2009

Court to Hear New Reports on Pakistani Scientist’s Fitness for Trial
July 5, 2009
By Benjamin Weiser
But a government expert, Dr. Gregory B. Saathoff, a psychiatry professor at the University of Virginia, said because of Ms. Siddiqui’s desire to return to Pakistan and her interest in avoiding prosecution, she “has had a strong motivation to appear incompetent.” “She has most likely fabricated reported psychiatric symptoms,” he wrote.

Treasury seizes assets of extremist organization
July 3, 2009
Richard Lardner
"This is a continuation of something that had been working effectively in the previous administration," said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department official and a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

What Americans Need to Know About Missile Defense: We're Not There Yet
June 30, 2009
by Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D., James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., Peter Brookes and Baker Spring
In 33 minutes or less, life as we know it in America could end. That's how long it would take for an enemy ballistic missile launched from the other side of the world to hit the United States. If it carried and detonated a nuclear weapon high over the center of the country, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would literally fry the nation's electrical grid and all of the circuitry that powers our homes, businesses, hospitals, phones, cars, planes, traffic lights, ATMs, water supplies, and anything else not "hardened" against such attacks. The EMP Commission chairman has testified that, within just one year of such an attack, 70 percent to 90 percent of Americans would be dead from starvation and disease.

Iran election: Tehran backs Hizbollah operations around world
By Damien McElroy
June 26, 2009
"Hizbollah has stretched, facilitated by Iran, across the Middle East, Central Asia, Europe and Latin America," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at Sweden's National Defence University. "It grants Iran global power and Hizbollah has become more susceptible to Iran's efforts to project its influence."

Homeland spy satellites shelved: DHS
June 23, 2009
by Josh Meyer
Michael P. Downing, the LAPD's deputy chief for counter-terrorism and
criminal intelligence, participated in the recent discussions with
Homeland Security as the chiefs' association representative of police
intelligence commanders. He said using the satellites to collect
intelligence would have been extremely complicated, and rife with
privacy and civil liberties concerns.
"What we're saying is that we'd like you to hold off. We have all these
other issues that we need to get fixed," Downing said in an interview.
"It's not dead, but de-prioritized, and we support that.

Next-up in the terrorist-batter’s box
By James Carafano
Washington Examiner
June 22, 2009
The experts don’t all agree on what terrorist networks, after al
Qaeda, we should worry about most. But near the top of many experts’
lists are groups bent on spreading Islamist radicalization in U.S.
prisons.

Military strives to understand social media
by Todd Johnson
June 22, 2009
“We have to remember the government is a different participant than
other people in social media,” said James Carafano, a senior fellow at
the conservative Heritage Foundation who recently published Social
Networking and National Security: How to Harness Web 2.0 to Protect the
Country. “We also have to remember that there are downsides to the
technology just like anything else.”
Carafano says there is the issue of classified information being leaked
in a sort-of “social media experiment gone wrong” as well as concern
that all information on the social networking sites isn’t accurate.

Role of Religion in Iran Election
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
June 19, 2009
"Ms. ABDO: If you watch television you’d think that society is
sharply divided between secularists supporting Moussavi, religious
people supporting Ahmadinejad. The reality is much more complicated than
that. Those supporting Moussavi are also religious. It’s not they
don’t want clerics involved in politics, they don’t want clerics
involved in their lives, it’s just certain clerics.

Defiant Smugglers Ply Egypt Gaza Border
by Deborah Amos
Friday, June 19, 2009
Matthew Levitt, a security expert with the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, says the stepped-up Egyptian security presence is in
the government's interest.
"Egyptians have been doing much more than they had been, whether it's
rotating senior officials in and out of the area to reduce the
opportunity for bribery, shutting down a lot more tunnels, trying to do
things farther into Sinai," he says. "But this is something that is in
the Egyptian national interest. And I think they see it that way."When
it comes to Gaza, Egypt's national interest has been tested more by Iran
than by Israel, Levitt says.
In April, the Egyptian government announced it had rounded-up a weapons
smuggling cell organized by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which
receives support from Iran.
Cairo accused the arrested men of plotting to overthrow President Hosni
Mubarak in a conspiracy backed by Iran. Egypt has been aggressive in
challenging Iran's rising influence in the region. This is one factor in
Egypt's vigilance on the border, Levitt says, "as highlighted by the
Hezbollah cell that was rounded up [and] engaged in operations both
supporting and arming Hamas in the Gaza Strip and, according to the
Egyptians, maybe even plotting attacks in Egypt."

Iran's protests do not a revolution make
By Geneive Abdo
June 15, 2009
Ahmadinejad's reelection signals an end to an internal power struggle
that has been under way for 20 years.

The Battle for Qom's Hearts and Minds
By Geneive Abdo
June 2009
The center of gravity in Iran's political crisis is not in Tehran, but
miles away, in a dusty center of religious learning.

After Afghanistan, will we squander the victory?
June 15, 2009
By James Jay Carafano
It is not too soon, however, to be looking to the future beyond the
war’s end. Already there are signs that Washington, D.C., is
squandering it away.
After attending a regional security summit in Singapore, Defense
Secretary Robert Gates had to ground his own plane because of mechanical
difficulties. That incident may be a metaphor for what Gates is doing to
today’s military. The defense secretary is funneling resources to Iraq
and Afghanistan, but cutting back elsewhere to keep defense spending
down. In the long run, the readiness of the force will suffer for this
trade-off.

Recruiter shootings spark homegrown terror fears
By Lolita C. Baldor
Associated Press Writer
June 15, 2009
"One of the scariest things is that we don't have a profile for how
someone becomes radicalized," said counterterrorism expert Matthew
Levitt. "It's different for everybody."
"It can happen on the Internet. It can happen in prison. It can happen
in a mosque," said Levitt, who formerly worked with the FBI and Treasury
Department. "There are different ways it manifests itself and that
demonstrates how serious a problem it is."

3 foreign women dead in Yemen, al-Qaida suspected
By AHMED AL-HAJ Associated Press Writer
June 15, 2009
"I think that it would have to be outside sources" that carried out the
attack, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National
Defense College, noting that the killings, including reports that the
bodies were mutilated, bear the hallmarks of al-Qaida. "The killings "represent a nasty turning point in Yemen," he said.

Analyzing Obama's Speech to the Muslim World
June 14, 2009
Muslim Community Lobby: Letters and Comments
Geneive Abdo characterized Obama's approach as "evasive" and devoid of
any real policy prescriptions. And while he addressed buzzwords such as
colonialism and occupation, she argued Obama's approach was not nearly
expansive enough. She continued by noting how Obama's rhetorical
brilliance raised expectation so high that Iran and al-Qaeda had
preemptively issued statements responding to his speech. She continued
by critiquing Obama's use of extremism as a foil in his speech.

She argued that the debate was already well beyond this dichotomy and
that Obama should have used his speech to address the political,
economic and social reasons for extremism's regional constituency.She
also noted the originality of using the affluence and freedom of
America's Muslim community as an argument in the US's favor. She did not
think this argument would be particularly persuasive given the
divergence of circumstances among Muslims in the United States and the
Middle East.

On the War in Iraq, Abdo criticized the president for not apologizing
for the invasion and not offering concrete plans for the country. She
did admit, however, that he at least repudiated the Bush notion that
Iraq was a war of necessity and not one of choice. Abdo also believed
that Obama criticized the Palestinians far more than the Israelis in his
speech, but did note how the president's tough rhetoric revealed a
burgeoning rift between the US and Israel. In summation, she graded the
presentation of his remarks highly but felt the substance of the speech
was mediocre and that the conflict between the two sides was rooted in
policy and not a lack of respect.

Ahmadinejad Campaigns for Iran Election One Handout at a Time
By Ladane Nasseri and Henry Meyer
June 8, 2009
“The West identifies with the more educated part of the Iranian
population,” said Geneive Abdo, an Iran analyst at the Century
Foundation, a New York-based research group. “They overestimate its
influence, versus the more traditional, religious part of the electorate
that backs Ahmadinejad.”

Cyber Security “Facts”
By Jim Harper
June 9, 2009
In another comment — not taking umbrage at mine, but culturally similar to Jackson’s — Ron Marks, Senior Vice President for Government Relations at Oxford-Analytica, says, “Cyberterrorism is here to stay and will grow bigger.” The same can be said of the bogeyman, but the bogeyman isn’t real either.

What Scoop Jackson knew
By James Carafano
June 8, 2009
Washington Examiner
There may never be another Scoop. Once upon a time Washington had many
leaders who put national security before their politics. Henry
“Scoop” Jackson stood at the top of the class.

Osama bin Laden tape makes bid to undercut Obama’s speech
By Christi Parsons and Mark Silva
June 3, 2009
Chicago Tribune
“This guy (Obama) sends chills up their spine,” said Tom Sanderson, deputy director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “Obama is laying a groundwork for relations with Muslim countries. Here’s someone who really pulls the carpet out from under them.”

Homeland Gaming
by Jessica Herrera-Flanigan
June 3, 2009
For example, the Washington Post ran a story in late March entitled “Sober Games for First Responders”that detailed the efforts of the National Emergency Medical Services Preparedness Initiative at George Washington University to develop a video game that will allow emergency workers to hone their skills on the virtual scene of large-scale crises. The “Disaster Gaming” Initiative received a $4.8 million grant for the game, called Zero Hour: America’s Medic.