Jim sent this in:

A special women’s unit within the banned radical group Muslim Brotherhood is operating in Egypt and possibly other Arab nations, according to a counterterrorism report obtained by the Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

The report states that the deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Ezzat, was arrested with other members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated group and that investigators uncovered evidence of a group of women who serve as “mules” to deliver messages and act as messengers for the terrorist group.

According to Middle East reports, the secret “sisterhood’ is being likened to a group of female terror group members that operated in the 1960s, especially in operations targeting Israel.

Sayyid Qutb, an early Brotherhood leader, taught that Muslim society had turned its back on Islam and had to return to its roots. He advocated violent revolution in order to overthrow secular governments and restore Islamic rule. He was captured, tried and executed by the Egyptian government in 1966.

While the group itself is outlawed on Egypt, security experts say that individual members of the ultra-secret Muslim Brotherhood may be among the candidates running for government office in the national elections later this year.

The women’s secret unit was created much in the same way that the Muslim Brotherhood was founded, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

While the radical Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, it is praised by many Egyptians and government officials wink at its continuing activism. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Brotherhood’s candidates, who can only stand as independents, won 88 seats (20% of the total) to form the largest opposition bloc, despite many violations of the electoral process, including the arrest of hundreds of Brotherhood members. Meanwhile, the legally approved opposition parties won only 14 seats. This revived the debate within the Egyptian political elite about whether the Brotherhood should remain banned.

The history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt following its founding in 1928 has been one of huge growth followed by successive government crackdowns.

Both royal and nationalist Egyptian governments suppressed the Brotherhood in 1948, 1954, 1965 after plots, or alleged plots, of assassination and overthrow were uncovered. Periodic suppressions have continued even after the Brotherhood officially renounced violence in the 1970s.

Today it is illegal but tolerated as Egypt’s most popular and powerful non-governmental organization, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

During the 2008 presidential race Hillary Clinton’s campaign warned that if a national security crisis arose with Barack Obama in the White House and the “red phone” alerting him rang at 3 a.m., he could not be trusted to adequately respond.

“Turns out Hillary Rodham Clinton was right all along,” declared Charles Hurt, Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the New York Post.

Hillary’s warning in a campaign ad suggested that an Obama White House would so downplay the threat posed by terrorism that “the government’s focus would shift away from the harsh and determined tactics used to protect the homeland,” Hurt wrote on Friday, adding, “Instead, Obama would turn his attention to becoming more popular in the world and stress negotiations over hardball tactics.”

That attitude has trickled down to all levels of the government responsible for national security, according to Hurt.

On Thursday, President Obama sought to calm Americans’ fears about the terror threat following the attempted bombing of a plane on Christmas Day. But “there wasn’t much to see in the White House other than bungling of previous bungling,” according to Hurt, as the administration rescheduled Obama’s address to the country several times.

At 8 a.m., the White House said the president would speak at 1 p.m. Then at 1 p.m., the announcement came that he would deliver his address at 3 p.m. At 3 p.m., the White House said Obama would speak at 4:30 p.m. He took the podium at 4:34 p.m.

Hurt cited Obama’s trip to Cairo last year to address the Muslim world, when he said it is “part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” and opined, “If you have time for such nonsense, then you are not spending enough time thinking about how to thwart this enemy.

“But it is not like we weren’t warned by Hillary Clinton.”

Another 2008 presidential candidate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, declared Friday morning that the Fort Hood shootings and the Christmas Day bombing incident show Obama and his advisers have been “fundamentally wrong” in their approach to the war on terror.

Giuliani, who was New York’s mayor when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” viewers that the president has tried to let “political correctness trump reality.”

Giuliani said the Obama administration came into power with the belief that President George W. Bush’s response to the 9/11 attacks was unnecessarily severe, and had alienated America’s potential allies abroad.

“They’d gone too far, Bush had overreacted, we make the war on terror worse if we emphasize it too much — this is what they truly believed,” Giuliani said. “But they were fundamentally wrong.”

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) calls for Obama totake a stronger stand against terrorism after Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for airline bomb plot.

National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg says that Obama has a visceral dislike for talking about terrorism.

In his nationally televised remarks following the horrendous killings at Fort Hood, President Obama never mentioned the “T” word — terrorism. The attack was an act “of violence.” No mention of terrorism.

In fact, the Fort Hood shooting is the first terror attack on American soil since 9/11. But Obama, reluctant to take the rap for inadequate protections against such attacks, is doing everything he can to make it look like an adult version of the Columbine school shootings.

We are treated to stories about the killer’s dread of being sent back to Afghanistan and his deformed personality.

But, the fact is that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan jumped on a table, yelled “Allah hu akbar” and began the shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 30 more.

Ilana Freedman, CEO and senior analyst for the Gerard Group International, which provides intelligence analysis for business and homeland security, describes Hasan as a “lone wolf terrorist” who acted without apparent coordination with any other person or organization.

But that does not make him any less of a terrorist.

The dividing line, of course, between a terrorist and a psychopathic killer is political motivation. His statements right before opening fire would indicate that Hasan was motivated by fanaticism and a commitment to Islamic fascism, even though President Obama bends over backwards to avoid saying so.

Obama’s refusal to call the attack terrorism, and to heed the warning signs about the porous nature of our security system that allowed it to happen on a military base, recalls President Clinton’s deliberate decision to downplay the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

He did not visit the site of the attack and treated it as a crime, promising to find those guilty and punish them, rather than to attack the international groups that funded and enabled them.

There may be no groups behind Maj. Hasan’s attack, but the fact that he was an officer in the Army, with full access to a military base and its arsenal of weapons, while holding the views he did, is the first indication of a laxity in security under President Obama.

This attack did not take place in a shopping mall or a school, where security procedures are, understandably, relaxed. It happened on the highest security place of all — a military base. That the military failed to spot the possibility of an attack and had no measures in place to prevent it must be laid at the feet of the commander in chief of that military: President Barack Obama.

Many commentators have warned that the diminution of security and the weakening of our anti-terrorist protections would leave us vulnerable to be hit again. Now it has happened. And the president is doing everything he can to blur the distinction between murder and terrorism.

It was his failure to understand the difference between an act of war and a crime that undermined President Clinton’s administration’s anti-terror efforts and led directly to 9/11. It would appear that President Obama is going down the same road of denial and minimization of political harm.

There may be casualties at Fort Hood, but Obama is determined that his popularity will not be among them.

Jim sent this in:

Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are claiming that the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence Division acted without the FBI’s knowledge and may have caused a failure in the surveillance of a terrorism suspect and compromised a bomb plot investigation.

According to a criminal complaint, at a sensitive stage of the investigation, by questioning an imam about the suspect, the NYPD acted without informing their FBI counterparts.

At least one of the police detectives being singled out in the FBI’s complaint is assigned to the NYPD Intelligence Division and not the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The Intel Division is responsible for organized crime, terrorism and other special projects and is not connected to the FBI-run JTTF.

The FBI complaint suggests the local cops may have tipped off Najibullah Zazi , a 24-year-old Denver airport shuttle driver, by towing, and then searching, a rental car he was using while in New York City. The police search succeeded in uncovering a laptop computer containing bomb making instructions on its hard drive.

The FBI contends this tipped off the suspect because during a telephone phone conversation with 

Ahmad Wais Afzali, Zazi stated the car’s removal caused him to believe he was being kept under surveillance. 

Members of the JTTF and officials at One Police Plaza in Manhattan said they could not comment on the alleged friction between FBI agents and NYPD detectives and the department’s spokesman, Paul Browne, told reporters simply that ”the NYPD and the FBI worked closely and successfully in this case and in scores of others.” He declined further comment as did Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

“While I don’t know the specific details of these allegations by the FBI against the NYPD cops, I do know from experience that the feds have a habit of blaming others when they fail while taking credit when others succeed in an investigation,” claims former NYPD Det. Mike Schwartz.

“I get worried when I hear stories like this one. It tells me that there are problems with the investigation and [FBI and NYPD] investigators are pointing fingers at one another,” Schwartz added.

Zazi, his father and Afzali were arrested over the weekend on charges they lied to the FBI but weren’t 

immediately charged with terrorism. According to affidavits filed in support of three criminal complaints, the FBI is investigating several individuals in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere, relating to a plot to detonate improvised explosive devices within the United States.

Records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection reveal that, on August 28, 2008, Najibullah Zazi flew to Peshawar, Pakistan from Newark International Airport in New Jersey via Geneva, Switzerland and Doha, Qatar. CBP records further reflect that Najibullah Zazi traveled from Peshawar to John F. Kennedy International Airport, in New York City, on or about January 15, 2009.

According to the affidavits, on or about September 9, 2009, FBI agents observed Najibullah Zazi depart his residence in Colorado in a rented car. He drove to New York City, arriving the following day, and spent the night at a residence in Flushing, Queens (“the Queens Residence.”)

On September 10, 2009, New York City Police Department detectives met with defendant Afzali, whom the NYPD had utilized as a source in the past. According to the affidavits, the detectives questioned Afzali about Najibullah Zazi and others and showed him photographs of Najibullah Zazi and others. Afzali allegedly told the detectives he recognized Najibullah Zazi and several of the men in the photographs.

According to affidavits, on September 11, 2009, defendant Mohammed Zazi placed a call to Afzali which lasted approximately 20 minutes. That same day, the FBI intercepted a phone conversation between Mohammed Zazi and his son, Najibullah Zazi. An affidavit alleges that, during the conversation, Mohammed Zazi told his son that he had spoken to Afzali who had informed him about being visited by law enforcement and shown photographs. Mohammed Zazi told his son that Afzali would call him and he advised his son to speak with Afzali “before anything else,” according to the affidavits.

In the midst of this phone call, Najibullah Zazi allegedly received a call from Afzali, who discussed his meeting with law enforcement the day before. According to a draft summary of the transcription, Afzali allegedly stated: “I was exposed to something yesterday from law enforcement. And they came to ask me about your characters.” Afzali also allegedly asked Najibullah Zazi about his last trip to Pakistan and added, “Listen, our phone call is being monitored.”

According to the affidavits, in another intercepted phone conversation on Sept. 11, 2009, Najibullah Zazi told Afzali that his car had been stolen and that he feared he was being “watched.” Afzali allegedly asked if there was any “evidence in his car,” and Najibullah Zazi said no.

That same day, FBI agents conducted a legally authorized search of Najibullah Zazi’s rental car, which was parked near the Queens residence. During the search, agents found a laptop computer containing  images of nine-pages of handwritten notes. According to the affidavits, the notes contain formulations and instructions regarding the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, explosives detonators and components of a fusing system. On September 12, 2009, Najibullah Zazi flew from La Guardia Airport in New York to Denver.

On September 16, 2009, FBI agents interviewed Najibullah Zazi in Denver. According to an affidavit, 

when he was asked about and shown handwritten notes regarding explosives found on his laptop computer, Najibullah Zazi falsely asserted that he had never seen the document before and stated he had not written the notes.

On September 17 and 18, Najibullah Zazi was further interviewed by the FBI in Denver. According to affidavits, Najibullah Zazi admitted in the interviews that during his 2008 trip to Pakistan, he attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al-Qaeda training facility in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, of Pakistan.

The affidavits allege that, on September 17, Afzali was interviewed by authorities in New York where he falsely asserted in a written statement that he did not tell Najibullah Zazi or Mohammed Zazi that authorities had approached him seeking information about Najibullah Zazi. According to the affidavits, Afzali also falsely asserted that he never told Najibullah Zazi that they were being monitored on the phone and that he never asked Najibullah Zazi about evidence in his car.

The affidavits further allege that, on September 16, Mohammed Zazi was interviewed by FBI agents in Denver where he was asked whether anyone had called him and told him about his son’s activities and any trouble regarding his son.

According to the affidavits, Mohammed Zazi falsely stated that he had never called anyone in New York other than his son and he had never received a call from anyone in New York. He allegedly revised his statement to say he had received one call from an individual who informed him that his son had missed his flight. According to the affidavits, Mohammed Zazi was later asked if he knew anyone by the name of Afzali and he said he did not.

The prosecutions are being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Eastern District of New York and the District of Colorado, with assistance from the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Pentagon officials will begin sharing access to classified, terrorism-related information stored on the secure Defense Department network with state and local agencies.

Officials will make the information available using a Department of Homeland Security computer network that ties together that department’s intelligence centers nationwide.

Dubbed “fusion centers,” these intelligence-gathering offices reside in most states and larger cities and share information with the federal government, as well as with other agencies in their area. As of this summer, there were 72 such centers.

The two Cabinet departments announced the joint information-sharing venture yesterday.

Only select staff with federal security clearances at the centers will have access to the information, said Air Force Lt. Col. René White, a Defense Department spokeswoman. Homeland Security is responsible for training and ensuring no one accesses the data without the proper clearances, she said.

Also, those cleared will have access only to pre-approved data within the network, she said. Most of the information available will be helpful for analyzing the actions of specific terrorists or terrorist organizations. It also will help local agencies understand terrorist organization hierarchies and establish patterns in their activities, White explained.

The information to be shared does not include any data on any specific U.S. citizen, White said.

The Defense Department now shares similar access to its secure network with the FBI, the CIA and the National Guard. Defense leaders heralded the move as another step in the two departments working together to protect the United States.

“With this action, [the Defense Department] continues its work in supporting states and localities who are leading our efforts to secure the nation from domestic terrorism attacks,” Paul N. Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and Americas’ security affairs, said in a release.

The first fusion centers were put in place in 2006 as a way for federal, state and local agencies to share information on terrorist threats and criminal activity.

Pentagon officials will begin sharing access to classified, terrorism-related information stored on the secure Defense Department network with state and local agencies.

Officials will make the information available using a Department of Homeland Security computer network that ties together that department’s intelligence centers nationwide.

Dubbed “fusion centers,” these intelligence-gathering offices reside in most states and larger cities and share information with the federal government, as well as with other agencies in their area. As of this summer, there were 72 such centers.

The two Cabinet departments announced the joint information-sharing venture yesterday.

Only select staff with federal security clearances at the centers will have access to the information, said Air Force Lt. Col. René White, a Defense Department spokeswoman. Homeland Security is responsible for training and ensuring no one accesses the data without the proper clearances, she said.

Also, those cleared will have access only to pre-approved data within the network, she said. Most of the information available will be helpful for analyzing the actions of specific terrorists or terrorist organizations. It also will help local agencies understand terrorist organization hierarchies and establish patterns in their activities, White explained.

The information to be shared does not include any data on any specific U.S. citizen, White said.

The Defense Department now shares similar access to its secure network with the FBI, the CIA and the National Guard. Defense leaders heralded the move as another step in the two departments working together to protect the United States.

“With this action, [the Defense Department] continues its work in supporting states and localities who are leading our efforts to secure the nation from domestic terrorism attacks,” Paul N. Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and Americas’ security affairs, said in a release.

The first fusion centers were put in place in 2006 as a way for federal, state and local agencies to share information on terrorist threats and criminal activity.