Surveillance Video: Alleged Copper Thief Takes Fall

Copper thievery seems to be a crime wave in America. A Miami police official told local media that "copper theft has become a major national security and public safety issue."

The Coalition Against Copper Theft explains:

Since commodity prices for copper have more than doubled in the past two years, the theft of copper from telephone lines, electrical substations, highway infrastructure and residential homes has grown exponentially. A conservative estimate by the Department of Energy indicates copper wire theft costs this nation almost $1 billion per year. More importantly is the human cost with a clear and definitive link between stealing copper and illegal drug use, primarily methamphetamines.

In this Miami school surveillance video, a burglar falls about 25 feet in his attempt to cop some coppper. The suspect, who crawled away from the scene, is still at large.

Homeland Security Takes Back Seat To Politics

The third time was the charm. After two nominees had to drop out, the Transportation Security Administration has a new administrator. Former FBI Deputy Director John Pistole (interesting name for a someone in law enforcement, no?) was recently confirmed to head the agency. Unions have been pushing to get their hands on TSA employees regardless of how that would affect airport security, but Pistole has not yet taken an official position on collective bargaining for TSA officers.

In the meantime, according to FNC, many other key jobs in homeland security remain unfilled:

Vacancies in the United States' intelligence leadership, including the director of national intelligence and his chief deputies, are raising alarms over a potential "train wreck" of vulnerability, intelligence sources and others on Capitol Hill tell Fox News.

The goal of the national director is to maximize assets across the intelligence community. But the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee says that is not happening because the position, the nation’s top intelligence official, is now subordinate to the White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

“The other DNIs have always been very, very professional. They've never been political. Under this administration, John Brennan has politicized intelligence. That's the danger here,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan said, adding that Brennan is not subject to congressional oversight as a presidential appointee.

The job opened up when previous Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair was forced out last month after a series of apparent intelligence failures raised questions about the country's preparedness for detecting and stopping new terror plots.

If Hoekstra's allegations are valid, then the Justice Department isn't the only agency that has been politicized in opposition to the public interest.

Along these lines, a proponent of sanctuary city policies recently got a key job in the administration:

The widow of a Houston police officer killed by an illegal immigrant was "shocked" to learn that the city's former police chief has landed a top immigration job with the Obama administration, her lawyer told FoxNews.com on [June 25].

That's because Joslyn Johnson, whose husband, Rodney Johnson, was killed in 2006, is suing former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt for failing to enforce federal immigration laws. She claims her husband would be alive today if the city had bothered to check up on the gunman's immigration status.

Now that Hurtt is taking a job to oversee partnerships between federal and local officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Johnson -- and other critics -- say they're concerned the official who resisted immigration enforcement in Houston will now be in charge of promoting it.

U.S. Interrogators Have No Access to Captured Taliban Leader

The Obama administration's so-called "High Value Interrogation" team is supposedly, finally in business, but Newsweek claims that it inexplicably hasn't been deployed.

Last summer, the Obama administration announced that, as a replacement for the Bush administration's secret CIA terrorist detention and interrogation program, it would create a SWAT-style team of interrogation experts to travel the world squeezing terrorist suspects for vital information. Administration officials say that the interrogation unit, known as the HIG (for High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group) is now operational. But for reasons that are unclear, the administration has not deployed HIG personnel to question Afghan Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arguably the most important terrorist suspect captured since the detention of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in spring of 2003...

Earlier this year, Obama administration intelligence officials came under heavy criticism from Capitol Hill Republicans for not deploying the HIG to question Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian terrorist suspect who tried to blow up a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underpants. At the time, it was unclear, based on signals coming out of the administration, whether the HIG was sufficiently well organized to participate in the underpants-bombing suspect's questioning, which ended up being conducted by the FBI. (The HIG is supposed to be an interagency unit composed of top intelligence and interrogation experts from across the government.)

President Signs Patriot Act Extension

"Date Night" is an odd time to sign a one-year extension of the Patriot Act, isn't it? Unless you were hoping no one--such as your media sycophants--would notice, perhaps.

Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama's signature Saturday....

Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:

-Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.
-Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.
-Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure.

Sen. Graham Blasts Administration's Policy Of Trying Terror Detainees in Civilian Court

While he can be wobbly on certain issues, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did an excellent job on FNC today assailing the administration's ill-conceived counter-terrorism policies when it comes to treating enemy combatants as common criminals:

While Graham conceded that Gitmo is the best run prison in the world, he said he is nonetheless willing to support the administration's effort to shut down the prison provided the White House adopts a "national security-centric system."

FBI Discloses Counter-Terrorism Handbook

Under its own procedural manual, which some civil libertarians find "alarming," was the FBI nonetheless proactive enough in investigating the the Ft. Hood shooter?

The F.B.I.’s interpretation of those [Bush-era intelligence gathering] rules was recently made public when it released, in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide; The disclosure of the manual has opened the widest window yet onto how agents have been given greater power in the post-Sept. 11 era.

In seeking the revised rules, the bureau said it needed greater flexibility to hunt for would-be terrorists inside the United States. But the manual’s details have alarmed privacy advocates.

One section lays out a low threshold to start investigating a person or group as a potential security threat. Another allows agents to use ethnicity or religion as a factor — as long as it is not the only one — when selecting subjects for scrutiny.

...The manual authorizes agents to open an “assessment” to “proactively” seek information about whether people or organizations are involved in national security threats.

Agents may begin such assessments against a target without a particular factual justification. The basis for such an inquiry “cannot be arbitrary or groundless speculation,” the manual says, but the standard is “difficult to define.”

...If agents turn up something specific to suggest wrongdoing, they can begin a “preliminary” or “full” investigation and use additional techniques, like wiretapping.

CIA Surfin' The Web For Open Source Intelligence

An "exclusive" from Wired.com's national security blog:

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

Administration Noncommittal on Patriot Act Privacy Changes

The White House has been less than transparent about changing the Patriot Act, according to GovernmentExecutive.com:

A senior Justice Department official on Wednesday [September 23] refused to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee what changes the Obama administration might support to the USA PATRIOT Act, even though Democrats on the panel said additional safeguards must be built into the law.

"I think what has happened is that Congress has seized the initiative here," David Kris, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's National Security Division, told the panel during a hearing

Kris was repeatedly asked his opinion about two recently introduced bills that would reauthorize and modify three provisions of the PATRIOT Act that expire at the end of this year

The Washington Examiner has the story of what Patriot Act critics on Capitol Hill have in mind:

You might not have heard, but some key parts of the nation's most important anti-terrorism law are set to expire in December. When the Patriot Act was originally passed in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress put time limits on three of its most far-reaching provisions: "Roving wiretaps," which allow investigators to keep up with suspects who use dozens of cell phones to avoid being traced; "business records" authority, which lets investigators ask a special national-security court for access to records of a suspect's dealings with private businesses; and the "lone wolf" provision, which allows investigators to track individual terror suspects even if they are not a member of a terrorist group, like al Qaeda. Congress renewed those provisions in 2005 and now must give them another four-year renewal, or they will disappear.

Some Democratic lawmakers have long wanted to weaken the act, and now, with big majorities in the House and Senate, they have their chance. But the renewal debate just happens to come at a time when recently uncovered domestic terror plots -- most notably the Denver shuttle bus driver and his colleagues caught with bomb-making materials and a list of specific targets in New York City -- are highlighting the very threats the act was designed to counter. Republicans are fighting to keep the law in its current form.

In the Wall Street Journal, Former AG Mukasey says don't mess with the Patriot Act:

One would think that the arrests last week of Najibullah Zazi, charged with plotting to bomb New York City subways—and of two others charged with planning to blow up buildings in Dallas, Texas, and Springfield, Ill.—would generate support for the intelligence-gathering tools that protect this country from Muslim fanatics. In Mr. Zazi's case, the government has already confirmed the value of these tools: It has filed a notice of its intent to use information gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was specifically written to help combat terrorists and spies.

Nevertheless, there is a rear-guard action in Congress to make it more difficult to gather, use and protect intelligence—the only weapon that can prevent an attack rather than simply punish one after the fact. The USA Patriot Act, enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, is a case in point....Rather than simply renew these vital provisions, which expire at the end of this year, some congressional Democrats want to impose requirements that would diminish their effectiveness, or add burdens to existing authorizations that would retard rather than advance our ability to gather intelligence.

Meanwhile, Newsweek says that the threat from homegrown terrorists is increasing:

The threat from Al Qaeda to the U.S. homeland is arguably more acute now than at any time since September 11. This is not because Al Qaeda has become a stronger foe. (On the contrary, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has actually been weakened in the last two years by intensified U.S. missile strikes against its leadership in FATA and a sharp backlash among Muslims worldwide against its violent excesses.) It is because a growing number of Americans have gone to FATA, the global hub of Al Qaeda's terrorist operations, to join the jihad in Afghanistan—something which was very rare until recently—and Al Qaeda, opportunistically, has recruited them for attacks on their country.

Gitmo Deadline Slips, State Secrets Policy Advances

Other than as a publicity stunt, is there any logical or security based reason why administration wants to shut down the Gitmo prison?

The Washington Post, one of the administration's many house organs, concedes that the January 2010 deadline might have been overly ambitious:

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

Not to worry: As always in these matters, the Bush administration at fault--although, amazingly enough, only partially this time:

Senior administration officials said the central roadblock during those early months was the condition of the detainee files, which had been left in disarray by the previous administration.

The administration kind of likes its predecessor's "state secrets" policy, however, although it seems that it wants to have it both ways. From the Washington Times:

Liberals and conservatives alike harshly criticized a new Obama administration policy designed to make it harder for the government to hamper lawsuits against it by invoking a "state secret" claim, and even the support from privacy-rights groups was tepid and cautious.

From one side, civil-liberties advocate and best-selling author Glenn Greenwald called the new policy merely cosmetic and a continuation of "the very Bush/Cheney policies" that President Obama criticized. From the other, Sept. 11 families activist Debra Burlingame said even those changes would encourage jihadist lawsuits and chill counterterrorism operations

Such privacy-advocacy groups as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the new rules looked good, but said the Obama administration still needed to deliver concrete results - by dropping its support for several Bush-era invocations of the privilege in court and by pushing through Congress a permanent law on the matter.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration appeared to vindicate such longstanding liberal criticisms by invoking the state-secret privilege to urge U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to toss a 2004 warrantless-wiretapping lawsuit filed by the Ashland, Ore., branch of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.

Justice Department lawyer Anthony Coppolino made the same arguments at Wednesday's hearing in San Francisco that Bush administration lawyers had: "Foreign intelligence surveillance is so vital to national security that it is important for the government to maintain secrecy," he argued.

Does this sound like the type of word games that Edwin Howard Armstrong warned about?

The new policy, announced Wednesday, gives the attorney general the sole authority to invoke a "state secret" claim, which allows the government to exclude evidence it says will compromise national security. The new rules, which take effect Oct. 1, also set a higher standard to make that claim, saying that revealing the information would need to pose "the risk of significant harm to national security"; the previous standard, set by the Supreme Court, allowed a claim when there was a risk of "reasonable possibility of harm" to national security. 

Cheney on National Security

Agree or disagree, the former VP provides a compelling interview on FNC about national security. On the impending investigation of CIA interrogators, Cheney said: "I just think it's an outrageous precedent to set, to have this kind of, I think, intensely partisan, politicized look-back at the prior administration."