Obama urges anti-terror cooperation after Norway attack (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama offered condolences to Norway after deadly twin attacks and urged countries around the world to step up cooperation to combat terror.

Speaking during a meeting with New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key, Obama called the attacks "a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring."

"We have to work cooperatively together on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks," the president said.

Obama, who visited Oslo in 2009 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, fondly recalled his welcome in the NATO ally and said he "wanted to personally extend my condolences to the people of Norway."

"Our hearts go out to them and we will provide any support we can to them," said Obama, who earlier received a briefing on the attacks from his top anti-terrorism adviser John Brennan.

A blast tore through government buildings and a gunman opened fire at a youth meeting of the ruling party, leaving at least 80 people reported dead.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States "strongly condemns today's attacks in Oslo and Utoya Island.

"We stand with the people of Norway in this moment of sorrow and offer our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those injured and killed," said Clinton

State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke Fulton called the attacks "despicable" and said the embassy in Oslo has urged all US citizens to avoid the center of the Norwegian capital.

"The US has reached out to the Norwegian authorities to offer assistance, but there have been no specific requests from the Norwegians thus far," Fulton told AFP.

New Zealand's prime minister, in his meeting with Obama, also voiced his "sympathies and concerns" over the attacks in Norway.

"If it is an act of global terrorism, then I think that what it shows is no country, large or small, is immune from that risk," Key said.

"And that's why New Zealand plays its part in Afghanistan as we try and join others like the United States in making the world a safer place," he said.

New Zealand has sent 70 elite special force troops and 140 reconstruction personnel to Afghanistan.

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Obama nominates new anti-terror chief (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Friday nominated intelligence specialist Matthew Olsen to head the National Counterterrorism Center, which works to thwart attacks on US soil.

Olsen, a lawyer who is currently general counsel at the secretive National Security Agency, has also served in the Justice Department and will replace Michael Leiter, who stepped down last month.

"Matt has a distinguished record of service in our intelligence community and I'm confident he will continue to build on our strong counterterrorism efforts," Obama said in a statement.

"Matt will be a critical part of my national security team as we work tirelessly to thwart attacks against our nation and do everything in our power to protect the American people."

If confirmed by the Senate, Olsen will join the center as it seeks to share counterterrorism information and threat data across the US government and its myriad intelligence agencies.

At the Justice Department, Olsen conducted a comprehensive review of intelligence information on detainees at the Guantanamo Bay camp for terror suspects as part of Obama's so-far unsuccessful attempt to close the facility.

Olsen's appointment was announced two days after the Obama administration unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy, which pursues the "utter destruction" of Al-Qaeda and refocuses US resources to combat the threat of home-grown terror.

The new strategy comes 10 years into the US-led "war on terror," launched by former president George W. Bush after the deadly September 11 attacks on the United States.

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AP sources: US-Pakistan form an anti-terror squad (AP)

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier, Ap Intelligence Writer – Thu Jun 2, 7:23 am ET

WASHINGTON – Bruised from their latest diplomatic clash, the U.S. and Pakistan are trying to bandage their relationship by forging a new joint intelligence team to go after top terrorism suspects, officials say.

The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the U.S. list of most-wanted terrorism targets, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday. The list includes some groups the Pakistanis have been reluctant to attack, U.S. officials said.

It's one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after U.S. forces tracked down and killed al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden during a secret raid in Pakistan last month.

But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Pakistanis say the U.S. has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil.

U.S. officials say they need to see the Pakistanis target militants they've long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pakistani tribal areas while attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

All those interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The U.S. and Pakistan have engaged in a diplomatic stare-down since the May 2 raid, with the Pakistanis outraged over the unilateral action as an affront to its sovereignty and the Americans angry to find that bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years in a military town just 35 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

The U.S. deliberately hid the operation from Pakistan, recipient of billions in counterterrorism aid, for fear that the operation would leak to militants.

A series of high-level U.S. visits has aimed to take the edge off. Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell met with intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha last month. Last week, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, held a day of intensive meetings with top Pakistani military and civilian officials.

After that outreach, Pakistan allowed the CIA to re-examine the bin Laden compound last Friday. Pakistan also returned the tail section of a U.S. stealth Black Hawk helicopter that broke off when the SEALs blew up the aircraft to destroy its secret noise- and radar-deadening technology.

The CIA has also shared some information gleaned from the raid, and Pakistan has reciprocated, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday.

The investigative team will be made up mainly of intelligence officers from both nations, according to two U.S. officials and one Pakistani official. It would draw in part on any intelligence emerging from the CIA's analysis of computer and written files gathered by the Navy SEALs who raided bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, as well as Pakistani intelligence gleaned from interrogations of those who frequented or lived near the bin Laden compound, the officials said.

The formation of the team marks a return to the counterterrorism cooperation that has led to major takedowns of al-Qaida militants, like the joint arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003.

The joint intelligence team will go after five top targets, including al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, a possible bin Laden successor, and al-Qaida operations chief Atiya Abdel Rahman, as well as Taliban leader like Mullah Omar, all of whom U.S. intelligence officials believe are hiding in Pakistan, one U.S. official said.

Another target is Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani tribe in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Allied with the Taliban and al-Qaida, the Haqqanis are behind some of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops and Afghan civilians in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence officials say their top commanders live openly in the Pakistani city of Miram Shah, close to a Pakistani army outpost.

Pakistani officials say the U.S. has never provided them accurate intelligence as to the Haqqani leadership's location. Pakistani officials also argue that as the Haqqani network has been careful never to attack the Pakistani government, there is no reason to attack them.

One official said a final target on this preliminary list is Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of a group called Harakat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, which the State Department blames for several attacks in India and Pakistan, including a 2006 suicide bombing against the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed four people.

A second U.S. official confirmed that the Pakistanis and Americans have agreed to go after a handful of militants as a confidence-building measure, but the official would not confirm the specific names on the list.

Pakistani officials say those five have always been top targets, but they also did not confirm that the new agreement specifically names them as joint targets.

Intelligence-sharing operations between the U.S. and Pakistan were already strained before the bin Laden raid, particularly by the arrest and detention in January of CIA security contractor Raymond Davis in the shooting deaths of two Pakistani men. Davis said the two were trying to rob him.

Davis was eventually released in March after the dead men's relatives agreed to accept blood money under Islamic tradition, an agreement Pakistani intelligence officials say they brokered.

But only a day after his release, a covert CIA drone strike killed at least two dozen people in the Pakistani tribal areas — people the CIA said were militants and the Pakistanis said were civilians.

Both sides disputed media reports that Pakistan had completely shut down joint intelligence centers it operates with the Americans following the bin Laden raid.

Two of the five "intelligence fusion centers" where the U.S. shares satellite, drone and other intelligence with the Pakistanis were mothballed last fall, long before either the Davis or bin Laden controversies, the Pakistani official and another U.S. official say. It was part of the fallout of the public embarrassment of the WikiLeaks cables disclosures, which revealed a closer U.S.-Pakistani military relationship than publicly acknowledged by Pakistan.

Two other fusion centers, plus smaller cooperative intelligence-sharing facilities, remain operational, both sides say, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The high-value target team is expected to use any intelligence found at the bin Laden compound in the hunt, although a month after the raid analysts have found nothing "actionable," a term describing intelligence that leads to a strike or operation against a new al-Qaida target, two U.S. officials say. The CIA-led teams have gotten through more than 60 percent of the computer files and written material taken from the compound so far.

They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing review of the now-classified bin Laden files.

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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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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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Anti-terror law clears hurdle, faces objections (AP)

WASHINGTON – A tight deadline looming, the Senate on Monday advanced a four-year extension of the Patriot Act, the controversial law that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

Lawmakers voted 74-8 to debate and vote the legislation this week, before key provisions expire on Friday. President Barack Obama was in Europe, so any extension must pass the House and Senate, then be flown overseas and signed into law before the three provisions expire.

That would require uncommon speed for the deliberative Senate, where one member can delay or block legislation. And there were opponents: Senators of both parties said the law, designed after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, would give the government too much power.

The White House urged them to work it out — quickly.

"It is essential to avoid any hiatus" in the law's powers, the Obama administration said in a statement.

The legislation would extend three expiring provisions until June 1, 2015, officials said.

The provisions at issue allow the government to use roving wiretaps on multiple electronic devices and across multiple carriers and get court-approved access to business records relevant to terrorist investigations. The third, a "lone wolf" provision that was part of a 2004 law, permits secret intelligence surveillance of non-U.S. individuals without having to show a connection between the target and a specific terrorist group.

From its inception, the law has been dogged by concerns that it represented a government power grab that could violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. The opposition came from an unlikely alliance of libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats seeking to limit the law's power.

Some Patriot Act opponents have suggested that Osama bin Laden's death earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the Patriot Act, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power.

"We were so frightened after 9/11 that we readily gave up these freedoms," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. "We really should sunset the entire Patriot Act and protect our liberties the way it was intended by our Founding Fathers."

But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

"We are not out of harm's way and no one should believe that," said the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Monday's tally cleared the Senate's 60-vote threshold to move forward with debate. Senate leaders huddled into the evening to get an agreement on which amendments would be considered, and for how long, in the shadow of the deadline. Officials said the bill would have to pass the Senate by Wednesday and be approved quickly by the House if were to be shuttled to Obama and signed before the provisions at issue expire.

Even before the test vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., proposed an amendment that closely tracked a bill his committee passed earlier this year with bipartisan support. Co-sponsored by Paul, the amendment would require that the use of national security letters — documents that allow the government to collect financial and other records — expire on Dec. 31, 2013, if not renewed by Congress.

The amendment also would require more public disclosure and oversight on the government's use of the letters, and it would cancel the one-year waiting period before a recipient of a letter can challenge a government order to keep it secret.

The Democrats who voted to block the Patriot Act extension were Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana as well as Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The Republicans who voted with them were Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Paul. Also voting no was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

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