thedrifter
01-26-05, 06:30 AM
01-24-2005
Terror Alert Confirms Border Security Vulnerability
By Michael S. Woodson
The anonymous caller told California authorities and federal agents that he smuggled Chinese nationals over the U.S.-Mexican border who were supposedly en route to Boston to blowup a radiological device.
According to a Jan. 20 news report in the *San Diego Union-Tribune, the good Samaritan coyote pre-arranged a drop site at which federal officials would find the photos we now see circulated on the internet, ostensibly of suspects Xiujin Chen, Zengrong Lin, Guozhi Lin, and Wen Quin Zheng.
This breaking story reminds me of one warning from a DefenseWatch colleague last year. “Failing to protect our borders and enforce our immigration laws is a part of our ever-present terrorism problem,” Senior Editor Lt. Col. Matthew Dodd wrote in an article (“The Illegal Immigration Threat,” Jan. 14, 2004).
Does this latest threat have teeth? There are doubts. For example, some federal sources have wondered why terrorists would tell a smuggler their true intentions. To obtain information on which he may gain advantage over his clients, did the coyote condition services on knowing that information, later getting scared by the implications? Or, is it all a hoax?
Federal authorities told The Boston Herald last week that the anonymous caller had also given them the name of a white male known to the Drug Enforcement Agency, stoking suspicions that the caller was trying to sick authorities on a competing drug smuggling operation. Though honor is lacking among thieves, could that include terrorists too?
It is not unprecedented for drug smugglers to cross-purpose with terrorists and arms dealers. The Mujahadeen of Afghanistan are known to deal in Opium dollars, the KLA of Kosovo ran heroin in Europe, and Peru’s communist Shining Path is certainly not clean. Last year, it was widely reported that the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) threatened to attack President Bush during his visit with Columbian President Uribe en route home from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Chile.
Such threats followed President Bush’s October extension of Executive Order 12978 defining Columbian narcotics traffickers an emerging national security threat. To underscore the chilly nature of the President’s Latin American trip, Bush’s Secret Service detail was visibly harassed by Chilean national police during functions in Chile. The inability to cooperate on security arrangements led to a forced cancellation of a high society dinner. The Secret Service engaged in a highly commendable stubbornness that night.
The current terrorism scare that mobilized security forces from San Diego to Boston could also be a feint, or a psychological warfare ploy. If the anonymous call was a deliberate diversion designed to imprint Chinese faces on our manhunt mindset it may have been an attempt to create unnecessary stresses on our resources.
Still, the Chinese connection is interesting, considering that Iraqi insurgents just recently took eight Chinese captives who were reportedly heading to Jordan from Najaf after working on an energy project there, according to Asian Times Online, then releasing them Sunday morning. There are no apparent reports of investigations into possible connections between the abduction of the eight Chinese nationals in Iraq and the reported search for two Iraqis among the Chinese nationals said to be targeting Boston. Hopefully, that possible lead is being covered.
The Iraq-China connection follows a Taliban-China connection in 2001 that The Washington Post reported as an offer of economic aid by the communist government in exchange for help with squelching Muslim separatist attacks in China’s Xinjiang region. One commentator close to the region, however, suggested other Chinese government motives, including the delivery of an unexploded U.S. cruise missile left over from the Clinton administration’s missile attack on Afghan terror bases.
An al Qaeda-Chinese-national connection could also exist in Muslim separatist trainees from Xinjiang from the Uighur population, though this too remains speculation. Another question is whether there are elements involved from the Nepalese Maoists, who have been designated by the U.S. as a terror group known to mix with South Asian extremists.
If this current threat to Boston is legitimate, perhaps experts on the differences between Han and non-Han (non-Chinese) peoples could tell us the origin of the people in the photos. It would shock me if Chinese PLA intelligence had not infiltrated many South Asian extremist groups who had pledged support for bin Laden since 2001.
Despite the uncertainties, the color-coded alert system here at home implies that Americans can help protect themselves. Also, the FBI should be commended on swiftly publicizing the right amount of information to local law enforcement and the public. However, while publicizing the threat, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department have also downplayed it. Like past Homeland Security alerts, the mixture of alarm and nonchalance is paradoxical.
Would agencies be forced into as much paradoxical catch-up work and man-hunting if they had already installed a well-trained counter-intelligence force within the border service, for example, after heeding the plain-worded instincts of veterans on this website who have been trained to establish perimeter security in their sleep? It is less likely.
Maybe the warning will register in civilian terminology. When you have a leak buried under some frozen, debris filled, rocky earth laced with gas and power lines, call in experienced plumbers. When they tell you what ought to be done, listen and heed.
Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie
Terror Alert Confirms Border Security Vulnerability
By Michael S. Woodson
The anonymous caller told California authorities and federal agents that he smuggled Chinese nationals over the U.S.-Mexican border who were supposedly en route to Boston to blowup a radiological device.
According to a Jan. 20 news report in the *San Diego Union-Tribune, the good Samaritan coyote pre-arranged a drop site at which federal officials would find the photos we now see circulated on the internet, ostensibly of suspects Xiujin Chen, Zengrong Lin, Guozhi Lin, and Wen Quin Zheng.
This breaking story reminds me of one warning from a DefenseWatch colleague last year. “Failing to protect our borders and enforce our immigration laws is a part of our ever-present terrorism problem,” Senior Editor Lt. Col. Matthew Dodd wrote in an article (“The Illegal Immigration Threat,” Jan. 14, 2004).
Does this latest threat have teeth? There are doubts. For example, some federal sources have wondered why terrorists would tell a smuggler their true intentions. To obtain information on which he may gain advantage over his clients, did the coyote condition services on knowing that information, later getting scared by the implications? Or, is it all a hoax?
Federal authorities told The Boston Herald last week that the anonymous caller had also given them the name of a white male known to the Drug Enforcement Agency, stoking suspicions that the caller was trying to sick authorities on a competing drug smuggling operation. Though honor is lacking among thieves, could that include terrorists too?
It is not unprecedented for drug smugglers to cross-purpose with terrorists and arms dealers. The Mujahadeen of Afghanistan are known to deal in Opium dollars, the KLA of Kosovo ran heroin in Europe, and Peru’s communist Shining Path is certainly not clean. Last year, it was widely reported that the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) threatened to attack President Bush during his visit with Columbian President Uribe en route home from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Chile.
Such threats followed President Bush’s October extension of Executive Order 12978 defining Columbian narcotics traffickers an emerging national security threat. To underscore the chilly nature of the President’s Latin American trip, Bush’s Secret Service detail was visibly harassed by Chilean national police during functions in Chile. The inability to cooperate on security arrangements led to a forced cancellation of a high society dinner. The Secret Service engaged in a highly commendable stubbornness that night.
The current terrorism scare that mobilized security forces from San Diego to Boston could also be a feint, or a psychological warfare ploy. If the anonymous call was a deliberate diversion designed to imprint Chinese faces on our manhunt mindset it may have been an attempt to create unnecessary stresses on our resources.
Still, the Chinese connection is interesting, considering that Iraqi insurgents just recently took eight Chinese captives who were reportedly heading to Jordan from Najaf after working on an energy project there, according to Asian Times Online, then releasing them Sunday morning. There are no apparent reports of investigations into possible connections between the abduction of the eight Chinese nationals in Iraq and the reported search for two Iraqis among the Chinese nationals said to be targeting Boston. Hopefully, that possible lead is being covered.
The Iraq-China connection follows a Taliban-China connection in 2001 that The Washington Post reported as an offer of economic aid by the communist government in exchange for help with squelching Muslim separatist attacks in China’s Xinjiang region. One commentator close to the region, however, suggested other Chinese government motives, including the delivery of an unexploded U.S. cruise missile left over from the Clinton administration’s missile attack on Afghan terror bases.
An al Qaeda-Chinese-national connection could also exist in Muslim separatist trainees from Xinjiang from the Uighur population, though this too remains speculation. Another question is whether there are elements involved from the Nepalese Maoists, who have been designated by the U.S. as a terror group known to mix with South Asian extremists.
If this current threat to Boston is legitimate, perhaps experts on the differences between Han and non-Han (non-Chinese) peoples could tell us the origin of the people in the photos. It would shock me if Chinese PLA intelligence had not infiltrated many South Asian extremist groups who had pledged support for bin Laden since 2001.
Despite the uncertainties, the color-coded alert system here at home implies that Americans can help protect themselves. Also, the FBI should be commended on swiftly publicizing the right amount of information to local law enforcement and the public. However, while publicizing the threat, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department have also downplayed it. Like past Homeland Security alerts, the mixture of alarm and nonchalance is paradoxical.
Would agencies be forced into as much paradoxical catch-up work and man-hunting if they had already installed a well-trained counter-intelligence force within the border service, for example, after heeding the plain-worded instincts of veterans on this website who have been trained to establish perimeter security in their sleep? It is less likely.
Maybe the warning will register in civilian terminology. When you have a leak buried under some frozen, debris filled, rocky earth laced with gas and power lines, call in experienced plumbers. When they tell you what ought to be done, listen and heed.
Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie