A notorious al Qaeda magazine is encouraging lone-wolf terrorist attacks on U.S. economic leaders, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett.
The list in Inspire magazine also included industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, internet entrepreneur Larry Ellison, and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. A prominent economist was also on the list but asked that his name be withheld. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was named, though not Janet Yellen, who succeeded him.
Also pictured was Jim Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, although he was misidentified in the caption as his late father, Sam Walton. Several other names on the list were misspelled.
The slickly produced magazine article begins with a photo illustration showing blood-spattered pictures of several of the leaders next to a dripping gun. Its stated goal is to derail the “revival of the America Economy.”
The article says the “economic personalities” and “wealthy entrepreneurs” can get off the list by withdrawing their money from U.S. banks, investing their wealth outside American soil, and denouncing support for Israel.
The White House says two hostages, an American and an Italian, died in Pakistan earlier this year as the result of a United States-launched drone strike that also killed two US citizens involved with Al-Qaeda.
“It is with tremendous sorrow that we recently concluded that a US government counterterrorism operation in January killed two innocent hostages held by Al-Qaeda since 2011,” reads a statement released by the White House press office on Thursday morning.
Officials say an attack in January against a suspected Al-Qaeda compound caused the death of American development expert Dr. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid worker.
Two Americans considered by the US government to be prominent members of Al-Qaeda were also killed during counter-terrorism operations in the same region, the administration said. Ahmed Farouq, an American considered by the US government to be an Al-Qaeda leader, was killed in the same strike that caused the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto, the White House said. The administration has also concluded that Adam Gahan, “a prominent member of Al-Qaeda,” was killed during a separate strike that month.
US President Barack Obama is expected to speak on the matter during an address Thursday morning.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House has already launched an investigation into the incident. The results may prompt the administration to revamp its drone program.
The death of Weinstein, the paper acknowledged, is the first known instance in which a US drone strike has accidentally caused the death of an American hostage. Previously, the White House has admitted that drone strikes ordered by the US in 2011 had killed two suspected members of Al-Qaeda with American citizenship and one of their teenage sons, also a US citizen. – RT.COM
Obama is now – after the fact – scrambling to justify bombing the sovereign nation of Syria without the permission of either the Syrian government or even the United States Congress by saying that he was going after the super-evil Khorasans, who were about to attack.
The Khorasans sound like a cross between Genghis Khan, Klingons and the Kardashians, and according to the US they’re even more dangerous than the Islamic State.
Agence France-Presse reports that the US has hit a little-known group called “Khorasan” in Syria, but experts and activists argue it actually struck Al-Qaeda’s affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which fights alongside Syrian rebels.
These rebels were called “moderates” by the US earlier.
In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of Al-Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West.
But experts and activists cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and Al-Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch.
“In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were Al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al-Nusra fighters,” added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011.
Experts were similarly dubious about the distinction.
“The name refers to Al-Qaeda fighters previously based in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran who have travelled to Syria to fight with… Al-Nusra,” said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.
“They… should not be considered a new or distinct group as such.”
This cell linked to Al-Nusra emerged just over a week ago, which is an interesting coincidence. When Washington added Al-Nusra to its list of “terrorist” organisations, even the internationally-backed Syrian opposition National Coalition criticised the decision.
Bloomberg reports that the U.S. dropped almost as many bombs and missiles on Islamic State positions in Syria in its first night of airstrikes there as it did in the first month of attacks on the extremist group in Iraq.
It appears American foreign policy comes down to this, “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” as the offensive unleashed 200 precision-guided munitions including 47 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and also got to play with its new F-22 toy in its first combat mission.
The first night of airstrikes was “only the beginning,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon’s spokesman, told reporters.
European governments are funding Al-Qaeda by paying ransoms for hostage releases, New York Times investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Rukmini Callimachi claims.
“Kidnapping Europeans for ransom has become a global business for Al-Qaeda, bankrolling its operations across the globe,” the newspaper’s report says.
According to unnamed senior diplomats questioned by the newspaper, the now well-rehearsed ritual started as early as 2003, when the German Government handed funds budgeted as humanitarian aid for the poor of Mali to a group of Islamic extremists holding 32 European hostages.
The kidnapping revenues that Al-Qaeda received from European governments and state-controlled companies since 2008 are estimated by the newspaper at no less than $125 million, with half of the sum coming during the last year.
“The more these organizations believe they can benefit from taking hostages in, and getting paid off, the worse it is over the long run for everybody,” the Washington Post quoted US Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen as saying.
The current ransom investigations follow last week’s unconfirmed reports that a £140,000 ($237,000) ransom was paid for British teacher Mike Harvey held hostage in Yemen for five months.
The number seems relatively low when compared to the $33.5 million that the French government is believed to have paid in October 2013 for the release of four French hostages after three years in captivity in Niger.
In 2012, Cohen addressed the problem of Western countries paying ransoms to terrorist organizations in a widely cited report. According to the data compiled, the average ransom payment per hostage to groups like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has increased from $4.5 million to $5.4 million in just one year.
As reported yesterday, in yet another humiliating blow to US foreign policy and the State Department, Al Qaeda-linked ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) militants took over the key northern town of Mosul, where an unknown number of US-made Black Hawk helicopters were parked and have been captured by Al Qaeda (potentially the same forces that have been trained by the US across the border in Syria).
Adding insult to injury the Al Qaeda militants also appear to have looted some $429 million from local banks. From IBtimes:
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars – the equivalent of $429m (£256m) – from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor.
Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish televison reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen.
Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations such as Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Falkland Islands.
The financial assets that Isis now possess are likely to worsen the Iraqi governement’s struggle to defeat the insurgency, which is aimed at creating an Islamic state across the Syrian-Iraqi border.
In other words, now that it is armed with US-made weapons, this particular al-Qaeda group also happens to be the world’s richest terror force!
And so with all disposable cash it needs for a long time and armed to the teeth, what is Al Qaeda to do? Why continue expanding of course. Moments ago, via Reuters, we got confirmation that the “insurgents” have just captured yet another symbolic Iraqi town, Tikrit: the birthplace of none other than Saddam.
Sunni insurgents overran parts of the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday, security sources said.
Tikrit, which is located 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Will they stop here? Of course not. Expect the ISIS force to continue south until finally it overruns Baghdad itself and until all of Iraq, courtesy of a crippled army, officially belongs to Al Qaeda. America’s job is done here.
One can’t wait until Al Qaeda is also in charge of all the other countries recently liberated by the US and/or CIA.
Gunmen opened fire on a car in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, killing four people, including a radical Muslim cleric, a media report said Friday.
The cleric, Sheikh Ibrahim Ismail, was seen as the successor to Aboud Rogo Mohammed, a radical preacher who was gunned down in August last year, sparking unrest in Mombasa, including attacks on churches.
Rogo was on US and UN sanctions lists for his alleged links to the Somali militant group al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda.
The Nation newspaper quoted police as saying Ismail and four others were traveling in a car from mosque on Thursday evening when the incident took place. Only one passenger survived the attack.
Al-Shabaab claimed last month’s attack on the Westgate shopping centre, which left at least 72 people dead, including 61 civilians, six soldiers and five assailants.
Twitter has increasingly come under criticism for hosting terror feeds. Al-Shabaab is on it sixth account after getting suspended in the past for tweeting photos of a dead French special ops soldier, and most recently the Somali terror outlet blazed through a few accounts after suspensions for gloating about the Westgate mall massacre.
Their latest account has remained active for many days now and has racked up 59 tweets. During the attack and its aftermath, journalists were checking the Shabaab feed for its latest claims and links to statements.
So when al-Qaeda announced it had launched its first official Twitter account, I, like other journalists who cover terrorism, hit the follow button. The account was suspended Sunday by Twitter after being allowed to remain open since Tuesday, posting nearly 50 tweets.
On Saturday, I received one of those occasional emails from Twitter offering suggestions based on a recent follow — suggesting that I follow other terrorists.
The first suggested account, “Islam Workshop,” is connected to an al-Qaeda web forum to “rouse the believers”. On Saturday the feed posted a video removed by YouTube for violence, showing Qaeda- and Muslim Brotherhood-backed jihadists Ansar Beit al-Maqdes fighting Egyptian forces in the Sinai.
The second appears to be linked to the Al-Battar training camp, al-Qaeda’s program that has offered DIY as well as hands-on terrorist advice. These days Muaskar Al-Battar (Camp of the Sword) concentrates largely on bringing together groups with the same goal in a loosely connected network. The feed even has a nice camp photo as its backdrop, with more than a few Tsarnaev look-a-likes in the wooded hills.
The third suggested Twitter account appears linked to a Kurdistan-based affiliate of al-Qaeda.
The fourth claims to be “one of the foot soldiers” of Al-Shabaab, and posted several press photo from the Westgate attack while gloating about Shabaab’s gruesome accomplishments.
The last account, posing with the girl, is former Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdulaziz Sayer Owain al Shammari, who was arrested by Pakistan in 2001 and transferred to his home country Kuwait in 2005.
“Based on detainee’s deception history, it is assessed that he has received training on advanced counter-terrorism techniques, as well as above average terrorist training typically taught by Al-Qaida,” reads a 2004 Defense Department memo. “…Detainee is assessed to have connections to high-ranking Al-Qaida members.”
Twitter has said it can’t comment on users when asked to explain why terrorist accounts remain up. The only reason Al-Shabaab’s account fell a couple of times after the horrific Westgate attack was because of intense pressure from angry Twitter users.
A document filed before the attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi Kenya, in a still-developing terrorism case in New York seems to confirm the long-held fear that al Qaeda is working to develop chemical weapons.
On Wednesday, CBS News obtained a document filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York indicating that three men charged with being members of the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia had “substantial knowledge regarding an al-Shabaab research and development department that was developing chemical weapons.”
CBS News senior correspondent John Miller told “CBS This Morning” the lead defendant in the case, Mahdi Hashi, and two others were arrested in August, 2012, by African authorities while allegedly on their way to Yemen. They are charged with participating in a weapons and training program with al-Shabab over a four-year period beginning in 2008.
Hashi, who left his home in the U.K. to join the Somali group, had been part of an elite suicide bomber unit with al-Shabab. – CBSNews
Syrian rebels, including jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda, have taken control of the historic Christian town of Maalula, north of Damascus, a watchdog and a resident said on Sunday.
Maalula is home to around 5,000 residents and is of strategic importance for the rebels, who are trying to tighten their grip around the capital Damascus, adding a northern post to existing bases in the south and west of the city.
Capturing the town, around 55 kilometres north of the capital, could also help rebels threaten the nearby highway between Damascus and Homs, a supply route used by the regime.
The battle for the town left at least 17 rebels dead and more than 100 wounded overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that dozens of regime forces and pro-militia members were also killed or wounded in the fighting.
“Overnight, Syrian regime troops moved into the village, but rebel forces sent reinforcements and were able to take control of the entire town,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
He said the Al-Nusra Front, which has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, was among the forces that had taken control of the town.
A Maalula resident, reached by phone, confirmed that regime forces had withdrawn from the area and rebel forces were now in control.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the resident said the situation on the ground was quiet.
“The rebels are inside Maalula, all of Maalula. The government troops have pulled out of Maalula,” the resident said.
Abdel Rahman said “fierce fighting broke out between regime forces and rebel fighters overnight, and the soldiers withdrew to the outskirts of the town.”
Troops were still stationed around the town, raising the possibility of renewed fighting.
Picturesque Maalula is nestled under a large cliff and is considered a symbol of the Christian presence in Syria.
Many of its inhabitants speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ that only small, scattered communities around the world still use.
It is full of troglodyte caves dating back to the first centuries of Christianity, and also houses the Mar Takla Greek Orthodox monastery.
The clashes first erupted on Wednesday, when Al-Nusra Front fighters and other Islamist rebels attacked a regime checkpoint at one entrance to the town.
The advance raised fears of attacks against churches or Christians in the town but on Friday, the opposition Syrian National Coalition said rebels had withdrawn from the area.
On Saturday, the Observatory said rebel forces were fighting pro-regime militias in the west of the town, and were also engaged in clashes with Syrian troops on the outskirts of Maalula. – AFP
A military jury sentenced a US Army officer to death Wednesday for carrying out an Al-Qaeda inspired mass shooting on the Fort Hood base in Texas that left 13 dead.
After a short deliberation, the forewoman of a jury of military officers said it was their unanimous verdict that 42-year-old Major Nidal Hasan should be executed.
“It is my duty as president of this jury to inform you that… the court martial in closed session in a secret ballot of all members concurs to the sentences, to forfeit all pay and allowances, to dismissal from service, to be put to death,” said the forewoman, a colonel.
Hasan, who elected to conduct his own defense during the trial but who called no witnesses and gave no testimony, sat in his wheelchair staring ahead of himself the verdict was read.
Under US military justice, death penalty verdicts are automatically reviewed under an appeals procedure that could take years.
It can then be appealed through the civilians courts, and any execution would have to be approved by the US president.
Death penalty verdicts are often overturned, and no soldier has been executed since 1961.
Hasan has nevertheless made no attempt to deny the charges and court appointed defense attorneys had expressed concern that he is seeking execution.
The US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent is the first member of the army to receive a death sentence since the 2005 conviction of Hasan Akbar, who killed two in an attack on fellow soldiers in Kuwait in 2003.
On November 5, 2009, Hasan opened fire at a medical facility in the sprawling Fort Hood base in Texas that serves as a staging point for soldiers to deploy to combat zones.
Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was himself shot by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack and he is now partially paralyzed.
The court had heard that Hasan was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
Following the sentence, Hasan was rushed quickly out of the military courtroom, which is in Fort Hood, to be transported back to a local civilian jail where he has been held for more than three years.
He is to be taken to military death row in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to await execution.
Seven relatives of victims slain in the shooting held back tears during the sentencing after repeatedly being warned not to not make any public declarations of support or opposition to the sentence.
“We are thankful for the just verdict that has finally been rendered. However, we are also dissatisfied with the media attention to Hasan and his extremist views,” Melissa Czemerda, daughter of Hasan’s victim Lieutenant Colonel Juanita Warman, said after the hearing.
“These types of murderers thrive on media attention. It promotes violence from other disturbed individuals seeking a platform for their sick and twisted views.”
Former Fort Hood police officer Sergeant Kimberly Munley, who was wounded in a gun battle with Hasan, immediately took to Twitter to welcome the sentence.
“He will wither away to nothing in his jail cell while waiting on the appellate courts!” she wrote
And Teena Nemelka, mother of slain Private First Class Aaron Nemelka, said: “We have all heard that Hasan believes with the death penalty that we will be seen as a martyr, but I feel that he is a coward, a traitor and a murderer.” – AFP
A high-ranking Yemeni security official has told McClatchy that the Obama administration’s recently announced terror threat which supposedly targeted US embassies had “no basis in fact” and was manufactured merely to dampen opposition to drone strikes.
After initially warning of a terror plot “thought to have been one of the most serious against American and other Western interests since the September 11 attacks,” the US closed 20 embassies and consulates earlier this month, 18 of which reopened soon after.
The announcement of the threat occurred as it was simultaneously acknowledged that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last year was linked to a clandestine CIA arms smuggling operation based in the Libyan city that was being used to transport arms to rebels in Syria, many of whom are allied with Al-Qaeda militants.
The announcement of the threat against US embassies also served to justify blanket NSA surveillance, leading some to suggest that the alleged plot was being hyped to distract from the Edward Snowden scandal. It was later claimed that the NSA had intercepted a “conference call” of Al-Qaeda members during which militants discussed an attack.
However, in a report entitled U.S. embassies in Muslim world reopen amid still-murky threats, McClatchy cites, “A high-ranking Yemeni security official speaking on the condition of anonymity,” who told the news outlet that the threat “had no basis in fact,” with the source bemusedly attributing “media reports about imminent terror strikes to a single official’s comments, which he cast as a misguided attempt at shifting public opinion in the face of increasing and unpopular American drone strikes.”
Dozens of people, labeled “suspected militants” by the US, have been killed in Yemen over the last two weeks as a result of at least eight drone strikes, attacks that have outraged Yemeni citizens. According to Princeton University professor and Yemen expert Gregory Johnson, the drone strikes are actually serving to recruit more terrorists.
“There are strikes that kill civilians. There are strikes that kill women and children. And when you kill people in Yemen, these are people who have families. They have clans. And they have tribes. And what we’re seeing is that the United States might target a particular individual because they see him as a member of al-Qaeda. But what’s happening on the ground is that he’s being defended as a tribesman,” said Johnson.
Figures show that 50 civilians are killed for every one terrorist taken out by a drone strike, which means that 95% of the victims are innocent men, women and children.
As Ron Paul noted recently, while the Obama administration is conducting drone strikes in Yemen to supposedly target Al-Qaeda terrorists, the White House is simultaneously supporting the allies of Al-Qaeda terrorists, the vast majority of whom have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, in Syria.
Furthermore, as the high-ranking Yemeni security official reveals, the administration is also apparently manufacturing terror plots in order to justify these drone strikes as well as mass NSA surveillance. – Infowars.com
Despite evidence showing the Benghazi attack was staged by a State Department hired jihadist security outfit in connection with an arms transfer to al-Qaeda mercenaries in Syria, the US MSM is pretending it does not know what happened in Libya on September 11, 2012.
The corporate media has yet to point out that the Obama administration attempted to cover-up the real reason for the murder of ambassador Stevens – U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the State Department initially pointing to a lame anti-Muslim video – and has consistently downplayed the incident and characterized it as a non-event not requiring congressional investigation and the impeachment of President Obama.
A number of guests appearing on the Alex Jones Show following the attack have built an indisputable case that the CIA was shipping arms from U.S.-controlled facilities located at the U.S. mission in Benghazi to its mercenaries in Syria and the murder of ambassador Stevens was carried out by an al-Qaeda affiliated group as part of a turf war between the CIA and elements in the Pentagon.
In May, former government insider Steve Pieczenik explained how a Pentagon effort to derail a CIA operation may have occurred.
All the evidence points to the Pentagon doing nothing to stop the attack on the compound. Martin Dempsey, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted during a Senate hearing in June that highly trained Special Forces were stationed a few hours away from Benghazi on the night of the attacks but were not deployed.
This contradicts comments made by Gregory Hicks, the former top U.S. diplomat in Benghazi, who told Congress in May that officials from Special Operations Command-Africa ordered the units to stand down.
In May, Infowars.com posted an article reporting the fact the Benghazi attack and the murder of ambassador Stevens had nothing to do with an absurd anti-Islam video, as the establishment media and the Obama administration insisted, but was directly connected to the shipment of arms from Libya to the mercenaries in Syria.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, appearing on the same show, alleged that Turkey partnered with the CIA to take down Bashar al-Assad in Syria and, hours before the compound was attacked and Stevens and others lost their lives, the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin met with the U.S. ambassador.
According to Egyptian security officials, Stevens was instrumental in recruiting jihadists for the CIA’s war in Syria and “served as a key contact with the Saudis to coordinate the recruitment by Saudi Arabia of Islamic fighters from North Africa and Libya. The jihadists were sent to Syria via Turkey to attack Assad’s forces,” writes Aaron Klein.
It has been widely reported that the Syrian mercenaries belong to the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
It was learned after the attack that the February 17th Martyrs Brigade was paid by the State Department to protect the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. The group had “clear al-Qaida sympathies, and had prominently displayed the al-Qaida flag on a Facebook page for months before the deadly attack,” Max Rosenthal reported for Newsmax in May. The February 17th Martyrs Brigade, it was latter learned during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, are in league with Ansar al-Sharia, said to be linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Part of the operation involving Stevens included sending surface-to-air missiles to al-Qaeda in Syria. “Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels,” CNN also reported late last week.
The Obama administration announced in late September that “it planned to expand a program to secure and destroy Libya’s huge stockpile of dangerous surface-to-air missiles” and that “the U.S. State Department has one official on the ground in Libya, as well as five contractors who specialize in ‘explosive ordinance disposal,’ all working with the rebel Transitional National Council to find the looted missiles,” ABC News reported.
In fact, the State Department, under the guidance of ambassador Stevens, was moving to round up the missiles and send them to al-Qaeda in Syria. Prior to this, in December, 2011, the U.S. claimed to have secured 5,000 surface-to-air missiles and destroyed them outside of the village of Sidi Bin Nur in Libya. Doubtless, instead, they became part of the CIA’s cache destined for Syria.
The unusual US decision to close its diplomatic missions en masse in the Middle East Sunday was prompted by intercepts of high-ranking Al-Qaeda operatives signaling a major attack, US lawmakers said Sunday.
Lawmakers briefed on the intelligence called the threat reporting among the most serious they’ve seen in recent years, reminiscent of the intelligence chatter that preceded the September 11, 2001, attacks.
“There is a significant threat stream and we’re reacting to it,” General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with ABC.
Dempsey said the specific locations and targets were not known but “the intent is to attack Western, not just US interests.”
At least 25 US embassies and consular offices were ordered closed Sunday, most of them in the Middle East and North Africa, in response to the threat.
Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that Al-Qaeda’s “operatives are in place.”
He said the United States knows this “because we’ve received information that high level people from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are talking about a major attack and these are people in the high level.”
ABC News cited an unnamed US official as saying there was concern that Al-Qaeda might deploy suicide attackers with surgically implanted bombs to evade security.
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, said the United States was in a high state of alert, calling it “probably one of the most specific and credible threats I’ve seen, perhaps, since 9/11.”
He said an attack appeared to be “imminent,” possibly timed to coincide with the last night of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
The suspected plot comes against the backdrop of a series of recent prison breaks in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan in which thousands of inmates have escaped, he said, creating additional risks.
US sensitivity to embassy security also has been heightened by the Al-Qaeda attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, last September 11 that claimed the life of the US ambassador and three other Americans.
It also dovetailed an intensifying US debate over electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency following bombshell leaks by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
The NSA’s congressional supporters were quick to point to the role of electronic intercepts in obtaining the latest intelligence, while dismissing suggestions it also served to divert attention from the agency’s role in scooping up Americans’ phone and Internet data.
“If we did not have these programs, then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys,” said Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
However, he pointed out that the latest threat warnings did not stem from controversial domestic electronic surveillance programs, but from NSA’s monitoring operations outside the United States.
“And that’s where all the planning is taking place, we think that’s where the activities is planned for,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Representative Peter King, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the intelligence was specific “as to how enormous it was going to be, and also there’s certain dates were given.”
“And, you know, the assumption is that it’s probably most likely to happen in the Middle East at or about one of the embassies, but there’s no guarantee of that at all,” he said on ABC.
“It could basically be in Europe, it could be in the United States, it could be a series of combined attacks,” he said.
Chambliss likened the stream of information to the intelligence chatter that preceded the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.
“What we have heard is some specifics on what’s intended to be done and some individuals who are making plans such as we saw before 9/11,” he said.
“Whether they’re going to be suicide deaths that are used or whether they’re planning on vehicle-born bombs being carried into an area, we don’t know,” he said. – AFP
The US government’s secret seizure of Associated Press phone records had a “chilling effect” on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, AP’s top executive said Wednesday.
“Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us,” AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said in a speech to the National Press Club.
“In some cases, government employees we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak to us by phone. Others are reluctant to meet in person … This chilling effect on newsgathering is not just limited to AP.
“Journalists from other news organizations have personally told me that it has intimidated both official and nonofficial sources from speaking to them as well.”
Pruitt spoke one month after the US news agency revealed that it had been notified after the fact that the US Justice Department had secret subpoenas of two months of phone records from its news operations.
The AP has said US authorities appeared to have sought out the records as part of a criminal investigation into leaked information contained in a May 2012 AP story about a foiled terror plot.
Pruitt, who previously called the seizure “a massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering, said the Justice Department “violated its own rules” on how it handles investigations of leaks to news media.
He said the collection of records pertaining to more than 100 journalists was “an overbroad and sloppy fishing expedition” and failed to follow procedures on notification.
Pruitt said that authorities maintained that by notifying the AP ahead of the sweep “it would have tipped off the leaker” but argued “that kind of reasoning would apply in every single case.”
This rationale would mean news organizations would never know when its records are being obtained, news sources would become less willing to speak and “the public will only know what the government wants them to know.”
The Justice Department has told the AP “that our phone records have been and will continue to be walled off, protected and used for no other purpose other than the leak investigation,” Pruitt said.
“We appreciate these assurances. But that does not excuse what they did. We need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The AP chief said the US administration should reaffirm the right of advance notice to news organizations, and use the courts to adjudicate any disputes on whether certain records are needed.
He also called for a “federal shield law with teeth” to ensure that journalists are not prosecuted for doing their jobs.
“We do not dispute that the government has the right to pursue those who leak classified information,” he said.
But he argued that “no one in this country should ever be prosecuted for committing journalism.”
Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder said the leak which prompted the seizure of journalist phone records was a “very serious” matter which “puts the American people at risk.”
Pruitt said Wednesday however that the AP waited five days before publishing the article, until after it had been assured by US officials that “the national security risk had passed.
The US administration under President Barack Obama has been aggressive in pursuing leaks of secret government information.
Authorities have said they had opened a probe into Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked details about a cast US government electronic surveillance program.
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced in January to two and a half years in prison for leaking the name of a secret agent implicated in harsh interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects. – AP
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