RUTHFULLY YOURS

Broward County, Florida, is on everyone’s lips in the United States. What was just another American community has been launched into the spotlight as the location of the latest mass-casualty school shooting. Yet, Broward County, which is just north of Miama and includes Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, has a sinister, and seemingly forgotten, relationship with Islam and terrorism.

A 2002 article in Florida’s The Ledger makes the case that Broward County is a hotbed for terrorists. Several terror plots have been discovered in the county, mosques are well attended, and then there’s the connection to the 9/11 hijackers:

Jose Padilla, accused of conspiring to explode a “dirty bomb” in the United States, worked at a suburban Taco Bell and discovered Islam here.

Two young Pakistani immigrants from nearby Hollywood allegedly hatched a plan to attack South Florida power plants and a National Guard Armory.

And several of the Sept. 11 hijackers roamed the area’s libraries, gyms and beachfront motels.

They all made their home — at least temporarily — in South Florida’s Broward County, leading some to wonder if this growing suburban and tourist area north of Miami has become a common destination for would-be terrorists.

The 16-year-old article went into detail about all of the cases which occurred in just the nine months leading up to the report, which included the 9/11 terror attack. Seven of the 19 men responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on that fateful day spent time in Broward County: “Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi went to a Hollywood bar the week before the attacks and played video golf.”

At the time, a 21-year-old computer tech, Safraz Jehaludi, was charged with threats to blow up the White House and a nearby power plant. Forty-year-old Adham Hassoun had also been arrested on an immigration violation and attended the same mosque in Fort Lauderdale as Padilla mentioned above.

The South Florida Muslim community, noted as Arabs on government census, showed a 70% increase over 10 years, bringing the population to 11,000 — and that was back in 2002. The report added:

Observers say the county’s growth and diversity have added a layer of anonymity for potential wrongdoers. Recent census figures show Broward County’s population grew nearly 30 percent during the past decade to more than 1.6 million.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Eleven Marines were affected by an unknown substance apparently released when an envelope was opened today at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall outside D.C.

The Marine Corps said that “an envelope was received around 3:30 p.m., on the Marine Corps side of the base.”

“Shortly after receiving the letter, 11 people started to feel ill and caused the evacuation of the building,” the statement said. “After the evaluation of 11 people, three were transported in stable condition for further medical evaluations.”

The Corps said Joint Base Police Department officials were working with local HAZMAT teams, and NCIS and the FBI were investigating. The building “was screened and cleared, and the letter was removed.”

ABC7 reported that the eight people who weren’t taken to a hospital for further evaluation reported symptoms such as itching and nasal irritation. The FBI took the envelope to Quantico for testing after field tests didn’t reveal any nefarious substances, CNN reported, adding that the text of the letter “contained derogatory, at times unintelligible and ranting language, and was addressed to a commanding officer at the base.” Investigators were probing whether the sender had any connection to the base.

A couple of years back, The White House issued a document “Strengthening the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce”that highlights a framework necessary to best recruit, train, and maintain a skilled Federal cybersecurity workforce.

Those elements included:

1) Expanding the Cybersecurity Workforce through Education and Training;

2) Recruiting the Nation’s Best Cyber Talent for Federal Service;

3) Retaining and Develop Highly Skilled Talent; and

4) Identifying Cybersecurity Workforce needs.

The document provided a good suggestions to improve the Federal cybersecurity workforce. There are a variety of additional ways to consider to better enable the precepts of the framework.

To expand the cybersecurity workforce, cultivation and training of a next generation of technicians and SMEs must be a priority. The cyber-threat risk environment is growing exponentially every day and there has not been enough resources dedicated to keeping up with governments cybersecurity requirements.

An investment in developing talent from economically depressed areas is a programmatic solution to consider. An investment in training those in economically depressed areas in an accelerated cybersecurity curriculum — combined with real-world experience through internships and fellowships — would yield high dividends. At the same time.it would bolster the nation’s pipeline for skilled digital workers.

Is there any agency in American law enforcement actually doing its job? Today in Wired:

Passports, like any physical ID, can be altered and forged. That’s partly why for the last 11 years the United States has put RFID chips in the back panel of its passports, creating so-called e-Passports. The chip stores your passport information — like name, date of birth, passport number, your photo, and even a biometric identifier — for quick, machine-readable border checks. And while e-Passports also store a cryptographic signature to prevent tampering or forgeries, it turns out that despite having over a decade to do so, US Customs and Border Protection hasn’t deployed the software needed to actually verify it.
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This means that since as far back as 2006, a skilled hacker could alter the data on an e-Passport chip — like the name, photo, or expiration date — without fear that signature verification would alert a border agent to the changes. That could theoretically be enough to slip into countries that allow all-electronic border checks, or even to get past a border patrol agent into the US.

In a “WTF?” letter, Senators Wyden and McCaskill report that the relevant federal staff “lacks the technical capabilities to verify e-passport chips.”

All in, national-security spending is damn near $1 trillion a year. The average annual federal compensation package is somewhere north of $120,000 per worker. And we can’t even properly manage passport control.

Any response by public authorities to do something in response to the killings in Parkland, Fla., must first come to grips with why established security measures failed on so many levels. Explain the failures by the FBI and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, so that the new solutions don’t fail, too.

On Jan. 5, someone familiar with Nikolas Cruz had the presence of mind to call the FBI’s Public Access Line to say she feared he might “get into a school and shoot the place up.” That tip wasn’t forwarded to the FBI’s office in Miami. Two other recent callers to the Broward police—which got 23 calls about Cruz’s behavior back to 2008—also warned he could become a school shooter.

Here are the official explanations.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “I have ordered the deputy attorney general to conduct an immediate review.” FBI Director Christopher Wray : “I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes.”

FBI Special Agent Robert Lasky: “We will conduct an in-depth review.” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel : “This isn’t science fiction. We aren’t allowed to arrest on what a person thinks about on pre-crimes.”

Florida already has a law, the Baker Act, permitting forced hospitalization for psychiatric examination. In 2016 mental-health workers were called to the high school to determine if Cruz should be hospitalized. They concluded he was stable. NBC reported that the Florida Department of Children and Families investigation of Cruz was “closed with no indicators to support the allegations of inadequate supervision or medical neglect.”

Finally, the armed sheriff’s deputy assigned to protect the high school failed to confront the shooter, instead staying outside the building.

Now come new solutions. Senator John Cornyn’s legislation would fix the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which has existed since 1998 but works poorly. Florida Governor Rick Scott wants to raise the legal age for purchasing a gun to 21. President Trump on Thursday tweeted his to-do list: comprehensive background checks with an emphasis on mental health, raising the gun-purchase age and banning bump stocks.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said the new Pentagon policy that will remove service members who have not been deployable for a year or more is about fairly sharing the burden within the forces.

The deploy-or-leave policy includes exceptions for pregnancy and wounded warriors. Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week that “on any given day, about 13 to 14 percent of the force is medically unable to deploy.”

En route to Washington on Saturday, Mattis told reporters that there is a “higher expectation of deployability by our forces” and the policy isn’t “to make change for change’s sake,” as he vowed when coming into the department.

“The Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness about a week ago came out, having defined the problem that initially was brought to his attention by the U.S. Army, where they had many nondeployables on their rolls. You may say, what’s this? People who’ve been injured and not returned to duty. People who have — and I’m not talking about combat injured now. That’s a separate category. But people who are, just for one reason or another, are not able to deploy with their units. It was a significant number, and the Army brought their concerns forward. The other services also highlighted the concerns,” he said. “They’ve come out with a policy that if you’re not deployable for a year or more, you’re going to have to go somewhere else.”

WASHINGTON – Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said too many young people do not qualify for military service due in part to obesity and criminal records, which is reflective of many “scary” problems in local communities that must be addressed.

Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H. W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, was asked why he thinks more African-Americans should join the military.

“I’m very, very thankful that they do, and they join the military for a variety of reasons: a combination of patriotism, looking for a change in their life experience at that point, travel or serving their country, just serving their country. And many of them go in because, frankly, it’s a steady wage every month,” Powell said during a discussion at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Avoice Heritage Celebration recognizing African-American veterans.

“More importantly, the benefits when you come out are very significant, and so it’s good. One of the problems we’re having, and this is scary, it’s not just the African-American community, it’s all of our American young people,” he added.

According to Powell, only about 25 percent of Americans 18 to 25 years old are able to meet the qualifications for military service. He said the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) “timed multi-aptitude test” is not that hard to pass.

“They can’t get through the basic exam that we give them. Now, c’mon, it’s not that hard of a test, but even high school kids who graduated high school can’t get through this exam. Secondly, criminal records; third, drug use; and fourth, obesity. And if you are very obese the army doesn’t want that medical problem, rightly. So we still get the number we need but it is pretty shocking that only 25 percent of our young people are eligible for service,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE

After Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, FBI special agent Robert Lasky, head of the bureau’s Miami division, said he “truly regrets” the pain caused by the FBI’s failure to act on a tip about the shooter.

The FBI said it had no way to trace the tip, then FBI boss Christopher Wray said the message was never passed on to the FBI’s Miami field office, as official protocol required. Relatives of the victims might have noted the passive verb construction. In typical style, Wray failed to name the person who never passed on the tip, and offered no explanation why that person might have done so.

Wray did say “we deeply regret the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy.” In response to that admission Florida governor Rick Scott called for Wray to resign. Across the country Americans could make a case that Wray and many others in the FBI deserved much sterner measures.

In 2013 Omar Mateen lost his job as security guard at Florida’s St. Lucie County courthouse. Mateen had made “inflammatory comments about women, Jews and the mass shooting at Ft. Hood.” The FBI twice questioned Mateen after he touted ties to terrorists, but FBI special agent Ronald Hopper told reporters “we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed.” On June 12, 2016, Mateen gunned down 49 people and wounded 58 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Mateen was born in the United States of Afghan parents but the Tsarnaev brothers, Termalan and Dzokhar, Muslims from the Caucuses region, entered the United States on tourist visas then claimed asylum. Russian intelligence warned the FBI the Tsarnaev brothers were dangerous but the FBI’s investigation found no links to terrorism. On April 15, 2013, the brothers planted bombs at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded at least 264.

In 2008, the FBI had picked off emails between U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan and Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. In these emails, Hasan was asking for religious sanction to kill American soldiers. The FBI failed to interview Hasan or even make a phone call to his superiors, and no government agency took any steps to stop him. On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood Texas, Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including private Francheska Velez, 21, who was pregnant, and wounded more than 30 others.

The Trump administration’s new National Vetting Center, housed within the Department of Homeland Security, could provide a needed boost to our defenses if it streamlines and coordinates the information collection and sharing processes between relevant immigration and national security agencies, rather than adding to the bureaucratic thicket.

While it is critical to get the mechanism for keeping harmful actors such as jihadists out of the U.S. right, equally if not more important is that we get right the vetting process itself. On this, the executive memorandum is silent.

What does the administration believe about vetting? The first iteration of President Trump’s terror entry executive order, inaccurately maligned as a “travel ban,” sheds light on his thinking.

The purpose of that executive order was to

…ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

The executive order echoed a statement President Trump made while on the stump in a pivotal August 2016 speech on fighting Islamic terrorism. Emphasizing the ideological nature of this struggle, then-candidate Trump stated:

In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.

In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.

Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country.

In that same speech, the president declared that one of his first acts if elected would be to establish a “Commission on Radical Islam,” the express purpose of which would be two-fold: (i) To “identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of Radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization;” and (ii) To “develop new protocols for local police officers, federal investigators, and immigration screeners.”

The lack of such a top-down analysis has plagued America since before 9/11. One wonders, how could our national security and foreign policy apparatus not study what President Obama himself termed the “one organizing principle” among the jihadist enemies facing us, of Islam? Moreover, how could U.S. government officials, notably including former FBI Director Robert Mueller, possibly purge the lexicon intrinsic to and trainers steeped in the theopolitical, Sharia-based threat doctrine motivating Islamic supremacists? You must understand your enemy’s animating ideology if you wish to defeat him. Conducting an honest study of Islamic supremacism, and the goals, tactics and strategies of its adherents would seem to be the essential first step to developing a strategy to comprehensively counter them.

When it comes to vetting to prevent Islamic supremacists from entering the homeland, third-party analyses based in such an understanding of the enemy – dishonest and determined though he may be — provide promising recommendations for keeping us safe.

The Trump National Security Strategy itself rightfully recognizes the importance of understanding Sharia supremacism in fighting jihad. CONTINUE AT SITE