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Terrorist Screening Center

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:17 +0000

Timothy J. Healy – Director, Terrorist Screening Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation: Statement Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs March 10, 2010 Good morning Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) and its role in the interagency watchlisting process. The attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253 on December 25, 2009, highlights the ever-present terrorist threat to our homeland. Over the past seven years, the TSC has played a vital role in the fight against terrorism by integrating terrorist information from the law enforcement and intelligence communities into a single database known as the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), which populates the various terrorist screening systems used by the government. Following the Christmas Day attempted attack, intense scrutiny has been placed on the requirements to nominate individuals to the watchlist and particularly to the no-fly and selectee lists, which are subsets of the TSDB.

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Terrorist Screening Center

Official: Former Army intel officer to lead TSA

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Harding’s intelligence background is significant because the administration has stepped up its counterterrorism efforts since the attempted airplane bombing on Christmas Day

Al Qaeda’s Safe Havens

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:09:20 +0000

On February 25, the Washington Institute held an event on Al Qaeda’s safehavens — a topic of growing concern in Washington since the failed Christmas day attack revealed how the group has been exploiting the undergoverned territory in Yemen to plot attacks against the US. Tom Krajeski, the former US Ambassador to Yemen, covered the factors that have enabled AQAP to operate in that country, but was optimistic that with increased US-Yemeni cooperation, we would succeed in dramatically weakening the group. Seth Jones, a political scientist at RAND, spoke about the al Qaeda/Taliban presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan and how these governments are responding, and Andre Le Sage, a professor at the National Defense University, discussed the state of al Qaeda and al-Shabab in Somalia. Here is a rapporteur’s summary of the event : Al Qaeda’s affiliates and safehavens is an area of increased focus for the Washington Institute. We have recently published a series of articles on this subject, including: a piece by Gregory Johnsen of Princeton University on AQAP; a piece by Stephen Tankel of Carnegie on Laskhar e -Taiba, and a two part piece by Andre Le Sage on al Qaeda/al Shabab in Somalia (click here and here ).

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Al Qaeda’s Safe Havens

Christmas day crotch bomber tied to Israel, FBI

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:00:00 +0000

The Christmas Day “terrorist” is the latest in a series of staged incidents meant to make The Clash of Civilizations appear plausible and “the war on terrorism” rational.

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Christmas day crotch bomber tied to Israel, FBI

START without Santa

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:59:26 +0000

The new US-Russian nuclear arms control deal is already ten days late, but there are hopes of getting it signed before Christmas The Americans and Russians have set the end of this week as the goal for signing Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev’s new deal to limit their countries’ deployed nuclear arsenal, so it can be done while the two leaders are both in Copenhagen for the climate change summit. The accord is already late. The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expired on December 5, and this is supposed to be its successor, but issues of verification and telemetry have been the sticking point at the Geneva talks. Diplomats were insisting over the weekend that these were details rather than show-stoppers. The cuts in arsenals involved are modest – from 2200 each to a range of 1500-1675. The big question then is whether the negotiators carry on meeting after the signing, with their sights sets on a more ambitious treaty in 2012. Meanwhile, some news from the Washington trenches in the battle over the new US Nuclear Posture Review, expected out in February. President Obama is looking for a radical rethink of the role of nuclear weapons in American defence doctrine. The Pentagon is generally more cautious, though it is not monolithic. At the very least, I was told, there will be much more unequivocal negative security assurances (ie we will never nuke you) offers to states without nuclear arms.

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START without Santa

F L A S H C L U B » christmas

Terrorist Screening Center

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