Thursday
29 Oct 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category Behind the Scenes
Dear Aviation Nation readers,
Many people have emailed to ask why the posts here are less than average. For the time being, I am writing two regular columns:
The Los Angeles Times Magazine "Back/Story by Annie Jacobsen."
Pajamas Media: Annie Jacobsen on terrorism and national security
Thank you for reading.
Thursday
15 Oct 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category Behind the Scenes, The Al-Qaeda Threat
My colleague, and one of my favorite human beings, Debra Burlingame, wrote to me yesterday:
"Have started new project with Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol:Keep America Safe.com"
Then she mentioned how the left was going nuts. Indeed, Maureen Dowd, of The New York Times, had nothing but mean spirited things to say about the new endeavor in her opinion column yesterday. On Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol Dowd wrote:
The blonde 43-year-old lawyer, a mother of five hailed by her fans as “a red state rock star,” teamed up this week with Bill Kristol to start a new group called “Keep America Safe.” Kristol, of course, was the chief proponent of the wacky notion that Dan Quayle, and later Sarah Palin, could Keep America Safe, which somewhat undermines the urgency and gravity of the group’s moniker.
I am fascinated that Dowd left out criticism of Burlingame. Naturally, Dowd did her homework and knows Burlingame is the third person involved. But Burlingame is hard, if not impossible, to attack because she goes straight after the truth not the sell. In her stories in The Wall Street Journal — whether she's writing about Gitmo or Jihadist's bogus lawsuits, or 9/11 — Burlingame's conviction is crystal clear. There's no agenda other than asking readers to face certain facts from which they can deduce their truth. Readers relate to that.
Burlingame's ability to speak to both left and right is an imperative for keeping America safe, not just as a tag line but as a reality.
(drawing by Terry Shoffner for The Wall Street Journal)
Friday
25 Sep 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category The Al-Qaeda Threat
Trouble in Saudi Arabia: Al-Qaeda’s ‘Bum’ Assassination Attempt
A suicide bomber almost managed to kill a heavily guarded Saudi prince, passing through several security checkpoints with a bomb hidden in his rectum.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef of Saudi Arabia and his son, Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, have many enemies. For decades, the powerful and unaccountable elder Prince Nayef has “overseen” the Saudi police force; Nayef once boasted that his law enforcement agency solves 100 percent of the kingdom’s annual crimes. Nayef regularly uses torture to elicit confessions from Saudi nationals as well as visitors from other countries, and for this human rights officials have repeatedly referred to Nayef as “the grim reaper of international law.” More recently, the elder Nayef was put in charge of a program to help terrorists living in and around Saudi Arabia to repent and change their ways. To administer the program, Nayef put his son, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, in charge.
On August 28, one of those alleged to have repented — Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a 23-year-old Saudi national — almost succeeded in killing the younger prince by exploding himself during a meeting. The royal family had high hopes for a better outcome in its attempts to bolster support for its controversial program. It even went so far as to gamble flying al-Asiri into the kingdom from Yemen on a royal jet, despite the fact that al-Asiri is on a list of 85 terrorists wanted by the Saudi authorities. Scott Stewart of STRATFOR Global Intelligence explained what happened during the meeting:
After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small, improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Al-Qaeda was quick to take credit for the suicide bombing (according to SITE). After all, it was a major public relations coup. For starters, the royals had been tricked — promised surrender and instead given a Trojan horse. Saudi’s princes pride themselves on having impenetrable personal security systems. Instead, this recent incident revealed a major flaw in the royal armor, not to mention in the country’s airline security system. Al-Qaeda was quick to point out (through jihadist websites) that al-Asiri had passed through two major security checkpoints, in the Najran and Jeddah airports, before boarding a royal jet with explosives hidden up his bum.
A bomb hidden in his anal cavity? Why does this sound so terribly familiar?
Remember Fadhel al-Maliki? Read the story here.
Friday
11 Sep 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category The Al-Qaeda Threat, Terrorist Hijackings
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America lists all 2,976 men, women and children killed on 9/11 by name. Reading each name in silent memorial is a powerful experience.
Sunday
6 Sep 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category Pakistan & Afghanistan
"Kabul Lullaby: Making music in post-Taliban Afghanistan can be playing with fire" — a story about the amazing double-bass virtuoso Dobbs Hartshorne playing Bach in Taliban territory — is the editor's pick this month.
You can read more about the work Dobbs Hartshorne does, at Bach with Verse.
Sunday
6 Sep 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category Space
From Mojave to the Moon by Annie Jacobsen
With a moon touchdown in their sites, scientists and engineers gathered in California’s Mojave Desert to plan, design and eventually fly a futuristic contraption called the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle.
Forty years ago this summer, three men—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins—left planet Earth in Apollo 11, headed for the moon. Their mission, with its predicted 60 percent chance of success, was to be the first humans to set foot on another celestial body. Getting to the moon’s orbit was not the hurdle—we’d done that with Apollo 8. It was the second part of the equation—how to physically land on the moon—that presented unknowns and made the odds so dramatic.
For starters, there would be no air on the moon. This meant that the existing principles of aerodynamics wouldn’t be in play. The lunar landing vehicle would have to be controlled entirely by propulsion—or thrust. And because the moon is covered with refrigerator-size boulders and pockmarked with asteroid craters, ranging from a few feet deep to hundreds of yards wide, it would have to be piloted by an astronaut and not controlled robotically by NASA scientists back home.
“There were no runways, lights, radio beacons or navigational aids of any kind,” Neil Armstrong said. Which is why, beginning seven and a half years before the big event, a bevy of scientists and engineers got to work, largely in California’s Mojave Desert, planning, designing and ultimately flying a contraption called the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV). In case you’ve never seen one, it can only be described as looking remarkably like the flying bedstead from the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Ugly or not, so important was the LLRV to Apollo 11’s success, a poster still welcomes visitors to the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base north of L.A. that reads, “Before we landed on the moon, we practiced here.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Sunday
6 Sep 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category The Al-Qaeda Threat
Al-Qaeda and the Sahara. A suicide bomber attacks a French embassy in Mauritania in response to Sarkozy's stance on the burqa.
Two French Agents Kidnapped in Somalia — Why Were They There? Two French intelligence agents, supposedly on a public mission without need for cover, get kidnapped while posing as journalists.
Was Sa’ad Bin Laden Managing Al-Qaeda from Iran? Osama bin Laden's son may have been more than just a "low-level" target, as U.S. counterterrorism official once described him.
Friday
31 Jul 2009
By Annie Jacobsen in category Behind the Scenes, The Al-Qaeda Threat
In Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’ over at The Wall Street Journal, Debra Burlingame illuminates the shocking story of how terrorist Richard Reid has sued to resume his jihad from prison. And how the Obama administration has caved in to these bogus and outrageous demands.
Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.”
On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner—Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber”—were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others.
Reid was arrested in 2001 for attempting to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with 197 passengers and crew on board. Why had Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to renew his security measures, kept in place since 2002?
This is required reading.