23 senators press Pentagon chief on terror suspect (AP)

WASHINGTON – Senators pressed the Obama administration Wednesday on why a suspected Somali terrorist will be tried in a civilian court in New York and not the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, 23 lawmakers questioned whether the administration's actions in the case of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame go against Congress' wishes that military commissions handle the trials of terrorism suspects.

The lawmakers, including Republican leaders, also asked Panetta whether the administration has a policy for handling high-profile suspects.

"The American people must be assured that terrorists are not brought into the United States for trial only to be released as a result of an acquittal, a short sentence, or some other action such as inability of the United States to deport an individual that allows the terrorist in the United States to remain here and be released into the general population," the lawmakers wrote.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter.

The military captured Warsame on April 19, and then put him aboard a Navy warship, where he was interrogated at sea by intelligence officials, senior administration officials said last week.

Warsame provided what officials said was important intelligence about al-Qaida in Yemen and its relationship with al-Shabab militants in Somalia. The two groups have been known to have ties, but the extent of that relationship has remained unclear.

The FBI later stepped in and began the interrogation from scratch, in a way that could be used in court. After the FBI read Warsame his Miranda rights, which include the right to remain silent and speak with an attorney, he kept talking for days. He was indicted on federal charges in New York last week.

The senators cited recent congressional testimony from Vice Adm. William McRaven, who said decisions are made case by case on where to hold suspected terrorists captured by the U.S. military outside of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The lawmakers noted that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, also have told Congress that there is no single policy.

"We believe this is an intolerable situation," the senators wrote.

They asked 11 questions, including whether Guantanamo was an option, whether detainees held at sea had been transferred to another country and whether the administration has a consistent policy.

Among those signing the letter were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and top members of the Senate Armed Services Committee: Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Joe Lieberman, independent of Connecticut; and Jim Webb, D-Va.

Last week, McConnell accused the administration of undermining national security by bringing Warsame into the United States.

"The administration has purposefully imported a terrorist into the U.S. and is providing him all the rights of U.S. citizens in court," McConnell said. "This ideological rigidity being displayed by the administration is harming the national security of the United States of America."

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AP Interview: Ex-CIA chief on al-Qaida after Osama (AP)

DUBLIN – The killing of Osama bin Laden will spur the al-Qaida terror network to back off his grandiose plans for more 9/11-style attacks in favor of more frequent, smaller strikes on easier targets, former U.S. spy chief Michael Hayden forecast Monday.

Hayden, who directed both the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush, also emphasized that the smartest way for America to monitor its enemies would be to keep targeting aides, not the kingpins directly.

"Let's say someone was trying to spy on the NSA. They would have been silly to target me. I don't use the phone much," Hayden told The AP on the fringe of an intelligence-gathering conference in Ireland.

"My communication's mostly face to face, one on one. No, you should target my secretary. You want to know what's going on? Tap her phone," he said in a phone interview.

Hayden was the main speaker Monday at an annual forum organized by the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies of Erie, Pennsylvania. During the interview he said the West was better off with Osama bin Laden dead than in custody — even though a living bin Laden represented a potential gold mine of intelligence.

He cautioned that the May 2 killing of the al-Qaida chieftain would speed the terror network's current transition to a higher volume of less sophisticated attacks.

"The common instinct from intelligence officers is that capture is always better than kill. But in this one particular case, even me as a career intelligence officer, I'd say that capturing him (bin Laden) would have been very problematic," Hayden said.

"Bin Laden in American custody would have made almost all Americans, Britons, many others in the West, all of them targets for al-Qaida retribution because we had bin Laden in our custody."

He said evidence emerging from the computer and paper records seized at bin Laden's Pakistan hideaway suggest a commander determined to repeat the epic scale and mass slaughter of early al-Qaida attacks, even though more rigorous security has made such strikes exponentially harder to pull off.

Al-Qaida under bin Laden's direction was "committed to the high-casualty attack against an iconic target: the World Trade Center, embassies in East Africa, multiple airliners over the Pacific or Atlantic," Hayden said.

"Future attacks are going to be more numerous — but less complex, less well organized, less likely to succeed, and less lethal if they do succeed. I think the killing of bin Laden will accelerate that change."

The 66-year-old Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general, served as NSA director 1999-2005 and as CIA director 2006-2009. The NSA oversees phone-tapping and other electronic surveillance at home and abroad using the warrantless powers of the Patriot Act, while the CIA seeks to track America's enemies using satellite and drone footage and a network of spies.

The deployment of remotely controlled drone aircraft to monitor suspected al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan and, unofficially, in Pakistan was "an absolute war-winner," he said.

The drone footage delivered "an unblinking stare" that allows intelligence analysts to learn the comings and goings of a Khyber Pass village "as well as their own hometown."

"The drones provide us exquisite intelligence to target individuals who have leadership positions in al-Qaida and to deplete their bench of expertise," he said.

He said planting CIA agents or informers into the center of a terrorist operation was "incredibly slow moving" and meant "working in ambiguous legal areas." He said the ideal informant was someone, such as a message courier, who was privy to a terror cell's activities but not a direct participant.

Hayden said the ethical dilemma of a spy's life could be summed up by the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song: To live outside the law, you must be honest.

"The contradictory point is this. Dishonest people spy for money. On one level, spying is inherently dishonest. You're in the business of getting someone to betray the inner workings of their organization in strict confidence to you," he said.

Hayden said the sharing of anti-terror intelligence among America's myriad security and law-enforcement agencies had to be carefully controlled, partly because improved surveillance and eavesdropping powers have created an overwhelming tsunami of data.

"Most people couch this as good versus evil: Sharing intel is good and restricting it evil. Well, let me tell you, sharing everything can lead to an army private releasing hundreds of thousands of documents onto the internet," he said, referring to last year's mass publication of nearly 500,000 U.S. Army field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks.

Hayden rejected any suggestion that the NSA and CIA should merge. He compared the idea to forming a joint team of soccer and cricket players "just because they both use a ball and play on grass."

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Online:

Mercyhurst College conference, http://globalintelligenceforum.com/

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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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Full container screening 'not best' move: US security chief (AFP)

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AFP) – Asking ports of departure to perform full screening of containers before they travel to the US was probably not the best decision, US Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.

"We believe the so-called 100 percent requirement is probably not the best way to go," Napolitano told reporters at a press briefing in Rotterdam, where she was visiting Europe's largest port and the fourth-largest globally.

Napolitano is on a week-long tour of Britain and Europe to beef up security ties within the global supply chain between the US, Britain and Europe and met her British counterpart Theresa May earlier this week, her office said.

On Thursday she is to meet EU ministers and will participate in a conference of the World Customs Organisation in Brussels, where she said she would deliver a similar message.

Asked about a 2007 US Congress requirement that all containers entering the US should be scanned by their ports of exit by 2012, Napolitano said: "We at this point are not going to insist on that."

Although the 2012 deadline was set by Congress, it did give her department the opportunity to extend it if 100 percent scanning wasn't feasible.

Napolitano has previously expressed doubt about whether the mandate for all containers to be scanned by 2012 would be met.

Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security preferred a more "layered approach" including better co-operation between countries, better intelligence sharing and analysis, as well as some container scanning to prevent attacks on the United States.

"I think what we have learnt over time is that there are many different ways to achieve a security objective. You have to have multiple layers that operate effectively," she said.

Called the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the project is being run by 50 ports worldwide including Rotterdam.

The scanning initiative requires port customs to pre-scan and evaluate containers considered to be high-risk possibilities of being used in terror attacks before being put on ships bound for US ports.

Napolitano told a Congressional panel in February the US faced "heightened" threats of terror of attacks from extremists, probably the highest since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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Counterterrorism chief to leave in July: official (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a unit created after the September 11 attacks to improve the sharing of intelligence among competing U.S. spy agencies, is leaving his post after 4-1/2 years in the job.

A U.S. official said NCTC chief Michael Leiter would depart the agency, and government service, in July. The source said it was unclear what Leiter's next job would be, but it was likely to be in the private sector.

Within intelligence and counterintelligence circles, Leiter was esteemed for his non-political approach to improving collaboration among rival agencies.

Under Leiter's stewardship, the NCTC has been regarded as one of the few components of the Office of Director of National Intelligence which has had success in improving U.S. intelligence coverage and analysis of militant activity.

However, the counterterrorism center faced some criticism under Leiter's leadership, particularly when the agency failed to put together clues which might have led to the early detection of Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian militant who has been charged with trying to blow up a Detroit airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

President Barack Obama praised Leiter in a statement on Thursday, saying he "led the National Counterterrorism Center with dedication and unwavering determination during challenging and demanding times."

There was also praise from Republican Representative Peter King, chairman of the House of the Representatives Homeland Security Committee, who said Leiter had done an "outstanding job" while working for both a Republican and a Democratic president.

No immediate information was available about whom Obama might nominate to succeed Leiter. However, some counterterrorism experts said that candidates might include former Bush administration counterterrorism experts Stuart Levey and Juan Zarate. Nominees for NCTC director must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball in London; Editing by Warren Strobel and Eric Beech)

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Pakistan's LeT threat to US: security chief (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pakistan-based Islamic militant group blamed for the assault on Mumbai could also pose a threat to the United States, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said Thursday.

Napolitano, who visited India last week for talks on anti-terrorism, renewed her assertion that Lashkar-e-Taiba -- which means "The Army of the Pure" in Urdu -- was in the same league as Al-Qaeda in US eyes.

"LeT is a potent terrorist organization. It could be construed as a threat to the United States. It certainly is to India," Napolitano said.

"It is Al-Qaeda-like in its strength and organization," she said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank.

India believes the LeT and the Pakistani intelligence service staged the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which left 166 people dead and severely strained relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.

David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani American who admitted scouting sites for the Mumbai attacks, has testified in a trial in Chicago that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence has supported the LeT despite an official ban on the group.

Napolitano stayed tight-lipped about her talks with India on Lashkar-e-Taiba but said that her counterparts did not ask her specifically to ask Pakistan to turn over suspects in the Mumbai assault.

"The United States believes that it is in everyone's interest for India and Pakistan to be able to work together," she said.

Relations between India and the United States, the world's two largest democracies, have improved rapidly in the past decade. But many Indian policymakers are uneasy about the close US cooperation with Pakistan.

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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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Obama asks FBI chief to stay, seeks Congress OK (AP)

By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller, Ap White House Correspondent – Thu May 12, 9:27 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Reluctant to see another shake-up in his national security team, President Barack Obama said Thursday he wants to stick with FBI Director Robert Mueller, the sturdy face of the bureau whose term has spanned from the Sept. 11 attacks on America to the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Key lawmakers indicated support for Obama's surprise decision.

Keeping Mueller on the job would require an act of Congress since the law allows an FBI director to serve only for 10 years, and Mueller's term is up on Sept. 4.Obama said he wants Mueller to remain for two more years, which would keep him in place well after the next presidential election, into September 2013.

Mueller is the longest-serving FBI chief since J. Edgar Hoover, whose checkered 48-year term ended with his death in 1972 and led Congress to put the term limit in place.

Obama said the rare exemption for Mueller was needed for continuity and "for the sake of our nation's safety and security."

Obama already is in the midst of a reshuffling of his national security leadership, shifting CIA Director Leon Panetta to be Pentagon chief and Gen. David Petraeus to head up the spy agency. The changes await Senate confirmation at a time of renewed worldwide attention to the threat of terrorism.

In a sign of Mueller's respected standing in both parties, lawmakers seem poised to allow him to stay atop the FBI.

Mueller is known for transforming a crime-fighting agency into the front line of defense against terrorism. Mueller was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and began just a week before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Obama said he has turned the FBI into a "pre-eminent counterterrorism agency."

It wasn't that way when he began. The carnage a decade ago at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon exposed vulnerabilities, and the FBI missed a number of clues that might have averted the attacks. Before 9/11, the FBI also came under fire for other messes, including one of its own, FBI agent Robert Hanssen, spying for Moscow for two decades.

The plan to keep Mueller on isn't tied to the U.S. raid in Pakistan that led to the killing of bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader behind the Sept. 11 attacks, or to any threat of retaliation against the United States as a result of that mission, administration officials said.

Obama had been looking for successors for Mueller since the start of the year and, indeed, the attention on the top FBI position centered on who would succeed him. Other likely names surfaced. White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to say whether the president had met with candidates.

Mueller was offered the two-year extension a couple of days ago, said an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity about the internal process. The official said that Mueller was not expecting the overture from the White House nor had he been looking to stay on.

Another potential factor in the mix: Any replacement for Mueller would have to be confirmed by an expanded Republican minority in the Senate, one with the votes to potentially complicate the prospects of an Obama nominee.

Under the scenario the White House has drawn, Mueller would serve two more years and then the president elected in 2012 would choose his successor for a decade.

The White House wants Congress to pass a standalone bill applying only to Mueller. He would not need to go through confirmation again.

The Republican House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, backed Obama's move on the same grounds of "continuity for our intelligence community."

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel that has jurisdiction over the FBI, lauded Mueller and offered a cautious, favorable response to Obama.

"This is an unusual step by the president and is somewhat of a risky precedent to set," said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. He called the 10-year term limit on an FBI chief's service, set in 1976, "an important safeguard against improper political influence and abuses of the past." Still, he added: "We live in extraordinary times. So, I'm open to the president's idea."

White House officials say that although such an extension has never been granted for an FBI director, it has been done in other term-limited cases, citing a 1994 law that extended the terms of certain U.S. parole commissioners. The FBI chief's 10-year term limit is in response to the legacy of Hoover's abuses of power.

Administration officials said they have been consulting with lawmakers and are confident Congress will make an exception for Mueller.

Mueller, 66, is a former Marine who came to the FBI after a long career in law enforcement.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, endorsed Obama's decision and said he was delighted to hear Mueller was asked to stay.

Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he supports the president's decision to try to keep Mueller for another two years.

"I think he's done an admirable job under difficult circumstances," Blunt said.

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Associated Press writers Pete Yost and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

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