It’s becoming increasingly difficult to “profile” Islamic extremists in the United States.
Jihad an Equal Opportunity Employer
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FBI
The U.S. Military Just Plunged Philippine Politics into Crisis
American fingerprints are all over a botched commando raid in the southern Philippines that left dozens dead and shocked the country.
A Visit from the FBI
In October 2010, I took my car to my mechanic in Santa Clara for an oil change. As the mechanic was elevating the car on the hydraulic lift, I noticed that there was something like a piece of string or wire coming out from the back. Then, when the car was fully elevated, I noticed this black device under the back of the car. I asked the mechanic to pull it out, and he handed it to me. He was somewhat freaked out.
Looking at FBI Entrapment
On August 28, 2008, two childhood friends from Midland, Texas, Bradley Crowder and David McKay, traveled north to join thousands of protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC). In the company of six Austin activists, Crowder and McKay were ready for adventure, and prepared, in Crowder’s words, to protest to “change the world.” What began as a journey of hope, however, ended in sudden catastrophe.
Revisiting Intelligence Reform
As the Bush administration winds up nearly seven years of intelligence fiascos, a quiet revolution has been going on at the Pentagon, which controls more than 80% of America’s $60 billion intelligence budget. Since taking over from Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in winter 2006, Robert Gates has greatly scaled down the Pentagon’s footprint on national security policy and intelligence. Working closely with Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Michael McConnell, he has slowly begun to assert civilian control over the key spy agencies funded by the defense budget and halted the Pentagon’s efforts to create its own intelligence apparatus independent of the CIA. The recent intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in contradicting early administration assertions, is perhaps the most significant sign of this newly won independence.
Those are significant actions. Under Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had become the dominant force in U.S. intelligence, with vast new powers in human intelligence and counterterrorism, both at home and abroad. By 2005, it was deploying secret commando units on clandestine missions in countries as far afield as the Philippines and Ecuador, sometimes without consulting with the local U.S. ambassadors and CIA station chiefs. At some point, President George W. Bush and his national security team apparently decided that the genie had to be put in the bottle, and sent Gates – a former CIA director who had worked closely with Vice President Dick Cheney during the first Bush administration – to put the kibosh on Rumsfeld’s private intelligence army.