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From the Los Angeles Times

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Post-9/11 assessment sees major security gaps

Among the issues, warn the former heads of the panel, is the unreliability of the system to keep airline passengers from smuggling explosives onto a plane.

by Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau

August 30, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Despite the outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars and a vast reorganization of federal agencies since the Sept. 11 attacks, major gaps remain in the government's ability to prevent and respond to a terrorist strike, according to an assessment by the former heads of the 9/11 Commission.

The report, which will be released Wednesday, warns that the nation's ability to detect explosives hidden on passengers boarding airplanes "lacks reliability." It describes emergency communications used by first responders in urban areas as "inadequate." And it calls efforts to coordinate rescues "a long way from being fully implemented."

The panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in late 2002 as an independent, bipartisan group to investigate the hijackings of four jetliners by Al Qaeda operatives. Its final report included numerous recommendations for reforms in the intelligence, law enforcement and domestic security communities.

The new assessment comes from the panel's former chairs, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.).

The committee also faults the Department of Homeland Security and Congress for failing to create a way to track when people leave the country and for not implementing tougher security requirements for identity cards.

"A decade after 9/11, the nation is not yet prepared for a truly catastrophic disaster," says the report, titled "Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of 9/11 Commission Recommendations."

"Until some of these things are done, we aren't going to be as safe as we should be," Kean said in an interview.

Kean said it was "outrageous" that Congress had not passed a law to allocate new radio spectrum to first responders.

The inability of firefighters and police to talk to each other from the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was a "critical failure" on Sept. 11, 2001, according to the report, but a recommendation to dedicate radio spectrum for first responders has languished in Congress.

In February, President Obama called for $7 billion to build an emergency broadband network using a designated band of radio spectrum known as D-block. But such a bill has not come to a vote in the Senate, and the House has not considered it.

More than a year and a half after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, passed through airport screening in Amsterdam and boarded a Christmas Day flight with plastic explosives sewn into his undergarments, the U.S. screening system "still falls short in significant ways," the report says.

The new full body scanners "are not effective at detecting explosives hidden within the body and raise privacy and health concerns," it says.

Some of the hijackers on Sept. 11 used fake documents to obtain state-issued IDs to board the airplanes, but deadlines issued in 2008 for states to make driver's licenses more difficult to forge have been pushed back multiple times. Compliance is currently not required until January 2013.

The delay "makes us less safe," the report says.

Another recommendation that has been ignored: for the U.S. government to fingerprint visa holders as they leave the country.

A system that tracks when travelers exit the U.S. would be "very expensive" to implement, said Stewart Baker, former head of policy at the Department of Homeland Security.

"This is a rare circumstance where I think the 9/11 Commission is wrong," Baker said. "I don't see the counter-terrorism value."

Rick Nelson, a counter-terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said some of the recommendations went unfollowed because they would either be too expensive or they ran afoul of concerns about privacy and civil liberties.

"A lot of the work that remains requires a decision by Congress and ultimately the American people," Nelson said. "Do they want this increased security and are they willing to pay for it and give up some civil liberties?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/september11/la-na-911-report-card-20110831,0,5954238,print.story

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From Google News

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9/11 children's colouring book angers US Muslims

The Kids' Book of Freedom condemned as 'disgusting' by Council on American-Islamic Relations

We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids' Book of Freedom has just been released by the Missouri-based publisher Really Big Coloring Books, which says it is "designed to be a tool that parents can use to help teach children about the facts surrounding 9/11". Showing scenes from 9/11 for children to colour in and telling the story of the attacks and the subsequent hunt for Osama bin Laden, "the book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth", according to its publisher, which says that it has sold out of its first print run of 10,000 copies.

One page of the $6.99 book, which has been given a PG rating, shows Bin Laden hiding behind a hijab-wearing woman as he is shot by a Navy SEAL. "Being the elusive character that he was, and after hiding out with his terrorist buddies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, American soldiers finally locate the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden," runs the text accompanying the picture. "Children, the truth is, these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has condemned the book as "disgusting", saying that it characterises all Muslims as linked to extremism, terrorism and radicalism, which could lead children reading the book to believe that all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, and that followers of the Islamic faith are their enemies.

Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the organisation, told the Toronto Star that "America is full of these individuals and groups seeking to demonise Islam and marginalise Muslims and it's just a fact of life in the post-9/11 era". Nonetheless, he expressed his hope that "parents would recognise the agenda behind this book and not expose their children to intolerance or religious hatred".

Publisher Wayne Bell told American television that the book does not portray Muslims "in a negative light at all. That is incorrect. This is about 19 terrorist hijackers that came over here under the leadership of a devil worshipper, Osama bin Laden, to murder our people," Bell said. "He [Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR] calls the book disgusting ... but he should call the people in the book, the 19 terrorists, Osama bin Laden, he should call him disgusting. This is history. It is absolutely factual."

But Walid said that "given the fact that this is a very emotional and sensitive topic and that there were Muslims who were victims in 9/11 [and] who were first responders, we think it would have been more responsible if the language would not have been such that every time Muslim was used it's radical, extremist, terrorist ... All these characters are painted to the mind of a young person that perhaps all Muslims may be somewhat responsible for 9/11 or that Muslims are an enemy."

Really Big Coloring Books, which also published a colouring book teaching children about the Tea Party last year, has said that it will donate a portion of its proceeds from sales of the book to Bridges for Peace, "a Jerusalem-based, Bible-believing Christian organisation supporting Israel and building relationships between Christians and Jews worldwide through education and practical deeds expressing God's love and mercy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/31/9-11-children-colouring-book-muslims

U.S. lags on 9/11 panel recommendations

The United States has failed to implement nine of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to keep the nation safe from terror, the former co-chairs of the panel said Wednesday in a new report.

The commission's former co-chairs, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, will issue a report today detailing what the U.S. has — and hasn't — done in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Wall Street Journal . Of the 41 recommendations from the commission, the report says that nine have not been fully put in place.

The government has failed to put into action a border screening process using biometric technology that checks individuals as they leave the U.S. and has yet to establish a standardized form of identification, the report says. In addition, terrorist detention guidelines remain unclear and the government has yet to create a proposed civil-liberties board.

These counter-terrorism actions need to be immediately enacted, the report says, since the “the threat from al Qaeda, related terrorist groups, and individual adherents to violent Islamist extremism persists.”

According to the report, the U.S. is at risk of terrorists recruiting U.S. citizens and residents, and could be targeted with major cyber attacks. Defending against cyber attacks on the country's infrastructure “must be an urgent priority,” according to the report.

The WSJ wrote that the former co-chairs say some of the successful moves in the past decade include better airport screening and intelligence-sharing operations.

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