By Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writer WASHINGTON — On Sept. 11, 2001, the core of al-Qaeda was concentrated in a single city: Karachi, Pakistan. At a hospital, the accused mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole was recovering from a tonsillectomy. Nearby, the alleged organizer of the 2002 bombing in Bali, Indonesia, was…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — It’s serious prison time for Farooque Ahmed, 35, of Ashburn, Va., who pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb the Washington area subway system. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce in Alexandria, Va. sentenced Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, to 23 years in prison. Ahmed thought he…
By Jeff Stein Spy Talk WASHINGTON — David Frum rightly skewered Republicans for saying the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and guns into the country while proposing a $600 million haircut for Customs and Border Control in the 2012 budget. But you have to wonder whether today’s…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com He may not be Mel Gibson, but terrorist suspect Adis Medunjanin might have done something sort of Mel Gibson-like after he was arrested last year in connection with an alleged al-Qaeda-sanctioned plot to blow up New York’s subway system. The New York Daily News reports that FBI agent Aaron Spivack testified…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Certainly it’s not what we want to hear. Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security told a Congressional committee Wednesday that the terrorism threat “facing our country has evolved significantly in the last ten years – and continues to evolve – so that, in some ways, the…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com FBI officials are warning major Wall Street banks that al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen may be plotting to attack their institutions or top executives, NBCNewYork reported. The TV station reported that intelligence officials stressed that the threats were general in nature and there was “no indication of a targeted assassination plot”…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A Guyanese national was sentenced Thursday in Brooklyn federal court to 15 years in prison for his role in an international plot to blow up fuel lines and fuel tanks under JFK Airport in Queens, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced. Authorities charged that that Abdel Nur provided material support to the…
WASHINGTON – Earlier this month, on the 5th floor of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, in the shadow the nation’s Capitol, John G. Perren, special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Branch, talked to ticklethewire.com editor Allan Lengel about lessons learned since Sept. 11, about the challenges the Internet has posed for terrorism investigations and…
