Recipe for Disaster - Teens Making Homemade Bombs
Posted: 09 May 2008 02:31 AM CDT
13 Investigates an explosive issue: Dangerous chemicals in the hands of teens. The FBI says it can’t stop kids from getting a recipe for disaster. But with public support authorities can help keep teens from creating a deadly mix.
It’s a new homegrown threat prompting a wake-up call for parents and businesses. Behind pimples and “peach fuzz” are teens accused of terrorist acts. Some set off home-made bombs, while others are facing charges for plotting deadly attacks.
Jeff Muller, the Assistant Section Chief in the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, wants parents to understand an important fact up front.
“The information is out there,” he said emphatically.
A few recent cases are good reminders.
Two Indianapolis teens on spring break in Savannah, Georgia are caught on tape carrying volatile chemicals behind a pool/patio store.
The video shows 17-year-old Kenneth Smock as he puts a container on a manhole. His 17-year-old friend, Taylor Sandlin, fuels the mix.
It’s an internet recipe for disaster and creates a cooked-up bomb that explodes in minutes.
Just up the map, 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger had ten pounds of ammonium nitrate delivered to his parents’ door. Police say the teen planned to blow up his high school in Chesterfield and had all the ingredients to get started.
“It’s the same substance Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City, if that gives you an idea of how volatile that is,” said Chesterfield Police Chief Randall Lear, describing the explosive components police found.
Schallenberger had just a fraction of what McVeigh concocted, but enough to tip off his parents to potential trouble. They turned him in.
“Ten pounds could take out, certainly take out a classroom,” said Donald Sachtleben, an FBI Bomb Technician with the Indianapolis FBI Field Office.
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Two Security Guards Suspended After Breach At Lambert Airport
Posted: 09 May 2008 02:11 AM CDT
There are new developments in the Lambert security breach.
Two security officers are suspended without pay after a homeless man slipped by them early Wednesday morning at a vehicle checkpoint.
The guards work for Whalen Security- the company’s president, Greg Twardowski, told FOX 2 News over the phone that he is extremely concerned about what took place.
He’s not the only one- an aviation expert and passengers are also speaking out.
“Obviously it was a thoughtless breach of security,” said SLU aviation expert Mel Burkart about the incident.
Airport officials say the Whalen Security officers were searching cars when a homeless man walked right past them.
The man then found his way into a Trans States Airlines regional jet- where he fell asleep until an airline employee found him.
Burkart says outside areas around airports are the weakest links in security.
“The potential is there. You know you have an airport like St. Louis that has hundreds of acres of ground and it has a fence up all the way around it but it’s not monitored and it’s not under total security vigilance day and night,” explained Burkart.
T.S.A. officials tell us the breach shows the importance of layered security.
That is security from T.S.A., airports and airlines.
T.S.A.. spokesperson Carrie Harmon said, “We all recognize that these layers are important because no single layer is 100 percent full proof 100 percent of the time.”
Authorities say the 58 year old homeless man has been released from custody until warrants are issued.
We’re told that might not come until Monday and that the man could face a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
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Terrorists Create Sophisticated Recruiting and Marketing Campaigns On Internet
Posted: 08 May 2008 09:33 PM CDT
Foreign terrorist groups have developed sophisticated Internet recruitment and marketing campaigns, increasing the threat of home-grown terrorism, a Senate committee said in a report released Thursday.
“The use of the Internet by al-Qaeda and other violent Islamist extremist groups has expanded the terrorist threat to our homeland,” the report said. “No longer is the threat just from abroad … the threat is now increasingly from within.”
The bipartisan report, written by the staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, recommended that the U.S. government develop a comprehensive outreach and communications strategy to isolate and discredit the “violent Islamist ideology as a cause worth supporting, let alone a cause worth advancing by attacking and killing one’s neighbors and fellow citizens.”
The U.S. government has some programs with narrow missions to combat al-Qaeda’s use of the Internet, but they are “disjointed or uncoordinated, and insufficient,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and the committee chairman, told reporters on Thursday.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the committee, said that the report shows there is “a highly coordinated effort by al-Qaeda and like-minded groups to spread their message of hate and violence over the Internet.”
There are “thousands” of Web sites and al-Qaeda even has a “clearing house” to give anti-American Web sites and messages its stamp of approval so that viewers know the site is legitimate, Lieberman said.
The senators showed a video with clips from several anti-American Web sites, showing American troops being killed in Iraq, how to make weapons and bombs, and terrorists displaying their weapons and propaganda.
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Eco-terrorist Gets 20 Years For Plotting Bombing Campaign
Posted: 08 May 2008 09:27 PM CDT
An “eco-terrorist” convicted of plotting to blow up or firebomb government and commercial buildings across California was on Thursday jailed for nearly 20 years, justice officials said.
Eric McDavid, 29, who was found guilty in March on conspiracy to damage or destroy property by fire and an explosive, was sentenced to roughly 19 and a half years prison at a hearing in Sacramento, northern California.
Two other co-conspirators, Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner, have already pleaded guilty in the case and are awaiting sentencing later this year.
Prosecutors said the three environmental militants had planned attacks on the US Forest Service’s Institute of Forest Genetics, a dam and fish hatchery, cellular telephone towers and electric power stations.
Bomb-making expertise was acquired from a book — “Poor Man’s James Bond” — which contains details of how to create home-made explosive devices, justice officials said. The three extremists were arrested in January 2006 after buying materials for the explosives and finalizing their targets, prosecutors said.
“Today’s severe punishment of nearly 20 years in federal prison should serve as a cautionary tale to those who would conspire to commit life-threatening acts in the name of their extremist views,” US Attorney McGregor Scott said.
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Leader of al Qaeda in Iraq al Masri Reportedly Arrested
Posted: 08 May 2008 08:59 PM CDT
A joint Iraqi-American raid in the northern city of Mosul has resulted in the arrest of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said on Thursday, but U.S. officials aren’t convinced yet of the suspect’s identity.
You might recall that al Masri made headlines a couple of weeks ago when he declared a 30 day offensive against U.S. forces.
DNA tests are being conducted to confirm the man captured is Abu Ayyub al-Masri. U.S. officials are cautious because al-Masri is an elusive figure and previous reports of his death or capture all turned out to be false.
One U.S. source tells FOX News that the intelligence community is “extremely skeptical” that al-Masri has been arrested.
If al-Masri’s identity is confirmed, however, the arrest would be a significant blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq, not so much because of the disruption to its leadership but because of the information he may be able to provide.
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said that Mosul police “arrested one of Al Qaeda’s leaders at midnight and during the primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir,” according to the Associated Press.
News of the arrest was also reported by Iraqi state television and Arab satellite TV stations.
The state channel, Iraqiya, said that Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani would reward Mosul police for the capture.
Interior Ministry spokesman Khalaf told the station by phone that a source close to the al-Qaida leader informed Mosul police that al-Masri would be at a house in the city’s Wadi Hajar area at midnight Wednesday.
“The police raided this house and arrested him. During the primary investigation, he confessed that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Now a broader investigation of him is being conducted,” he said to Iraqiya.
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Canadian Terrorism Suspect Tells Court He Won’t Recognize Law - Attempts To Walk Out On Trial
Posted: 08 May 2008 08:19 AM CDT
An Islamic convert facing terrorism charges was re-arrested after trying to walk out of his own trial Tuesday – saying simply that “I’m outta here” – after telling the court he wouldn’t recognize Canadian law.
The 20-year-old, who can’t be identified because he was underage at the time of his arrest two years ago, had been released on bail. But he spent last night in jail, and his legal future is unclear.
At the time proceedings broke down, a police officer had been on the stand, and the court was discussing the young man’s mental status, including whether he was suicidal.
The only youth among 11 Torontonians accused of a variety of conspiracies is also the only suspect whose case has got to its trial phase. He faces charges of attending a terrorist training camp. The court has heard only preliminary motions so far, and has yet to delve into evidence or testimony.
While on bail, the young man had been living with his Hindu parents.
A Toronto Muslim preacher told The Globe that the suspect had been coming to Friday prayers, saying that he’d rather return to jail than live in a non-Islamic household.
“He said ‘In jail, I can at least pray,’” Aly Hindy, imam of the Salahuddin Islamic Centre in Scarborough, said in an interview.
“I said ‘Don’t do this!’” Mr. Hindy said. He added that he counselled the young man to pray in secret, but tensions between the suspect and his father had reached a boiling point.
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Senior RCMP Mountie: What We’re On To Scares Us, Keeps Me Awake At Night - Canada
Posted: 08 May 2008 08:14 AM CDT
The RCMP is investigating seven suspected terrorist plots so disturbing they “keep me awake at night,” the senior Mountie for national security disclosed yesterday.
Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said the cases are “spread right across the country” and each is comparable in scale to Canada’s biggest alleged jihadist conspiracy, which resulted in the arrests of 18 Toronto-area people in a suspected plot to bomb federal buildings in 2006.
The seven cases are among an unprecedented 848 national security cases, most related to terrorism, currently under investigation, Assistant Commissioner McDonell told an Ottawa conference on critical infrastructure protection.
“What we’re onto scares us,” he said in a later interview, without elaborating. “What we’re not onto really scares us.”
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the RCMP’s national security criminal investigation section’s caseload has grown 780 per cent, with the $40-million-a-year section “borrowing people from here, there and everywhere, there’s just that much work out there,” he said. “It’s a no-risk environment. Our people are running at the limit.”
His comments are the most detailed and candid yet from police on the threat confronting Canada.
“What we’re facing is a violent Islamist born-again social movement,” comprised mostly of young, second- or third-generation immigrants with a secular background, he told the Conference Board of Canada gathering of security, industry and government experts.
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