NewsTrust - Terrorism - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Seymour Hersh: US Training Iranian Terrorists in Nevada

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Amy Goodman, Seymour Hersh - Apr. 11 (Special Report) - the Bush administration secretly trained an Iranian opposition group despite its inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists.

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Fearful of a nuclear Iran? The real WMD nightmare is Syria

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

thebulletin.org - By Charles P. Blair - Mar. 01 (Special Report) - Charles P. Blair of the Federation of American Scientists has a chilling article detailing the enormous WMD capacity of Syria, which includes sufficient delivery capability to be a real threat. As Blair points out, it's difficult to guard WMD when a government collapses, and at this point it seems inevitable that the Assad regime will collapse. This is a very compelling read.

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The message from Strasbourg | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

thebulletin.org - By Alexander Kelle - Feb. 23 (Special Report) - On December 20, 2011, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled that the "use of gas against terrorists during the Moscow theatre siege was justified." It did not, that is, violate the right to life -- enshrined in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights -- of the 700-plus hostages in a Moscow theater almost a decade ago.

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US Senate passes its version of NDAA bill, which would allow military to detain anyone on US soil - OpenGlobe

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

OpenGlobe - By Tempodivalse, OpenGlobe contributors - Dec. 02 (Special Report) - The US Senate on Thursday passed its version of a bill that, among other provisions, would enable the US military to indefinitely detain anyone who is deemed to be engaging in terrorist activities.

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Fact-check: South Carolina Debate

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley - Nov. 13 (Fact Check) - We found several exaggerations and misstatements in the latest Republican presidential candidates’ debate. Romney issued a hollow threat to take China’s currency manipulation to a world body that doesn’t actually deal with overvalued money, and he claimed federal spending consumes more of the nation’s economic output than it really does. … More >>

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How the FBI's Network of Informants Actually Created Most of the Terrorist Plots

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Trevor Aaronson - Oct. 10 (Investigative Report) - The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

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Lloyd's Sues Saudi Arabia for 'Funding 9/11 Attacks'

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - Sep. 23 (News Report) - Lloyds of London seeks $215 million in damages from the kingdom to recover claims it paid 9/11 victims and their families. The suit charges that the Saudi government funded al-Qaida through its banks and charities. The complaint, filed in US court, states that without official Saudi sponsorship, "al-Qaida would not have possessed the capacity to conceive, plan and execute the Sept. 11 attacks." In other words, absent Saudi support, the Twin Towers would still be standing - along with nearly 3,000 Americans.

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Former Senator Bob Graham Urges Obama to Reopen Investigation into Saudi Role in 9/11 Attacks

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Sep. 15 (News Report) - new information has emerged about the possible role of prominent Saudis in the 9/11 plot. According to recent news reports, a wealthy young Saudi couple fled their home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, just a week or so before Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind three cars and nearly all of their possessions. The FBI was tipped off about the couple but never passed the information on to the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks, even though phone records showed the couple had ties to Mohamed Atta and at least 10 other al-Qaeda suspects.

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Breivik's Fundamentalist War on Politics, and Ours

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Henry A. Giroux - Aug. 03 (News Analysis) - by using the clip from "The Town," it appears that Republican leaders used gratuitous images of mind-crushing violence and retribution as a legitimate, even inspiring, framework for motivating support for legislative practices that will have deleterious, even violent, impacts on vulnerable populations in the United States, especially children. This is not merely barbarism parading as political reform - it is also a blatant indicator of the degree to which sadism and a theater of cruelty have become normalized at the highest reaches of government.

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If a Married Lesbian Couple Saves 40 Teens from the Norway Massacre and No One Writes About it, Did it Really Happen?

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

wordpress.com - Aug. 02 (News Report) - Dalen and Hansen drove the boat to the island, picked up from the water victims in shock in, the young and wounded, and transported them to the opposite shore to the mainland. Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat. Since there were so many and not all fit at once aboard, they returned to the island four times.

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Norwegian Shooting Suspect's Views Echo Xenophobia of Right-Wing Extremists in U.S., Europe

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 27 (News Analysis) - His 1,500-page political manifesto, titled "A European Declaration of Independence," seeks common cause with xenophobic right-wing groups around the world, particularly in the United States. It draws heavily on the writing of prominent anti-Islam American bloggers, as well as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. His writing reveals he is a right-wing nationalist fueled by a combined hatred of Muslims, Marxists, multiculturalists and feminist women.

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Norway Attacks Expose U.S. Media’s Double Standard on “Terrorism”

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Glenn Greenwald: - Jul. 26 (News Analysis) - “When it became apparent that Muslims were not involved and that, in reality, it was a right-wing nationalist with extremely anti-Muslim, strident anti-Muslim bigotry as part of his worldview, the word 'terrorism' almost completely disappeared from establishment media discourse. Instead, he began to be referred to as a 'madman' or an 'extremist,'" says Greenwald. “It really underscores, for me, the fact that this word 'terrorism,' that plays such a central role in our political discourse and our law, really has no objective meaning. It’s come to mean nothing more than Muslims who engage in violence."

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What Norway's Terrorist Has in Common With the American Tea Party and Right Wing

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Juan Cole - Jul. 25 (News Analysis) - The movement to ban the shariah, the castigation of a progressive income tax as “Marxist,” the condemnation of multiculturalism as a threat to Western values, are all themes commonly heard in the US Tea Party and in the right wing of the Israel lobbies.

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Norway Attacks: We Can No Longer Ignore the Far-Right Threat

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Matthew Goodwin, - Jul. 24 (News Analysis) - I spent four years interviewing far-right activists, many of whom rejected political violence. Yet what became clear during this research was that there is, unquestionably, a culture of violence within the broader far-rightwing subculture. Many of the ideas that were voiced during this research have also come to light over the past 48 hours: the perceived threat posed by Muslim communities, a belief that mainstream parties are incapable of dealing with this threat and strong emphasis on a "clash of civilizations" between members of the majority population and minority groups.

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Did Saudi Arabia Attack Us on 9/11?

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan - Jul. 19 (Investigative Report) - 'Was there a foreign government behind the 9/11 attacks? A decade later, Americans still haven't been given the whole story, while a key 28-page section of Congress's Joint Inquiry report remains censored. Gathering years of leaks and leads, in an adaptation from their new book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan examine the connections between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi), the Bush White House's decision to ignore or bury evidence, and the frustration of lead investigators - including 9/11-commission staffers, counterterrorism officials, and senators on both sides of the aisle.' Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan, Vanity Fair

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Justice Department Filing Casts Doubt on Guilt of Bruce Ivins, Accused in Anthrax Case

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By by Mike Wiser, PBS FRONTLINE, Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers, Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica This story was co-published with PBS FRONTLINE, McClatchy. WA - Jul. 19 (News Report) - The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago. Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they had identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. On July 15, however, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001. The government said it continues to believe that Ivins was “more likely than not” the killer. But the filing in a Florida court did not explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that the lab “did not have the specialized equipment’’ in Ivins' secure lab “that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters.” The government’s statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI’s eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder. Earlier this year, a report by the National Academy of Science questioned the genetic analysis that had linked a flask of anthrax stored in Ivins’ office to the anthrax contained in the letters. The court papers were uncovered by a reporter for the PBS program FRONTLINE which is working on a forthcoming documentary on the case with McClatchy Newspapers and ProPublica, the investigative newsroom. They were filed by lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Division who are defending the government against a wrongful death suit brought by the family of Robert Stevens, a photo editor at the Sun. Stevens was the first to die from a tainted letter and his family has accused federal officials of lax procedures that allowed someone to make a germ weapon using anthrax from a government laboratory. In asserting that Ivins was culprit, criminal investigators pointed to his access to the specialized equipment at the laboratory. Officials drew up elaborate charts showing that Ivins’ time in the hot suites spiked in the weeks before the letters were mailed. But Ivins’ colleagues have said in depositions for the Stevens case that the powder could not have been made in the lab without sickening lab technicians and others who had not been vaccinated against anthrax. A Justice Department spokesman Monday shed little light on the seeming shift in positions, saying that investigators still believe Ivins produced the anthrax at Fort Detrick and are unaware of evidence that he did so elsewhere. The Justice Department filed the papers in federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla., last week. The lawyers were attempting to counter allegations by the Stevens family of negligence at Fort Detrick, including inadequate controls over anthrax controls, by arguing that the anthrax in the letters wasn't produced there. Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said Monday that the court filing did not contradict the government’s conclusion that Ivins sent the letters. Rather, he said, the lawyers merely argued that “Ivins’ actions were not foreseeable to his supervisors’’ because he did not have equipment to dry the spores in his containment laboratory. Boyd said this meant the United States should not be held liable for his actions.” “To clarify, this statement was intended to relate to the specific containment laboratory” where Ivins kept a flask of liquid anthrax with genetic markers similar to those found in the letters, Boyd said. In excerpts from one of more than a dozen depositions made public in the case last week, the current chief of of the Bacteriology Division at the Army laboratory, Patricia Worsham, said it lacked the facilities in 2001 to make the kind of spores in the letters. Two of the five letters, those sent to Democratic U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, were especially deadly, because they were so buoyant as to float with the slightest wisp of air. Worsham said that the lab’s equipment for drying the spores, a machine the size of a refrigerator, was not in containment. “If someone had used that to dry down that preparation, I would have expected that area to be very, very contaminated, and we had non-immunized personnel in that area, and I would have expected some of them to become ill,” she said. In its statement of facts, the government lawyers also said that producing the volume of anthrax in the letters would have required 2.8 to 53 liters of the solution used to grow the spores or 463 to 1,250 Petri dishes. Colleagues of Ivins at the lab have asserted that he couldn’t have grown all that anthrax without their noticing it. The government’s own summary of the case against Ivins, released early last year when the Justice Department formally closed its investigation, noted that “drying anthrax is expressly forbidden by various treaties,” and “overt use of any of these methods, if noticed, would have raised considerable alarm and scrutiny.’’ Paul Kemp, Ivins’ lead defense attorney, said Monday that the department’s concession that the equipment wasn’t available “is at direct variance to the assertions of the government on July 29, 2008,” the day Ivins died, thus “invalidating one of the chief theories of their prosecution case.” Kemp said that government officials told him and a colleague, Tom DeGonia, that the FBI could “prove that Dr. Ivins manufactured the dried spores used in the anthrax attacks, and would prove this by the records of his presence in the hot suites in August and September. Anthrax is one of the deadliest biological weapons. Once inhaled, the tiny spores germinate inside the human body, producing rapidly multiplying, highly toxic bacteria that, if untreated, typically kill a person within days. The anthrax mailings came as a second shock to the nation just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. Beginning Sept. 18, 2001, the perpetrator sent at least five letters containing anthrax powder to three media outlets and to the offices of Sens. Leahy and Daschle. Two postal workers, a nurse and an elderly woman in Connecticut also died, some 32,000 congressional and postal employees took long-term antibiotic treatments and teams wearing moon suits spent months cleansing a Senate office building and large postal facility of the deadly spores.

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Mumbai Explosions Reportedly Hit Busy Markets

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Jul. 13 (News) - Three explosions rocked busy locations in India's financial capital Mumbai late Wednesday, killing at least 8 people and injuring 70 in the city that was the scene of a major terrorist attack nearly three years ago. The Press Trust of India and several news channel reported that India's Home Ministry had called the explosions a terror attack.

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TSA Airport Scanners Wouldn’t Catch an Implant Bomber

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Jul. 06 (Special Report) - A number of news outlets are reporting today on the bizarre-sounding story of terrorist groups considering how to implant explosive devices into humans to blow up a passenger jet. A U.S. security official confirmed the story for ProPublica, and the Transportation Security Administration released a statement that it had recently briefed domestic and foreign airlines. The agency said that passengers flying to the United States may notice additional security measures, such as more interaction from TSA officers, pat-downs and the use of “enhanced tools and technologies.”

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100% Scared: How the National Security Complex Grows on Terrorism Fears

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Tom Engelhardt - Jun. 12 (News Analysis) - Americans don't expect 100% safety from illness, car crashes, or even shark attacks. But our obsession with 100% safety from terrorism is fueling the military-industrial complex.

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Pakistan: Blasts kill 80 to avenge bin Laden death

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CTV - May. 13 (News) - Suicide bombers in Pakistan blew themselves up outside a military training facility Friday, killing 80 people in an attack designed to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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A Monster of Our Own Creation

Mon, 09 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Scheer - May. 09 (News Analysis) - 'He was our kind of guy until he wasn't, an ally during the Cold War until he no longer served our purposes. The problem with Osama bin Laden was not that he was a fanatical holy warrior; we liked his kind just fine as long as the infidels he targeted were not us but Russians and the secular Afghans in power in Kabul whom the Soviets backed.' Robert Scheer, Truthdig

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Soldier in Afghanistan reacts to historic news - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

armytimes.com - By Colin Kelly - May. 03 (News) - Another soldier, Spc. William Baxter, a parachute rigger with the 101st Sustainment Brigade, was more succinct with his thoughts. “OK, he’s dead, can we go home?” he asked.

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Discovery of Bin Laden Hideout Spotlights Concerns About Pakistan's Intelligence Service

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sebastian Rotella - May. 02 (News Analysis) - The killing of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani city dominated by the military has spotlighted a conundrum that Western counterterror agencies have grappled with for years: Is Pakistan's powerful intelligence service an ally, an enemy or a mix of both? This time the debate is likely to take place in public, not behind the closed doors of national security outposts in Washington. In fact, White House homeland security adviser John Brennan seemed to confront the issue head-on Monday when he said that the presence of the world's most wanted man in a fortress-like compound near the homes of retired generals and a military academy raises questions that the Pakistani government must answer. The Obama administration took the extraordinary step of keeping Sunday's commando raid secret from Islamabad. Although Obama cited "counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan" as a factor in the successful hunt for bin Laden, U.S. officials have not given details on the extent and nature of that Pakistani assistance. The ISI has been suspected of playing a double game in previous cases: the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, the mysterious escape from Pakistani custody in 2007 of an al-Qaida operative accused in the London transport bombings and a plot to bomb U.S.-bound commercial flights, charges of ISI involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attack and recent allegations by top military brass that the ISI supports militant networks fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

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The Mosaic Philosophy at Gitmo

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Apr. 30 (News Report) - Several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

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How to Arm a Dictator - Nick Turse | TomDispatch

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Apr. 28 (News) - All told, over the past five years, the U.S. has provided more than $300 million in aid to Yemen’s security forces, with the dollars escalating precipitously under the Obama administration. In 2008, under President George W. Bush, Yemen received $17.2 million in baseline military assistance (which does not include counterterrorism or humanitarian funding). In 2010, that number had risen to $72.3 million while, overall, Yemen received $155.3 million in U.S. aid that year, including a “$34.5 million special operations force counterterrorism enhancement package.” These funds have provided Yemen’s security forces with helicopters, Humvees, weapons, ammunition, radio systems, and night-vision goggles.

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