APNewsBreak: US says bin Laden knew of Europe plot (AP)

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER and KIMBERLY DOZIER, Associated Press Kirsten Grieshaber And Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press – Wed May 25, 5:03 pm ET

BERLIN – The United States has told Germany that evidence pulled from Osama bin Laden's hideout shows the terror chief was linked to a plot to attack targets in Europe last year, a senior German official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Two U.S. officials also told the AP that bin Laden had advised Europe-based militants to attack in unspecified mainland European countries just before Christmas. The officials offered no details.

Separately, bin Laden encouraged multiple attacks on Danish targets because of disparaging references to the Muslim prophet Mohammed in Danish media, the U.S. officials said.

European security officials said earlier this month that they'd seen very little of the information from the May 2 raid on bin Laden's hideout, but the Americans have begun sharing more information with intelligence agencies in Europe.

The German official said U.S. officials had told their German counterparts that information retrieved from the Pakistani house where bin Laden was killed shows that senior al-Qaida member Sheikh Yunis al Mauritania was in contact with bin Laden about the Europe plot.

A 29-year-old Moroccan terror suspect was arrested last month in the German city of Duesseldorf with letters between him and al Mauritania about planned terror attacks in Europe, the official told the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

He and other European security officials said they have not seen evidence to suggest that bin Laden was involved in planning the attacks.

"We now know he was a lot more operational than previously thought — and there's some interesting information that has come out on this — but whether this means he was involved in the actual planning or advising remains unclear," said a European security official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive intelligence information.

A senior French security official said Wednesday that the U.S. have also shared some of the intelligence collected from bin Laden's compound with them, but so far he has not seen any evidence linking bin Laden to the 2010 Europe terror plot.

"I don't know what the Americans are sharing with the Germans," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because his information is privileged.

In September, intelligence gleaned from a terror suspect detained in Afghanistan prompted heightened security in Britain, France and Germany.

Germany raised its security threat level in November after officials said they had received information from their own and foreign intelligence services, including in the U.S., that indicated a sleeper cell of some 20 to 25 people may have been planning an attack somewhere in Europe. Later, Germany also received information on possible separate attacks at Christmas or New Year's.

Germany eased the threat level this year.

The first link to bin Laden appears to have been uncovered with the April arrest of a Moroccan named Abdeladim El-Kebir. At the time he was taken into custody, German officials said el-Kebir and two or three other suspects were working on making a shrapnel-laden bomb in Germany to attack a crowded place such as a bus in spring or summer 2011.

The message exchange with al Mauritania found at his home also indicated that he belonged to the group that American security officials last year warned may be plotting attacks in Europe, the German official told the AP.

The German official suggested that the letter contained some indication that bin Laden had been kept abreast of the plot to attack Europe in fall 2010.

A recent U.S. security briefing on the bin Laden house evidence "basically confirmed to us what we had already found in the letter exchange between El-Kebir and (al Mauritania)," the official said.

On the day of El-Kebir's arrest, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich released a statement saying the suspects had been under surveillance since November, when Germany increased security. He added authorities had accumulated enough evidence to launch an official criminal investigation last month.

After his arrest, German intelligence officials said el-Kebir received the assignment to carry out a bombing from a high-ranking al-Qaida member early last year. At the time they did not identify the al-Qaida leader, and did not say he was also thought to be connected to earlier European plots.

El-Kebir left Germany in early 2010 and trained in an al-Qaida camp in Waziristan near the Afghan-Pakistan border, and returned last year to carry out the attack.

He had at one time resided in Germany on a student visa but later returned illegally after abandoning his studies.

___

Dozier reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Paisley Dodds in London, Jamey Keaten in Paris, Karl Ritter in Stockholm and Al Clendenning in Madrid.

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India calls Pakistan 'fragile' state (AFP)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India sounded the alarm on Friday that Pakistan had become a "fragile" state with militant groups nurtured as "an instrument of state policy" uniting in their battle against the government.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram issued the warning at the start of talks with US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is on a four-day trip to India to strengthen anti-terror information-sharing between the countries.

New Delhi has long accused Pakistan of harbouring militant groups, but analysts say it is becoming increasingly concerned that growing unrest could compromise the safety of the country's growing nuclear arsenal.

Chidambaram said in a statement that the "global epicentre of terrorism" was in Pakistan where "the vast infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan has for long flourished as an instrument of state policy".

He continued: "Today, different terrorist groups, operating from the safe havens in Pakistan, are becoming increasingly fused; the society in Pakistan has become increasingly radicalised; its economy has weakened

"The state structure in Pakistan has become fragile."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew into Pakistan on Friday with "tough questions" for the country's leadership nearly a month after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad.

The US diplomat met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, then headed into talks with army chief Ashfaq Kayani and the chief of Pakistan's intelligence agency Ahmad Shuja Pasha, officials said.

She is also likely to try and smooth over relations between Pakistan and the United States, which sank to new lows after US Navy SEALs swooped on the Al-Qaeda chief's compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on May 2.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

A stop-start peace process is officially back on, but ties remain frosty.

India broke off formal peace talks with its neighbour after the 2008 attack on Mumbai that left 166 dead and was blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

New Delhi and has repeatedly called on Islamabad to bring the perpetrators to justice. Pakistan has charged seven people but none has been convicted.

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Testimony of a Betrayer: A Terrorist Operative in Chicago (Time.com)

David Headley is not on trial in Chicago's Everett McKinley Dirksen federal courthouse. But he is the star of the proceedings, the chief witness against a man who was once his friend. There is nothing ordinary about the case: it kicks off from Headley's confessed and key role as a perpetrator of one horrific terrorist attack - the three-day November 2008 assault on Mumbai - and details his part in planning another incident in Denmark, all in the quest to convict a former boarding school classmate, in part, for abetting Headley's own criminal actions.

For someone so tall and apparently sturdy, Headley, 50, speaks in a surprisingly soft voice, so soft that at several points during his testimony the court clerk and attorneys have asked him to speak up. But the testimony, when it is audible or read out loud from exhibits, is chilling, sending tremors halfway around the world and roiling the already unfriendly relations of nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan. (See photos of the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks.)

Headley says he cased Mumbai for the Army of the Righteous - Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) - the banned Pakistani extremist group accused of plotting the attack on India's financial capital. Under oath, he said that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), provided financial and military guidance for Lashkar and other militant groups. "I assumed these groups were under the same umbrella," Headley said in court, identifying at least one ISI operative as an overseer of the Mumbai plot.

The original assault plan had focused on Mumbai's central train station, a Jewish community center that Headley believed was an outlet for Israel's secret service, a popular tourist cafe, a movie house, a school, a police station, a hospital and the landmark Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel. Lashkar leaders initially did not put Mumbai's upscale Oberoi Trident hotel on its list. But on a whim, Headley decided to take video and photographs of it and the hotel ultimately wound up on a target. Of the 160 people killed in the three-day Mumbai massacre, 32 were staff and guests at the Oberoi.

On his second day of testimony, Headley said that one of his ISI handlers, identified as "Major Iqbal," expressed disappointment that Mumbai's airport was not included among the targets. As for the attack on Mumbai's Jewish community center, Chabad House, the operative allegedly told Headley it "would be revenge" for Israeli actions against Palestinians. (See photos of the 2008 Mumbai attack.)

On the day the Mumbai attacks began, Headley was in Lahore, Pakistan, and received a text message that read: "Turn on the television." As he watched the initial reports, Headley recalls thinking, "I was pleased." By December 2008, he'd returned to the U.S. and said that he detailed to an alleged co-conspirator how the Mumbai attacks transpired, declaring, "We're even with India." That alleged co-plotter was Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 50, the man now on trial in Chicago, who looked blankly into the jury box as his former friend testified against him. In exchange for his cooperation with the U.S. government, Headley, who has confessed to his participation in the Mumbai and Danish plots, will not be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark for trial; federal prosecutors will also not seek the death penalty against him when he is sentenced. As for Rana, if he is convicted of conspiring to help Headley and other planners of terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Copenhagen, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Rana first met Headley at a Pakistani military boarding school. At that time, Headley was called Daood Sayed Gilani, a transplant to Pakistan from his birthplace in Washington D.C., his father a Pakistani diplomat and his mother the daughter of a prominent American football player. It was the first of his many identities, which would shift through the years as he chose to collaborate with shadowy figures of his American and Pakistani existences.

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After his parents divorced, Headley was brought back to Pakistan by his father. At 17, he moved back to the U.S. to live with his mother in Philadelphia, apparently above a bar she owned called the Khyber Pass. Not much is known about Headley's early 20s in the U.S. but by the time he was 27 he would be arrested on his first drug charge - which would lead to the first time he cooperated with authorities to get a lesser sentence. He was 37 when he was arrested for smuggling heroin into the U.S. from Pakistan. Again, he chose to cooperate with the U.S. in exchange for a lenience, becoming a paid informant working in Pakistan for the federal government. At the same time, he may have begun his association with Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan. In fact, during altercations with the women he lived with in the U.S., law enforcement officials were told by the "wives" that Headley had terrorist ties. But even after 9/11, this apparently did not raise alarms in the U.S.

It was about 2006, that Headley officially dropped the name Daood Gilani and reconnected with Rana. As Rana's chief lawyer, Charlie Swift, would portray it, the rekindled friendship was a case of "the bad boy and the good boy" - with his client being the latter. Indeed, Rana's life had been one of striving and enterprise. Trained as a military doctor, he served with coalition forces in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf war against Saddam Hussein. He later chose to move to Canada where he became a citizen before finding his way to Chicago's large, prosperous South Asian community. Unable to get relicensed to practice medicine in the U.S., he became the business partner of an American and opened First World Immigration Service, an outfit which helped scientists, doctors and other professionals navigate through the U.S. immigration process. Tall, lean, professorial and pious, Rana would buy a farm in Kinsman, Illinois, about 80 miles southwest of Chicago, to grow and slaughter goats for halal markets across the Midwest. (Read "Alleged Chicago Jihadi: Key Role in the Mumbai Attacks?")

For Headley, Rana was a practical connection: his immigration business would provide cover for him to conduct surveillance trips into South Asia and other parts of the world. Headley testified that Rana "could be convinced to help us out." For Pakistan, India has always been the primal enemy, with the chief battleground the disputed region of Kashmir. The two countries have gone to war a number of times, with the Pakistani military coming off the worse for the most part. It is easy to believe that Headley and Rana, former classmates at a military academy, would have bonded over Pakistan's quest for Kashmir - cemented by the militant piety that Headley had been inculcated with by the LeT. Indeed, Headley testified that, apart from a focus on Kashmir, one of the goals of LeT was to wage jihad in retaliation against India's failure to protect its Muslim minority from violence.

Headley testified that he told Rana of nearly every aspect of his weeks-long combat training camps in Pakistan with the LeT, including why he changed his name - "Nobody would be able to tell I'm a Muslim or Pakistani." He said he played on Rana's guilt for having abandoned Pakistan's military and moving to Canada and the U.S. in order to win him over to waging the LeT's vision of jihad. Headley testified that Rana once believed that a military jihad could only truly be declared by a head of state, not a religious figure or any ordinary Muslim. Headley said he dismissed that belief and convinced Rana that jihad was a religious duty.

David Headley's declarations have so far taken center stage in this trial. They are explosive, but hardly unexpected. Indians do not need to be convinced that Pakistan was behind the Mumbai massacre. The Pakistani government, for its part, has consistently denied Headley's testimony, much of which has been familiar since he started cooperating with the U.S. after his arrest in October 2009. In the struggle between the two enemy nations, David Headley embodies certain truisms that either country would be loath to give up - and now appear to have the imprimatur of sworn testimony in a U.S. court of law.

But the legal procedures in Chicago, in the end, will not be about Headley but about the guilt or innocence of Tahawwur Hussain Rana. And if defense lawyers play it right, a jury may not need much help to puncture the claims of a prosecution star witness who has been willing to collaborate again and again with anyone willing to offer him an escape clause - in this specific instance, betraying a friend that he set up as an accomplice. Charlie Swift, Rana's chief defense attorney, knows there's one thing he must ultimately prove: "Rana was totally unaware of what he was getting into."

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War-weary lawmakers send Obama a message (AP)

WASHINGTON – War-weary Republicans and Democrats on Thursday sent the strongest message yet to President Barack Obama to end the war in Afghanistan as the commander in chief decides how many U.S. troops to withdraw this summer.

A measure requiring an accelerated timetable for pulling out the 100,000 troops from Afghanistan and an exit strategy for the nearly 10-year-old conflict secured 204 votes in the House, falling just short of passage but boosting the hopes of its surprised proponents.

"It sends a strong signal to the president that the U.S. House of Representatives and the American people want change," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said shortly after the vote.

Obama will begin drawing down some of the troops in July, with all combat forces due out by 2014. McGovern and others fear that the initial reduction will be a token cut of some 5,000, numbers they argue fail to reflect that Osama bin Laden is gone and the United States can't afford spending $10 billion a month on the war.

An Associated Press-GfK poll earlier this month found 59 percent oppose the war and 37 percent favor it, with significant support for Obama's plan to start removing troops this summer.

"Five thousand on July 1 and nothing else, that won't fly," said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif. "That will create a great deal of anger."

Twenty-six Republicans joined 178 Democrats in backing the Afghanistan measure. Eight Democrats and 207 Republicans opposed it. In the Democratic-controlled House last July, a similar measure got 162 votes. The tally on Thursday reflected the increasing exasperation in Congress with the costly war, even among the typically more hawkish Republicans.

But among the measure's foes, Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., said the accelerated timetable "would pull the rug out of the entire strategy," and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said "the sacrifice of blood and treasure will be thrown away for considerable impatience."

The divisive issue was part of three days of debate on a broad, $690 billion defense bill that would provide a 1.6 percent increase in military pay, fund an array of aircraft, ships and submarines and increase health care fees slightly for working-age military retirees. The bill meets the Pentagon's request for $119 billion to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The House passed the military blueprint for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 on a vote of 322-96.

In another sign of exasperation with war, the House overwhelmingly backed a measure barring any taxpayer dollars for U.S. ground forces or private security contractors in Libya with the exception of those involved in rescue missions of U.S. service members. The vote was 416-5.

Obama angered lawmakers with the amount of consultation with Congress before launching air strikes against Libya in March. Several members also have complained that Obama violated the 1972 War Powers Resolution, failing to seek congressional authorization for the U.S. military role in Libya.

Obama recently said the U.S. involvement is limited in the NATO-led operation. He also has said he would not send ground forces.

Despite a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House moved ahead with several provisions in the bill that limit Obama's authority to reduce the size of the nuclear weapons arsenal and decide the fate of terrorist suspects. The bill also would delay implementation of the president's new policy allowing gays to serve openly in the military and revives an extra engine for a new fighter aircraft that the Pentagon doesn't want.

The Republican-led House bill must be reconciled with a Senate version that is unlikely to include many of the divisive provisions. The Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee will begin crafting the bill the week of June 13.

The administration opposes language in the bill revising the authorization to use military force established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Republican proponents say the provision mirrors what the Obama administration has spelled out as its justification for prosecuting various terrorist cases. Critics say it would give the president unlimited authority not only to detain terror suspects and prosecute them in military tribunals, but also to go to war

The American Civil Liberties Union said the provisions "authorizes a worldwide war against terrorism suspects and against nations suspected of supporting them."

Republicans said the threat has changed since 2001 and Congress needs to respond. An effort by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and several Democrats to eliminate the provision failed on a vote of 234-187.

The bill would limit Obama's authority to transfer terrorist suspects from the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to installations in the United States, even for trial. It also would make it difficult for the administration to move detainees to foreign countries. The dispute over the fate of 170 detainees at the U.S. naval installation elicited the fiercest debate between Republicans and Democrats.

The House added another provision on Thursday, voting 246-173 to require that all foreign terrorist suspects be considered enemy combatants to be tried in military tribunals.

The bill includes a provision that would prohibit money to the administration for removing nuclear weapons from operation unless it reports to Congress on how it plans to modernize the remaining arsenal. The bill also says the president may not change the target list or move weapons out of Europe until he reports to Congress.

Last December, the Senate ratified the New START treaty, signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April 2010. The pact would limit each country's strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from the current ceiling of 2,200. It also established a system for weapons inspections.

START stands for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

In threatening a veto, the administration said it objected to the bill's onerous conditions on its ability to implement the treaty. The White House also said the legislation "raises constitutional concerns as it appears to encroach on the president's authority as commander in chief to set nuclear employment policy — a right exercised by every president in the nuclear age from both parties."

In writing the military bill, the House voted to eliminate the Institute of Peace, the independent organization which works to prevent and resolve violent international conflicts and has operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Korean peninsula.

Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minn., said as the nation struggles economically, it can't afford a duplicative agency whose work can be done by the State Department, Peace Corps or the Defense Department. The Institute got $39.5 million in the current budget.

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Indonesian police seek 15 suicide bombs (AFP)

CIREBON, Indonesia (AFP) – Indonesian police said Thursday they were searching for 15 suicide vests prepared by a terrorist cell that carried out an attack on a police mosque last month, wounding 30 people.

Information gathered from suspects detained in relation to the attack suggested another 15 vest bombs were circulating somewhere in the massive archipelago, police said.

"We are still looking for 15 bombs," police spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam told reporters in Cirebon, West Java, where the mosque was attacked on April 15.

Twenty-two suicide vests had already been seized as part of the ongoing investigation, he said.

Police also released a video made by the bomber, Muhammad Syarif, 32, whom they allege was linked to several militant networks including Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid, founded by radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

"I hope this bomb will kill many friends of the devil. God is with me," he said in the clip.

He said he was inspired by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in Pakistan shortly after the Cirebon mosque bombing.

"So many mujahedeen (holy warriors) were killed and arrested by the police as they were fighting to uphold the religion of Allah. Those who kill these mujahedeen are friends of the devil," he said.

Police paraded before the media several detained suspects linked to Syarif, who was killed instantly when he set off his device in a mosque at a police compound during Friday prayers.

The arrests come as part of investigations into a series of recent incidents including a Good Friday plot to blow up a Jakarta church and a book bomb campaign targeting Muslim moderates and counter-terrorism officials.

No one was killed in those incidents.

Officials have warned that local extremists could carry out attacks to avenge the killing of bin Laden.

But they say the Al-Qaeda leader's death will have little effect on Indonesian jihadis, who operate independently to the late Saudi extremist's global terror network.

Indonesia has won praise for rounding up hundreds of Islamist militants since 2002 when local radicals detonated bombs on Bali island, killing 202 people, mainly Westerners.

But analysts say indigenous terror networks are adapting to police crackdowns on high-profile groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, which was blamed for the Bali bombing.

A report released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on Thursday provided fresh insight into how radicalism is spreading among inmates in Indonesia's notoriously corrupt prisons.

It said convicted terrorists were being allowed to plot and harden their networks "to better perform their jihad duties".

Police spokesman Alam said members of the Cirebon group had received doctrinal training from Aman Abdurrahman, a twice convicted terrorist and radical ideologue who is allowed to preach to fellow jail inmates.

"The group had been indoctrinated to destroy, among other things, mosques built by people who didn't obey Allah's law. The police mosque was one," he said.

"They will battle infidels who don't obey Allah's law... including the police."

Senior anti-terror police have publicly called for an overhaul of the prison system but Justice and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar rejected the Australian study, saying there were no grounds for concern.

"Terrorism is everywhere... Don't believe the research. It is a provocation. Where is the proof?" he said, joking that the claims in the report made him "dizzy".

Experts on Islamist militancy in Indonesia, an ostensibly secular democracy with some 200 million Muslims, say extremists are trying to destabilise the government to advance their demands for Islamic law.

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India, US pledge to boost intelligence cooperation (AP)

NEW DELHI – India and the United States said Friday a new homeland security dialogue will be crucial to cooperation in counterterrorism, intelligence sharing and cybersecurity.

They identified port, border and coastal security; efforts to stop illegal money to terror and criminal groups and cooperation in mega-city policing as areas of cooperation between the countries.

The joint statement by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and India's Home Minister P. Chidambaram reaffirmed their governments' resolve to defeating terrorism and called for effective steps by all countries to eliminate safe havens for terrorists.

During the Cold War, India and the Soviet Union shared close ties, while the U.S. tilted toward India's rival, Pakistan. But in recent years, New Delhi and Washington have drawn closer, finding common ground in their concern over global terrorism, commitment to democracy and booming trade.

Napolitano visited India as a businessman stands trial in Chicago in connection with the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed at least 166 people. India has blamed Pakistan-based insurgent groups for the killings.

She earlier this week paid tribute to victims of the attacks, laying a wreath and observing a brief silence at a memorial to 16 policemen killed during the three-day siege of India's financial capital.

Concluding her four-day visit, Napolitano told reporters the new homeland security dialogue would be a forum "to strengthen our strategic partnerships, to share best practices and to identify future areas of collaboration."

The dialogue will be held in Washington next year, she said.

"The United States and India face common threats and in return we must develop common approaches to protect shared critical infrastructure and free flow of people and commerce across our borders," Napolitano said.

She described India as a steadfast partner and said both countries should work together to strengthen their law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts.

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Guyana detains US Muslim cleric in terrorism probe (AP)

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Akbar Muhammad, a U.S. Muslim cleric visiting the South American country of Guyana, was detained Thursday on suspicion of ties to drugs and terrorism, according to police.

Officers raided the Princess Hotel in the capital of Georgetown and took Muhammad to the department's headquarters for questioning, said Seelal Persaud, assistant police commissioner.

"Based on the information we have, he is involved in drugs and terrorism," Persaud told The Associated Press. He declined further comment and no further details were immediately available.

Muhammad has been a spokesman for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

He arrived in Guyana earlier this week from Illinois and was expected to attend a rally on Thursday afternoon organized by black activists in the mining town of Linden just south of the capital.

Muhammad has visited Guyana several times in recent years but had never been detained by authorities during previous visits.

It is unclear if U.S. federal authorities are investigating Muhammad. The FBI did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Messages left with the Illinois-based Nation of Islam National Center and with the Truth Establishment Institute, which handles speaking engagements for Muhammad, were not immediately returned.

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Pakistan-based LeT 'as dangerous' as Al-Qaeda: US (AFP)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – The US Homeland Security chief said on Friday she viewed the banned Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as an equal in danger to the Al-Qaeda network.

Janet Napolitano, speaking on a trip to New Delhi where she met top Indian security officials, was asked about the threat posed by the group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.

"It is one that seeks to harm people and the US perspective is that the LeT is an organisation which is in the same ranks of Al-Qaeda-related groups," Napolitano told reporters after day-long talks in New Delhi.

India believes the LeT and the Pakistani intelligence service staged the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which severely strained ties between the countries and led to a breakdown in their peace talks.

David Coleman Headley, an American-Pakistani giving evidence in a Chicago court in connection with the attacks in India's financial capital, has admitted to his links with the LeT and Pakistani intelligence.

The group, founded to fight India's presence in the disputed territory of Pakistan, denied any involvement in the Mumbai carnage.

Napolitano said the US had worked with India on investigations into the Mumbai attacks and would grant Indian investigators further access to Headley, the key government witness in the trial of an alleged accomplice.

"The United States has given India full access to the witness and once the case (trial) is over more access will be given. It is an example of how our two countries operate," she said.

A twice convicted drug dealer, Headley admitted to taking part in the Mumbai plot after prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty or to allow him to be extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark on related charges.

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US diplomats feared Islamic radicals in Jamaica (AP)

KINGSTON, Jamaica – U.S. diplomats have expressed concern that an Islamic cleric convicted of whipping up racial hatred among Muslim converts in Britain might do the same thing in his homeland of Jamaica, according to a leaked cable from the island's U.S. Embassy.

The dispatch, dated February 2010, warns that that Jamaica could be fertile ground for jihadists because of its underground drug economy, marginalized youth, insufficient security and gang networks in U.S. and British prisons, along with thousands of American tourists.

It says Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, who was deported back to Jamaica in January 2010, could be a potential catalyst, and it noted that several Jamaican-born men have been involved in terrorism over the last decade.

Another memo says an associate of el-Faisal was suspected of involvement in a previously unreported terror plot in Montego Bay, a tourist center near where el-Faisal now lives. A second associate was allegedly suspected of threats against a cruise ship in nearby Ocho Rios. No details of the alleged schemes were provided in the cables and both U.S. and Jamaican officials declined to comment on them.

U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials have expressed concern in the past that Middle Eastern terror groups might forge alliances with drug traffickers or take advantage general lawlessness in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The January 2010 return of "extremist Jamaican-born cleric Sheikh el-Faisal raises serious concerns regarding the propensity for Islamist extremism in the Caribbean at the hands of Jamaican born nationals," said the secret cable, apparently from Isiah L. Parnell, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.

"Given the right motivation, it is conceivable that Jamaica's disaffected youth could be swayed towards organized crime of a different nature through the teachings of radical Islam," said the dispatch dated February 25, 2010.

The cable is one of the quarter million confidential American diplomatic dispatches first obtained by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and separately obtained by The Associated Press.

There is no hard evidence that Jamaica has a burgeoning problem with extremism, though some of the embassy dispatches list suspected associates of el-Faisal, several labeled as radical Muslims and believed to be involved in drug and human trafficking. One is a 31-year-old Jamaican suspected of involvement in a Montego Bay bomb plot and another man suspected of threats against a cruise ship.

Other Jamaicans involved in terrorism include Germaine Lindsay, one of the four men behind the 2005 suicide bomb attacks on London's subways, and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted in the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.

Jamaican police say they are monitoring el-Faisal but note that he has no criminal record in the country.

"To the extent that he was living abroad and was convicted of offenses, we do have concerns. But he is a Jamaican and we had to take him back," said Deputy Police Chief Glenmore Hinds.

One of the leaked U.S. cables said Jamaica's Ministry of National Security has established a special unit to collect information on Islamic extremism, but it voiced concern about whether the unit would be able to "react rapidly to actionable intelligence and to effectively prosecute an anti-terrorism case in the courts."

El-Faisal, who is known as "al-Jamaikee," or "the Jamaican" in Islamist circles, has been living in a rural town outside the northern city of Montego Bay, not far from where he grew up. He has several children.

He declined through a spokesman repeated requests for an interview with the AP.

Mustafa Muhammad, president of the Islamic Council, said el-Faisal's angry rhetoric and conspiracy theories may attract some young and disenfranchised people, but he doubted it would have much traction among the Jamaica's roughly 5,000 Muslims.

"Faisal has always been very eloquent and the moment he speaks he captures your attention," Muhammad said in the library of a whitewashed concrete mosque in Kingston. "That is why it's so sad, so very sad, about what he has come to believe."

Jamaica's Islamic Council has banned el-Faisal from preaching in the country's mosques because he of his past. He now preaches in informal prayer sessions and conferences.

"He told me that he didn't think he had ever done anything wrong," Muhammad said. "That's a concern to me."

Born Trevor Forrest in 1963, he was raised in the rolling hills of northern Jamaica. His parents belonged to the Salvation Army, the Christian evangelical group. He converted to Islam after being introduced to the faith by a school teacher at about 16, Muhammad said.

Shortly after his conversion, el-Faisal's global migrations began. In the early 1980s, he traveled to Trinidad for a Saudi-Arabian-sponsored course in Islamic and Arabic studies. He then went to Guyana for similar studies, according to terrorism researchers.

El-Faisal, now a compactly built 47-year-old man with receding hair, was deported to Jamaica for the second time last year after being arrested in Kenya, where he reportedly encouraged young men to join an extremist Islamic group in Somalia.

Before that, he preached in a London mosque attended by convicted terrorists and was imprisoned in Britain for nearly four and a half years for inciting murder and stirring racial hatred with sermons titled "No peace with the Jews" and "Them versus Us." In one recorded sermon, he told followers that "the way forward is the bullet." On another, he said jihadists should use "chemical weapons to exterminate the unbelievers."

"Faisal's popularity remains strong with online jihadist supporters, particularly American jihadist groups. His sermons are widely published across the Internet," said Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst who is now an independent terrorism researcher.

Some experts in militant Islam said his isolation in Jamaica may create a mystique that could draw alienated people into his circle.

"There is a danger that Abdullah Faisal will radicalize individuals in Jamaica, just as he has previously done in the U.K. and elsewhere. He is a powerful, charismatic speaker who is easily capable of presenting Islamist extremism as a rational choice," said James Brandon of the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think tank.

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Congress votes to renew anti-terrorism steps (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress, racing the clock and rejecting demands for additional safeguards of civil liberties, passed a bill Thursday to renew three expiring provisions of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act.

With the provisions set to expire at midnight Thursday (0400 GMT on Friday), the Republican-led House of Representatives approved the measure, 250-153, just hours after it cleared the Democratic-led Senate, 72-23.

President Barack Obama is traveling in Europe. White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said that he was prepared to use "the auto pen to sign" the bill quickly into law.

Democrats and some Republicans favored more protections of civil liberties in the legislation for law-abiding citizens.

But congressional leaders, facing the midnight deadline and possibly short on votes, agreed to a four-year, unaltered extension of the provisions to track suspected terrorists.

The provisions empower law enforcement officials to get court approval to obtain "roving wiretaps" on suspected foreign agents with multiple modes of communications, track noncitizen "lone wolves" suspected of terrorism, and obtain certain business and even library records.

"Although the Patriot Act is not a perfect law, it provides our intelligence and law enforcement communities with crucial tools to keep America safe," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat.

"The raid that killed Osama bin Laden also yielded an enormous amount of new information that has spurred dozens of investigations yielding new leads every day," Reid said.

"Without the Patriot Act, investigators would not have the tools they need to follow these new leads and disrupt terrorist plots," Reid said.

The provisions are key parts of the Patriot Act, which was enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. While backers say the provisions bolster U.S. security, critics say they could be abused and violate the rights of U.S. citizens.

'NOT EVEN A WORD'

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a liberal Democrat, and Republican Senator Rand Paul, a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, together offered steps to bolster oversight of the Patriot Act and increase civil-liberty liberty protections.

Their proposed changes cleared the Judiciary Committee, but Leahy and Paul were unable to bring them up for a vote by the full Senate.

Leahy said, "The extension of the Patriot Act provisions does not include a single improvement or reform, and includes not even a word that recognizes the importance of protecting the civil liberties and constitutional privacy rights of Americans."

But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, "The invaluable terror-fighting tools under the Patriot Act have kept us safe for nearly a decade, and Americans today should be relieved and reassured to know that these programs will continue."

The Senate had been tied up in procedural knots over the measure for days. It moved after a push from FBI Director Robert Mueller and National Intelligence chief James Clapper.

In letters to congressional leaders, Mueller and Clapper wrote that renewal of the provisions is vital to national security. Clapper said that if Congress allowed any lapse in the provisions, "even for the briefest of time, the nation will be less secure."

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky; Editing by Will Dunham)

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US, India seek to step up security cooperation (AFP)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Top US homeland security officials were set to discuss stepping up cooperation with their Indian counterparts on Friday in the wake of Osama bin Laden's killing in Pakistan.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who arrived in India on Tuesday, and Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram will jointly launch the US-India homeland security dialogue, the US Embassy in New Delhi said.

The agenda for the talks -- which take place as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Pakistan with "tough questions" for the country's leadership -- is expected to include the May 2 killing of bin Laden and information-sharing related to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Napolitano's visit also comes amid the ongoing trial in a US court of a Pakistani-American who plotted the attacks in Mumbai.

The dialogue is part of new Indo-US ties that would increase "communication and information-sharing between the US and India on counter-terrorism and other issues that affect our security," the US embassy said.

India, fearing attacks by Islamist militants following bin Laden's killing by US forces, has increased security in major cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi.

In Mumbai, the first leg of a four-day trip to the country, Napolitano attended a memorial ceremony for the 166 people, including six Americans, slain in the 2008 attack on the city by gunmen who India says came from Pakistan.

India has blamed agencies of arch-rival Pakistan of staging the attacks, but Islamabad has denied the allegations.

"Terror will occupy centre-stage" when Napolitano and Chidambaram meet for their first formal talks on internal security, the United News of India said, quoting unnamed officials.

India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons, have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947.

The Indo-US dialogue "will also highlight protecting the global supply chain, combating illicit financing and enhancing cyber security," the US embassy added as Napolitano flew to New Delhi.

Other topics that could be addressed include coastal security, mega-city policing, countering illicit financing and trans-national crime, cyber security, accessing and sharing of data relating to terrorism.

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US controversial anti-terror powers extended (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama on Thursday signed into law a four-year extension of controversial counter-terrorism search and surveillance powers at the heart of the Patriot Act.

The president signed the act into law after it was approved by Congress and just before the provisions were to expire at midnight (0400 GMT Friday), extending measures adopted in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The White House issued a brief statement that Obama had signed the extension into law from France, where he is currently attending a G8 summit.

FBI and intelligence officials had warned that if the Patriot Act was not extended by the deadline they would be robbed of crucial tools in the fight against terrorism -- including wiretapping.

"I have no doubt that the four-year Patriot Act extension, that members of both parties will agree to today, will safeguard us from future attacks," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Congress had debated whether to extend the act just temporarily, longer-term or permanently in recent months. In February, Congress approved a three-month extension to allow time for negotiations.

The provisions allow authorities to use roving wiretaps to track an individual on several telephones; track a non-US national suspected of being a "lone-wolf" terrorist not tied to an extremist group; and to seize personal or business records or "any tangible thing" seen as critical to an investigation.

The law had drawn fire from an unusual coalition of liberal Democrats and Republicans tied to the arch-conservative "Tea Party" movement, who say it grants the government too much power and infringes on individual liberties.

Republican conservative Rand Paul sought to impede the extension by adding on several amendments, including a ban on inspecting some archives of arms sellers during terror investigations. The measure was overwhelmingly rejected.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy meanwhile called for greater congressional surveillance in counterterrorism inquiries.

FBI director Robert Mueller wrote to Congress leaders on Wednesday to warn them of the urgency of the matter.

"It is important that these tools be reauthorized without lapsing," Mueller wrote, opposing proposed amendments which he said "would adversely impact our operations."

"Certain amendments currently being proposed would impose unique limitations on our ability to investigate foreign spies and terrorists and protect Americans against foreign threats."

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Headley is a rare breed among admitted terrorists (AP)

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press Eileen Sullivan And Sophia Tareen, Associated Press – Thu May 26, 6:11 pm ET

CHICAGO – In 2000, David Coleman Headley called a phone number he saw on a recruiting poster in a mosque in Pakistan, and in doing so launched a nearly decade-long career as a terrorist.

For the soft-spoken Pakistani-American who admits he helped carry out the deadly 2008 terror rampage in Mumbai, it was simple: "I went to a meeting."

Born in Washington, D.C., Headley — who is now the government's star witness in the trial of a businessman accused in the Mumbai attacks — has an American mother and Pakistani father, fair skin and speaks many languages including perfect English. He has a U.S. passport, attended six militant training courses in Pakistan and became adapt at blending in wherever he traveled.

When it comes to terrorists, Headley is a rare breed.

But in the years since Headley's unusual mix of dual citizenship and ability to travel internationally made him an ideal terrorist foot soldier, it's become much easier for militants to compensate for there not being enough people like Headley to recruit.

These days extremists from anywhere in the world can prey on disaffected men and women as they surf the web in the privacy of their own basements. English-speaking Islamic clerics proselytize on YouTube about perceived Western-imposed injustices. They publish flashy Internet magazines written in English with articles about how to build a bomb in your mother's kitchen and advice on how not to get caught.

If someone wants to join a foreign jihadist cause, there are plenty of options to choose from, and the extensive travel and training like Headley had — while still valuable to terror groups — is no longer the key to success.

"There are terrorists, and then there are terrorists," said Juan Zarate, a senior counterterrorism official in the Bush administration. After spending the past decade disrupting known terrorist networks and their hideouts, the United States is now seeing fewer seasoned and honed terrorists likely Headley and more fly-by-the-night Internet radicals, Zarate said.

Take Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major who is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. Hasan communicated about the merits of jihad with a radical Islamic cleric who is hiding with al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen but didn't spend years at a terror training camp.

Then there's Faisal Shahzad, the man accused of trying to blow up a truck last year on a busy New York City street corner. The Pakistan Taliban provided Shahzad with about $15,000 and only five days of explosives training in late 2009 and early 2010, just months after he became a U.S. citizen.

There are also individual agents, like 21-year-old Arid Uka, who radicalized on his own, by looking at terrorist websites before storming a U.S. military bus at a German airport in March, killing two U.S. airmen.

"Those that actually have training overseas, those that actually have connections to sophisticated terrorist organizations are going to be more lethal," said Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute.

But, he said, terrorists and recruitment methods come in various shapes, sizes and forms. While terror organizations are still able to blossom in areas with little or no effective government, the Internet has become yet another ungoverned space — and it's easier to get to.

"We can't ignore or discount those that are literally turning to the Internet and being radicalized and recruited," Cilluffo said. "They can cause harm."

Headley pleaded guilty in 2010 to laying the ground work for the Mumbai attacks that killed more than 160 people and is now testifying in a federal terrorism trial against his longtime friend, Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, who is accused of giving Headley cover when he made multiple surveillance trips to Mumbai to scout sites. Rana has pleaded not guilty.

During his testimony, Headley detailed his numerous trips to India and Pakistan and his face-to-face and email conversations with both his handler from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the Mumbai siege, and a Pakistani intelligence officer known only as "Major Iqbal." Headley claims both helped with the plot. On Thursday, Headley described how he started working with another Pakistani militant to plan another attack, this time on a Danish newspaper that in 2005 printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. That attack never occurred.

For more than a decade, Headley managed to stay off the radar as he flew from one continent to another to meet with terror operatives. To blend in wherever he traveled, Headley carried a cross, had red bracelets commonly worn by Hindus, and kept the book, ""How to Pray Like a Jew" in his bag. He even changed his name in 2006 from Daood Gilani to something less likely to raise eyebrows — David Coleman Headley.

His travels eventually caught up with him. In the summer of 2009, U.S. officials were looking for someone named "David" who was a frequent international traveler.

In August 2009, customs officials found Headley and the FBI was soon listening to his conversations with associates and reading his emails. On Sept. 7, 2009, agents listened to Headley tell Rana about "four targets that I liked." Rana told Headley even if he hit those four targets, Headley would still want more.

On May 25, a prosecutor asked Headley: "Is that true?"

Speaking matter-of-factly about his decade in global terror, Headley responded, "Probably."

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Headley says he's no longer proud of Mumbai attack (AP)

CHICAGO – An admitted American terrorist who is the federal government's star witness in the deadly 2008 attack in Mumbai says he is no longer proud of the rampage that left more than 160 people dead.

David Coleman Headley is testifying in the Chicago trial of his longtime friend Tahawwur Rana (tuh-HOW'-ur RAH'-nah), who is accused of cooperating with Headley in the three-day siege of India's largest city.

Headley has said that when the attacks happened in November 2008, he was proud of them because he said they were in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims.

But when defense attorney Patrick Blegen asked Headley on Thursday if he was still proud of the attacks, Headley said: "No."

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Rogers to Holder: Leave CIA alone (AP)

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier, Ap Intelligence Writer – Tue May 17, 3:35 pm ET

WASHINGTON – House intelligence chairman Mike Rogers says the Justice Department should stop investigating CIA interrogators for alleged abuse of detainees under the Bush administration. Rogers says the interrogators' work helped lead to the killing of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, obtained by The Associated Press, the Michigan Republican says the interrogation program was a "vital part of the chain" that led to the successful raid on bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan two weeks ago. The Justice Department on Tuesday said "no comment."

Since 2009, the Justice Department has been investigating cases involving CIA interrogation tactics, including what the CIA inspector general called a mock execution.

There's no indication that the interrogations under investigation are related to bin Laden's capture.

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Obama, in Europe, signs Patriot Act extension (AP)

WASHINGTON – Minutes before a midnight deadline, President Barack Obama signed into law a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists.

"It's an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat," Obama said Friday after a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

With Obama in France, the White House said the president used an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature. It is only used with proper authorization of the president.

Congress sent the bill to the president with only hours to go on Thursday before the provisions expired at midnight. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties are not abused.

The Senate voted 72-23 for the legislation to renew three terrorism-fighting authorities. The House passed the measure 250-153 on an evening vote.

A short-term expiration would not have interrupted ongoing operations but would have barred the government from seeking warrants for new investigations.

Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government's ability to monitor individual actions.

The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps, authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device; court-ordered searches of business records; and surveillance of non-American "lone wolf" suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.

The roving wiretaps and access to business records are small parts of the USA Patriot Act enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But unlike most of the act, which is permanent law, those provisions must be renewed periodically because of concerns that they could be used to violate privacy rights. The same applies to the "lone wolf" provision, which was part of a 2004 intelligence law.

Paul argued that in the rush to meet the terrorist threat in 2001 Congress enacted a Patriot Act that tramples on individual liberties. He had some backing from liberal Democrats and civil liberties groups who have long contended the law gives the government authority to spy on innocent citizens.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he voted for the act in 2001 "while ground zero was still burning." But "I soon realized it gave too much power to government without enough judicial and congressional oversight."

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said the provision on collecting business records can expose law-abiding citizens to government scrutiny. "If we cannot limit investigations to terrorism or other nefarious activities, where do they end?" he asked.

"The Patriot Act has been used improperly again and again by law enforcement to invade Americans' privacy and violate their constitutional rights," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.

Still, coming just a month after intelligence and military forces tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, there was little appetite for tampering with the terrorism-fighting tools. These tools, said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, "have kept us safe for nearly a decade and Americans today should be relieved and reassured to know that these programs will continue."

Intelligence officials have denied improper use of surveillance tools, and this week both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent letters to congressional leaders warning of serious national security consequences if the provisions were allowed to lapse.

The Obama administration says that without the three authorities the FBI might not be able to obtain information on terrorist plotting inside the U.S. and that a terrorist who communicates using different cell phones and email accounts could escape timely surveillance.

"When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we would be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday. In unusually personal criticism of a fellow senator, he warned that Paul, by blocking swift passage of the bill, "is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them."

The nation itself is divided over the Patriot Act, as reflected in a Pew Research Center poll last February, before the killing of bin Laden, that found that 34 percent felt the law "goes too far and poses a threat to civil liberties. Some 42 percent considered it "a necessary tool that helps the government find terrorists." That was a slight turnaround from 2004 when 39 percent thought it went too far and 33 percent said it was necessary.

Paul, after complaining that Reid's remarks were "personally insulting," asked whether the nation "should have some rules that say before they come into your house, before they go into your banking records, that a judge should be asked for permission, that there should be judicial review? Do we want a lawless land?"

Paul agreed to let the bill go forward after he was given a vote on two amendments to rein in government surveillance powers. Both were soundly defeated. The more controversial, an amendment that would have restricted powers to obtain gun records in terrorist investigations, was defeated 85-10 after lawmakers received a letter from the National Rifle Association stating that it was not taking a position on the measure.

According to a senior Justice Department national security official testifying to Congress last March, the government has sought roving wiretap authority in about 20 cases a year between 2001 and 2010 and has sought warrants for business records less than 40 times a year, on average. The government has yet to use the lone wolf authority.

But the ACLU also points out that court approvals for business record access jumped from 21 in 2009 to 96 last year, and the organization contends the Patriot Act has blurred the line between investigations of actual terrorists and those not suspected of doing anything wrong.

Two Democratic critics of the Patriot Act, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Udall of Colorado, on Thursday extracted a promise from Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that she would hold hearings with intelligence and law enforcement officials on how the law is being carried out.

Wyden says that while there are numerous interpretations of how the Patriot Act works, the official government interpretation of the law remains classified. "A significant gap has developed now between what the public thinks the law says and what the government secretly claims it says," Wyden said.

___

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman and Pete Yost contributed to this report.

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US calls Chechen group terrorists, offers reward (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has declared a Chechen group as a terrorist organization, and is offering up to $5 million for information leading to its commander.

The State Department announced the action against the Caucasus Emirate Thursday, after President Barack Obama met Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev in France.

The group is blamed for bombing Moscow's airport in January, two subway stations in 2010 and a Russian rail train in 2009. The attacks killed dozens.

The designation aims to block financial support for the militants. They want to expel Russia from the North Caucasus and establish an Islamic emirate.

The U.S. also authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the group's commander, Doku Umarov. It said he also has encouraged violence against the U.S., Britain and Israel.

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Amtrak chief: Trains more vulnerable than planes (AP)

WASHINGTON – Amtrak President Joseph Boardman says he wants to step up security patrols of the passenger rail network and explore new technologies able to provide advance warning of track tampering following revelations that al Qaida considered attacking U.S. trains.

Boardman told a Senate panel Tuesday that the agency has expanded its use of explosive-sniffing dogs and is in close contact with U.S. and international security agencies.

He said promising ultrasonic and laser technologies may enable detection of track problems far ahead of trains. But he cautioned that trains are more vulnerable to attack than planes because terrorists have more ability to access trains and track.

He said more patrols of tracks are needed to identify specific points of vulnerability.

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Arab uprising disturbing flow of anti-terror intel (AP)

By BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Bouazza Ben Bouazza And Karl Ritter, Associated Press – 1 hr 47 mins ago

TUNIS, Tunisia – Western security officials worry crucial intelligence on terror groups in North Africa will dry up as repressive — but effective — security services are dismantled or reorganized following the Arab revolts.

Those concerns, expressed by European and Israeli intelligence officers in interviews with The Associated Press, add urgency to reports of foreign fighters with suspected al-Qaida crossing into Tunisia.

Extremist groups such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are not believed to have played a big role in the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. But concerns are mounting they will exploit the instability caused by the sudden collapse of autocratic regimes that clamped down hard on terrorism and cooperated with the West.

"The intelligence coming from our partners in North Africa has been very important over the years," one European security official told AP.

"Although the agencies were seen as being particularly brutal, they were often very effective," he said. "I think it's too soon to say what will happen in North Africa, but it's fair to say that we're concerned further instability could affect intelligence exchanges."

Another intelligence official from a different European country said there already is a noticeable drop in the flow of intelligence from North Africa. "It's already happening," he said, calling it a bigger concern for Europe than the risk of reprisals by Islamist extremists for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

While Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen are considered priority countries in the fight against al-Qaida, North Africa has been a staging ground for various terror groups affiliated with, or inspired by, al-Qaida leaders.

In a message recorded shortly before his death and released online Wednesday, bin Laden praised the protest movements in Tunisia and Egypt and predicted that revolutions would spread across the region. Bin Laden and his followers saw many Middle East governments as corrupt and hoped their collapse would lead to rule based on their austere interpretation of Islamic law.

North Africa has featured in several major terror plots in Europe, including the 2003 ricin plot in Britain in which a suspected al-Qaida operative from Algeria was convicted for trying to spread the deadly poison. Moroccans or people of Moroccan origin made up most of the 29 people tried for the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in Europe's deadliest Islamist terror attack.

One-third of terror suspects arrested in the European Union in 2010 were of North African origin, according to Europol, the EU's police agency.

French authorities have long trumpeted strong counterterrorism cooperation with Algeria, which suffered a bloody Islamic insurgency that peaked in the 1990s. Relatively small anti-government protests have erupted in Algeria in recent months, but nothing on the scale of that in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

Still, Europol's latest terror assessment in April said "the instability of state security forces may weaken the ability of states such as Algeria to effectively tackle a group such as AQIM." Such groups "may be able to take advantage of the temporary reduction of state control for terrorist purposes," Europol said.

Those concerns were underscored by the recent influx of foreign fighters near the Tunisian-Algerian border. A Tunisian colonel was killed Wednesday in a clash with an armed group of Libyans, Algerians and Tunisians, local Tunisian officials said. The group's identity wasn't immediately known.

A French official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said "I'm not convinced" that the incidents in Tunisia had links to AQIM as some local media suggested. He noted that some people — including the Libyan opposition Transitional National Council — have an interest in trying to draw some links as part of efforts to provoke greater Western participation in the region.

"I don't rule it out, but I don't have proof either," the official said.

Egypt, Libya and Tunisia had varying records of cooperation with the West. Under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was long seen as a key ally for the West. Tunisia, while also a Western ally, kept quiet about many of its internal counterterrorism efforts under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and was seen as sparing on intelligence sharing. Moammar Gadhafi's Libya — once a state sponsor of terror — developed cooperative ties with the West only after he renounced his nuclear program.

An Aug. 10, 2009, U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks described Libya as a "critical ally in U.S. counterterrorism efforts" and "one of our primary partners in combating the flow of foreign fighters."

Egypt's State Security Investigations Service (SSIS) had close relations with both the FBI, which offered its members training, and the CIA, "from whom the SSIS received prisoners for interrogation under the U.S. rendition program," Canadian security analyst Andrew McGregor wrote in an April analysis published by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.

The Egyptian security service was also blamed for the worst human rights abuses during Mubarak's rule, using the fight against terrorism as an excuse to crack down on political dissent.

After Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11, protesters stormed the security service's main headquarters and other offices, seizing documents to keep them from being destroyed to hide evidence of human rights abuses. The SSIS was dismantled and the new interior minister, Maj. Gen. Mansour el-Essawy, said a new agency in charge of national security and fighting terrorism will be formed.

In Tunisia, the Interior Ministry of the interim government in March dissolved the dreaded political police — one of Ben Ali's greatest tools of repression — and the state security apparatus, but it remains unclear what will replace them.

Magnus Ranstorp, terror expert at the National Swedish Defense College, said it may just be a matter of replacing the top leaders, while keeping the structure of the agencies intact.

"You may change the leadership but you won't change the entire security service," he said.

Nevertheless, Western intelligence partners are likely to see the flow of information "strangled" temporarily as established lines of communication disappear. "You don't recreate that overnight," Ranstorp said.

Mathieu Guidere, a professor at Toulouse University who studies Islamic fundamentalism, said around 30 top officials had been replaced in Tunisia's Interior Ministry.

"The new people are not used to the protocols. They don't have the personal contacts" with Western intelligence agents that their predecessors did, said Guidere. "So intelligence is more difficult to get."

A key concern in Egypt — not least for neighboring Israel — is the release of thousands of prisoners during the uprising, potentially including hardened terrorists. For years Egypt and Israel enjoyed close security cooperation, including a joint effort to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza from the Sinai desert.

Israeli security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said there is "complete chaos" in Sinai that has caused immediate damage to its intelligence collection efforts.

With no strong regime to deal with, Israel is concerned about the way it will collect intelligence on the Gaza front, they said.

____

Ritter reported from Stockholm. Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds in London, Jamey Keaten in Paris, Aron Heller in Jerusalem, Katharine Houreld in Nairobi and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.

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Clinton: Pakistan needs to take 'decisive steps' (AP)

By ANNE GEARAN and NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Anne Gearan And Nahal Toosi, Associated Press – Fri May 27, 10:04 am ET

ISLAMABAD – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that relations between the United States and Pakistan have reached a turning point after the killing of Osama bin Laden and she called on Islamabad to take "decisive steps" in the days ahead to fight terrorism.

Clinton made the remarks after meeting with Pakistani leaders on a seven-hour trip aimed at repairing ties badly damaged by the May 2 U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida chief. A brief portion of the meetings witnessed by reporters was stiff and awkward, with no smiles among the U.S. delegation, and it was unclear how much, if any, progress was made.

Although she stressed that the U.S. won't abandon an alliance it considers critical to success in the war in Afghanistan and that both countries had shared interests, Clinton also criticized Pakistanis for propagating conspiracy theories and anti-American sentiment.

Pakistani officials are angry they were not told in advance of the raid against bin Laden, who was living in an army town not far from the capital, Islamabad. Parliament has passed resolutions condemning the U.S. incursion, and the U.S. has been asked to reduce the number of military personnel it has stationed in nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has become a nexus for Islamic extremism.

In the U.S., suspicions have abounded that elements in Pakistan's security services may have harbored the terrorist mastermind, and some lawmakers have called for a review of the billions in military and humanitarian aid that the U.S. gives to Pakistan.

Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, were the highest ranking U.S. officials to travel to Pakistan since the raid. They met Friday with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, among others.

Afterward, Clinton said relations "had reached a turning point," but that she thought Pakistan knew the stakes involved. She joked about the tense atmosphere witnessed by reporters at the beginning of the talks, but was serious-faced for the most of the news conference.

"We will do our part, and we look to the government of Pakistan to take decisive steps in the days ahead," she said at the U.S. Embassy, with no Pakistani official present. "Joint action against al-Qaida and its affiliates will make Pakistan, America and the world safer and more secure."

She added that the Pakistanis had mentioned "some very specific actions" they would take in the short term, but did not give any details. She also said the U.S. had been given access to bin Laden's compound Friday, a sign of ongoing cooperation between the nations.

The U.S. relies on Pakistan for transit and supply routes for foreign troops in Afghanistan and will need its help if Afghanistan is to broker a peace deal with Taliban militants. The country is believed to have influence over several Afghan insurgent commanders.

Clinton acknowledged this, saying "for reconciliation to succeed Pakistan must be part of this process."

She also repeated that no evidence has emerged that people in Pakistan's highest ranks had any idea of bin Laden's whereabouts.

According to Clinton, Zardari, the Pakistani president, grew emotional when saying that had he known of bin Laden's whereabouts he would have gone after him. Zardari is the widower of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated by suspected al-Qaida-linked militants.

"Our counterparts in the (Pakistani) government were very forthcoming in saying that somebody, somewhere, was providing some kind of support, and they are carrying out an investigation and we have certainly offered to share whatever information we come across," Clinton added.

Zardari's office released a statement after the meeting saying that the two sides agreed to "work together in any future actions against high-value targets in Pakistan," and to cooperate on promoting peace in Afghanistan.

The U.S. visit comes a day after a Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives near several government offices in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 32 people.

Thursday's blast was the latest in a series of attacks to hit the country since the bin Laden raid, including an 18-hour siege of a naval base in Pakistan's south. Some commentators and elements in the media have tried to blame the siege on "foreign hands" such as archrival India, with some suggesting that it was part of a grand Western conspiracy to destabilize Pakistan and take away its nuclear weapons.

Clinton lashed out at conspiracy theorists and those who spread anti-American views, saying such actions hamper what could be a more constructive relationship, and ultimately "won't make problems disappear."

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Pakistan to use 'all means' against terror (AFP)

ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistan has authorised the use of "all means" to wipe out militants, following a string of humiliating Taliban attacks on security forces, but stopped short of unveiling specific new measures.

Six guerrillas stormed the naval air base in Karachi on Sunday, killing 10 personnel and destroying two US-made aircraft each costing 36 million dollars in an attack that took hundreds of troops 17 hours to quell.

It was the worst siege on a military base since militants besieged the army headquarters in 2009 and heaped humiliation on commanders still reeling from the disclosure that Osama bin Laden was found living under their noses.

Pakistan's main Taliban faction have claimed a string of attacks on the security forces to avenge the Al-Qaeda chief's killing on May 2 in an American special forces raid that apparently unfolded without the military realising.

On May 13, 98 people were killed in a bombing outside a police training centre in the northwest. A week later, the Taliban bombed a US convoy in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing one Pakistani and wounding 11 people.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani convened a meeting of the defence committee of the cabinet on Wednesday to review security measures, attended by cabinet ministers, army, navy, air and intelligence chiefs.

On the same day, nine security personnel were killed and a police station flattened in a massive suicide truck bomb in Peshawar.

Gilani admitted that "serious concerns are being expressed about our ability to deal with the gravity of problems posed due to terrorism".

But a statement issued after the meeting failed to list any specific policies and appeared largely confined to rhetoric.

"Security, defence and law enforcement agencies will be authorised to use all means necessary to eliminate terrorists and militants," it said.

Possibly alluding to ground operations against militants along the Afghan border it added: "All arms of the government will ensure that terrorist hideouts are being destroyed using all appropriate means."

The United States has long put pressure on Pakistan to lead a major air and ground offensive in North Waziristan, the most notorious Taliban and Al-Qaeda bastion used to launch attacks across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has always maintained that any such operation would be of its own time and choosing, arguing that its 140,000 troops committed to the northwest are too overstretched fighting against militants who pose a domestic threat.

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Shoe bomb still a threat to aviation: top US official (AFP)

LAS VEGAS (AFP) – Shoe bombs are still a threat so for now US air travelers will have to continue to take their shoes off before airport screenings, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday.

Napolitano said her department has been looking for a technological solution to the shoe problem, drawing applause at a conference of travel and tourism industry leaders.

She quickly added: "We're not there yet, so wear slipons."

The shoe requirement is probably the most hated symbol of the raft of security measures imposed on air travelers after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Industry leaders have complained about a one-size-fits-all approach to aviation security that they say has discouraged travel and is costing billions of dollars in revenues.

"It's a technological problem," said Napolitano.

"Why? Because we know from a risk-based standard that our adversaries have tried before and are always attempting to see what they can get onto a plane that would constitute enough explosive material to blow a plane up," she said.

"That threat has not disappeared, and if anything even the public revelations out of the material seized out of this compound where bin Laden was confirmed that aviation remains a target."

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Judge orders hearing for man in Mich. mosque plot (AP)

DETROIT – A judge on Tuesday ordered a competency hearing for a mentally ill Vietnam War veteran accused of planning to attack a prominent Michigan mosque with fireworks.

Roger Stockham, a Muslim convert of Imperial Beach, Calif., was to stand trial in Michigan on terrorism and explosives charges for allegedly plotting to detonate powerful fireworks at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Bruce Morrow ordered a competency hearing for Stockham after learning that the 63-year-old sent a letter to the center last week.

Defense attorney Matthew Evans said Stockham's letter didn't threaten physical violence, but he declined to divulge its contents.

"It was just a rant — it really didn't make sense," Evans said.

The hearing is set for July but could be held sooner.

Stockham was arrested Jan. 24 outside the mosque in the Detroit suburb, at the heart of the region's Arab-American community. He has said he only planned to spray-paint an anti-Iraq war message on the building, not to set off the fireworks police said they found in his car.

Stockham has several prior convictions and suffers from bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders. He has spent much of the past three decades in prison or psychiatric hospitals.

He's charged in Michigan with making a false report or threat of terrorism and possessing explosives with unlawful intent. Evans said he faces at least three years in prison if convicted of both charges.

Police said he had 96 fireworks in his car, including M-80 firecrackers and smoke bombs.

Kassem Allie, the Islamic Center's executive administrator, declined to discuss the letter. But he said Stockham still poses a threat, regardless of his competency.

"We are convinced, based on what we understand his history is, that either way public safety should be the first consideration," Allie said.

Jeriel Heard, the county's director of jails, said he's not aware of the letter, but his officers are trained to look for letters that include specific threats to a person or institution. Officers typically do not intercept letters unless they include such threats.

Stockham told The Associated Press during a jailhouse interview last month that he is taking medication for bipolar disorder. He said that despite being locked up, he feels "better than I've been since the war."

Evans earlier had argued on behalf of Stockham's mental competency, saying that he was eccentric but not insane. Evans said the news of the letter surprised him and has forced him to reconsider how to defend his client and handle the case.

"I went out on a limb here. Now I've got to start making sure the branch is solid," Evans said.

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Publisher Conde Nast signs $2B WTC tower lease (AP)

NEW YORK – Magazine publisher Conde Nast formalized an agreement Wednesday to relocate its global headquarters to 1 World Trade Center, a move that will add a touch of glamour and a prized anchor tenant to the landmark tower rising at the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Standing on the 34th floor of the unfinished spire, with a view overlooking New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, officials from the company and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey signed a $1.9 billion, 25-year lease that calls for the publisher to take over about a third of the skyscraper formerly known as the Freedom Tower.

Conde Nast, the publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, among other magazines, said it would move more than 3,000 workers into about 1 million square feet of the tower, on 21 floors. It becomes the second corporate tenant to ink a deal for space, and its presence is almost sure to inspire more buzz than the first entity to sign on, a Chinese real estate investment firm.

"From travel to fashion to cultural critiques, the Conde Nast imprint lends authority to any subject. The same can be said with real estate," the Port Authority's executive director, Christopher Ward, said at a board meeting earlier Wednesday where the agency approved the deal.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the lease-signing that the publisher's presence in the building will be a trendsetter downtown, much as the company was when it moved to its current Times Square headquarters in 1999. Conde Nast's embrace of the once-seedy district helped establish it as a proper corporate address. Bloomberg said he expected the same phenomenon downtown.

"They have blazed a trail. Others will follow," he said.

Conde Nast chairman S. I. Newhouse Jr. said the company has thrived off of the city's "indefatigable energy, power and vitality," and was proud to be part of lower Manhattan's rebirth.

One World Trade is slated for completion in late 2013. At 1,776 feet, it will be the tallest building in the U.S., and the centerpiece of a redeveloped ground zero.

The steel frame of the tower now reaches 66 stories of a planned 104 designed to punctuate the rebuilt site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

About 1.8 million square feet of office space in the building are still available for rent. The deal calls for Conde Nast to take possession of its space in the building in 2014.

The skyscraper is one of several envisioned at the site, along with a Sept. 11 memorial, transit hub and performing arts center.

Port Authority board members also approved a partnership deal Wednesday that will allow one of the city's biggest names in real estate, the Durst Organization, to make a $100 million investment in 1 World Trade Center and take over leasing and property management for the property.

Julie Menin, chairwoman of the community board that covers the World Trade Center site, said she expected Conde Nast's arrival to spark growth in restaurants, retail and amenities.

"This is great news for downtown and hopefully will be a harbinger of many other leases to come," she said.

The search for an anchor tenant from the private sector had lasted years, through complex and sometimes contentious dealings with multiple stakeholders.

"There were a lot of bumps along the way, but this will be an incredible testament to the citizens of our city, of how we have rebuilt," said William C. Rudin, chairman of the civic group Association for a Better New York.

Conde Nast's move from midtown Manhattan to lower Manhattan was a natural progression, Rudin said. Cost-conscious publishers who weathered an industrywide downturn as advertising rates plummeted and viewers migrated online were eager to get better deals for their money, he said, and lower Manhattan frequently offers more space at a variety of price points.

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Murder suspect says he wanted to start terror cell (AP)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The man accused of fatally shooting a soldier outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock in 2009 now says he wanted to start a terrorist cell in the U.S., but a prosecutor brushed off the claims Saturday as "just ridiculous."

In his latest letter to the court, Abdulhakim Muhammad told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright that he wanted to return to the U.S. from Yemen to start his own terror group. Muhammad was deported from Yemen in early 2009, after being in prison in the Middle Eastern country for immigration violations.

Muhammad was born in Memphis, Tenn., as Carlos Bledsoe, but changed his name after converting to Islam.

He is charged with capital murder and attempted capital murder in the June 2009 shootings that killed Army Pvt. William Long and wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula. The letter, first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, focuses on Muhammad's argument that his case should be tried in federal court.

Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley said there was little he could say about the letter.

"I mean, his claims are just ridiculous. He's nothing but a street thug and this is just a drive-by shooting. That's our position and we're sticking to it," Jegley told The Associated Press.

Muhammad's attorney, Claiborne H. Ferguson, said his client was likely stressed ahead of his trial, which is set to begin in July.

"As we get closer to trial, I can imagine that the situation will become more and more stressful for Muhammad. Members of the defense team are prepared to move forward and try the case as necessary," he said.

The FBI did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

When Muhammad was arrested minutes after the shootings, he told police that he was acting alone and that the ambush was a "jihad" in retaliation for what he believed was a war on Islam by the U.S. Seven months later, in a letter from jail, he claimed to be linked to a Yemen-based al-Qaida affiliate.

Muhammad has told the AP in telephone interviews from jail that the shooting was revenge for American killings of Muslims and that he does not believe he is guilty.

In his latest letter, which the court received Friday, Muhammad continued to dispute the insanity defense his attorneys plan to use at his trial. He notes that state doctors have found him competent to stand trial.

"I have no mental disease or defect, neither past or present. I was well aware of my actions June 1, 2009, as well as my actions before and after that date," he wrote. "So dismiss the case and try it in federal court where I will have a better defense other than mental instability."

He also noted that the shootings occurred outside a federal building and "the Army recruiters outside that federal building were federal employees. He claims he was under federal investigation at the time of the shooting.

Wright, the judge, has refused Muhammad's request to fire his attorneys.

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Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.arkansasonline.com

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India, US to discuss counterterrorism (AP)

NEW DELHI – U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has begun a four-day visit to India by paying tribute to victims of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack.

Napolitano laid a wreath and observed a brief silence on Tuesday at a memorial to 16 policemen who were killed during the three-day siege of India's financial capital.

Napolitano will also visit New Delhi to launch an India-U.S. security dialogue to increase cooperation in counterterrorism, intelligence sharing and cybersecurity.

A total of 166 people were killed when 10 young Pakistanis attacked two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a busy train station in Mumbai in November 2008. India blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based militant groups.

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British police 'target Asians': report (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – British police are up to 42 times more likely to use counter-terrorism powers to stop and search people of Asian origin than white people, a report said on Tuesday.

Police are using a power, granted under the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows them to stop people at ports and airports for up to nine hours without the need for reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime.

More than 85,000 such stops were carried out in 2009 and 2010, according to figures obtained by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies.

An analysis by The Guardian newspaper found that people of Asian origin -- normally people from south Asian countries such as India and Pakistan -- were up to 42 times more likely than white people to be stopped.

Asked by lawmakers on Tuesday whether people of Asian origin in Britain felt they were being singled out, senior police officer Nick Gargan said there was "no shortage of evidence" to back up the claim.

"There is the perception that that's precisely how communities feel," he said.

A total of 2,201 of the stop and searches lasted more than an hour and fewer than one in 100 resulted in an arrest being made, according to the figures.

People of Asian origin made up 41 percent of these stops, white people 19 percent, black people 10 percent and others 30 percent.

Asians make up five percent of Britain's population, while white people make up 91 percent.

Police denied they were singling out any specific groups.

Existing rules ensure "that the examination of a person cannot be based solely on perceived ethnicity or religion," said John Donlon, of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

"Activity is intelligence-led and officers deployed at ports do not single out particular ethnic groups for examination."

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Al-Qaida eyed oil tankers as bombing targets (AP)

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Eileen Sullivan And Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press – Fri May 20, 10:46 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in the compound where bin Laden was killed nearly three weeks ago, was little more than an al-Qaida fantasy. But the FBI and the Homeland Security Department issued a confidential warning to police and the energy industry Thursday. The alert, obtained by The Associated Press, said that al-Qaida had sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers, had decided that spring and summer provided the best weather to approach the ships, had determined that blowing them up would be easiest from the inside and believed an explosion would create an "extreme economic crisis."

Bin Laden's documents also revealed that in February 2010, the terror group identified New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago as important cities that should be attacked; and it eyed specific dates, including the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Christmas, July Fourth and the State of the Union address, according to a similar alert issued Friday, obtained by the AP. There is no information indicating that there are plots involving these cities, dates and tactics under way.

"We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States," Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a statement Friday. "However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of al-Qaida in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea."

With about half the world's oil supply moving on the water, industry and security experts have warned for years that such an attack would be a jolt to global markets. That's particularly true if terrorists carried it out in one of the narrow waterways that serve as shipping chokepoints.

"You start blowing up oil tankers at sea and you're going to start closing down shipping lanes," said Don Borelli, senior vice president of the Sufan Group security firm and a former FBI counterterrorism agent in New York. "It's going to cause this huge ripple through the economy."

Still, even if al-Qaida were able to blow up one of the supertankers that move oil around the globe, it would barely dent the world's oil supply, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, who has been trading oil contracts since the futures market opened on the Nymex in 1983. A tanker holds about 2 million barrels, or enough to supply world demand for about a half hour.

The terrorist threat to oil infrastructure is nothing new. Members of a British terror cell that hoped to hijack trans-Atlantic airplanes in 2006 had also made plans to attack oil and gas targets in Britain. And al-Qaida's franchise in Yemen has attacked pipelines.

Thurdsay's alert was significant mostly because it linked the scheme directly to bin Laden, meaning the idea probably has circulated among al-Qaida's most senior leaders.

The government encouraged companies to continue random screening, to warn employees about possible threats and to establish procedures for reporting suspicious activity. But there was no immediate effect on oil markets, and both shippers and security officials said it was business as usual on the water.

"This has been a possibility on everyone's minds for some time now," said Bill Box a spokesman for the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners. "Everyone is aware of what might happen."

Shippers have been on particular alert as threats of piracy have increased along the African coast. In 2008, Somali pirates captured the Sirius Star supertanker and held it for ransom. In 2007 the Japanese tanker the Golden Nori was hijacked carrying 40,000 tons of the highly explosive chemical benzene. Intelligence officials initially worried that terrorists might try to crash the boat into an offshore oil platform or use it as a gigantic bomb, but it proved to be another attack by pirates seeking ransom.

Then in 2010, two groups of pirates got into a shootout while arguing over the ransom for the Maran Centaurus, threatening to turn the ship into a massive fireball.

Pirates have had success with a relatively low-tech strategy. They fire at a ship to get it to slow down, then pull alongside in skiffs. Using lashed-together ladders or grappling hooks, the pirates climb on board with guns. Many ship owners are reluctant to have armed guards onboard, since the cargo is so flammable that sailors are even forbidden to smoke.

Somali pirates take the ships for money. The information taken from bin Laden's compound after he was killed May 2 suggests al-Qaida was interested in adapting that strategy to terrorize.

The U.S. has warned for years that such an attack in a narrow waterway, such as the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran, would immediately send oil prices higher.

In Asia, concerns have centered on the continent's key oil chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, located between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Last year, an Indonesian al-Qaida affiliate set up a training camp at the beginning of the strait, leading to speculation about an attack there and prompting Singapore to issue a warning.

"The good thing is that boats don't move that fast. It gives you plenty of time to interdict," said Crispian Cuss, the program director at Olive Group, one of the biggest private security companies in the Middle East. "If a vessel was hijacked by an al-Qaida organization and headed toward a major port, the authorities would not let that vessel get anywhere near that port."

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Follow Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/esullivanap and http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo

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Sullivan reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Chris Kahn in New York; Cassandra Vinograd, Raphael Satter, David Stringer and Meera Selva in London; Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Pakistan; Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Katharine Houreld in Nairobi contributed to this story.

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