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From Los Angeles Times

Al Qaeda had U.S. trains in its sights, U.S. officials say

Evidence collected in the Osama bin Laden killing in Pakistan indicates that the terrorist network considered attacking America's rail system.

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

May 5, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Evidence collected from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan indicates that Al Qaeda considered launching a terrorist strike against America's rail system, U.S. officials said Thursday, though there was no sign of concrete plans to carry out an attack.

The plot was "aspirational," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.

The apparent plot was discovered amid the documents, computers, hard drives, flash drives, DVDs and other material that U.S. commandos recovered after they killed Bin Laden in his hide-out Monday. It is the first information made public from the vast haul.

In response to the new intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security sent a bulletin to state and local police officials Thursday urging them to remain at a "heightened state of vigilance," said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the department.

"We have no information of any imminent terrorist threat to the U.S. rail sector, but wanted to make sure our partners were aware of the alleged plotting," Chandler said.

Officials said Al Qaeda members discussed the plot in February 2010 and planned to execute it later this year, on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Associated Press reported.

Terrorists aligned with or inspired by Al Qaeda have targeted trains with deadly effect in the past.

In March 2004, coordinated bombings of commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people and injured about 1,800. In July 2005, four suicide bombers blew up three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London, killing 52 people and injuring about 700.

U.S. authorities have added airport security personnel and tightened screening for passengers and cargo coming into the country since the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Trains and subway systems are more difficult to secure, given the millions of people who get on and off every day. Rather than using checkpoints to screen each passenger, police and bomb-sniffing dogs conduct random checks on platforms, stations and aboard some trains.

Mass-transit systems and passenger trains "unfortunately remain a target," John Pistole, the Transportation Security Administration administrator, told a congressional hearing on rail security Wednesday. He said they had been "the focus of numerous plots here in the U.S. — unsuccessful, fortunately."

Mass transit is "the most vulnerable," agreed Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, which held the hearing. "And having been to London and to Madrid and seen the terrible damage that was done there by Al Qaeda, you realize, one, in some ways how much easier it is for terrorists to attack mass transit, and also how horrific the tragedy is when it occurs."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bin-laden-rail-threat-20110506,0,3807980,print.story

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Editorial

Death row's delays

California should take a cue from other states that have dealt with the issue of capital punishment: Just abolish it.

May 5, 2011

Last year, California added 28 inmates to the state's death row, eight of whom were sentenced in Los Angeles County. They aren't in much danger of an early demise, however, thanks largely to legal delays, including a decision Tuesday by state officials not to pursue executions in 2011. The seemingly never-ending court battles mean that convicts in capital cases are far more likely to die of natural causes than by lethal injection. But that won't stop them from costing taxpayers an estimated three times more than other inmates.

Not for the first time, this gives us cause to wonder what good the death penalty in California is doing. Gov. Jerry Brown also personally opposes death sentences, though he appears to lack the courage of his capital convictions. The solution is in plain sight and has been pursued successfully by other states, including Illinois earlier this year: Abolish capital punishment.

The budget-minded Brown last week canceled plans to build a new death row at San Quentin State Prison, noting that it was hard to justify spending $356 million on housing for convicted murderers while services for children, the disabled and seniors were being slashed to the bone. Fair enough. But deferring the problem won't make it go away, as California lawmakers discovered after their practice of ignoring a worsening prison overcrowding crisis was finally ended when federal judges declared the state guilty of unconstitutionally cruel punishment. Similarly, the state can't go on adding to the death row population indefinitely while failing to address San Quentin's severe capacity and design problems.

There are 713 inmates on death row, yet the state hasn't executed anyone since 2006 (29 have died of natural causes since then). Confronted with similar costs and delays, along with evidence that some death row inmates had been wrongfully convicted, four states have abolished the death penalty since 2007. In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn dealt with existing death row inmates by commuting their sentences to life without parole, an elegant solution that would end California's legal and budgetary problems at a stroke.

California lawmakers aren't inclined to follow Illinois' lead, and Brown has shown no interest in pushing them. He says this is because he respects the will of the majority, which has shown strong support for the death penalty in the past. But Brown might want to consult more recent polls. A 2010 Field poll showed that although 70% of the state's voters favor capital punishment, a slight majority said that if given a choice between imposing a sentence of death or life without parole in first-degree murder cases, they'd choose the latter. Replacing capital punishment with life imprisonment isn't necessarily a political death sentence.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-death-20110505,0,3508064,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Verdict Issued in London Terror Bombing

LONDON – The coroner in an inquest into terrorist bombings, which killed 52 people and injured more than 700 others on London's public transportation system on July 7, 2005, delivered a verdict of “unlawful killing” on Friday.

The five-month inquest, which called 309 witnesses, including officers of Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, examined the attacks in minute and often moving detail. "I am not aware," said the coroner, Lady Justice Hallett, "of our having left any reasonable stone unturned."

Though the verdict was never in doubt, she said in her remarks that the families of those who died “want to find out what happened, how their loved ones died and if their deaths could have been prevented." The coroner said she would make a series of recommendations, expected to encompass everything changes in intelligence gathering and coordination that might have increased the chances of detecting the plot to suggesting on improving emergency services and law enforcement.

Some of the bereaved families have issued their own recommendations, and have said they may pursue a new enquiry, focused more specifically on such possible failings by the authorities. But Lady Justice Hallett said that the evidence she had heard “does not justify the conclusion that any failings of any organization or individual caused or contributed to the deaths,” and added that she hoped the inquest would mark the end of investigations into the bombings.

The attacks stunned Britons, particularly as evidence emerged that they had been planned largely by British-born men of Pakistani descent. The revelations also sprea unease among members of the Muslim minority here that they would stigmatized.

On the day of the attacks, London came to a halt in shocked silence. Public transport ceased and, like New Yorkers after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Londoners found themselves walking home. Two weeks later, on July 21, 2005, the city reeled again as a new group of would-be bombers attempted copycat attacks that failed. During the course of that day, the British police shot to death a Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, saying they had mistaken him for a terrorist.

That killing, too, plunged Britain and its security services into a bout of self-scrutiny that deepened when a separate terrorism trial established that, before the attack, two of the July 7 bombers had, in fact, been under surveillance by MI5 officers tracking a different conspiracy but had not been arrested.

The July 7 bombers were Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30; Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Mir Hussain, 18, who all came from areas near the northern city of Leeds, along with Germaine Lindsay, 19, from Aylesbury, north of London. They attacked three subway trains and a double-decker bus.

On the day, closed circuit television footage showed, the four men assembled at Luton north of London than traveled by commuter train during the morning rush hour. Two of the men — Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan — were later shown in suicide videos denouncing Britain.

The tape showing Mr. Tanweer included separate scenes of Ayman al-Zawahiri , the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda , suggesting that the group was seeking to take responsibility for or at least to associate itself with the attacks.

On the video, Mr. Khan, 30, declared, ”We are at war, and I am a soldier.”

The four bombers killed themselves and 52 victims in attacks on three subway trains and a bus.

A subsequent report by the British Parliament said that Mr. Khan and Mr. Tanweer had visited Pakistan before the attacks, and, while there, might have contacted Al Qaeda figures and trained to use explosives.

The parliamentary report said that Mr. Khan and Mr. Tanweer had been observed by British counterterrorism police officers on the “peripheries” of another terrorist operation in Britain. But, it said, counterterrorism agencies had failed to grasp the “development of the homegrown threat and the radicalization of British citizens.”

When the suspects from that operation – codenamed Crevice – came to trial, surveillance evidence showed that Omar Khyam, the convicted leader of the plot, had met several times with Mr. Khan.

According to court papers, four Crevice defendants, including Mr. Khyam, trained at the same camp in Malakand, Pakistan, as did Mr. Khan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/europe/07london.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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Department of Homeland Security

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Beware of Osama Bin Laden Email Phishing Schemes

• Keep software up to date - Many operating systems offer automatic updates. If this option is available, you should enable it.
  
  
• Save and scan any attachments before opening them - If you have to open an attachment before you can verify the source, take the following steps:
  
  
  • Be sure the signatures in your anti-virus software are up to date (see Understanding Anti-Virus Software for more information).
    
    
  • Save the file to your computer or a disk.
    
    
  • Manually scan the file using your anti-virus software.
    
    
• Turn off the option to automatically download attachments - To simplify the process of reading email, many email programs offer the feature to automatically download attachments.

• Stop before clicking on images or opening suspicious email from sources or website you don't know.
  
  
• Think about who sent you the email before opening any attachments or clicking links. Be wary of unsolicited attachments, even from people you know. Above all trust your instincts.
  
  
• Connect and use the Internet with the confidence of knowing you have taken the steps to protect your computer.

http://blog.dhs.gov/2011/05/beware-of-osama-bin-laden-email.html

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