An al Qaeda website today announced that due to al Zarqawi's injuries, it has appointed a deputy to take his place until he's recovered. He is Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Kurani.

"The leaders met after the injury of our sheikh, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ... and decided to appoint a deputy to take the lead until the return of our sheikh," said the statement, which was posted on a militant web site that two days earlier announced al-Zarqawi had been injured.

"The leadership decided that our esteemed Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Kurani will be a deputy for the mujahideen (holy fighters) for he was renowned for carrying out the most difficult operations," it said, adding that Zarqawi had chosen him for such attacks.

Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid introduced the party's reform agenda today at the National Press Club. He made an interesting observation (received by e-mail):

As of this month, more time has passed since 9-11 than the time between Pearl Harbor and the defeat of Japan. During those three years and eight months – sixty years ago – we invaded North Africa and Normandy. We freed people from the Philippines to France. Hitler lay dead and Tojo was in chains. We had defeated fascism around the world and had begun to build the new United Nations.

But today Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, our homeland is still not secure, we’re still not energy independent, and – in many ways – Americans are less safe than we were before 9-11.

Syria broke off cooperation ties with the U.S. today over the War on Terror.

Imad Moustapha told CNN that Syria's decision came in the wake of recent "unfair and inaccurate" statements by U.S. officials that Damascus was allowing foreign fighters to cross Syria's border to aid in the insurgency in Iraq. "This is actually the state of the affairs. Today, we are not cooperating with the United States," Moustapha told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Al-Qaeda is reporting that Al-Zarqawi has been wounded. The U.S. has not been able to confirm.

Friday we wrote that a bipartisan group of Senators would be sending a letter to the White House asking why it hasn't moved on the 9/11 Commission's recommendation to create a Civil Liberties Oversight Board as a check and balance on its anti-terror policies. The recommendation was specifically included in the terrorism law passed by Congress and signed by the President last December.

The letter, addressed to Andrew Card and signed by Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democratic Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, is avaiable here.

The New York Times reports on the letter today.

...the four senators asked for a timetable and details on how the panel would be staffed and set up. The letter noted that the White House's proposed budget for the board fell well below the $13 million devoted to a civil rights office within the Department of Homeland Security, the $39 million for the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the $4 million for the Council of Economic Advisers.

by TChris

The first terrorism prosecution that the Justice Department brought after 9/11 fell apart, in part because the Department brought a case it knew to be weak. More importantly, the Department withheld excuplatory evidence from the defense, a fact it reluctantly admitted in an eventual request to overturn the convictions.

In an attempt to save face, the Department compounded its misdeeds by repeating them: bringing a weak case and, at least arguably, withholding exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors brought charges of insurance fraud against two of the accused terrorists, "accusing the men of falsely reporting injuries in a minor car accident."

Prosecutors said at the time that they viewed the insurance scam as a serious offense. But internal Justice Department memorandums show that senior prosecutors had serious doubts about the strength of the case and recommended against bringing it, only to have the department go ahead with the lesser charges.

The emails described the fraud prosecution as a "contingency plan" if the terrorism prosecution didn't pan out. Some members of the Justice Department were sufficiently savvy to understand that the ploy would be recognized for what it is: retaliation against the defendants for their successful effort to defend themselves while providing cover to the Department for its bungling of the first prosecution.

Among the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that were included in the terrorism law passed by Congress and signed by the President last December, was one calling for the creation of a civil liberties oversight board to ensure that privacy and civil liberties concerns are taken into account by the Executive branch in enforcing terrorism laws.

So where is it? Has a Chair been nominated yet? Is it adequately funded? Or is the White House stalling?

Former 9/11 Commssion Chair Thomas Kean has complained about the lack of progress in establishing the commmission.

Here's a heads-up. Watch the news this afternoon, as four Senators, including one Republican, will be demanding an explanation.

by TChris

We haven't heard much lately about the government's color-coded terror threat warning system. Some suspect that the terror threat level was elevated whenever it served the administration's purpose to elevate the public's fear level. Now that the president has been reelected, the fear-inducing system has served its apparent purpose and should be retired.

No one, of course, knows what to do when the level is increased. Or when it is returned to yellow, the mid-point on the five-tiered scale. Perhaps they are supposed to go back to simply being afraid.

The color codes, introduced in March 2002, have done nothing to improve anyone's homeland security. They've caused confusion. And alert-fatigue. And cost untold dollars.

Tom Ridge defended the system yesterday, complaining that people focus too much on the colors. "It could be numbers, it could be animals," Ridge said. Whether the threat level is indicated by a color or a giraffe isn't the issue. The ineffectiveness of a system that doesn't tell people what or where the threat is or what to do about it won't be cured by replacing colors with a different symbol.

Michael Chertoff says he's looking for a better warning system. He should start by scrapping the existing one.

Amidst much fanfare last week, President Bush announced the capture of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, supposedly a very senior al Qaeda leader in Pakistan who might lead us to Osama. The BBC picked it up here.

Now it turns out, the capture may have been just another Emily Littella moment. The Sunday Times of London reports that European counter-terrorism experts believe Bush and Rice got it wrong, and confused al-Libbi with another much more senior al Qaeda leader named Anas al-Liby, who is thought to be a mastermind of the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa. al-Liby has not been captured.

When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

by TChris

If you've flown out of LAX recently, you've probably wondered why you have to stand in a ridulously long and slow-moving line just to hand your checked luggage to a TSA employee before moving to another ridiculously long and slow-moving line to be screened before you can enter the boarding area. You may be longing for the good old days, when the counter agent simply tossed your checked luggage onto a conveyor belt, and you may be wondering why TSA isn't screening your luggage when it comes off the belt instead of clogging the lobby with more slow-moving lines.

The answer: it seemed like a good idea at the time. But it turns out that the long wait in line doesn't assure that your checked bags are actually screened.

Because the machines were installed under tight timetables imposed by Congress, they were squeezed into airport lobbies instead of integrated into baggage conveyor systems. That slowed the screening process - the machines could handle far fewer bags per hour - and pushed up labor costs by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. At busy times, bags are sometimes loaded onto planes without being properly examined, according to several current and former screeners.

The mismanagement of security isn't limited to airports. The NY Times reports on the billions of dollars Homeland Security will need to spend to correct the security problems that weren't solved by the billions of dollars already spent.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is going into the security business:

Ashcroft is starting a company that will offer "strategic consulting, security and internal investigative services, and crisis counseling," to major corporations, a spokesperson for the new firm said on Monday. ...His new firm will advise clients on issues including homeland security, law enforcement, corporate compliance, antitrust law and intellectual property protection, the spokesperson said.

Joining Ashcroft at the Washington-based firm will be his long-time chief of staff David Ayres, and Juleanna Glover Weiss, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans.

Anything that gives Giuliani competition can't be all bad.

by TChris

The New York Times reports that there is "growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation" as part of the government's rendition program (background here). It appears that the United States transported dozens of prisoners to Uzbekistan.

While the Bush administration claims it has no reason to believe that foreign governments participating in the rendition program mistreat prisoners, that claim cannot credibly be made with regard to Uzbekistan. According to a State Department human rights report issued in 2001: