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April 2008 |
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Your bi-monthly update on Homeland Security
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Sol, Henry and all SSI staff,
Congratulations on the inaugural edition of the "Counter Terrorist" Your efforts to educate, train, and protect America in Homeland Security is greatly appreciated. Besides these efforts in the US, the quality of your trips to Israel is unsurpassed. As a Fire Chief in a large resort destination area of Southern California the information learned from this trip has helped us learn how the experts prevent, protect and respond to terrorist events. Good luck and I look forward to reading the magazine
Roger Smith, Fire Chief
City of Anaheim
We would like to thank all our advertizers that have made possible the inaugural issue of the Counter Terrorist to be launched at GOVSEC in Washington DC and the UASI National Conference both from the 21st to the 24th of April, 2008.
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Join the 12th mission June 6th, through the 14th, 2008 |
Liberty City Terror Retrial Going to the Jury 
By Jay Weaver
Having already sparred over the same evidence during the first trial last year, the prosecution and defense each made sharper arguments in the retrial of a Miami group accused of plotting with al Qaeda to overthrow the United States.
But when the 12 federal jurors begin deliberating the terror case on Monday, they face the same struggle that beset the previous panel in December.
That jury deadlocked on the terror-conspiracy charges against the six defendants and acquitted a seventh after nine days of deliberations.
Read on...
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Islam and Free Speech  By Peter Hoekstra
The Netherlands is bracing for a new round of violence at home and against its embassies in the Middle East. The storm would be caused by "Fitna," a short film that is scheduled to be released this week. The film, which reportedly includes images of a Quran being burned, was produced by Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament and leader of the Freedom Party. Mr. Wilders has called for banning the Quran -- which he has compared to Hitler's "Mein Kampf" -- from the Netherlands.
After concern about the film led Mr. Wilders's Internet service provider to take down his Web site, Mr. Wilders issued a statement this week that he will personally distribute DVDs "On the Dam" if he has to. That may not be necessary, as the Czech National Party has reportedly agreed to host the video on its Web site.
Read on...
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The Homeland Security Bulletin Of Open Source Threats HS BOOST
SSI is taking orders from Intelligence agencies around the country for its brand-new workshop, Jihad 2.0 from Virtual to Physical. The workshop, created by Gadi Aviran, the founder of Terrogence, the content providers for SSI's new monthly Intelligence Subscription service HS Boost has already been ordered in Florida, Boston, Denver, Anaheim and many more cities. The workshop increases awareness of the entire Terror threat life cycle without undue focus on any one aspect or modus operandi. This gives Homeland Security an advantage in understanding phenomena like Suicide Terror which far too often are treated as independant threats.
The last Intelligence bulletin drew attention to the threat to US railways, and indeed there was an incident this month in Virginia. Anyone that is a bona fide member of an intelligence service that would like to receive a copy of the pilot should contact Henry Morgenstern 305.401.6906 (cell).
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Terrorism Money is Still Flowing
By Josh Meyer
The United States vowed to smother funding, but a lack of cooperation -- global and domestic -- along with other problems have hobbled the effort.
WASHINGTON -- The U.S.-led effort to choke off financing for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is foundering because setbacks at home and abroad have undermined the Bush administration's highly touted counter-terrorism weapon, according to current and former officials and independent experts.
In some cases, extremist groups have blunted financial anti-terrorism tools by finding new ways to raise, transfer and spend their money. In other cases, the administration has stumbled over legal difficulties and interagency fighting, officials and experts say.
But the most serious problems are fractures and mistrust within the coalition of nations that the United States admits it needs to target financiers of terrorism and to stanch the flow of funding from wealthy donors to extremist causes.
Read on... |
 
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Al Qaeda Recruiting "Western" Fighters: CIA Boss  By Alister Bull
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda is training fighters that "look western" and could easily cross U.S. borders without attracting attention, CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Sunday.
The militant Islamist group has turned Pakistan's remote tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan into a safe haven, and is using it to plot further attacks against the United States, Hayden said.
"They are bringing operatives into that region for training -- operatives that wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport outside Washington) with you when you were coming back from overseas," Hayden said during an interview on NBC's television show Meet the Press.
Read on...
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Special One-Day: UASI National Conference, Charlotte, April 24th
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Defense Department Will Try Out UB's Germ-Killing BioBlower  By Jay Rey
A device developed by two University at Buffalo researchers to kill deadly airborne spores, viruses and bacteria is getting a second look from the Defense Department.
A prototype of UB's "BioBlower" was among the technologies tested by the Defense Department during a four-week period last year, and the results confirmed the researchers' original findings: The machine killed 99.9 percent of whatever biological agents were thrown at it, according to coinventor James F. Garvey, a professor in UB's chemistry department.
Now, the BioBlower will go to the next level.
The Defense Department has asked Garvey and co-inventor John A. Lordi, a research professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department, to retrofit the BioBlower to one of the military's temporary, inflatable shelters used as hospital units and command sites on the battlefield.
Read on...
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DHS "Target Analysts" to be Trained in Watchlisting By Jacob Goodwin
The folks who run the National Targeting Center in Reston, VA, want to provide online training for 70 of the NTC's rookie "target analysts" to teach them how to use the federal government's integrated terrorist watchlist to target suspicious inbound and outbound passengers.
Customs and Border Protection, which is seeking this new online training, runs the National Targeting Center, which is a 24/7 intelligence operation established in November 2001. "Its purpose is to provide proactive targeting aimed to prevent acts of terror, to seize, deter and disrupt terrorists, implements of terror, and to destroy the terror infrastructure," explained a CBP solicitation posted on March 26.
The online course will be called Fundamental Watch Listing and will supply the target analysts with a "thorough understanding of the methodology for preventing attacks against the homeland through the watchlisting process," said the CBP notice.
Read on...
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Tracking a Marine Lost at Home  By Damien Cave
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. - A week after Eric W. Hall disappeared into the woods of Southwest Florida, his mother stood in a parking lot overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. She had asked for volunteers. Would they come?
Becky Hall's son had experienced a flashback, fleeing a relative's home after sensing that Iraqi insurgents had surrounded him. He was 24, a former Marine corporal from Indiana who had been medically discharged after a bomb ripped through his leg. Here, among the retirees and strip malls, he was a stranger.
And yet his absence spurred a community to action. More than 50 people stepped forward that first day in February. Others came later, young and old, contributing four-wheelers, pickup trucks, boats, horses, search-and-rescue dogs, and even a small plane.
Read on...
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Responders Test Coordination Skills  By Ben Bain
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies converged in southern Virginia last week to demonstrate and test the interoperability of the communications systems that will need to work together for the agency's disaster response plans to succeed.
FEMA has expanded its repertoire of scripted response plans, from 44 in 2006 to more than 240 now. It has also increased the number of agencies it coordinates with in creating scripted scenarios for such exercises, from four to 31, said Glenn Cannon, assistant administrator of FEMA's Disaster Operations Directorate.
The exercise, hosted by the Northern Command's Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) at Fort Monroe, Va., is an example of one of several ways that FEMA and its coordinating agencies have sought to improve their performance. Other measures include a national communications plan and the National Response Framework. "We don't want to wait until we are in the middle of an event to call our friends at DOD and say, You know, now we need some help," Cannon said.
Read on...
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Salaries for Jobs Requiring Top Secret Security Clearances on the Rise, Survey Says By Rafael Enrique Valero
Washington-area federal employees and contractors with Top Secret security clearances make more money on average than their colleagues in other states, according to a recent nationwide study.
In the state category, the average salary for those working in Washington with a Top Secret security clearance or higher hit $80,380 during this past year, up from $78,813 between 2006 and 2007, reported the latest annual Security Clearance Jobs Salary Survey from ClearanceJob.com, an Internet-based job board for professionals with U.S. government security clearances.
Virginia ranked second with an average salary of $78,043 in the 2008 poll, up from $76,090 in the previous year's survey. In Virginia's Crystal City, an area in Arlington that is home to many government agencies and contractors, salaries jumped to $90,714 from $73,710 in 2007, while Herndon, Va., reported the single highest paid salary at $94,118 in the D.C. metro area.
Read on...
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Sincerely, Security Solutions International | | |
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For further information:
Security Solutions International, Kendall Tamiami Executive Airport,
14300 S.W. 129th Street, Suite 204, Miami, Fl. 33186
866-573-3999 Office, 866-573-2090 Fax
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