violence) becomes a real issue. This point should not be lost on current litigation before the Supreme Court, such as with the Child Online Protection Act. Visit the links http://www.doaskdotell.com/content/coparlse.htm and http://www.doaskdotell.com/content/copaqest.htmfor detailed thought.
It is only fair to state now that some experts are now questioning how well “milled” were the anthrax spores found in Senator Daschle’s office, calling into question theories that the milling must have come from a hostile overseas sources (such as Iraq).
Notes on
The information on the anthrax cases is disturbing and
sometimes contradictory, but it seems to point to sources from
But a critical effort in solving all of this is understanding what made the kamikaze hijackers tick. We can understand young men from impoverished backgrounds being captured by the idea of martyrdom. But young men from more privileged backgrounds with graduate school educations in Europe—well, college students in the West (the United States and Europe) are increasingly individualistic, and build worlds around themselves. If is hard to understand how these young men persisted in such a “religious” ideology when surrounded by the accoutrements of Western civilization. Men, of course, are “barren” until tamed by women, by love, or at least by aesthetic and intellectual culture that they can master on their own. That didn’t happen with these men. Moreover, as precisely executed and diabolically planned as were their attacks, much of their other behavior seems to have been ad hoc and sloppy—perhaps consistent with the idea of decentralized cells that come up with their own “plans.” A lot of it still doesn’t make sense.
On
Hacking of websites, suspicion of
terrorists involved in hacks
In late March 2002 a large part of my Nov. 2001 terrorism essay was overwritten by a hacker. It was easily restored. Security investigation shows that this was apparently an attempt to “heckle” this site off the web. I can understand that it may seem, in the minds of some, provocative for someone in my position to discuss this problem as bluntly as I do on the net in a pseudo-commercial site. However, this site is about freedom and its limits, and this cannot be discussed with intellectual honesty without getting into details about the terrorism threat, just (as with the case of my COPA litigation) it can’t be discussed without homosexuality. Without the capacity to get into controversial and “dangerous” topics, I have nothing.
Further investigation of this incident continues. It appears that most to all of the overwriting material consists of “random” characters.
“A file transfer protocol site operated by the Arkansas Highway and
Transportation Department became a cache of Osama bin Laden
videos, jihadist songs and terrorist incident videos sometime over the weekend
of
These kinds of incidents may be more common than has been reported.
On
I have myself received at least two possible “tips” by email since 9/11. These are turned over to law enforcement, but it is probably “common” for individual operators of controversial political websites to receive such “leads.” I receive no feedback from what I turn over to law enforcement.
I have been very concerned that amateur or small-business
websites (with inadequate security) could be unsuspecting conduits for steganographic information by terrorists, and that such a
development, if it occurred, could lead to liabilities, bonding requirements,
and the like, at least for ISPs and maybe even for domain owners. In at least a
few cases corporate or government sites or sites belonging to domestic
individuals (including, probably, me) have been hacked by agents that would
appear to be connected to radical Islamic terrorists. The Patriot Act
apparently specifies potential downstream liabilities like this, even though
there have been (apparently) no prosecutions or DOJ lawsuits against legitimate
websites as of mid 2004. As of 2004, it seems that most message relaying by
terrorists has been through sites overseas that are taken down deliberately
very quickly. (This came out of the arrest in
The government has expressed concern over the “combination
effect” of information assembled on private websites, sometimes by
entrepreneurs—pieces of information legally unclassified on their own, but
capable of being useful to terrorists when conveniently assembled. (This
concept is well known in security circles.) For example, John Young’s website (Cryptome) was
covered on
According to the January 2004 Discover, medical
science journalists had met in Washington in early 2003 for a workshop on the
possibility of “negligent publication,” or the idea that some material, though
legally unclassified, could be too dangerous to let loose with the public
because of “asymmetry.” Besides the oft-mentioned problems with weapons and
even “homemade nukes,” the writers were concerned about an article in the July
2002 issue of Science concerning poliovirus synthesis, and a Journal
of Virology issue in late 2001 on fooling the immune systems of mice with a
genetically engineered mousepox virus. There was
discussion of “open source” and the idea that amateurs could unwittingly help
terrorists “connect the dots” to make
In late 2004 the federal government seized servers belonging
to Indymedia (from Rackspace
Managed Hosting in
The March 2005 Reader’s Digest contains an op-ed by Michael Crowley, “That’s Outrageous: Let’s Shut Them Down: These Websites Are an Invitation to Terrorists,” in which he describes (without naming the domain) a site by John Young, a New Yorker who has “connected the dots” and assembled and published the locations of all kinds vulnerable targets in New York City from unclassified sources (often just walking the streets and taking photos). Other sites have published the names of undercover police (why isn’t that classified?), or aerial photos of the homes of top government officials.
Mainstream media can cause security problems and backlashes
with inaccurate reporting. Newsweek had reported desecration of the
Koran (Qur’an) at Gunatanomo based on flimsy
information, and this led to deadly riots in
The British tabloid The Sun (Tom Newton Dunn, “Bush probes Saddam’s pants”) http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005230454,00.html )and The New York Post (http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/44340.htm ) published a photo of an aging Saddam Hussein in skivvies, fat teats but hairy chest, apparently from a compromised confidential military police source, with the possibility of fomenting more violence in the Muslim world, especially Iraq.
Also, see the op-ed “The ‘Scoop’ Heard ‘Round the World.
Sadly.” By Chris Hanson, The
Susan Llewelyn Leach provides an article, “Watch
where you point that camera,” on the increased law enforcement sensitivity to
photography in some public places, which is now illegal on some subway and
train systems. The Christian Science Monitor,
Blogging could
be a tool for intelligence agencies.
On
Muslim uproar
over blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed
In September 2005 a Danish newspaper (Jyllands-Posten) published twelve cartoon pictures of the prophet Mohammed as caricatures, poking fun at him in various ways such as showing a turban as a bomb. Several European newspapers republished the cartoons. Islam does not permit visual images of the Prophet Mohammed; they view this the way we would view child pornography. Radical Islam tends to view blasphemy as a source of personal shame for individual Muslims who do not have access to modern ideas of free self-expression. The result has been, especially in early Feb 2006, violence and attacks against Westerners in several Muslim countries. Westerners would see the publication as trollish but not objectively harmful.
http://blog.newspaperindex.com/2005/12/10/un-to-investigate-jyllands-posten-racism/ This is a link to another domain. The drawings are privately authored and therefore copyrighted, and since I have not asked for reproduction permission, I do not keep them on or present them directly from this site.
Andrew Sullivan commented on
Aaron Brown’s CNN show on Feb. 5, noting that free speech, even to offend
others, is non-negotiable in western modern culture; that one can oppose
offense with civil actions but not with the violence of thugs. Radical Islam
seems to be predicated in preventing the expression of ideas that would
challenge the beliefs of its subjects. Christianity went through this at the
time of the Inquisitions. A Washington Post editorial on
Other references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html “Why I Published Those Cartoons” by Flemming Rose,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2017195,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/02/02/cartoons.wrap/index.html
http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/Muhammad/main.asp
Bordens and Waldenbooks announced that they would not carry the April-May 2006 issue of Free Inquiry Magazine (http://www.secularhumanism.org/ ) because the issue will contain four of the allegedly blasphemous drawings, and could pose a security problem for the store’s employees and customers. This, it sounds to me, is giving in to hecklers and has a major American company and retailer setting a bad example, inviting more of the same, when it refuses to see content that is objectively acceptable by normal public standards (I presume that Free Inquiry had secured copyright permission to reproduce the drawings) because of fear. See theMarch 29, 2006 AP story by Carolyn Thompson, “Borders, Waldenbooks won’t carry magazine,” from http://www.sandiego.com
The Washington Times ran a major editorial on this on
However, on
There has also been a controversy with the “
Shaun Waterman has a United Press International story (The Washington Times,
On
A similar story concerns the cancellation by the Deutscher
Opera of
Misleading Wesbite Registration a security issue associated with hacking
The arrest of Babar Ahmad in
Here is a link to material on airline safety authored by Ralph Omholt”
http://home.attbi.com/~skydrifter/asn.htm
The chapter “Terrorism, Individualism, Civil Liberties and
Libertarianism” has been included in a book sent to iUniverse on
In the Fall 2002 the American Experiment Quarterly published two essays, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Not a Doomsday Review,” by Ben Brandt, and :” “Understanding the Threat: A Minnesota Response,” by Charlie Weaver. Editor Mitchell Pearlstein invited me to submit a response of 400 words or less but found mine too expansive and suggested that I use it elsewhere. So, for now, here it is:
Response to American Experiment articles.
There are two new provocative periodical references:
Lewis M. Simons, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” National Geographic, Nov. 2002, p. 2
Sebastian Junger, “Terrorism’s New
Geography,” Vanity Fair, Dec. 2002,
discusses terrorist and Al Qaeda links in the Triple Border area between
Link to the color-coded terror warning system is http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0205/terror.warning/frameset.exclude.html
Here is one translation (from the Associated Press) of most of the Al Qaeda Nov. 2002 tape purportedly from Osama Bin Laden; since it mentions recent incidents in Bali, Moscow, Yemen, etc. it is supposed to show that bin Laden is still alive.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/834290.asp
On
Again, the libertarian idea that the West has done wrong,
first by abetting the forcible takings of lands from Palestinians in the past,
and then by colluding with dictators in the Islamic world for business
interests (oil) supposedly (but maybe not in fact) at the expense of the people
living there, seems to make our moral position (especially dependence, albeit
decreasing, on Mideast oil as a foundation for personal mobility and
uncommitted lifestyles) harder to defend today. They call it karma.
The “Poindexter” Homeland Security bill before Congress would allow various government departments to share surveillance information with a new “data mining” system possibly enumerating most transactions conducted by ordinary Americans. The existence of such a system raises questions about checks and balances, oversight, and conflicts of interest for any government or contractor employees with even read-only access to this data.
Aug 7. 2005, The
Washington Post, Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser, “e-Qaeda: Terrorists Turn to Web as Base of
Operations,” documents in detail how al-Qeada and
perhaps other groups can operate in physically distinct units with no direct
contact but communicate through the web, for training and for signaling of
operations. Hidden signals can be planted on websites (steganography). An article in Newsweek on
Hackers have also attacked various other provocative web sites.
The terrorism essay (for which this file is a footnote file) was hacked (in the
section talking about suitcase nukes) on
On
On
On
In July 2007 both NBC and
Installment 2, on
The Washington Post started a series “Five Years Later” by
John Warrick, on
Installment 3, on
Norman J. Ornstein provides an editorial, “Unprepared: Why
Inauguration Day is dangerous” in The New Republic,
Stephen D. Krasner provides an argument, “The Day After: If
terrorists explode nuclear devices in several major cities, expect the
principle of national sovereignty to be among the casualties,” Foreign
Policy, Jan/Feb 2005, p. 68. In his scenario, the cities are in different
countries, not just the
Steve Coll provides “Nuclear
Nightmares: What Bin Laden sees in
John Mintz provides The
On My 5, 2005 Katherine Shrader of the AP reported that the United States had secured less Russian nuclear material in 2004 than in 2003, a fact of great concern to Sam Nunn.
FBI and
According to the AP (Lara Jakes Jordan) on
NBC “Meet the Press” on
Joseph Farah provides an analysis of significant dates to Al
Qaeda at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45562 One alarming date would be
The Nov/Dec 2006 issue of Foreign Policy has a disturbing article by Peter D. Zimmerman, Jeffrey G. Lewis, “The Bomb in the Backyard,” at this link., p. 32 in hardcopy. The article describes how a domestic cell could purchase desert real estate and build a “farm” to cover up the building of a nuclear weapon in a manner similar to covering up illegal drugs. The printed edition has a Norman Rockwell style painting on the cover to illustrate the concept (with Osama bin Laden as the “husband”). Only Al Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo seem capable of this.
An even more explicit article is in the December 2006 Atlantic Monthly, by William Langewiesche, “How to Get a Nuclear Bomb: It wouldn’t be
easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible. A reporter travels the
world to find the weaknesses a terrorist could exploit,” p. 80. He
describes HEU as a much more practicable than plutonium,
and talks about the loose spots in the world. One of them is east of the Urals,
a closed weapons production area with the cities of Ekaterinburg,
Ozersk, and
The
On
There have also been media reports that a terrorist attack exploding a railroad car carrying chlorine in a densely populated area could cause over 100,000 casualties. Many cities are trying to prohibit the transport of certain products in their most densely populated areas.
Time magazine, on
On
On