By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Sometimes friends aren’t always real friends. The investigative website ProPublica reports that the feds in Chicago on Monday indicted four suspected masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Two of those folks have been linked to Pakistan’s security forces, who supposed to be helping out the U.S. in the fight…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Because Congress has blocked Gitmo detainees from being prosecuted in civilian court, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. said Monday that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will stand trial in a military court in Gitmo. The announcement marked a sharp reversal of his announcement in November 2009…
Erroll G. Southers is the Associate Director of the DHS National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) and adjunct professor of homeland security and public policy at the University of Southern California. He is also the Managing Director of Counter-Terrorism and Infrastructure Protection for the San Jose-based international security consulting firm…
By Zack Cohen ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — It’s being satirically dubbed the“war on toner,” a phrase that reflects experts’ skepticism about the U.S. response to al Qaeda’s failed bid to blow up U.S. bound planes with explosive-packed ink cartridges. In other words, the response is hardly sufficient, some experts insist. “In typical TSA fashion [the measures]…
By William Booth and Nick Miroff Washington Post Foreign Service SAN DIEGO — When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into their cellphones – then listened, watched and waited. Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com More frustrating news about guns, drugs and Mexico. The Washington Post reports that efforts to crack down on the flow of guns from the U.S. to the Mexican drug cartels “have been frustrated by bureaucratic infighting, a lack of training and the delayed delivery of a computer program to Mexico, according…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com In the Mexican-U.S. drug war, money still corrupts on both sides of the border. The latest: A U.S. border inspector was charged Friday with taking more than $50,000 to let drug-filled vehicles from Mexico pass through his lane, the Associated Press reported. Authorities charged that Oscar Osbaldo Ortiz Martinez,30, a Customs…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Despite their efforts, U.S. and Mexican authorities are seizing no more than one percent of the billions of dollars in drug proceeds being smuggled south into Mexico, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. The cash is being smuggled in spare tires, engine transmissions and truckloads of baby diapers, the…
