New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to "JihadJane," her Internet alias

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to “JihadJane,” her Internet alias, was unique in many ways, but a common thread ties the alleged Islamic militant to other recent cases of homegrown terrorism: the Internet.

From charismatic clerics who spout hate online, to thousands of extremist websites, chat rooms and social networking pages that raise money and spread radical propaganda, the Internet has become a crucial front in the ever-shifting war on terrorism.”LaRose showed that you can become a terrorist in the comfort of your own bedroom,” said Bruce Hoffman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University. “You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.”

“The new militancy is driven by the Web,” agreed Fawaz A. Gerges, a terrorism expert at the London School of Economics. “The terror training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being replaced by virtual camps on the Web.”

From their side, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are scrambling to monitor the Internet and penetrate radical websites to track suspects, set up sting operations or unravel plots before they are carried out.

The FBI arrested LaRose in October after she had spent months using e-mail, YouTube, MySpace and electronic message boards to recruit radicals in Europe and South Asia to “wage violent jihad,” according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.That put the strawberry-haired Pennsylvania resident in league with many of the 12 domestic terrorism cases involving Muslims that the FBI disclosed last year, the most in any year since 2001. The Internet was cited as a recruiting or radicalizing tool in nearly every case.

“Basically, Al Qaeda isn’t coming to them,” Gerges said. “They are using the Web to go to Al Qaeda.”

In December, for example, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of seeking to join anti-American militants in Afghanistan.A Taliban recruiter made contact with the group after one of the five, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, posted comments on YouTube praising videos of attacks on U.S. troops, officials said. To avoid detection, they communicated by leaving draft e-mail messages at a shared Yahoo e-mail address.

Hosam Smadi, a Jordanian, was arrested in September and accused of trying to use a weapon of mass destruction after he allegedly tried to blow up a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas. The FBI began surveillance of Smadi after seeing his anti-American postings on an extremist website.And Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, two middle-class kids barely out of high school near Atlanta, secretly took up violent jihad after meeting at a mosque.

“They started spending hours online — chatting with each other, watching terrorist recruitment videos, and meeting like-minded extremists,” the FBI said in a statement after the pair were convicted of terrorism charges in December.

Prosecutors alleged that the pair traveled to Washington and made more than 60 short surveillance videos of the Capitol, the Pentagon and other sensitive facilities, and e-mailed them to an Al Qaeda webmaster and propagandist.

U.S. authorities also closely monitor several fiery Internet imans who use English to preach jihad and, in some cases, to help funnel recruits to Al Qaeda and other radical causes.The best known is Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born imam who is believed to be living in Yemen. U.S. officials say more than 10% of visitors to his website are in the U.S.

Among those who traded e-mails with Awlaki were Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with shooting and killing 13 people in November at Ft. Hood, Texas, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, part of the Muslim American Society, noted that many extremist websites featured fiery images, loud music and fast-moving videos of violence and death.”They use video games and hip-hop to bring young people in, sometimes in very benign ways,” he said. “Then they make this transition by showing all the horrific things” and by then, some would-be recruits are hooked.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said his group had struggled to compete with the instant attention that grisly videos of beheadings, roadside bombs or masked men with weapons draw on the Internet.”They get the backdrop of the Afghani mountains or the battlefields of Somalia,” he said. “We’re speaking from conference centers and quiet halls. Somehow, we have to figure out a way to make our message more newsworthy. We’ve issued YouTube videos, and it barely gets a couple of hundred hits.”

Scanners force trade-off between privacy, security

the security gate at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO  As Ronak Ray hunted for his flight gate, he prepared for the prospect of a security guard peering through his clothes with a full body scanner. But Ray doesn’t mind: what he gives up in privacy he gets back in security.”I think it’s necessary,” said Ray, a 23-year-old graduate student who was at San Francisco International Airport to fly to India. “Our lives are far more important than how we’re being searched.”Despite controversy surrounding the scans, Ray’s position was typical of several travelers interviewed at various airports Wednesday by The Associated Press.Airports in five other U.S. cities are also using full body scanners at specific checkpoints instead of metal detectors. In addition, the scanners are used at 13 other airports for random checks and so-called secondary screenings of passengers who set off detectors.

But many more air travelers may have to get used to the idea soon. The Transportation Security Administration has ordered 150 more full body scanners to be installed in airports throughout the country in early 2010, agency spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said.Dutch security officials have said they believe such scanners could have detected the explosive materials Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria is accused of trying to ignite aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day.Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has 15 full body scanners, but none were used to scan Abdulmutallab when he boarded. In Europe and the U.S., privacy concerns over the scanners’ ability to see through clothing have kept them from widespread use.

The technology was first used about two years ago to make it easier for airport security to do body searches without making physical contact with passengers.The idea of an electronic strip search did not bother Judy Yeager, 62, of Sarasota, Fla., as she prepared to depart Las Vegas. She stood in the full-body scanner Wednesday afternoon and held her arms up as a security official guided her through the gray closet-sized booth.”If it’s going to protect a whole airplane of people, who gives a flying you-know-what if they see my boob whatever,” Yeager said. “That’s the way I feel, honest to God.”George Hyde, of Birmingham, Ala., who was flying out of Salt Lake City with his wife, Patsy, on Wednesday after visiting their children and grandchildren in Park City, Utah.”I’d rather be safe than be embarrassed,” Hyde said. Neither he nor his wife had been through a body scanner before.”We’re very modest people but we’d be willing to go through that for security.”

Trevino said the TSA has worked with privacy advocates and the scanners’ manufacturers to develop software that blurs the faces and genital areas of passengers being scanned. In all cases, passengers are not required to be scanned by the machine but can opt for a full body pat-down instead.At Salt Lake City International Airport, fewer than 1 percent of passengers subjected to the scanner chose the pat-down since the machine was installed in March, said Dwane Baird, a TSA spokesman in Salt Lake City.On Tuesday, some 1,900 people went through the scanner and just three chose not to, he said.Critics of the scanners said the option to opt out was not enough.”The question is should they be used indiscriminately on little children and grandmothers,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock of California. McClintock co-sponsored a bill approved by the House 310-118 in June prohibiting the use of full body scanners for primary screenings. The bill is pending in the Senate.

He said the devices raised serious concerns regarding constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.”There’s no practical distinction between a full body scan and being pulled into a side room and being ordered to strip your clothing.”To further protect passenger privacy, security officers looking at the images are in a different part of the airport and are not allowed to take any recording devices into the room with them, Trevino said. The images captured by the scanners cannot be stored, transmitted or printed in any way.But the TSA still has some public relations work ahead of it, judging by the reactions of passengers in Albuquerque, N.M., who were worried about what would happen to their images once they were scanned.”Are they going to be recorded or do they just scan them and that’s the end of them? How are these TSA people going to be using them? That’s a real concern for me,” said Courtney Best-Trujillo of Santa Fe, N.M., who was flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The six airports where full body scanners are being used for what TSA calls “primary screenings” are: Albuquerque, N.M.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Miami, Fla.; San Francisco; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Tulsa, Okla.The remainder of the machines are being used for secondary screenings in Atlanta, Ga.; Baltimore/Washington; Denver, Colo.; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Indianapolis, Ind.; Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.; Los Angeles; Phoenix, Ariz.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Ronald Reagan Washington National; and Detroit, Mich.

Though most passengers interviewed by The Associated Press felt security trumped other concerns, Bruna Martina, 48, a physician from the coast of Venezuela, said the scanners still made her feel uncomfortable.”I think there has to be another way to control people, or to scan them, but not like this,” she said as she headed back home after a vacation in Miami with her husband and two sons. She also does not think the scanners will thwart another attack.”They’ll find another way,” Martina said. “There is always somebody cleverer than the rest.”(Ap)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano concedes airline security system failed

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

WASHINGTON Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight from Amsterdam to Detroit.The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two areas of aviation security – how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened – as critics questioned how the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.”Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”The White House press office, traveling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said early Monday that the president would make a statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the morning. White House spokesman Bill Burton did not elaborate.Billions of dollars have been spent on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when commercial airliners were hijacked and used as weapons. Much of that money has gone toward training and equipment that some security experts say could have detected the explosive device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of hiding on his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.On Sunday, Napolitano said, “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.

The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano’s initial assessment.Airport security “failed in every respect,” Rep. Peter King of New York said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not reassuring when the secretary of Homeland Security says the system worked.”Investigators are piecing together Abdulmutallab’s brazen attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Dec. 25. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding his potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive material.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, says Abdulmutallab’s ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana. Demuren said Monday that Abdulmutallab bought the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam on Dec. 16.

Demuren declined to comment about Abdulmutallab’s travels in the days before he boarded his Dec. 24 flight from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam, saying FBI agents and Nigerian officials view the information as “sensitive.” He says Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carryon bag.Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but there was not enough information about his activity that would place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

However, British officials placed Abdulmutallab’s name on a U.K. watch list after he was refused a student visa in May.Home Secretary Alan Johnson added that police and security services are looking at whether Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Britain.

Abdulmutallab received a degree in engineering and business finance from University College London last year and later applied to re-enter Britain to study at another institution. Johnson said Monday he was refused entry because officials suspected the school was not genuine and they then put his name on the list.

Johnson says that people on the list can transit through the U.K. but cannot enter the country.Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views. In a statement released Monday morning, Abdulmutallab’s family in Nigeria said that after his “disappearance and stoppage of communications while schooling abroad,” his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for “their assistance to find and return him home.”

The family says: “It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day.”

The statement did not offer any specifics on where Abdulmutallab had been.

Abdulmutallab’s success in smuggling and partially igniting the material on Friday’s flight prompted the Obama administration to promise a sweeping review of aviation security, even as the Homeland Security secretary defended the current system.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.

Both lines of defense were breached in an improbable series of events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its safe landing in Detroit. Law enforcement officials believed the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.

Security experts said airport “puffer” machines that blow air on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on search using a swab. Most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives.

Abdulmutallab was treated for burns and was released Sunday to a prison 50 miles outside of Detroit.

Stiffer boarding measures have met passengers at gates since Friday and authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays.

Adding to the airborne jitters, authorities detained a man, also from Nigeria, who locked himself in the bathroom on Sunday’s Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land in Detroit. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. Despite the government’s decision after the attempted Friday attack to mobilize more air marshals, none was on the Sunday flight from Amsterdam.

Airliner plot raises fears about al-Qaida in Yemen "terror"

Detroit Metropolitan Airport

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A Nigerian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a U.S. plane originated with al-Qaida’s network inside Yemen deepened concerns that instability in the Middle Eastern country is providing the terror group with a base to train and recruit militants for operations against the West and the U.S.Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been charged with trying to destroy a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas day in a botched attempt to detonate explosives. The 23-year-old claimed to have received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, a U.S. law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing.If confirmed, it would be the second known case recently by the relatively new group, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, of exporting terrorism out of Yemen – a country with a weak central government, many lawless areas and plentiful supplies of weapons. But Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, has long been an al-Qaida stomping ground.In August, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, in a suicide bombing in an attack that bore similarities to the airliner plot. The explosive device Abdulmutallab used was attached to his body, just below his torso. The Saudi attacker is believed to have attached the explosives to his groin or inserted them inside his body.

According to U.S. court documents, a preliminary analysis of the device used by Abdulmutallab showed it contained PETN, a high explosive also known as pentaerythritol. The same material is believed to have been used in the August attack in Saudi Arabia by Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, who had traveled to Yemen to connect with the al-Qaida franchise there. PETN was also what convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid used when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001.

The botched attack on the U.S. plane came a day after Yemeni forces, with the help of U.S. intelligence, launched the second of two major air and ground assaults on major al-Qaida hideouts in Yemen. At least 64 militants were killed in the two operations.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement, dated from last week and posted online Sunday, that the first airstrike was conducted by American jets. The group urged followers to attack U.S. military bases, embassies and naval forces in the region.The mass shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas Army post on Nov. 5 added to the concerns about al-Qaida threats from Yemen. U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people, had exchanged dozens of e-mails with radical U.S. cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was hiding in Yemen. Last week’s attack on al-Qaida hideouts targeted a meeting of Yemeni and foreign al-Qaida operatives, believed to include al-Awlaki.

A video posted online four days before the bombing attempt featured an al-Qaida operative in Yemen threatening the United States and saying “we are carrying a bomb.” Though it was not immediately clear whether the speaker was anticipating Friday’s bombing attempt, it has attracted scrutiny because of reports that the bombing plot may have originated in Yemen.

Yemen’s weak central government, whose authority does not extend far outside the capital San’a, is battling two rebellions – a secessionist movement in the south and a war with Shiite rebels in the north – as well as al-Qaida militants. Al-Qaida’s presence is particularly worrying because the lawlessness of the country allows it to roam freely.

Some analysts say increased activity by al-Qaida in Yemen suggests the group has strengthened and taken root in a country whose proximity to the world’s top oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and vital maritime routes make it strategically more important than Afghanistan.Anwar Eshki, the head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies based in Jiddah, said al-Qaida in Yemen “is stronger than it was a year ago and is turning Yemen into its base for operations against the West.” Eshki’s center closely follows al-Qaida in Yemen.

“Yemen is al-Qaida’s last resort,” Eshki said. “There’s no doubt that al-Qaida’s presence in Yemen is more dangerous than its presence in Afghanistan.”Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator for the New York-based NEFA Foundation, which researches Islamic militants, suggested rivalry among al-Qaida’s branches may be a factor behind the focus on the U.S. He said al-Qaida central in Afghanistan and Pakistan is still the main source of attempts to attack the United States.

“There’s now a competition in the world of al-Qaida between various al-Qaida factions, with each trying to prove themselves and prove their worth,” he said.

“The ultimate achievement for these folks is being able to replicate something that previously only al-Qaida central could achieve,” he added. “If you can be sophisticated enough to hit a target in the continental United States, that’s a tremendous achievement for these folks.”Yemen has not confirmed Abdulmutallab’s claims that he was aided by al-Qaida operatives in the country and officials told The Associated Press investigations are ongoing. Significantly, the government has not denied his claims.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s government appears to be mounting a serious and aggressive campaign against al-Qaida after years of treading carefully with the militants. The intensified battle coincides with increased Yemeni-U.S. cooperation.Last week’s attack targeted a meeting of Yemeni and foreign al-Qaida operatives believed to include the top leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Naser Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi, and his deputy Said al-Shihri. There were reports, later denied by family and friends, that al-Awlaki, the radical cleric linked to the Fort Hood shooter, was killed in the bombings.

Shihri was one of 11 former Guantanamo detainees that Saudi Arabia said went through a rehabilitation program but later joined al-Qaida. He emerged as a leader of Yemen’s branch of al-Qaida after being released from the Saudi program last year.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr al-Qirbi discussed Yemen’s campaign against al-Qaida with Arab diplomats on Sunday, but it was not clear whether Abdulmutallab’s case came up.In a statement, al-Qirbi said his country had long planned the operations against al-Qaida elements and the decision to execute them was expedited because al-Qaida has increasingly threatened the country’s stability.

“Al-Qaida elements went far by carrying out attacks against security officers, and threatened the country’s stability and economic interests which made the decision impossible to postpone,” he said.The United States and Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s powerful northern neighbor, have expressed concern over al-Qaida’s growing presence in Yemen. The Pentagon has spent about $70 million this year on assisting Yemen against the militants as U.S. officials pressed that country to take tougher action.Yemen, at the tip of the Arabian peninsula, straddles a strategic maritime crossroads at the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the access point to the Suez Canal. Across the Gulf is Somalia, an even more tumultuous nation where the U.S. has said al-Qaida militants have been increasing their activity.

The hard-to-control border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia means private money from the rich kingdom can easily be smuggled to al-Qaida operatives in Yemen. Yemen’s proximity to the Arab world and the Horn of Africa makes it easier for the group to recruit young Muslims, an effort fed by rampant poverty.Yemen was the scene of one of al-Qaida’s most dramatic pre-9/11 attacks, the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden coast that killed 17 American sailors.

But the difference now is that rather than just carrying out attacks in Yemen, the new generation of al-Qaida militants appears to be trying to establish a long-term presence here, uniting Yemenis returning from fighting in Iraq and other areas and Saudis fleeing the kingdom’s crackdown on al-Qaida. A year ago, the terror network’s Yemeni and Saudi branches merged into Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, another factor that may have strengthened the group.