A Sensible Decision

An update on this story:

Prosecutors have dropped the "weapons of mass destruction" charge in the case of the South Carolina teenager who allegedly planned to bomb his school.

The teenager who allegedly planned to destroy his high school with explosives will not face a WMD charge at his anticipated trial, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

Ryan Schallenberger, 18, had been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in connection with his suspected plot against Chesterfield High School. Federal prosecutors dropped the charge without explanation in May.

The WMD charge never made sense. He had enough ammonium nitrate to take out a classroom or two, but that's a far cry from a weapon of mass destruction.

Calling something "WMD" when it's not only confuses and dilutes the meaning of the term.

WMD?

When you start applying a term to cases where it ought not apply, you dilute its meaning:

An 18-year-old straight-A student accused of planning to bomb his high school was charged Tuesday with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a possible life sentence.

Authorities say his parents called police because he had ordered 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate, which they retrieved after getting a delivery notice from the postal service. Ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer that was a component in the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The kid seems extremely disturbed, and if he had gone ahead with an attack, the results could have been terrible.

But none of that means this would have been a WMD attack.

This sort of thing is irritating because if we start applying "WMD" to any threat that can kill a few dozen people, then the term has lost its potency - and we risk underestimating real WMD threats.

There are already enough problems with threat recognition - let's not muddy the waters by pretending that words can mean whatever we want them to mean.

Update 2008-05-09: A bit of perspective on what 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate can do:

“Ten pounds could take out, certainly take out a classroom,” said Donald Sachtleben, an FBI Bomb Technician with the Indianapolis FBI Field Office.

I stand by my argument.

Stopping Nukes at the 11th Hour?

This week's Sunday LA Times ran a story about the multi-agency effort to hunt nuclear materials and interdict a potential nuclear terrorist attack before it happens.

About every three days, unknown to most Americans, an elite team of federal scientists hits the streets in the fight against nuclear terrorism.

More than two dozen specialized teams have been positioned across the nation to respond to threats of nuclear terrorism, and as many 2,000 scientists and bomb experts participate in the effort.

Scientists in specially equipped helicopters and airplanes use radiation detectors to scan cities for signs of weapons. They blend into crowds at major sporting events, wearing backpacks containing instruments that can identify plutonium or highly enriched uranium.

If the many layers of federal defense against nuclear smuggling break down, these unarmed weapons designers and physicists, along with experts from the FBI, could be the last hope of staving off a catastrophic attack.

They are supposed to rush up to a ticking nuclear explosive (or a "dirty" bomb, which would disperse radioactive material) and defuse it before it's too late -- a situation often depicted by Hollywood that seems less fictional every year.

Hoo boy. "Hollywood" is right.

While I don't deny that these are smart, capable people, I have serious doubts about the efficacy of these efforts. This is last-hour, last-minute stuff - which works great in a movie script but perhaps not so well in the real world.

It's worth noting that these teams are looking primarily for the materials in nuclear weapons - plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. These materials are comparatively difficult to detect. It's needle-and-haystack thinking to suggest that these teams will be likely to interdict them in a crowd at a sports stadium, or while walking down the Vegas strip or a Manhattan street. Moreover, if a terrorist team were ever to acquire a nuclear bomb and transport it to the U.S., they wouldn't have to detonate it at the sports stadium or Strip itself. With a nuclear weapon, "close" is good enough.

The real effort must always be at the earlier stages of prevention: Recognizing threats before they become fully operational, and deterring these threatening elements from acquiring dangerous materials.

We are, of course, doing some of these things - working to deter the threat before it reaches our shores:

[T]he United States is retrieving and locking down nuclear fuels abroad, has created a line of radiation detectors at foreign and domestic ports, and has increased intelligence efforts.

It's these efforts that have a chance of reliably preventing the threat. The best we can say about the last-minute approach is that it's "not impossible" to imagine it might work:

If those and other measures fail, the emergency response teams are a last hope, but one nobody should rely on, said Charles B. Curtis, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which pushes for stronger efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism.

Intercepting a device "is a very, very, very difficult problem, but not impossible," said Curtis, a former Energy Department deputy secretary.

Vahid Majidi, a nuclear weapons chemist and head of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, seemed more confident. Asked how good his chances would be to find a nuclear bomb in Manhattan with 24 hours' warning, he said, "Quite reasonable."

Well, yes. If we have solid intelligence and 24 hours' warning, then it's reasonable to think we might be able to interdict and remove the threat. But these types of threats don't script themselves so neatly.

It's much better to train first responders to recognize all aspects of the threat (as the FDNY does in its counterterrorism strategy) and attack it from its earliest stages.

The last minute is just too late.

Preventing Radicalization: What's Important?

The Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) has posted the proceedings of an August seminar on the radicalization process. The focus was on radicalization by Islamist groups, though some of the findings could certainly be applied to other radical groups.

As I've written - or perhaps it's "harped on" - before, understanding the radicalization process is extremely important for anyone who's interested in preventing terrorism on the local level. Recognizing a threat that's still emerging - and intervening at an early stage - can be far more effective and productive than trying to play defense against an array of more mature threats.

Unfortunately, much of the DIIS discussion focused on the question of "Who is likely to become a radical?" which I think is not the most critical question. For example, DIIS concluded that key factors in the radicalization process are:

The perception of personal marginalization combined with the perception of Western double standards in foreign policy appears to play a crucial role.

Additionally, individuals often join radical groups for political or religious reasons and in a search for empowerment but also in search for friendship and a sense of social belonging.

That's all very nice. If you wish, you can go about looking for marginalized young people who feel that the world is against them and are searching for "friendship and a sense of social belonging," along with a sense of purpose and meaning for their lives. But given that you've just described teen angst itself, you'll end up with a list so long as to be useless.

More important, from the perspective of prevention, is "During the radicalization process, what techniques and activities leave detectable traces?"

Unlike operational terrorists, for whom avoiding detection is a high priority, recruiters have to stick their heads above the ground and find the young people DIIS describes. Studying the recruiting process and recognizing its techniques will result in a more focused investigation.

There were, however, a few highlights worth noting. Kamran Bokhari from Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) - a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir - pointed out one of the significant vulnerabilities of radical groups:

The radical groups ... are often characterized by a “revolving door” phenomenon. Very few of the individuals who join the groups stay there in the long run. This was the case for Kamran Bokhari himself.

Another worthwhile point was made by Marco Zannoni of the Dutch Institute for Safety, Security and Crisis Management, who argued that the de-radicalization process needs to be systemic and holistic:

Multiple tasks are to be handled in a de-radicalization process. A key point is to acknowledge that different authorities should undertake different tasks in any de-radicalization process at different points in the process. Any intervention involves multiple sets of tasks such as preparing, preventing, spotting, gathering information, monitoring, interpreting and responding to radicalized individuals.

For example the roles of a teacher or a social worker are quite different from the roles of the Police and those roles are crucial at different points in time. Any intervention should be targeted at an individual who might be radicalizing, but additional interventions are needed. Those have to be targeted towards the individual’s context/situation. Possible leads for radicalization, but also for intervention, can be found in the radicalizing/radicalized individual’s immediate surroundings: at school, at work or when they perform acts such as writing messages on the internet.

I was also curious about this nugget, found in the Recommendations section:

It is recommended to find inspiration in the confetti-approach/the New Dutch model, which consists of supporting many micro-projects.

I need to find out more about the "confetti approach." It sounds like a model for innovating new approaches and finding out what works.

Overall, the seminar's findings and recommendations are difficult to argue with. Who'd take issue, for instance, with the idea that:

There is a need to look into how trust can be created between authorities and relevant communities in order to make effective counter-measures...

At a strategic level, these sorts of discussions are worthwhile. On a more tactical level, you've got to ensure that your actions are focused on the right things. It helps to start with the right question.

May Mean Nothing ...

But interesting nonetheless. DHS Secretary Chertoff tells the Chicago Tribune his "gut feeling" is an increased risk this summer:

In an unusually blunt and frank assessment of America's terror threat level, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in Chicago this morning that his "gut feeling" is the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer.

"I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board.

Calling it "a gut feeling" based on past patterns of terrorists in Europe, recent al-Qaeda statements and intelligence he did not disclose ... Chertoff said he is sure [al-Qaeda is] regrouping, retraining and rethinking.

All things considered, this is unsurprising. Count me among those who find it hard to believe we've gone more than 5 years without a successful terrorist attack.

Former MI5 Head: Jihadist Radicalization Process Speeds Up

In The Daily Telegraph, the former head of Britain's internal intelligence agency, the MI5, says that the radicalization process of jihadists in the UK is speeding up.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director-general of MI5, said the radicalisation of teenage Muslims "from first exposure, to extremism, to active participation in terrorist plotting" was now worryingly rapid.

It was vital that the Government rose to the challenge of trying to change the attitudes that "lead some of our young people to become terrorists".

How to do this? Manningham-Buller advises:

She warned of the "pressing demand" for the police to create a secret network of Muslim spies capable of improving intelligence gathering.

[S]he called on both the police and MI5 to develop their relationship, which she said had created a counter-terrorist organisation "unmatched anywhere in the world".

In creating a network of Muslim spies, is the goal to infiltrate and disrupt potential jihadist groups, or is it to identify and address the root causes of the quickening pace of jihadism? The former is a necessary-but-insufficient short-term solution. The latter is ultimately the key to addressing the threat.

And yet...

The former spy chief also warned that "it is inevitable that some terrorist plots will escape our combined attention," adding: "Even if we have the numbers of personnel engaged in looking at our own citizens as, say, the KGB or the Stasi did during the Cold War, and with the same authoritarian powers, some things would slip under the radar."

Manningham-Buller's warning regarding the inevitability of terrorist attacks is well-founded and appropriate. The idea that the U.S. can eliminate the risk of further terrorist attacks - or even that we already have eliminated it - is a false notion. We run the risk of being lulled into a false sense of security.

Such misperceptions are ultimately dangerous, as they disrupt our ability to respond in a manner consistent with the threat.

Update 2007-07-09: A tip of the cap to Jonah Czerwinski at Homeland Security Watch, who also addresses the radicalization process. Jonah links to a pair of related documents which I'll briefly cover here. First is the recent congressional testimony of Frank Cilluffo, who directs the Homeland Security Policy Institute and George Washington U.

Cilluffo contextualizes the problem:

Radicalization is not a well understood phenomenon, hence greater study of the life cycle of a terrorist – specifically, the process by which an individual becomes motivated to listen to radical ideas, read about them, self-enlist or respond to terrorist recruiting efforts, and ultimately, undertake terrorist activity – is needed in part to identify trigger points and possible points of intervention.

There is agreement that there is no single terrorist profile; however, there are some more general indicators that may indicate whether a young person is susceptible to the siren song of jihadism, such as a desire to join a group, to do something meaningful, to strike back against perceived forces of oppression, etc. (See this post.)

Cilluffo addresses the differences between "homegrown terrorism" in Europe and the U.S.:

[I]t is something of a misnomer to speak of “homegrown terrorism” for the term is suggestive of watertight compartments that do not in fact exist. To the contrary, we live in a borderless world and the threats that we face are similarly transnational. That said, the United States remains in some respects reasonably well situated. Other countries are currently experiencing a more full-blown manifestation of certain dimensions of the problem such as the United Kingdom. In a sense therefore, we have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve and deal proactively with these elements before they have the chance to flourish more vigorously in this country.

It is true that real differences exist between the U.S. and Europe, in terms of the risk of jihadism (See this post as well as this analysis of European jihadism from Foreign Affairs.) But Cilluffo is correct in his assertion that we are becoming borderless.

Internet chat rooms are now supplementing and replacing mosques, community centers and coffee shops as venues for recruitment and radicalization by terrorist groups like al Qaeda. The real time, two-way dialogue of chat rooms has enabled extremist ideas to be shared, take root, be reaffirmed and spread exponentially. By incorporating and manipulating local political grievances – some of which are legitimate – extremists have woven an effective tale of an imaginary “clash of civilizations.” The extremists’ compelling “call to action” based partly on myths and falsehoods begs for the development of an effective counter-narrative that forcefully refutes and responds to the extremists’ own.

[I]t is clear that the U.S. needs to catch up in this cyber-battle of words and ideas. However, unless elements of the counter-narrative emanate from within the Muslim community and are conveyed by voices that are trusted and credible within those communities, the opportunity to achieve impact will be limited at best.

So far it seems that online recruits have not been able to develop robust operational capabilities. The intent is there, but the skills are lacking.

The larger point here is the creation of the counter-narrative. I couldn't agree more.

Cilluffo extends his argument, echoing my sentiments above - that infiltration and disruption are only short-term fixes to the radicalization problem, and that a real solution must address the root causes:

Granted, where appropriate we should seek to deny or disrupt extremist access to and extremist efforts through the Internet via legal and technical means and covert action. At the same time however, it is crucial that we bear in mind wider and deeper goals and themes such as the need to offer an alternative to those who feel alienated and marginalized. Another example is the importance of intelligence work to inform counterterrorism. These underlying or foundational elements merit special consideration as they are critical components of our efforts concerning radicalization writ large.

Importantly for local first preventers, Cilluffo emphasizes the importance of local action to solve the radicalization problem:

[T]he solution sets for the problem under discussion must emanate principally from the grassroots, from local communities, their leaders and the citizens that reside there. Governments at the federal, state, local and tribal levels certainly have a contribution to make however, and there is also a measure of interplay between the public and private sectors that is and will continue to be crucial to combating radicalization at home and elsewhere.

For instance, law enforcement at the local level should develop new relationships and deepen existing ones within Muslim communities as local figures are best placed to identify radicalization at its earliest stages. Cultivated mutual respect and understanding between officials and communities, founded on a solid education about Muslim cultures and Islam, is critical. Notably, in the Fort Dix case, the mosque attended by three of the plotters quickly called an “emergency town hall meeting” to invite law enforcement, other officials, and members of the public “to ask anything they want about the mosque or about Islam, and to publicize a ringing denunciation of terrorism and violence of any sort…”.

Also see this post regarding the relationship between local law enforcement and Muslim communities.

Next, Jonah links to this report from the Future of Terrorism Task Force. Published in January and attributed to 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton and the aforementioned Frank Cilluffo, it comes to a similar conclusion as Manningham-Buller:

Like crime or disease, terrorism should be conceived as a chronic problem requiring a sustained and patient strategy, with ever evolving tactics.

Hamilton and Cilluffo also find that radicalization is spreading:

While difficult to measure with precision, it is known that al Qaeda’s ideology is spreading. Per the National Intelligence Estimate, “Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.”

One problem that limits the West's ability to prevent the spread of jihadism is limited knowledge of Islam. As a result, we have a difficult time driving a wedge between the violent jihadists and the broad Muslim community:

Muslim culture, and in particular the Islamic faith, are not widely understood within the Western world. This lack of understanding, coupled with fear of extremist adversaries, taints our ability to relate with the larger and overwhelmingly peaceful and moderate Muslim population, reinforcing misconceptions of and dividing us from those susceptible to radicalization.

But the effort to drive this wedge is best placed at the local level:

The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence efforts, and requires the incorporation of state and local solutions. Similarly, the protection of critical assets, as well as the initial response to an attack, are primarily state, local and private sector responsibilities, with federal assets and resources provided as a supplement.

As we carry out our counterterrorism efforts, we can learn important lessons from other nations:

Australian officials, for example, have concluded that protective security measures over the next five years must not become rigid, and both variability and unpredictability must be consciously injected into flexible prevention measures.

Israeli officials highlighted the need for public participation, rather than just awareness, and emphasized that resilience must be built from the bottom up in addition to the top down.

In Britain, officials have worked to inculcate in the public an understanding that there is no such thing as zero risk, and that sometimes even the best efforts of the authorities will not be good enough.

As I see it, the underlying philosophical stance of Hamilton and Cilluffo's argument is best expressed by this passage:

To change hearts and minds – and encourage moderation – we must challenge ideas with ideas. Trust is the most valuable currency we have in this battle because trust underpins all counterterrorism tools (e.g., military, diplomatic/policy, legal, economic and covert action).

U.S. Taliban Trainees?

The Counterterrorism Blog has a brief item about an interview conducted with Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah the day before he died.

Dadullah claims the Taliban is training U.S. and British citizens for future attacks here.

If the claim is true - and it's best to assume it is, since other Americans have been trained in terrorist camps before, and al Qaeda hasn't lost its determination to fight the West - then it's worth remembering that if these jihadists successfully slip back into the U.S., the people in the best position to find them will be local police or other authorities. As William Bratton and George Kelling have pointed out:

The presence of police in our communities sensitizes them to anomalies and yields counterterrorist data valuable to other agencies.

"Only an effective local police establishment that has the confidence of citizens," former CIA director James Woolsey testified to Congress in 2004, "is going to be likely to hear from, say, a local merchant in a part of town containing a number of new immigrants that a group of young men from abroad have recently moved into a nearby apartment and are acting suspiciously."

Building a local network is critical.

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

Terrorists?

One to ponder:

Their guilt isn't in question. The six men and four women already admitted being involved in a series of arson fires that did $40 million in damage to research facilities, a ski resort and other businesses in the West. But are they terrorists as the government says?

A federal judge was set to hear arguments Tuesday on a motion by the government to add a so-called terrorism enhancement to their sentences.

To some extent, the definition of whether this is terrorism is a bit of a distraction from the more important point that the threat is significant:

Prosecutors want Judge Ann Aiken to declare the group terrorists — something defense attorneys argue has never happened in 1,200 arsons nationwide claimed by Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.

The fires targeted forest ranger stations, meat packing plants, wild horse corrals, lumber mill offices, research facilities, an SUV dealer and, in 1998, Vail Ski Resort. No one was injured, the defense notes in legal motions.

That no one was injured is also something of a red herring. As any firefighter will tell you, arson is a serious crime. Firefighters get hurt and killed in arson fires every year.

In terms of the threat, it's noteworthy that the group was coordinated:

The case, known as Operation Backfire, is the biggest prosecution ever of environmental extremists, and has turned on its head the prevailing idea that arsonists have generally acted alone, said Brent Smith, director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas.

"We thought these people operated for the last 15 years under this kind of uncoordinated violence approach, just like the extreme right was doing — leaderless resistance," Smith said. "That's why this case is so very different."

Prosecution filings argue that though the defendants were never convicted of terrorism, they qualify for the label because at least one of the fires each of them set was intended to change or retaliate against government policy.

I guess I'm agnostic on what label is applied to them. Their sentences aren't likely to change if they get the "terrorism" add-on. More important is the recognition that it's not just jihadists who are willing to use coordinated violence to promote an agenda.

Update 05-24-2007: They got the terrorist label.

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

More on LNG Risk

GAO provides a bit more information on the risk associated with liquified natural gas (LNG) in this follow-up testimony, which was provided in the wake of its earlier report on LNG. (My post is here.)

Everyone agrees that the "nightmare scenario" of LNG shipping is a tanker explosion. While such an explosion is possible, especially when vapors are trapped in a confined space, it seems unlikely that this could result from an intentional attack:

For confined spaces, such as under a dock or between the hulls of a ship, [a group of 19 experts] agreed that it is possible, under controlled experimental conditions, to induce explosions of LNG vapors; however, a detonation—the more serious type of vapor cloud explosion—of confined LNG vapors is unlikely following an LNG spill caused by a terrorist attack. For unconfined spaces, experts were split on whether it is possible to induce such explosions under controlled experimental conditions; however, even experts who thought such explosions were possible agreed that vapor cloud explosions in unconfined spaces are unlikely to occur following an LNG spill caused by a terrorist attack.

If experts are skeptical of the likelihood of a detonation, it's clear that a terrorist group certainly couldn't engineer an attack that would predictably result in such a detonation. However, I was interested in this caveat:

One expert noted that although the consequences of cascading failure could be serious, because the extreme cold of spilled LNG and the high heat of an LNG fire could damage the tanker, there are virtually no data looking at how a tanker would be affected by these temperatures.

In summary, there is a risk involved with LNG tanker shipments, but it's reasonable to conclude - for now anyway - that a terrorist group would seek a more reliable mode of attack.

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

Local Anti-Terrorism: The L.A. Model

GovExec has posted a story by Shane Harris, originally in the National Journal, detailing Los Angeles' efforts to share information about potential terrorist threats. Most of the info, naturally, is not useful. But some is, and the extent to which there is cooperation among the various agencies involved, the effort to prevent and/or respond can be enhanced or impaired. The story begins:

On April 23, 2004, a Friday, a man calling himself "Al" contacted the Homeland Security Department in Washington. He claimed that he knew a group of terrorists who were going to blow up a building. Al knew this, he said, because he was once a member of Al Qaeda.

Los Angeles, next Thursday, the 29th, Al said. A shopping mall near the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard and the close-by campus of UCLA. Al said that a cell of three terrorists would enter the country from Canada. He even gave names. This didn't sound like a crank.

The local Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) chased down down the leads:

Officials in Washington immediately called L.A.'s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a team of FBI agents, Homeland Security officials, and local police and sheriff's officers. ... [I]n L.A., partly owing to a long history of cooperating on anti-gang and drug squads, the local cops and the feds got along well.

FBI agents traced Al's call to a prepaid phone card. They tracked down the card seller, who gave agents a log of Al's calls. It turned out that his real name was Zameer Mohamed and that he had called in the bomb threat from Room 308 of a Comfort Inn in Calgary.

Hotel management told agents that a Samier Hussein had rented the room. Authorities ran the name and got a hit in federal records: Mohamed had used Hussein as an alias in Texas, where officials had investigated him the year before on a theft charge.

On Wednesday, the day before the threatened attack, city officials informed the shopping mall owners. On Thursday, [L.A. Police Chief William] Bratton stood before news cameras at the Grove and asked Angelinos for help. "We need the eyes, the ears" of the citizenry, he stressed.

A couple of points regarding mall security, which I've discussed before. First, it's notable that law enforcement waited until the day before to notify security officials at the mall. One day's notice isn't much, especially considering that the original call was made 5 days earlier. The unspoken assumption seems to be that notifying mall security earlier would be unhelpful or even detrimental. But couldn't mall security have taken steps to prepare for the threat if they had been notified earlier? And shouldn't they be involved in a coordinated attempt to prevent, mitigate, and/or respond to a potential attack.

It's worth remembering what the Department of Justice found in its recent study on mall security:

By a large majority (63%), mall security officials would welcome greater involvement of their state DHS and law enforcement officials in security planning.

DOJ favors collaboration between law enforcement and mall security, suggesting that they:

• Develop and rehearse detailed and coordinated emergency response plans and involve stakeholders

• Enhance partnerships with the public sector

Put simply, it is valuable for private security personnel to have a trusting relationship with local law enforcement. And this applies not just to major cities like L.A. and London, but to smaller cities as well. Mall plots have been uncovered in Columbus, Ohio (pop. 693,000) and Rockford, Illinois (pop. 150,000).

Yet it's not clear that this happened in L.A. To the contrary, the response of the security managers at the two threatened malls suggests that they were not on the same page as the JTTF:

"This just happens all the time.... This is no different than any anonymous bomb threat that gets called in," Gene Thompson, the head of corporate security for the Westside Pavilion's owners, told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "Life goes on," said Tom Miles, the Grove's general manager.

It could be that the mall security guys were only trying to prevent a possible media frenzy. Or it could be that their messages were not coordinated with law enforcement. Otherwise, how to explain the fact that law enforcement was asking citizens to keep their eyes open, while the mall personnel were saying, "Nothing to see here, folks"?

Thankfully, this particular threat turned out well:

In fact, life did go on, unimpeded by a bomb or any other shopping disruptions. On the day Mohamed had warned that his Qaeda friends would strike, federal authorities apprehended him as he crossed the U.S.-Canadian border into Montana.

Mohamed confessed that he'd made the whole thing up. There was no bomb. Those supposed Qaeda operatives were actually friends of his girlfriend. Mohamed had called Homeland Security to get back at her for stealing his paycheck from a Toronto bank ... Mohamed said he picked the two malls because he knew the area.

A separate note on citizen involvement: When Chief Bratton asked for citizens to be on the lookout for suspicious activities, did they know what to look for? To be effective as "eyes and ears," citizens need to be both educated and vigilant, as they are in Israel. Jonathan Tucker has pointed out:

The vigilance of the Israeli public plays a key role in preventing terrorism. According to security experts, the average Israeli is highly aware of suspicious packages, individuals, and actions that could pose a threat to public safety and does not hesitate to notify the police. As a result, ordinary citizens foil more than 80% of attempted terrorist attacks in Israel...

But without knowing what to look for, citizens have only a minimal ability to recognize threats, at best:

[B]y officials' count, they have received more than 4,000 tips, leads, and other vague insinuations about possible terrorist attacks in the greater L.A. area in just the past three years.

Most of them turn out to be bogus. Anonymous callers see "Arabs" taking photographs of bridges. Electrical plant owners notice a van driving slowly by their security gates. Some concerned citizen sees "Middle Eastern-looking" men loading fertilizer onto a truck in her neighbor's driveway. Authorities have documented literally thousands of such leads in cities across the country, and few of them come to anything. The camera-toting terrorists are actually tourists; the driver of the van was lost; the men loading fertilizer were Mexican gardeners.

The rest of the story focuses on the role of L.A.'s fusion center, the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), in recognizing terrorist threats. The JRIC does a good job of incorporating analysts from multiple agencies and fields of expertise into a collaborative mix:

JRIC's roster is a bureaucratic potpourri. It contains FBI agents, LAPD officers, L.A. County sheriff's deputies, public health experts, contract analysts who study radical Islam, a liaison from the Homeland Security Department, and officers detailed from other local law enforcement agencies across the Los Angeles region.

The region adheres to a pact of "mutual aid," which all but eliminates turf tensions. Cooperatively fighting terrorism fits right in with that culture.

The article also discusses the widely-cited JIS case, in which a group of would-be terrorists were arrested after they conducted a string of robberies. It raises the question of whether the JIS bust should really be considered a "major" bust, because the capabilities of that homegrown group were less than those of an international terrorist organization such as al Qaeda.

To some extent I think this is a red herring. The point is, JIS was both intent and capable of doing damage.

Even if they were not a "major" terrorist operation, the experience of finding, tracking, and prosecuting them is valuable experience. The next time, it may be al Qaeda or some other organization with even greater capabilities. Local law enforcement can use the lessons of the JIS case and other experience to recognize threats and intervene before they manifest themselves.

One problem that remains is the quantity and quality of information coming from federal agencies:

Today, some threat reporting comes from the Homeland Security Department and some from the FBI. Those entities have sparred over which should be the primary conduit for states and localities, and who should decide how much they get to know.

State and local officials, meanwhile, complain that threat reporting is inconsistent and that much of what they know comes from their own residents. Even in Los Angeles, where relations have remained congenial, Chief Bratton says that the federal agencies need to settle their disputes and to give the locals more information.

"How do we get the feds to make nice with each other -- that's still the big issue," Bratton says. From his perspective, local officials have already made a sizable investment in homeland-security policy. "I easily spend 40 percent of my time on terrorism matters," Bratton says, including talking to journalists and members of Congress. Of the federal agencies whose intelligence Bratton wants, he says, "Locals have to be accepted into what was a private club.... We're the new kids knocking on the door."

Implementing the Information Sharing Environment is an ongoing effort which has been slow to develop, though its intentions are good (see this post). More on information sharing later...

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

Review: FDNY Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Strategy

I've had a chance to read the entire FDNY Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Strategy (html | pdf) and I have found a lot to like.

When I reviewed the FDNY's general Strategic Plan in February, it was not clear to me how serious the FDNY was in its intention to collaborate with other agencies to manage risks. Building collaborative relationships among various agencies is vital because it has real-world effects. For example, better coordination between agencies on 9/11 could have saved lives - i.e., if FDNY had been able to get the message from police helicopters that the support beams of the Twin Towers were buckling.

Even so, communication during the response is only the half of it. Agencies must collaborate and share information to prevent potential acts of terrorism as well.

After reviewing FDNY's terrorism-specific plan, I'm persuaded that FDNY is serious in its efforts to proactively collaborate and share information, and to use its unique capabilities to recognize threats. From a strategic perspective, the FDNY has developed an excellent model for involving firefighters in a collaborative effort to prevent terrorism and mitigate its effects.

Early on, FDNY makes its intentions clear:

[Defining and assessing] FDNY's role in the homeland security network involves evaluating the outcomes of actions taken to reach these preparedness goals and finding new and better ways to work collaboratively with security partners.

The FDNY has many crucial responsibilities in homeland security. This Strategy is designed to help members fulfill those responsibilities and work with all homeland security partners to enhance terrorism and disaster preparedness for the Department, the City and the nation.

To improve its response capabilities, FDNY is trying to address the information-sharing problems that plagued the response to 9/11:

Network-centric command is an information-sharing framework that integrates voice, video and data information from multiple internal and external sources. … This information comes from FDNY databases, imaging libraries and field units, as well as from other City, State and Federal agencies, the private sector and the media.

The FDNY's newly designed and substantially upgraded Fire Department Operations Center (FDOC) serves as the hub for the Department's network-centric command system and interoperable communications capabilities. Additional components [include] network connections to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), New York City Police Department (NYPD), New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and other City, State and Federal agencies.

These are useful tools during the response to an incident. But even more impressively, FDNY is also focusing on building better relationships with other agencies in advance of incidents, to promote prevention and preparedness.

The FDNY has worked steadily toward increasing the ability to interface with other local, State and Federal emergency management, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to collectively enhance prevention and preparedness through the rapid and comprehensive exchange of information.

The FDNY will continue to work with security partners to fill the significant information-sharing gaps that exist. … Additionally, the Department has liaisons with the NYPD and the FBI. Several members of the BFI also serve on the JTTF. These important connections help inform the Department's leaders of current threats the FDNY must prepare for, as well as how the Department can better contribute to the City's preparedness efforts.

The FDNY also is working with the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis to establish a direct information conduit between the FDNY and DHS.

Perhaps most impressively, FDNY envisions that its "prevention" mission has evolved. It is involved not just in fire prevention, but in terrorism prevention. This is a vitally important new mindset:

The events of 9/11 … prompted the Fire Department to see prevention on the same level as consequence management. And, like fire prevention, terrorism prevention is a role of the FDNY that needs to develop and grow.

The key to FDNY's prevention efforts is sharing information:

The FDNY [has] recognized that the Department could help to fill some of these [information] gaps by contributing to local intelligence-gathering efforts. When routinely shared with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the information gathered by FDNY personnel could make a significant contribution to existing intelligence and lead to the identification and disruption of terrorist activities.

And FDNY rightly knews that it has access to information that others do not:

Terrorism-related information can be gathered by the FDNY in many ways. During the course of routine building inspections, arson investigations and the response to fires and medical emergencies, FDNY personnel have unique access to homes and buildings that generally are concealed from outsiders. For example, the FDNY conducts frequent building inspections, system testing and safety and evacuation plan reviews throughout the City.

The FDNY's information-gathering potential is substantial. Each year, FDNY units make approximately two million fire, medical and other emergency responses and 300,000 building inspections.

FDNY personnel also may observe characteristics – materials, equipment, literature, etc. – during their normal response operations that would indicate a threat of terrorist activity.

Because it has unique information-gathering capabilities, FDNY intends to be an active partner in recognizing threats and acquiring intelligence:

In reaction to information gathered and based on the type of intelligence received, the FDNY can increase inspection activity to assist in detection or strategically locate additional resources to act as a terrorism deterrent.

Collectively, this respresents an incredible opportunity for FDNY personnel to be what the President has labeled the nation's "First Preventers" – first responders who are able to recognized tell-tale signs of danger to homeland security, report the suspicious activity and preserve the scene until the proper authorities arrive.

To discuss the potential power of this approach, I'd like to specifically focus on one type of inspection/detection activity that FDNY mentions in its plan. This exemplifies a number of concepts that I've written about in the past week or so.

As I've discussed in a couple of recent posts, DHS has plans to install arrays of radiation detectors in all major cities.

That's fine, but as I've argued, it's essentially just a passive "net" of equipment. Such a system should be just one of a number of systems to prevent radiological threats.

Now let's consider how the FDNY intends to supplement the passive-detection system:

The hazardous materials monitoring equipment carried by every Fire Department unit can detect radiation and potentially lead to the discovery of materials intended for use in a dirty bomb attack.

This is a much more robust detection regime. It's one thing to have a network of radiation detectors silently watching the city like an army of HAL-9000s. But how much better is it to supplement those passive detectors with an department of firefighters who carry radiation detectors with them and are trained to identify the precursors of terrorist activity - or in Bruce Schneier's word, to recognize what's "hinky." The passive system is now supplemented by a much more active system.

To their great credit, FDNY is training its personnel to recognize the precursors to terrorism:

The FDNY currently is developing a training program to provide personnel with the skills they need to be optimally effective in identifying and reporting suspicious materials, activities or symptoms.

The Department has institutionalized counterterrorism training into the standard emergency response curriculum for all personnel.

There's more, though. Recalling that "threat" is only one aspect of risk, FDNY correctly acknowledges that it can bring a unique perspective on the other aspects of risk: vulnerability and consequence:

While law enforcement generally examines structures from a security perspective, the Fire Department provides another dimension of knowledge by looking at the same structure from a vulnerability and consequence management point of view. When fire personnel conduct building inspections or perform a size-up of an incident, they observe those characteristics that would profoundly affect a building's vulnerability to attack and the likely associated consequences of an attack …

In summary, FDNY has created an excellent strategic plan that incorporates many of the foundational elements of prevention. It's really good stuff and a good model for any fire department.

Update #1 - 2007-05-01: A recent incident on a New York highway, involving an NYPD officer, illustrated the benefits of putting radiation detectors in the hands of homeland security professionals, as Newsday reported:

A counterterrorism officer was driving to work near Coney Island on April 27 when a radiation detector alerted him to a possible problem.

The officer, Lt. Steve Donahoo, "got a positive reading from the car that was next to him," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

It turned out to be a false alarm: The Mercedes sport utility vehicle was carrying an engineering tool that uses a small amount of radioactive material to measure soil density. But the episode demonstrated how the New York Police Department has turned to hand-held radiation detectors in hopes of foiling any plot to detonate a so-called dirty bomb.

In recent years, the nation's largest police department has quietly deployed more than 900 of the five-ounce detectors, which are roughly the size of an MP3 player and cost at least $1,000. The devices are sensitive enough to differentiate between harmful, artificial isotopes and naturally occurring, innocuous ones, police said.

Officers typically wear the detectors on their belts like pagers while on patrol. The devices emit an alarm that intensifies as they get closer to the source.

Putting detectors in the hands of professionals provides a blend of technology and human expertise. That's a powerful combination, especially when information is shared among a network.

Update #2 - 2007-05-01: Here is another thought on using fire department personnel to gather intelligence on potential threats:

Although the concept of having fire department personnel collect and share information with other agencies is an excellent means of identifying potential terrorist threats, it will be important for the FDNY to define its mission carefully and stick to identifying terrorist threats.

The FDNY must avoid "mission creep." Firefighters should not become a reconnaissance arm of law enforcement, because doing so might jeopardize the public's trust in the fire service.

If they stick to terrorist threats, they should be fine. If their mission expands, then there could be problems.

Cross-posted in IPS Blogs at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

See Something, Say Something?

Bruce Schneier wrote an interesting post yesterday on the relative usefulness - or uselessness - of citizen reporting of suspicious activity: the "See Something, Say Something" paradigm.

He argues that without proper training, peoplw who report suspicious activity will typically send investigators down false trails. But with training, reporting improves substantially:

People trained to be alert for something hinky will do much better than any profiler, but people who have no idea what to look for will do no better than random.

It seems to me that what he's really doing is focusing on the right question. In the aftermath of any terrorist incident or serious crime (e.g., Virginia Tech), there is a tendency to ask:

"What kind of person would do this?"

While that's an interesting question for cable news hosts and pop psychologists to chew over, it's not the most useful question for prevention efforts. Focusing on "the kind of person" can lead to all sorts of errors of misperception, especially to an untrained or minimally trained eye:

A much better question is:

"What are the precursor activities that indicate the potential for crime or terrorist activity?"

Identifying those activities provides much better - and much more objective and defensible - evidence that someone may be up to no good. It seems to me that Schneier's description of "hinky" is really about making that crucial distinction.

Cross-posted at the Institute for Preventive Strategies.

U.S. Chlorine Tank Thefts

There are some eyebrow-raising developments in the chlorine-bomb threat. Nothing is certain, but the signs tend to point one way. From USA Today:

The Chlorine Institute, a trade group that represents more than 200 companies that make and distribute chlorine, recently alerted the FBI to several thefts or attempted thefts of 150-pound chlorine tanks from water treatment plants in California.

However...

There is no intelligence indicating such an attack is imminent or that terrorists have stolen any chlorine from the nation's chemical or water treatment plants, which use chlorine to purify drinking water.

And yet...

Robert Stephan, Homeland Security's infrastructure protection chief, says department officials are briefing bomb squads, urging plants to tightly guard their chlorine supplies and sharing photographs of unexploded truck bombs with police chiefs.

This is the definition of a predictable surprise. The indications have been there for months. Local homeland security professionals would be wise to share information on this threat and ensure that stocks of chlorine (and other dangerous chemicals) are secured and that they're prepared to respond to any sort of chemical event.

Veryfast Biological Agent Detection

This is still in the research and testing phase - but wow - it's fast:

A new laser technique allows for instant detection of bioterrorism agents, permitting tests that previously were cumbersome or impossible, according to a report in the April 13 issue of the journal Science. In the Science paper, Texas A&M and Princeton researchers report on using lasers to detect anthrax in less than a tenth of a second.

"Our procedure can work for monitoring anthrax in the mail, but it can also scan the whole atmosphere," said Marlan Scully, the lead author of the paper. Currently, anthrax tests require that suspicious substances be cultured in a lab, a time-consuming process.

Although the Science paper focuses on anthrax, Scully said the same laser technique could be deployed in a wide range of applications, from national security to health. "There are a lot of other potential applications -- monitoring glucose in the blood of diabetics would be just one example," Scully said.

One of the difficulties of managing biological incidents - natural or intentional - is the time delay from exposure to the agent, to the onset of symptoms, to diagnosis. Reducing the amount of time it takes to detect biological agents could shorten that lag time, leading to more effective treatment and management.

In the meantime, local homeland security professionals should collaborate to ensure that they are ready for all biological threats. Many communities need to be better prepared for biological threats. (See these two posts.)

A Contamination Risk of Imported Food?

Ever since the discovery of contaminated wheat gluten from China that led to the deaths and illness of thousands of pets, the question has arisen whether the same kind of thing could happen with imported human food.

Some reporting today from the Associated Press suggests it could:

Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other foods are inspected — yet those government inspections regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.

Add to that the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that poisoned cats and dogs nationwide and led to a massive pet food recall, and you've got a real international pickle. Does the United States have the wherewithal to ensure the food it imports is safe?

Food safety experts say no.

With only a minuscule percentage of shipments inspected, they say the nation is vulnerable to harm from abroad, where rules and regulations governing food production are often more lax than they are at home.

"FDA doesn't have enough resources or control over this situation presently," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, which works with industry to improve safety.

Last month alone, FDA detained nearly 850 shipments of grains, fish, vegetables, nuts, spice, oils and other imported foods for issues ranging from filth to unsafe food coloring to contamination with pesticides to salmonella.

Each year, the average American eats about 260 pounds of imported foods, including processed, ready-to-eat products and single ingredients. Imports account for about 13 percent of the annual diet.

How did the melamine wind up in the wheat gluten [in the pet food]? Investigators still don't know.

The FDA and the USDA have adopted a "risk-based" inspection philosophy, focusing on specific foods, sources or producers that they believe represent the largest potential risk to the public's health.

"We have better control than we did a few years ago but it is largely the responsibility of the importer to make sure those products are safe," said Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's top veterinarian.

For local homeland security professionals, this is mostly a question of mitigation. It's the job of USDA and FDA to prevent the importation of contaminated food, and if they don't stop it at the border, local communities would have to deal with local effects. Recalling that the DHS Inspector General recently reported that public panic is a likely result of a major food contamination incident, it's worth giving some thought to this:

Commentators on the subject have observed that an adverse food sector event could also reduce state and local governments’ ability to maintain order and deliver essential services. A major food contamination event could engender public panic on a local or mass scale, depending on the affected food product and population, and media coverage of the incident.

(Also see this post for my summary of the report.)

Questions for local homeland security professionals include:

• What level of collaboration is there among local public health agencies, healthcare providers, and other local authorities (e.g., elected officials, law enforcement)?
• What healthcare resources are available?
• What communication plans are in place?
• How can local authorities maintain the public's confidence?
• Does everyone know their role in the event of a public health emergency?
  

A lot of these questions are relevant to other public health concerns such as pandemic flu or other biological threats. By taking a collaborative approach and addressing a range of potential hazards, local homeland security professionals can make the best use of the resources available to them.

Updated 04-23-2007: A guest column in the Washington Post by former food executive Peter Kovacs echoes some of the concerns about imported food, especially from China:

One pound of tainted wheat gluten could, if undetected, contaminate as much as a thousand pounds of food.

Often, U.S. officials don't know where or how such ingredients were produced. We know, however, that alarms have been raised about hygiene and labor standards at many Chinese manufacturing facilities.

That it was pet food that got tainted -- and that relatively few pets were harmed -- is pure happenstance. Earlier this spring, Europe narrowly averted disaster when a batch of vitamin A from China was found to be contaminated with Enterobacter sakazakii, which has been proved to cause infant deaths. Thankfully, the defective vitamin A had not yet been incorporated into infant formula. Next time we may not be so fortunate.

UK Report on WMD Risk

More housecleaning:

In February the Chatham House (a UK think tank) published a report on the risk of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism. It's essentially a concise, well researched primer on these threats. First, a few notes on the overall CBRN threat:

It is appropriate to think of CBRN as a system, offering all that might be required for a range of terrorist groups from the largest to the smallest, from the almost casual to the most organized, and from the poorest to the best funded.

In the absence of the Cold War military imperative, not only has genuine interest mounted in the civilian applications of WMD-relevant technology, but the illegal proliferation of sensitive technology, materials and knowledge has proved both more tempting and more possible. In short, WMD technology has increasingly become something of a commodity since the end of the Cold War.

Next a few notes on each threat:

Chemical

First, the precursor chemicals for chemical weapons (CW) are widely distributed:

Many of the CW precursor chemicals are ‘dual use’ in that they have civil industrial applications: mustard gas requires ethyl alcohol, sodium sulphide and bleach; thiodiglycol is used for ball-point pen ink, but is also ‘only one chemical step removed’ from mustard gas; the chemical ingredients for tabun (GA) are used in pesticides, those for sarin (GB) in flame retardants, those for soman (GD) in dairy and food-processing equipment, and those for VX in pyrotechnics.

A so-called Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) could also be produced using much larger quantities of lower-grade, less enriched U-235. The device might then ‘fizzle’ rather than detonate its entire mass instantly and efficiently. But if the resulting explosion were to be equivalent to just one or a few kilotons of TNT rather than tens of kilotons, terrorists could still find this option attractive.But taking the next step - building a chemical-weapons capability and actually producing chemical weapons - is difficult, as demonstrated by the widely-cited example of Aum Shinrikyo, who launched the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway:

According to some estimates, Aum Shinrikyo’s attempts to synthesize sarin cost as much as $30 million, involved as many as 80 scientists and other people with advanced laboratory facilities, and took a year or more to achieve.

To produce CW in large-scale quantities is challenging scientifically and technologically, and the handling and weaponizing of CW are generally understood to be very hazardous.

Chemical attacks are made more complicated by environmental factors:

In general, CW are dependent for their effect on ambient weather conditions, and particularly on the temperature, the intensity of sunlight, the strength and direction of wind, and rain (especially, of course, for those agents soluble in water).

For a terrorist group, simplicity may be preferred:

A rather more straightforward option, of course, would be to buy or steal a supply of toxic industrial chemicals, for simple release in a crowded area.

That's what al Qaeda is doing with chlorine in Iraq - simply acquiring whatever they can get and using it to supplement a more conventional attack, usually a truck bomb.

Biological

Biological threats seem relatively simple. All you have to do is acquire the desired biological agent, grow it, package it, and release the biological weapon (BW) as desired - right? But it's not nearly that simple:

BW production involves four stages – acquisition, production, weaponization and delivery – the first three of which are progressively more difficult:

1. Acquisition. It would not be easy to acquire the seed stock of a pathogen or a toxin-producing organism, but it would not be impossible either.
2. Production. The manufacturing of BW agents is not straightforward. Bulk production, in particular, would be demanding and dangerous.
3. Weaponization. Weaponizing a BW agent is yet more challenging, for two reasons. First, the health and safety of those involved in BW production could scarcely be more at risk. Second, it would not be a simple matter to produce a stable device with a predictable effect. BW agents are, in general, vulnerable to environmental and weather conditions.
4. Delivery. Once the first three stages have been passed through successfully, the delivery of a BW device would be a relatively simple matter.

More generally, it should always be borne in mind that BW use would inevitably be a complex undertaking, drawing upon many branches of science and technology, including microbiology, pathology, aerosol physics, aerobiology and meteorology.

And even if the high hurdles were passed, the effects are somewhat unpredictable. In some previous instances of civilian exposure to biological agents, casualties have not been catastrophic:

In 1979 an accident at a Russian military site led to some 65,000 people being exposed to anthrax spores. Of these, only 70 were reported to have been infected with anthrax, of whom 68 died. The anthrax attacks in the United States in late 2001 also had a very limited medical effect, albeit with widespread social and political impact.

Regarding biological weapons, the bigger threat might actually be something that we don't even know about yet. The report quotes G.L. Epstein as saying:

The rapidly increasing capability, market penetration, and geographic dissemination of relevant biotechnical disciplines will inevitably bring weapons capabilities within the reach of those who may wish to use them to do harm. If it takes close to a decade to develop and license a new therapeutic vaccine, it is not today’s threat but the threat a decade from now that we need to counter. And given how much easier it is to pose a threat than to counter one, the threat ten years out may not even materialize until eight or nine years out.

Especially as biotechnology advances, this threat will become increasingly complex.

Radiological

There is a wide variance to the severity of this threat. While the lower end is not hard to imagine, the upper end of the radiological weapons (RW) threat is somewhat unknown:

The ‘maximum credible event’ could be a device (explosive or other) designed to distribute tens or even hundreds of thousands of Curies of radioactive material. Little work has been done to model the effect of such an attack.

But the motivation is there:

‘Some of the major international terror groups, including al-Qaeda, have not only the resources to carry out such an attack, but also the willing martyrs, whose participation would significantly reduce the cost and complexity of any protective systems needed to allow the perpetrator to survive long enough to carry out the attack.’

And the materials are out there:

Radiological materials are used in a wide variety of circumstances: general industry, agriculture, medicine, communications and navigation. But not all radioactive isotopes would be suitable for RW use. Among the candidates, ‘only a few stand out as being highly suitable for radiological terror’: cobalt-60; strontium-90; yttrium-90; caesium-137, iridium-192, radium-226, plutonium-238, americium-241 and californium-252.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated that one licensed US radioactive source is lost every day.

While the phrase "dirty bomb" has entered the lexicon, an explosive might not be the most attractive means for dispersing radioactive material:

Radioactive material can be distributed in a variety of ways; some isotopes can be dissolved in a solvent and poured or sprayed, others can be burned or vaporized. From the point of view of a terrorist group, non-explosive delivery might offer an advantage in that authorities might be slow to suspect and detect radiological release. In the delay, radioactive material might be ingested or inhaled by yet more people, and radioactive pollution allowed to spread still further.

The main effect of a radiological weapon would probably be economic (assuming that the radioactive materials contaminated an area of economic importance, such as the business district of a major city):

There appears to be a reasonably firm consensus in the literature that while the political and economic effects of a RW attack could be extreme, only the largest conceivable RW device could kill more than scores or hundreds of people.

Thus, a recent US Department of Defense study estimated that a 100 lb (45 kg) RW device carried in a backpack, containing radioactive material used for cancer treatment, detonated in a city centre, would kill no one through radiation. However, a truck-borne device using a similar amount of explosive but with about 100 lb (45 kg) of spent nuclear fuel rods could cause lethal doses of radiation within a half-mile radius.

Nuclear

This is the ultimate nightmare, of course. Fortunately, there are only two possible materials suitable for making a nuclear weapon:

Although various nuclear isotopes are used in the construction of a nuclear weapon, at the core of any device must be a mass of sub-critical fissile material – either highly enriched uranium-235 (HEU) or separated, ‘weapons-grade’ plutonium (Pu-239).

And while a terrorist group would need specialized knowledge and plenty of resources, it's not impossible to imagine that they could build a weapon:

Graham Allison, writing in late 2003, claimed that ‘given the right materials – a grapefruit- or soccer ball-sized amount of fissionable material is sufficient – several masters-level engineering students … with several hundred thousand dollars and the type of equipment you could purchase off the shelf at Radio Shack could make a device that would explode. The last time I checked, researchers at Los Alamos, trying to develop strategies to combat this threat, had come up with sixty-nine different workable designs for a nuclear device.’ Barnaby makes a similar point: ‘The difficulty of designing and fabricating a nuclear weapon … is often exaggerated. A competent group of nuclear physicists, and electronics and explosives engineers, given adequate resources and access to the literature, would have little difficulty in designing and constructing such a weapon from scratch. They would not need access to any classified literature.’

If that's not possible, another option exists:

Another alternative might be to eschew nuclear weapons development and delivery altogether, and instead ‘deliver’ an attack on a nuclear power station, using conventional means (such as a large proximate explosion or the direct impact of an aircraft)...

In 1981 a US study estimated that such an attack carried out with an explosive-laden aircraft could cause 130,000 deaths.

Perhaps most ominously, the study points out that, in the eyes of a terrorist group such as al Qaeda, the risk of destruction is not a limiting factor - though it may be a factor in the response of their target:

But the difficulty arises, of course, when traditional terrorism gives way to so-called ‘expressive terrorism’, and when the object of nuclear weapon use would be not to negotiate but simply to destroy. For terrorist individuals and groups driven by some religious, millennial or apocalyptic vision, the massive and hugely symbolic impact of a unilateral, ‘spectacular’ nuclear strike could be precisely their goal. Furthermore, the destruction of themselves and everything associated with them in the retaliatory attack which followed their nuclear attack might be a prospect to be accepted, if not welcomed. What, then, would be the point of launching a nuclear counterattack against such perpetrators, other than to provide for them the martyrdom they seek?

Quite apart from the massive human cost of such an attack, the rationale for a punitive nuclear response falls away when account is taken of the likely size and scale of the organization carrying out the attack; would a group of a few hundred people dispersed across a wide area, and perhaps even among several countries, really be a suitable target for a retaliatory nuclear strike? If not, and if the decision is taken instead to pursue the terrorists with conventional military means, then the terrorists will have gained whatever benefit they envisage from a nuclear attack, without a substantial change in their circumstances, since they would have expected to be pursued by conventional military forces in any case.

The prospect now begins to loom of a nuclear weapon state being self-deterred when contemplating the wisdom of a nuclear response to a limited nuclear attack. ... Surprisingly perhaps, the ‘post-modern’ terrorist begins to assume a good deal of initiative in this scenario; the rewards of nuclear use might be perceived as maximal, with the attendant risks minimal (or, at least, unchanged).

While this threat may be improbable, the risk is so great that it cannot be ignored:

[I]t might be improbable that a terrorist organization could either design and manufacture, or acquire a nuclear weapon, and then deliver it, but even the slightest possibility that this could happen would entail massively disproportionate consequences. In other words, the risk of terrorist use of nuclear weapons, as traditionally calculated, could scarcely be higher. For Western governments the risk is of such a magnitude that worst-case analysis seems not only unavoidable but also appropriate.

Foiled Maritime Terrorism in Morocco

Reuters is reporting today that a group of 12 would-be bombers have been foiled in Morocco. Their targets were foreign ships - an indication that jihadists continue to view economic targets as desirable, including maritime targets.

At least 12 would-be suicide bombers planned to blow up foreign ships at the Casablanca port and other Moroccan landmarks, top security officials were quoted as saying on Thursday.

They said at least six of the suspected bombers were still on the run, but others were arrested after their presumed leader blew himself up on March 11 to stop police taking him alive.

Abdelfattah Raydi, the 23-year suspected leader of the group of bombers, walked into an Internet cafe in Casablanca's Sidi Moumen slum on March 11 with another suspected bomber.

Raydi, who had worn an explosives belt for four days to avoid police catching him alive, detonated the device when the cafe owner shut the door and called authorities after he saw him consulting a jihadist Web site, newspapers said.

"Investigations showed that 12 suicide bombers among 30 terrorists linked to March 11's Casablanca plot were prepared to attack economic and security targets including blowing up foreign ships at Casablanca port and tourism facilities in Marrakesh, Essaouira and Agadir," wrote al Ahdath al Maghribia daily.

It's being called a "lucky accident" that the plot was prevented, but I'd say it's a good example of civic engagement in anti-terrorism. The Internet cafe owner could just have easily looked the other way, but he recognized a potential threat and decided to intervene.

The bad news out of the incident is that it provides further evidence of jihadists' attraction to the idea of mixing chemicals or biological agents with their bombs, as demonstrated on a number of recent occasions in Iraq.

The [Moroccan] papers also quoted officials as saying the would-be bombers planned to use "poison" in their planned attacks, showing a change in the country's home-grown terror.

Al Ahdath said the "poison" was a byproduct of tetanus pathogenic bacteria ...

These guys do a good job of sharing information via the Internet. If a tactic seems to work in one place, it begins to pop up in other places. So information sharing has to go on here, too, regarding vulnerability and risk.

Critique of New Chemical Plant Regulation

Stephen Flynn's testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has been posted to the Council on Foreign Relations site.

Flynn is critical of the legislative changes regarding chemical facilities made in the 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, as well as the interim rule-making language issued by the Department of Homeland Security in Feb. 2007.

First, Flynn offers his opinion of the threat:

Like many students of terrorism, I believe that Al Qaeda or one of its growing number of radical jihadist imitators will attempt to carry out a major terrorist attack on the United States within the next five years. At the top of the list of likely targets is the chemical industry.

The new legislation is intended to improve the security at chemical facilities. But Flynn argues it impedes information-sharing between the chemical facilities and state and local officials:

[N]eighbors to dangerous chemical facilities have lived largely in the blind when it comes to the hazards they may be exposed to and are often unaware of the steps they should take to protect themselves in the event of a chemical release.

While there is legitimate reason to treat some security information as sensitive, the act goes too far by requiring DHS to treat vulnerability or security information under this section, "as if the information were classified material" and stipulating that this information be provided only to "State and local government officials possessing the necessary security clearances, including law enforcement officials and first responders."

This onerous requirement effectively places the overwhelming majority of state and local officials and emergency responders out of the loop when it comes to the security of plants nestled within their own communities. Few officials hold these clearances and there is already an extensive backlog in providing them.

As a consequence, the vast majority of emergency planners who are responsible for putting together the local response to disasters will have to make these plans without an understanding of the vulnerabilities and the existing security protocols that are in place at a facility.

He also delivers a strong critique of the provision in the act which allows DHS rules to supersede state legislation:

The excessive new protections of vulnerability and security-related information reinforces one of the most serious shortcomings of the act which is its failure to allow state governments to enact stronger security requirements than those adopted at the federal level when those states determine such requirements are appropriate to safeguarding their populations....

This is federalism turned on its head. While states and locals are responsible for dealing with the aftermath of a disaster associated with a chemical plant about which it has historically possessed more intimate knowledge than the federal government, the federal government is now maintaining that it alone has the authority to set the rules governing the security of these facilities.

The information-sharing aspect is troubling. Some secrecy is necessary, of course. You don't want to disclose the location of potentially dangerous chemicals. But why state and local officials are not on the "need to know" list - that's a good question.

Flynn is a generally respected expert on vulnerability. He's the author of America the Vulnerable and The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation.