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From the L.A. Daily News

MEXICO DRUG WAR: 9 found hanging from overpass, 14 heads delivered to city hall in cooler

by Adriana Gomez Licon and Olga R. Rodriguez

| PHOTOS: DRUG CARTEL VIOLENCE |

MEXICO CITY - The bodies of 23 people were found hanging from a bridge or decapitated and dumped near city hall Friday in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, where drug cartels are fighting a bloody and escalating turf war.

Authorities found nine of the victims, including four women, hanging from an overpass leading to a main highway, said a Tamaulipas state official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide information on the case.

Hours later, police found 14 human heads inside coolers outside city hall along with a threatening note. The 14 bodies were found in black plastic bags inside a minivan abandoned near an international bridge, the official said.

The official provided no motive for the killings. But the city across the border from Laredo, Texas has recently been torn by a renewed turf war between the Zetas cartel, a gang of former Mexican special-forces soldiers, and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which has joined forces with the Gulf cartel, former allies of the Zetas.

Local media published photos of the nine bloodied bodies, some with duct tape wrapped around their faces, hanging from the overpass along with a message threatening the Gulf cartel.

"This is how I will finish all the fools you send," the banner read.

It also accused its rivals of setting off a car bomb that exploded outside Nuevo Laredo police headquarters last week and it made fun of a Sinaloa cartel enforcer killed in a Nuevo Laredo prison two years ago. "He cried like a woman giving birth," it said.

Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire met with Tamaulipas Gov. Egidio Torre Cantu on Friday and agreed to send more federal forces to the state, according to a statement from Poire's office.

Nuevo Laredo was the site of a 2003 dispute between the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels that set off a wave of violence that has left thousands dead and spread brutal violence that continues across Mexico until this day. That year, then-Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas was arrested and accused drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, sensing weakness , tried to move in on Nuevo Laredo, unleashing a bloody battle.

The city of tree-covered plazas and hacienda-style restaurants was transformed as the Zetas, then working as enforcers for the Gulf cartel, and Sinaloa cartel fighters waged battles with guns and grenades in broad daylight.

Killings and police corruption became so brazen that then President Vicente Fox was forced to send in hundreds of troops and federal agents, and the only man brave enough to take the job of police chief was gunned down hours after he was sworn in.

The Zetas won that fight and have since ruled the city with fear, threatening police, reporters and city officials and extorting money from businesses. They broke off their alliance with the Gulf cartel in 2010, worsening the violence across northeast Mexico.

But last month, 14 mutilated bodies were found in a vehicle left in the city center, behind city hall. Some media outlets reported that the Sinaloa cartel took responsibility for those bodies and in a message allegedly signed by its leader, Guzman, said the group was now back in Nuevo Laredo "to clean" the city.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_20573763/mexico-drug-war-9-found-hanging-from-overpass

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From the Washington Times

Wily bomb maker fast in race with technology; informant ID'd device

by Shaun Waterman

Al Qaeda 's top bomb maker in Yemen is so ruthless that he recruited and equipped his own brother for an underwear-bomb suicide attack against a top Saudi royal in 2009.

“Even for al Qaeda , that's cold,” said author Peter Bergen , who has studied the group since the late 1990s.

Now Ibrahim al-Asiri , 30, is suspected of making a new underwear bomb designed for use against a U.S.-bound airliner in a plot uncovered last month by U.S. and Saudi intelligence and thwarted within the past few days.

The supposed would-be bomber was an informant working for the CIA and Saudi Arabian intelligence , U.S. and Yemeni officials said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. The informant, who delivered the bomb to authorities, is safely out of Yemen .

The revelation, first reported by the Los Angeles Times , shows how the CIA was able to get its hands on a sophisticated underwear bomb well before an attack was set into motion, the AP reported.

Underwear bombs and other explosive devices, such as the converted printer cartridges used in the foiled October 2010 air-cargo bomb plot, are al-Asiri 's trademark, President Obama's senior counterterrorism adviser said.

Al-Asiri “has demonstrated real proficiency as far as concealment methods as well as the materials that are used in these” bombs, John Brennan said Tuesday in an interview on NBC-TV.

A Saudi national who has served time in the kingdom's prisons, al-Asiri is the son of a pious retired military man, according to the Saudi Gazette newspaper. The U.S. designated him a terrorist kingpin last year, and he is wanted by the Saudis and by Interpol .

He is believed to be one of the top targets of the recently stepped-up U.S. campaign of lethal drone attacks in Yemen .

The FBI , which is examining the underwear bomb, said it is “very similar” to devices used in plots by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorist network's affiliate in Yemen, “including against aircraft and for targeted assassinations.”

That clearly is a reference to the August 2009 attempt to kill Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammad bin Nayef , who was injured slightly when al-Asiri 's brother Abdullah blew himself up at a meeting he had requested to turn himself in to authorities.

Initial reports suggested that the bomber had concealed the bomb in his rectum, but Saudi investigators concluded that the device was an underwear bomb, said Mr. Bergen , who was briefed by Saudi officials at the time.

They discovered that the device, made of a plastic explosive called PETN, used a chemical detonator, had no metallic components and could not be detected by conventional metal-detector screening.

On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate a similar underwear bomb aboard a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner. The detonator failed, probably because Abdulmutallab had sweated through his underwear and dampened the detonator, officials told The Washington Times last year.

The latest version of the underwear bomb has an improved detonator, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The bomb “was a threat from the standpoint of the design,” Mr. Brennan told ABC News. “And so now we're trying to make sure that we take the measures that we need to prevent any other … similarly constructed [bomb] from getting through security procedures.”

Abdulmutallab's underwear bomb was not spotted by metal detectors at Amsterdam's Schipol airport.

After the failed attack, the Transportation Security Administration ( TSA ) sped up its deployment of advanced imaging technology screening devices, which have become notorious as the “naked X-ray” machines.

Analysts generally agree that the imaging machines should be able to spot the new underwear bomb, said Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

But in an interview with CNN, he cautioned that this was just a “preliminary conclusion. … We don't know all of the facts yet.”

The key to imaging detection of underwear bombs is generally the detonator because it has to emerge from the clothing in which the explosives are concealed, said Erroll G. Southers, a homeland security scholar at the University of Southern California.

The TSA has deployed about 700 imaging machines at more than 180 U.S. airports, according to agency figures. The machines cost between $130,000 and $170,000 each, and the agency has spent nearly $167 million so far to buy, test, deliver and install them.

TSA has faced keen scrutiny of its efforts to roll out the machines and questions about the effectiveness of deploying them in the United States because all previous al Qaeda attacks against U.S. aviation have originated overseas.

“That is a huge gaping hole,” Mr. Southers said.

Inconsistencies in technology and policy from country to country undermine public confidence, he said, noting reports that the European Union this year will relax the no-liquids rule for air passengers' hand luggage, which would put the European Union out of step with the U.S. The ban is designed to defeat another kind of nonmetallic explosive.

Investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will report at a congressional hearing Wednesday that TSA deployed the imaging technology at airports without evaluating it properly.

“Additionally, various reports, studies and independent testimony all suggest that TSA is ineffectively deploying security technology and equipment at commercial airports,” reads a staff memo for the hearing.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/8/wily-bomb-maker-fast-in-race-with-technology/

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U.S. sends airport security guide to other countries

by Eileen Sullivan and Kimberly Dozier

WASHINGTON — In the wake of a terrorist bomb plot disrupted by the CIA , the U.S. advised some international airports and air carriers Tuesday about security measures for passengers traveling to the U.S.

The guidance from the Transportation Security Administration was a reminder of methods the U.S. provided to these international airports and carriers in the past six to eight months to help protect against threats from liquid explosives and explosives hidden inside a person's body or clothes or in printer cartridges. All are methods officials said al Qaeda's spinoff group in Yemen has considered for plots against the U.S, according to an American official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details of the guidance.

The CIA recently foiled a bomb plot in Yemen in which officials say a suicide bomber was to have detonated an explosive on a U.S.-bound flight.

“The seizure of this device is a reminder that our adversaries continue to be interested in targeting the aviation sector,” Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said Tuesday afternoon. Chandler said the government issued the guidance reminder “to underscore the importance of these ongoing measures to air carriers and foreign government partners.” He said there is currently no credible or specific information about a terror threat to the U.S.

Despite the discovery of a sophisticated new al Qaeda airline bomb plot, congressional and security officials suggested there was no immediate need to change airport security procedures, which already subject many shoeless passengers to pat-downs and body scans.

The CIA, with help from a well-placed informant and foreign intelligence services, conducted a covert operation in Yemen in recent weeks that disrupted a nascent suicide plot and recovered a new bomb, U.S. officials said.

They said the bomb represented an upgrade over the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The new bomb was also designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time al Qaeda developed a more refined detonation system.

FBI experts are picking apart that non-metallic device to see if it could have slipped through security and taken down an airplane.

Some passengers, meanwhile, were taking the news of the new bomb in stride.

“The terrorists will always be looking to make a bomb,” said Guillaume Viard , a 26-year-old physiotherapist from Nice, France , about to board a flight to Paris at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

Retirees Nan and Bill Gartner , also at Kennedy Airport, were on their way to a vacation in Italy

“We were nervous — for a minute,” said Nan Gartner . “But then we thought, we aren't going anywhere near Yemen , so we're OK.”

Added Bill Gartner , “We hope we're right.”

U.S. officials sought to reassure the public that security measures at airports are strong. They said there are no immediate plans to subject airline passengers to new security screenings.

“I think people getting on a plane today should feel confident that their intelligence services are working, day in and day out,” John Brennan, the top counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, said on ABC 's “Good Morning America.”

Just last winter, al Qaeda's Yemen branch boasted that it had obtained a supply of chemicals used to make bombs. Chemicals can eliminate the need for electrical equipment to detonate explosives.

“Hence, no wearisome measures are taken anymore to attain the needed large amount of chemicals for explosives,” the group wrote in its online magazine, “Inspire.”

The CIA caught wind of the bomb plot last month, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The would-be bomber was supposed to buy a plane ticket to the United States and detonate the bomb inside the country, officials said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday night that she had been briefed about an “undetectable” device that was going to be on a U.S.-bound airliner.

Before the bomber could choose his target or buy his ticket, however, the CIA moved in and seized the bomb.

The fate of the would-be bomber remains unclear. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN on Tuesday that White House officials told him, “He is no longer of concern,” a point Brennan echoed on a round of appearances Tuesday on television news shows.

“We're confident that this device and any individual that might have been designed to use it are no longer a threat to the American people,” Brennan said.

The plot was a reminder of the ambitions of al Qaeda in Yemen , the most active and dangerous branch of the terrorist group. While al Qaeda 's core in Pakistan has been weakened over the past decade, instability in Yemen has allowed an offshoot group to thrive and set up training camps there. In some parts of the country, al Qaeda is even the de facto government.

Though analysis of the device is incomplete, U.S. security officials said they remained confident in the security systems that are in place.

“These layers include threat and vulnerability analysis, prescreening and screening of passengers, using the best available technology, random searches at airports, federal air marshal coverage and additional security measures both seen and unseen,” Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said.

“The device did not appear to pose a threat to the public air service, but the plot itself indicates that these terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said during a news conference in New Delhi with Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna.

It's not clear who built the bomb, but because of its sophistication and its similarity to the Christmas Day bomb, authorities suspect it was the work of master bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri or one of his students. Al-Asiri constructed the first underwear bomb and two others that al Qaeda built into printer cartridges and shipped to the U.S. on cargo planes in 2010.

Both of those bombs used a powerful industrial explosive. Both were nearly successful.

But the group has also suffered significant setbacks as the CIA and the U.S. military focus more on Yemen . On Sunday, Fahd al-Quso , a senior al Qaeda leader, was killed by a missile as he stepped out of his vehicle along with another operative in the southern Shabwa province of Yemen .

Al-Quso , 37, was on the FBI 's most wanted list, with a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. He was indicted in the U.S. for his role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen , in which 17 American sailors were killed and 39 injured.

Al-Quso was believed to have replaced Anwar al-Awlaki as the group's head of external operations. Al-Awlaki was killed in a U.S. airstrike last year.

The new Yemeni president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi , has promised improved cooperation with the U.S. to combat the militants. On Saturday, he said the fight against al Qaeda was in its early stages. Hadi took over in February from longtime authoritarian leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/8/us-sends-airport-security-guide-other-countries/

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Border Patrol adapting to new threats

Strategy to use drones, copters in Southwest

by Jerry Seper

Just eight months after Defense Department officials complained in a Government Accountability Office ( GAO ) report that there was “no comprehensive Southwest border security strategy” in place, the U.S. Border Patrol unveiled a new strategy Tuesday that relies on helicopters and unmanned aerial drones and targets repeat offenders.

Recognizing that it had to realign its priorities, resources and organizational structure to focus on new security threats while continuing its missions of immigration enforcement and drug interdiction, the new strategy represents what Border Patrol officials called “an evolution” to account for and take advantage of changes and improvements in the border environment and the agency since the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

While threats to the Southwest border have evolved since the agency's last official strategy in 2004, the new plan said Border Patrol resources and capabilities to meet those threats “have also grown.” Accordingly, the new national strategy is structured to adjust to those evolving threats and to reflect what the agency called “the effectiveness of the Border Patrol's additional resources and improved operational capabilities.”

The new 32-page strategy comes at a time that the number of agents has more than doubled to 21,000 since 2004 and the apprehension of those entering illegally from Mexico has dropped to a 40-year low.

The strategy evolves from a resources-based approach to a risk-based approach, built around a framework of what the Border Patrol called the use of “information, integration and rapid response to better secure the border in the most risk-based, effective and efficient manner.”

The strategy represents a natural evolution from an under-resourced organization focused on obtaining sufficient personnel, technology and infrastructure to “an organization that is managing rapid growth and is focused on using those additional resources in the most effective and efficient manner.”

“The U.S. Border Patrol has proudly protected our borders since its founding in 1924. Its mission has always been important. However, on 9/11, that mission immediately became more vital than ever before to our nation's security,” Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher says in the report.

During a hearing before the House Homeland Security subcommittee Tuesday, the chief defended the new strategy, saying it would give the Border Patrol tools, programs, techniques and approaches that are more focused, effective and efficient.

The report said the agency will introduce and expand sophisticated tactics, techniques and procedures; increase mobile response capabilities and expand the use of specially trained personnel; and disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations by targeting enforcement efforts against the highest priority threats.

It also will increase and sustain the certainty of apprehension for illegal crossings, and increase community engagement through community programs, media relations and leveraging the public to help it achieve its goals.

The Sept. 12 GAO report said the Defense Department was hampered in identifying its role regarding border security and planning for that role since it could not identify a comprehensive Southwest border security strategy.

GAO 's auditors said top Defense officials expressed concern not just about the military's role on the Southern border, but that key officials at the Department of Homeland Security - including those who oversee the Border Patrol - had not bothered in eight years to map out a comprehensive border strategy.

The auditors said Defense officials told senior leaders at Homeland Security they felt the military's “border assistance” was “ad hoc in that DOD has other operational requirements.” It noted that the Defense Department assists when legal authorities allow and resources are available, while Homeland Security had “a continuous mission to ensure border security.”

Qaeda bomber adept at breaching aviation security

by William Maclean

LONDON (Reuters) - A Saudi bombmaker believed behind several failed but ingenious attempted attacks on the West is the most likely creator of an improved "underwear bomb" discovered in a plot foiled by U.S. and allied authorities, security experts and officials say.

Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, who once provided the bomb for a suicide mission by his younger brother, a fellow militant, is described by security officials as one of the most dangerous and innovative explosives experts ever to serve al Qaeda.

Believed to be in his early 30s, Yemen-based Asiri became an urgent priority for Western counter-terrorism officials following his alleged role in planning strikes on the United States in 2009 and 2010, plots that included the failed bombing of an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.

Asiri, who survived a U.S. drone missile attack last year, has drawn scrutiny for his skill at fashioning bombs using a hard-to-detect powdery substance called pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, and hiding them in clothing or equipment.

"If we assume Asiri is behind all these attacks, then he is at the top of the list of the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives," Mustafa Alani, a Gulf security expert with good Saudi contacts, told Reuters.

Richard Barrett, who heads the al Qaeda-Taliban sanctions monitoring committee at the United Nations, said he was "pretty certain" Asiri was the top suspect in the latest plot.

"He has a particular skill for making things which are effective without being detectable," he said. "This example looks like an evolution from the one he gave the Christmas Day bomber ... and so I think it is likely to have been his."

"DEVICES OF THE UTMOST SOPHISTICATION"

The Obama administration said on Monday that authorities in the Middle East recently seized an underwear bomb which they believe al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula AQAP.L, had intended to give to a suicide bomber to blow up an airliner bound for the U.S. or another Western country.

The discovery of an AQAP international plot at such an early stage will have been a source of guarded relief to some in Western governments, given that other such attempted bombings have been found uncomfortably late in the execution phase.

The Detroit plot for example was discovered only when the device misfired as the airliner flew over U.S. territory.

A 2010 plot, in which two cargo planes bound for the United States contained bombs concealed in printer cartridges, was discovered only after repeated searches of the aircraft.

The then British Security Minister Pauline Neville-Jones, hinting at the plot's late detection, described the conspiracy as "an attack involving devices of the utmost sophistication. That it was not a success is down to the professionalism of our security services and those of our partners."

A Riyadh-born former chemistry student who once plotted to bomb oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Asiri served nine months in jail in Saudi Arabia for attempting to join a militant group in Iraq to fight U.S. troops there.

He later moved to Yemen and joined AQAP, providing the bomb that killed his younger brother in a failed bid to assassinate Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in 2009.

Later that year, security sources say, Asiri was behind the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day. Both the Detroit airliner bomb and the bomb used in the failed attack on the Saudi prince turned out to have been sewn into the would-be bombers' underwear, rather than implanted inside body organs or cavities, U.S. officials say.

"ONLY ONE MAJOR BOMB MAKER"

The cartridge bomb plot followed in 2010.

In an English-language al Qaeda online magazine called Inspire, the network boasted that the cartridge plot cost only $4,300 and had achieved one important goal by scaring the West.

It hinted that Asiri had trained others in his Yemen-based group, saying: "Isn't it funny how America thinks AQAP has only one major bomb maker?"

Gauging the extent of Asiri's inventiveness, and of his ability to inspire the imaginations of his colleagues, has become a preoccupation Western security officials.

U.S. and allied officials, for example, say they are increasingly concerned that doctors working with AQAP will implant bombs inside living militants to try to circumvent airport security measures and bring down planes.

However experts suspect that Asiri's expertise may not be easily transferrable. "He may have tried to train people," said Barrett. "But I think he has a particular ability which is probably not easily learned by others, and clearly we haven't seen more of these things emerging yet."

Will McCants, an analyst of violent Islamist movements at CNA, a U.S. non-profit research organisation, told Reuters that from the U.S. perspective Asiri was among the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives. He was "very, very clever at getting around U.S. and allied security measures."

But he added: "I just don't think his innate imagination can be easily passed along."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/09/uk-security-plot-asiri-idUSLNE84800Y20120509

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Rare Double Agent Disrupted Bombing Plot, U.S. Says

by SCOTT SHANE and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The suicide bomber dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner was actually an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia who infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday.

In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen last month, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his aviation attack and inside information on the group's leaders, locations, methods and plans to the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi intelligence and allied foreign intelligence agencies.

Officials said the agent, whose identity they would not disclose, works for the Saudi intelligence service, which has cooperated closely with the C.I.A. for several years against the terrorist group in Yemen. He operated in Yemen with the full knowledge of the C.I.A. but not under its direct supervision, the officials said.

After spending weeks at the center of Al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate, the intelligence agent provided critical information that permitted the C.I.A. to direct the drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, the group's external operations director and a suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, an American destroyer, in Yemen in 2000.

He also handed over the bomb, designed by the group's top explosives expert to be undetectable at airport security checks, to the F.B.I., which is analyzing its properties at its laboratory at Quantico, Va. The agent is now safe in Saudi Arabia, officials said. The bombing plot was kept secret for weeks by the C.I.A. and other agencies because they feared retaliation against the agent and his family — not, as some commentators have suggested, because the Obama administration wanted to schedule an announcement of the foiled plot, American officials said.

Officials said Tuesday night that the risk to the agent and his relatives had now been “mitigated,” evidently by moving both him and his family to safe locations.

But American intelligence officials were angry about the disclosure of the Qaeda plot, first reported Monday by The Associated Press, which had held the story for several days at the request of the C.I.A. They feared the leak would discourage foreign intelligence services from cooperating with the United States on risky missions in the future, said Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

“We are talking about compromising methods and sources and causing our partners to be leery about working with us,” said Mr. King, who spoke with reporters about the plot on Monday night and Tuesday after he was briefed by counterterrorism officials. Mr. King, who called the bomb plot “one of the most tightly held operations I've seen in my years in the House,” said he was told that government officials planned to investigate the source of the original leak. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

Intelligence officials believe that the explosive is the latest effort of the group's skilled bomb maker, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. Mr. Asiri is also believed to have designed the explosives used in the failed bombing attempt on an airliner over Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009, and packed into printer cartridges and placed on cargo planes in October 2010.

A senior American official said the new device was sewn into “custom-fit” underwear and would have been very hard to detect even in a careful pat-down. Unlike the device used in the unsuccessful 2009 attack, this bomb could be detonated in two ways, in case one failed, the official said.

The main charge was a high-grade military explosive that “undoubtedly would have brought down an aircraft,” the official said.

Forensic experts at the F.B.I.'s bomb laboratory are assessing whether the bomb could have evaded screening machines and security measures revamped after the failed 2009 plot. One American official said the bureau's initial analysis indicated that if updated security protocols designed to detect a wider range of possible threats were properly conducted, the measures “most likely would have detected” the device.

On Tuesday, the Transportation Security Administration repeated a security message previously sent to airlines and foreign governments. The security guidance notes that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula still intends to attack the United States, probably using commercial aviation, and warns T.S.A. agents to look out for explosives in cargo, concealed in clothing or surgically implanted, officials said.

Over the past eight months, American counterterrorism officials have monitored with growing alarm a rising number of electronic intercepts and tips from informants suggesting that Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen has been ramping up plots to attack the United States.

“There was increasing concern about the chatter, more and more intelligence” that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula “was moving with renewed energy to carry out some kind of attack against homeland, using airliners and concealed explosives,” said one senior administration official. Working with foreign allies, the Obama administration quietly tightened airport security.

The ominous signs followed months of political chaos in Yemen during which the Qaeda branch and its militant allies seized effective control over large areas of the country, giving the terrorist group a broader base from which to plot attacks against both the Yemeni government and the United States.

Senior American counterterrorism and military officials have expressed concern that Al Qaeda's growing number of training camps, including small compounds, have churned out dozens of new fighters who, in turn, help expand the area under the insurgents' control. Officials fear that the camps could also train Qaeda operatives for external operations against targets in Europe and the United States.

“Certainly when they hold terrain, it makes training more safe and secure than on disputed terrain; therefore, more and better training,” said one senior American military official.

The Yemeni government's control over the hinterlands southeast of the capital, Sana, has always been tenuous, but over the past year it has receded almost entirely. With the authorities focused on political turmoil in the capital, many soldiers fled their posts, and jihadists began asserting control.

For more than a year the town of Jaar — along with several smaller settlements — has been controlled by militants who operate under the banner Ansar al-Sharia, which is variously described as a wing of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch or as an allied group.

One prominent tribal mediator from Shabwa Province, reached Tuesday by phone, said Ansar al-Sharia controlled all the checkpoints on Yemen's southern coast between Aden and Balhaf, and as far north as Ataq. On Monday, militants attacked several army bases and outposts in the south, killing 20 soldiers and capturing 25, The Associated Press reported. Local tribal figures described the attacks as revenge for the killing of Mr. Quso on Sunday.

Control in the south often appears to be shared between militants, local tribes and members of the southern independence movement, which is largely secular. But Qaeda militants and their allies appear to operate freely even in areas they do not fully control, possibly including Aden, the south's major city. Aden has become a bastion of open opposition to the government, with the flag of the independence movement — once rigidly banned — now flying from houses across the city.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/world/middleeast/suicide-mission-volunteer-was-double-agent-officials-say.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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Editorial

Al Qaeda's latest bomb plot highlights the shape of future threats

Last week , on the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, the United States released the terrorist mastermind's communications during his last years in hiding. Bin Laden knew he no longer had control over Al Qaeda. The splintered terrorist network may not have been capable of a large-scale, coordinated attack like 9/11, but through isolated bombings it could still wreak havoc. Stopping those attacks is the challenge bin Laden bequeathed the world.

That fact rang disturbingly true as Americans digested the news of the stunning cloak-and-dagger mission that disrupted a Yemen-based plot to bring down a US-bound commercial airliner using an undetectable bomb. The revelation that US agents infiltrated an Al Qaeda cell, and that a double agent had handed over the newly created bomb and provided the information necessary to kill the cell's external operations director, is a breathtaking triumph of counterterrorism. It was also proof that the strategies necessary to prevent such attacks — intelligence-gathering, cooperation with foreign governments, and clandestine missions to capture or kill terrorists — are quite different than those of the “war on terror” under which this nation has lived for many years.

The new type of bomb, probably designed by Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the maker of the “underwear” bomb brought aboard a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas in 2009, was more sophisticated and likely would have gone undetected even with a patdown. It, too, was intended to be worn in underwear, but contained a high-grade explosive powerful enough to bring down a jumbo jet. It also had two types of detonators, to prevent the kind of malfunction that spared the Detroit-bound plane.

Al Qaeda and its splinter groups are well aware of US security protocols and had crafted the bomb with a new design and materials in hopes of evading the metal detectors used in much of the world, if not the more sophisticated scanners at many US airports. Thankfully, the bomb is now in US custody for analysis.

The ongoing ability of terrorists to adapt to the latest security measures suggests that our tremendous investments in passenger screening need to be constantly updated and assessed. The administration argues that the thwarted attack should remind the public why airport security is essential; that's true, but it should also remind Homeland Security that there is no point in simply making the same checks, over and over. Just as the terrorists are nimble, we must be too.

Just as the terrorists are nimble, we must be too.

On the same day that the administration first acknowledged the plot, Al Qaeda attacked and killed 22 soldiers in Yemen. There is no permanent victory when fighting terrorists, just a persistent series of battles.

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2012/05/09/qaeda-latest-bomb-plot-highlights-shape-future-threats/SwwjETdSBdedLVXVrqccXL/story.html

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Connecticut

ICE to give leniency to minor traffic violators

by Emanuela Lima

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on April 27, that if it identifies an undocumented immigrant through Secure Communities, from only a minor traffic violation, the agency will not keep him or her in custody until there is a conviction. The announcement comes as results of a report were issued on the shortcomings of the program.

ICE's Task Force on Secure Communities responded to the criticism through a 19–page response obtained by Tribuna.Under Secure Communities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials check police fingerprints of criminal suspects against ICE databases in an effort to deport criminals residing in the country illegally. If ICE officials believe a suspect may be undocumented, they can issue a detainment request that the state hold the individual in custody... I mmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on April

27, that if it identifies an undocumented immigrant through Secure Communities, from only a minor traffic violation, the agency will not keep him or her in custody until there is a conviction.

The announcement comes as results of a report were issued on the shortcomings of the program. ICE's Task Force on Secure Communities responded to the criticism through a 19– page response obtained by Tribuna.

Under Secure Communities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials check police fingerprints of criminal suspects against ICE databases in an effort to deport criminals residing in the country illegally. If ICE officials believe a suspect may be undocumented, they can issue a detainment request that the state hold the individual in custody so that ICE can determine whether to initiate deportation proceedings.

In the document, the agency recognized a number of problem areas with the program, including that security control actions based only on minor traffic offenses, “do not correspond to an efficient use of government resources.”

The task force recommended that ICE should clarify that civil immigration law violators and individuals who are convicted of or charged with misdemeanors or other minor offenses are not top enforcement priorities unless there are other indications that they pose a serious risk to public safety or national security.

ICE agreed that felons should be a higher priority than misdemeanants and civil immigration law violators, although certain serious misdemeanants and egregious civil immigration law violators are priorities as well. The Civil Enforcement Priorities memorandum states that ICE's top enforcement priority includes aliens convicted of crimes, with higher priority given to individuals convicted of more serious crimes. “The memorandum also states that some misdemeanors are relatively minor and do not warrant the same degree of focus as others, and that ICE agents and officers should exercise particular discretion when dealing with minor traffic offenses such as driving without a license,” the agency stated.

ICE has issued a memo directing its personnel to prioritize individuals in the following order:

- Level 1 offenders: aliens convicted of “aggravated felonies,” as defined in § 101(a)(43) of the Immigration and Nationality Act,5 or two or more crimes each punishable by more than one year, commonly referred to as “felonies”; - Level 2 offenders: aliens convicted of any felony or three or more crimes each punishable by less than one year, commonly referred to as “misdemeanors” - Level 3 offenders: aliens convicted of crimes punishable by less than one year.

The memorandum also explains that individuals who are not criminals but who are repeat border crossers, recently unlawful entrants, or fugitives from the immigration court system are also priorities for enforcement.

It also found other areas in which the program needs to improve on and made recommendations:

The task force also recommended that ICE must clarify the goals and objectives of the Secure Communities program, as well as the parameters and functioning of the program, and accurately relay this information to participating jurisdictions, future participating jurisdictions and the communities they serve. “Regardless of whether ICE has legal authority to operate Secure Communities without local agreement, ICE must work to develop good working relationships with states, cities, and communities,” said the report. It also highlighted the agency's initial public statements caused confusion about how Secure Communities works and who is required to participate.

ICE responded by stating that it has taken steps to clarify that confusion surrounding whether a memorandum of agreement (MOA) is required for Secure Communities to operate in a state or local jurisdiction. Because ICE determined that an MOA is not required, it terminated all existing MOAs in 2011 .

“Once a state or local law enforcement agency voluntarily submits fingerprint data to the federal government, no agreement with the state is legally necessary for one part of the federal government to share it with another part.”

The task force recommended that ICE must improve the transparency of the program. ICE agreed with the recommendation and has ensured that information regarding all aspects of Secure Communities is available online at the ICE.gov Secure Communities webpage ( http://www.ice.gov/secure_ communities/) and the ICE Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) webpage ( http://www.ice.gov/foia/library/ ).

In Connecticut

Secure Communities became an issue for Gov. Malloy in February when ICE decided to go statewide. The Governor, who has openly criticized the program, hinted at the existence of a checklist when he released a statement through his office that said state law enforcement would decide whether to honor deportation requests on a “caseby case basis.”

Mike Lawlor, the state's undersecretary for criminal justice and policy planning, said state administrators are drafting a “checklist” that will be used to determine the cases in which the state will comply with ICE's detainment requests and when the requests will be ignored. He said the checklist will be a set of specific criteria to ensure that ICE is only able to deport dangerous convicts and not those who are guilty of minor crimes.

“ICE says Secure Communities will focus on deporting serious offenders, so our goal is to take the way the program has been advertised and reduce that to a checklist,” Lawlor said. “If you meet the criteria, law enforcement will detain you, and if not, you will be released.”

ICE has historically had a working relationship with local law enforcement across the country. But those activities have increased over the past four years with the rollout of Secure Communities. Under that program, the fingerprints of criminal suspects that police routinely share with the FBI are automatically forwarded by that agency to ICE for review.

If ICE has concerns about an individual, the agency requests local and state authorities hold him or her for 48 hours after being eligible for release so immigration officials can pick the individual up. Last month, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities said members also worry about the impact on policing.

“Community policing is one of their major initiatives to try to reduce crime,” Finley said. “When you can't partner as a police officer with the neighborhood you patrol on a regular basis it makes for a very difficult time,” said James Finley, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, at a protest against Secure Communities.

http://www.tribunact.com/news/2012-05-09/English/ICE_to_give_leniency_to_minor_traffic_violators.html

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Sanford police chief: Neighborhood watch programs need 'good, hard look'

by the CNN Wire Staff

The man tasked with leading the police department in Sanford, Florida, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing said communities should "take a good, hard look at who is selected," for neighborhood watch programs.

But, said Sanford's interim Police Chief Richard Myers, he still supports the programs.

"Neighborhood watch is at work in literally thousands of neighborhoods across the country and with no problems whatsoever," Myers told CNN's Erin Burnett on Tuesday. "I think the problems emerge from who the person is and perhaps there's a cause for communities to take a good, hard look at who is selected or who volunteers.

"Let's not kill the concept because of one bad, really bad outcome."

Martin attorney: Revoke Zimmerman's bond

Myers, a former police chief from Colorado Springs, Colorado, took the post Friday. He said he has plans to help the department that has been under the microscope since the February 26 killing of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Martin was black; Zimmerman is Hispanic.

"I'm here to help the community. There's a lot of healing that has to take place," Myers said. "I'm here to help the department get some stability."

His predecessor, Bill Lee, stepped aside as chief after a vote of no-confidence by city commissioners in April, clearing the way for Myers.

The Martin case drew nationwide protests when Sanford police decided against arresting Zimmerman, who told investigators he killed Martin in self-defense.

A special prosecutor assigned to look into Martin's death ultimately brought second-degree murder charges against the 28-year-old Zimmerman, who has pleaded not guilty and is out on a $150,000 bail.

Myers, a 35-year law enforcement veteran, acknowledged the Sanford police department needs to rebuild its relationship with African-Americans in the area.

"One of my major goals is to try and strengthen the relationship that Sanford police have with all elements of the community, especially the African-American community," he said.

"In America today, there still exists a great deal of unresolved tension about race and policing and I have a particular passion for working on those issues and helping to resolve conflict. So whether or not that was a factor in this case, it certainly is a factor in some tension that exists. We're going to work on that."

Myers began his career in the suburbs of Detroit and Chicago before becoming chief of the Appleton, Wisconsin, police department. After that, he took the reins of the Colorado Springs police department in 2007.

Myers resigned that post in 2011. Myers is supposed to spend a three- to five-month stint leading the Sanford department, city officials have said.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/09/justice/florida-teen-shooting/?hpt=hp_t2