The Failure To Connect The Dots; Air Security Still Lagging

Harry Smith at CBS grills DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano who finally admits that they screwed up and where the bomber, Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab, put on the TIDE list and not elevated to further scrutiny, managed to bring explosives sufficient to take down an aircraft on board but was thwarted only by an alert passenger.

The security system put in place after 9/11 and then after the Richard Reid shoe bomber case didn't thwart the attack; it was the Flight 93 Let's Roll mantra by passengers refusing to go quietly to their deaths that thwarted the attacks. The screening system failed. The failure by the bomber was due to a quick thinking passenger who risked his own life to stop the bomber from detonating what appeared to be a sufficient amount of explosive to take down Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

Further restrictions on what can be brought on board the planes, let alone whether a person can have bags in their possession during the last hour of the flight or that passengers will not be allowed to go to the restroom in the last hour of the flight will not prevent terrorism of this kind; the terrorist may simply try to blow up the plane after takeoff or at any point in the course of the flight.

It is merely to give the appearance of doing something about air safety. Actually taking action to thwart terrorism requires more stringent security protocols and more invasive methods that are all too likely to rankle civil libertarians and to impose further costs on flying. Technologies that could detect certain explosives aren't fully deployed around the world, and scanners that can literally see through the body aren't being deployed because of privacy concerns, even though they may have been able to detect the explosive underwear that Mutallab was wearing.

So, the two measures that have done the most to improve air security to date have nothing to do with the security at airports; it has everything to do with installing armored cockpit doors and passengers who aren't going to sit back and let hijackers or terrorists fulfill their plot aims.

UPDATE:
This isn't just a failure to connect the dots; it may now include providing al Qaeda with more dots. Two of those who were apparently involved in the planning of the attack on Northwest Air Flight 253 were previously detained at Guantanamo Bay, but were released to Saudi Arabia.

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.

 So, once again, detainees released under the misbegotten idea that closing Guantanamo Bay is a good idea has turned out to be a stupendously bad one as detainees who were out of the fight were able to rejoin the jihad and plot, plan, and carry out attacks against the US and our interests around the world.

Detroit's Death Spiral Continues

Corruption, raging unemployment, the auto industry collapse, and a real estate market that is in even worse shape, and yet there are still worse things going on in Detroit these days.

Detroit can't even find the money to bury those people unclaimed by family or relatives in its mortuary. The bodies are stacking up.

After years of gross mismanagement by the city’s leaders and the big three car manufacturers of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, who continued to make vehicles that Americans no longer wanted to buy, Detroit today has an unemployment rate of 28 per cent, higher even than the worst years of the Great Depression.

The murder rate is soaring. The school system is in receivership. The city treasury is $300 million (£182m) short of the funds needed to provide the most basic services such as rubbish collection. In its postwar heyday, when Detroit helped the US to dominate the world’s car market, it had 1.85 million people. Today, just over 900,000 remain. It was once America’s fourth-largest city. Today, it ranks eleventh, and will continue to fall.

Thousands of houses are abandoned, roofs ripped off, windows smashed. Block after block of shopping districts lie boarded up. Former manufacturing plants, such as the giant Fisher body plant that made Buicks and Cadillacs, but which was abandoned in 1991, are rotting.

Even Detroit’s NFL football team, the Lions, are one of the worst in the country. Last season they lost all 16 games. This year they have lost eight, and won just a single gane.

Michigan’s Central Station, designed by the same people who gave New York its Grand Central Station, was abandoned 20 years ago. One photographer who produced a series of images for Time magazine said that he often felt, as he moved around parts of Detroit, as though he was in a post-apocalyptic disaster.

Then in June, the $21,000 annual county budget to bury Detroit’s unclaimed bodies ran out.

Detroit is in a death spiral and the local politicians don't know what to do. Michigan has the highest unemployment rates in the nation, and Detroit's unemployment rate is at Great Depression levels. Foreclosures and a lack of services are shrinking the remaining tax base even further.

High taxes, unemployment, and a shrinking tax base are feeding on each other to result in Detroit's demise. The spin on a slight decline in Detroit's unemployment rate isn't necessarily the result of job creation, but that people are losing their unemployment benefits and falling out of the statistic.

The economic situation in Detroit is so bad, that the Pontiac Silverdome, which cost $55 million to build and includes 150 acres of land for the stadium and parking, was recently sold for $583,000.

That's not that much more than what many houses sell for in Bergen County, New Jersey on a fraction of an acre. The depreciation of assets throughout Detroit and its surrounding communities is going to continue as job opportunities dry up and people seek better economic opportunities elsewhere.

Racidal Imam Killed In Shootout With FBI In Detroit

A Detroit imam, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was under investigation for his radical activities, including conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods, and firearms offenses and exhorting his followers to jihad, was killed in a shootout with FBI officers as they attempted to arrest him yesterday.

Luqman Ameen Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, was being arrested on a raft of federal charges including conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods, and firearms offenses.

Charges were also filed against 11 of Abdullah's followers. Eight were in custody Wednesday night awaiting detention hearings today; three remained at large.

A federal complaint filed Wednesday identified Abdullah, 53, also known as Christopher Thomas, as "a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group." His black Muslim group calls itself "Ummah," or the brotherhood, and wants to establish a separate state within the United States governed by Sharia law, Interim U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg and Andrew Arena, FBI special agent in charge in Detroit, said in a joint statement.

"He regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric," an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. "Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting."

The Ummah is headed nationally by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a state sentence for the murder of two police officers in Georgia.

(snip)

The others charged are:

• Mohammad Abdul Salaam, also known as Gregory Stone, 45, of Detroit, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes and sale or receipt of stolen goods.

• Abdullah Beard, also known as Detric Lamont Driver, 37, of Detroit, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Abdul Saboor, also known as Dwayne Edward Davis, 37, of Detroit, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Mujahid Carswell, also known as Mujahid Abdullah, 30, of Detroit and Ontario, Canada, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Adam Ibraheem, 38, of Detroit, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Gary Laverne Porter, 59, of Detroit, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes and possession of firearms by a convicted felon.

• Ali Abdul Raqib, 57, of Detroit, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Mohammad Alsahi, also known as Mohammad Palestine, 33, of Ontario, Canada, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Yassir Ali Khan, 30, of Ontario, Canada, and Warren, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

• Mohammad Abdul Bassir, also known as Franklin D. Roosevelt Williams, 50, of Ojibway Correctional Facility, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes, sale or receipt of stolen goods, mail fraud, supplying firearms to felons, possession of weapons by a felon, and altering or removing motor vehicle identification numbers.

• A.C. Pusha, charged in a separate complaint late Wednesday with conspiracy to receive and sell stolen goods.

Salaam, Saboor, Porter, Beard, Ibraheem, Raqib, and Pusha all appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit late Wednesday afternoon. Bassir is in state custody. Others charged are still at large.

The group was advocating the creation of a separate Islamic state within the US and sought to bring about its creation through violence; jihad.

Yesterday's raid seeking Abdullah's arrest was part of a 2-year investigation into the activities by his group.

UPDATE:
A newspaper photographer was assaulted outside the mosque where Abdullah preached.

Witnesses said the men were on the porch at the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque when Ricardo Thomas, 67, began taking photos from across the street. Several pushed him, one threw a punch at him and his camera equipment was smashed.

Thomas was kicked while on the ground and suffered a cut lip. He drove himself to a hospital and said later "there was no reason" for the attack.

"It's a public street," Thomas said. "I am a journalist doing my job, just like all the other journalists doing their jobs."

UPDATE:
Video on the incident.



A FBI press release is here, and provides a list of crimes alleged by the individuals listed above. It also requests knowledge of the whereabouts of the following:

At the time of this release, Mujahid Carswell, Mohammad Alsahi and Yassir Ali Khan were still at large. Anyone with information regarding the location of these individuals should contact the FBI at (313) 965-2323.

Great Moments In Education Spending

Someone in the Chicago school district authorized and spent $67,000 to purchase espresso/cappuccino machines. None of the schools that received them wanted or needed them. They sit unused.

Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General.

That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general's 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted.

In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators split the order among 21 vocational schools to avoid competitive bidding required for purchases over $10,000. As a result CPS paid about $12,000 too much, according to Inspector General James Sullivan. "We were able to find the same machines cheaper online," he said.

"We also look at it as a waste of money because the schools didn't even know they were getting the equipment, schools didn't know how to use the machines and weren't prepared to implement them into the curriculum," Sullivan said.

That's $67,000 that could have been spent on books or materials that actually improved student learning.

Or, it could have been given to Detroit, which claims that it has no money at all and has to scrounge for toilet paper and light bulbs. The district is apparently $400 million in the hole and is on the verge of being assigned an emergency financial manager.

What has taken Michigan so long to figure out that the Detroit schools are in trouble? Why has it waited until the district was $400 million in the hole? You would think that they would have noticed something was wrong when you have generations of students who are ill prepared for college and work. Why do Detroit residents continue to stand for a product - public education - that wastes money and can't spend the money in the classroom?

Throw in the fact that the state is going to send less money to the district because a headcount will reveal that they have fewer students, and the Detroit school outlook looks bleak. This would be the second time in 7 years that the district is to be taken over, and the teachers union, the DFT, complains that the reason that the district is the current bind is because of what happened the last time. Curiously, you would think someone would actually look and see why the budget went from a surplus to a massive deficit within six months:

Flanagan's action came after months of revelations about the district's precarious finances, in which the administration went from declaring a fund surplus in the spring to announcing a projected $408 million shortfall by June. The board later agreed to massive budget cuts, including layoffs and school closures, but ended fiscal year 2008 in a deficit nearing $140 million

The downturn in the auto industry could certainly play a role in the shortfall, but I suspect that there's more to this story than that.

UPDATE:
Indeed there is a reason; Detroit is spending $10,576 per student. Sadly, most of that money isn't making it into the classroom. (HT: jcm)

Detroit Mayor Pleads Guilty To Lying Under Oath

Make that former Mayor, as Kwame Kilpatrick, the Democratic mayor of Detroit, entered a guilty plea for lying under oath.

The deal calls for Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice by committing perjury, agreeing to serve four months in jail, pay up to $1 million in restitution, and serve five years' probation. He also agreed not to run for office during that five-year span.

The mayor will turn over his state pension to the City of Detroit, which paid $8.4 million to settle two whistle-blower lawsuits three former cops filed against the city. The mayor was charged with eight felony counts ranging from conspiracy to perjury to misconduct in office to obstruction of justice after the Free Press revealed that the mayor lied on the witness stand during a police whistle-blower trial and gave misleading testimony about whether he intended to fire a deputy police chief investigating allegations of wrongdoing by members of his inner circle.

In a rushed monotone, Kilpatrick told the court: "I lied under oath in the case of Gary Brown and Harold Nelthrope versus the city of Detroit ... I did so with the intent to mislead the court and jury, to impede and obstruct the disposition of justice."

Groner asked Kilpatrick: "Are you satisfied with your lawyers in this case?"
The mayor replied: "Uh, what do you mean?"

After Groner explained, Kilpatrick said he was satisfied with the performance of his legal team.

Groner: "The court's satisfied and will accept the plea to two counts of obstruction of justice."

Oh, and the Detroit Free Press has decided to play name that party. Thanks! I made sure that was addressed in my lede.

UPDATE:
The AP gets it right and doesn't play name that party. Reuters also doesn't play name that party. Fancy that.

Name That Party: Kwame Kilpatrick Edition

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was ordered jail by a judge after violating the terms of his bond as part of his perjury case.

The mayor made an unauthorized trip to Canada last month, leading the county prosecutor's office to request Kilpatrick be punished and triggering the judge's ruling.

Only minutes earlier, the mayor offered an apology to the court, telling District Court Judge Ronald Giles that for seven months, "I've been living in an incredible state of pressure and scrutiny."

But Giles sent the mayor to jail anyway, telling him he would have given any defendant the same treatment.

"What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in that seat, what would I do? And that answer is simple," he said.

Sadly lacking? The political affiliation of Mayor Kilpatrick. But, we know how these things go.

He's a Democrat. Would a GOPer get the same treatment? I think not. Fairness is all that I ask. Then again, this is the AP we're talking about.

UPDATE:
The New York Times apparently got the memo. They decided to play name that party as well. Jammie catches Kwame's home town paper, the Detroit Free Press, doing the same.

Name That Party: Detroit Rock City Edition

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records obtained by the Free Press.

The false testimony potentially exposes them to felony perjury charges, legal experts say.

Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.

The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."

An entire article about the mayor of Detroit, his lies under oath about a steamy relationship with his chief of staff that included racy text messages (that would be perjury), and not one word about his political affiliation?

Hmmmm.