3 posts tagged “military”

Search monolith banned from military bases
By Lester Haines
The Register
Friday 7th March 2008

The US defence department has banned Google from capturing images of military facilities for its entertaining Street View facility on Google Maps following the shock discovery of intimate pics of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

It said in a statement that the offending snaps included "360-degree views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers, headquarters, facilities and community areas", thereby posing a threat to national security.

Google spokesman Larry Yu admitted to the BBC that the drive-by recording of Fort Sam Houston had been "a mistake". He added that Google has "a compliant image removal policy - not only relative to the military but to consumers also", a reference to privacy concerns which last August led the search monolith to agree to obscure number plates and faces on request.

In the case of the military, Google has wasted no time obscuring the offending military facility by removing it altogether from Street View.

Terrorists wishing to attack Fort Sam Houston will in future, therefore, have to rely on their own intelligence-gathering resources, backed by nothing more than handy US military maps (pdf) of the facility, and hi-res satellite imagery of the base on Google Maps and Google Earth.

By AL BAKER
Published: March 7, 2008

The British Consulate in 2005. The Mexican Consulate last year. And on Thursday, the Times Square military recruiting station.

Three bombings with similar devices at three high-profile locations in Manhattan, each occurring at nearly the same time of day, in the predawn hours; each inflicting little damage; none injuring people.

And in each case, someone — most likely a man — seen pedaling away on a bicycle with a hooded jacket or sweatshirt hiding his face.

These are the similarities that police detectives and federal agents are exploring as they investigate whether these blasts, so seemingly similar, were the work of the same person or group, and what the motive was.

Law enforcement officials stopped short on Thursday of definitively linking the explosions — or of trying to divine the significance of the latest, most visible target: the island at the center of the pinball-game brightness of Times Square.

“The fact of the matter is that all three incidents happened within a 30-minute span, a 25-minute span,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference at 1 Police Plaza, where he played a video surveillance tape that showed the blast occurring at 3:40:43, although he said police believed it was closer to 3:43. The May 5, 2005 bombing at the British Consulate occurred at 3:55 a.m.; the bombing last year at the Mexican Consulate was at 3:40 a.m. on Oct. 26.

The device used on Thursday was “roughly similar” to those in the two earlier bombings, Mr. Kelly said. No one has directly claimed responsibility for the explosions, another similarity.

Late Thursday, investigators analyzed letters received by members of Congress with pictures taken before the blast of someone in front of the recruiting station with the words “We did it. Happy New Year.” As the night wore on, investigators increasingly believed the letters had no connection to the bombing, but were probably a strange coincidence, one official said.

The bombings in 2005 and last year involved two devices each, each packed with black gunpowder. One was modeled after the “lemon” type of grenade used in the Vietnam War, the other was scored like the rough “pineapple” grenade used during World War II. This time, the explosives were packed in a metal ammunition box, the kind that can be bought at a military surplus store. The authorities have yet to determine whether the explosive was black gunpowder.

“I read an intelligence briefing this morning that there is a pattern of similarity in the modus operandi, specifically the delivery of the improvised explosive devices to the target,” said Kevin B. Barry, who retired in 2002 as a detective in the New York Police Department’s Bomb Squad and is now an official with the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators.

“The question now is: Are the forensics similar in nature? Are they able to link the three together in any way?” he said. “And, will they declare it a serial bomber if they link the three I.E.D. components forensically?”

The Times Square blast drew the attention of the national news media, the involvement of the FBI and comments from presidential candidates. Experts tried to glean motives from the similarities.

“What you have here is a very frustrated individual, someone who is trying to send a message, but it is a very confused message,” said Ray Pierce, a retired New York City detective who now works as a criminal profiler.

The use of a bicycle, the early-morning hours of the attacks and the improvised nature of the devices, as well as the low-grade or low-velocity explosive, suggest the perpetrator might be a young person who is more focused on sending a message than hurting anyone, Mr. Pierce added.

He said that if the letters that surfaced in Washington were found to be from the individual or group behind the explosion on Thursday, “it’s positive,” because it is a less violent way of communicating than setting off bombs.

“The more dialogue, the higher the probability this could be resolved without further violence,” he said. In light of the letters, Mr. Pierce said, officials should encourage the person to open a dialogue by anonymously writing or calling.

The bombing at the British Consulate, at 845 Third Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets, occurred on an election day in Britain. The one outside the Mexican Consulate, at 27 East 39th Street near Madison Avenue, came on the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of Bradley Roland Will, 36, a journalist from New York who often traveled to Latin America to chronicle little-known disputes.

And the explosion on Thursday occurred on the 38th anniversary of the day when three members of the revolutionary group Weather Underground accidentally blew themselves up in their town house in Greenwich Village while making bombs. The significance of these dates, if any, is unknown.

People move in ways they are comfortable with, even when carrying out violence, analysts said. Police officers, for example, often use guns to commit suicide, because that is familiar.

“He feels comfortable on the bicycle,” Mr. Pierce said of the bomber, suggesting the person could be a bike messenger.

Several analysts said that the forensics of an explosive device can tell investigators much about what they are dealing with. Bombers tend to have signatures.

Mr. Barry described the components of a bomb that investigators “will be looking for.” He said they are: a power source, such as an AA battery or a fuse; an initiator, like the fuse itself or a cellphone or a timing device; an explosive; and a switch.

Another prime piece of forensic evidence would be the ammunition box fashioned into the bomb and any remnants of it.

In this case it was a metal box used for banded machine gun bullets, the authorities said. Mr. Barry said such a device would easily fall apart.

“They will pick up every scrap they can find,” Mr. Barry said. “They might be able to get powder, they might be able to get a fingerprint and they might be able to get DNA, from sweat, for instance, and they might be able to make a match with any of those other two devices.”

Mark J. Mershon, the assistant F.B.I. director who heads the bureau’s New York office, said the physical evidence would be taken to the agency’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., for analysis, where evidence from the bombings in 2005 and 2007 were also sent.

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A Canadian accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan should not be tried as a war criminal because he was a child soldier for al Qaeda, too young to voluntarily join its forces, his military defense lawyer told a U.S. war court on Monday.

Navy Lt. William Kuebler asked a military judge to throw out the charges against Canadian defendant Omar Khadr, who was shot and captured at age 15 in a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

"He is a victim of al Qaeda, not a member of al Qaeda," Kuebler said.

Khadr is the Toronto-born son of an alleged al Qaeda financier. He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer in the firefight and planting roadside bombs intended to kill other U.S. or coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

Khadr is charged in the Guantanamo war court with murder, attempted murder, conspiring with al Qaeda, providing material support for terrorism and spying by conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Kuebler argued that U.S. and international law assume that children involved in an armed conflict are not there voluntarily, because they lack the experience and judgment to understand the risk of joining armed forces. Defense attorneys contend that any charges against Khadr should be pursued in a civilian court in a juvenile system where the goal is rehabilitation rather than punishment.

If the U.S. Congress intended to try children as war criminals, it would have explicitly authorized that in the 2006 law that serves as a framework for the Guantanamo court, Kuebler said.

But a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, arguing for the prosecution, said that if Congress intended to exclude juveniles from the Guantanamo war court, it would have explicitly written that, because lawmakers knew Khadr could face charges. Instead, Congress wrote the law using the term "person," which legally refers to "anyone born alive," Justice Department attorney Andy Oldham said.

LAST WESTERNER

Khadr is the last citizen of a Western nation among the 275 captives being held at Guantanamo as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

Charges are now pending against five of the Guantanamo prisoners. The Pentagon plans to try about 80 of them. But six years after the detention camp opened, only one captive has been convicted in Guantanamo's widely criticized tribunal system and that was through a plea deal.

Khadr sat quietly during the hearing, clad in a white tunic and trouser uniform signifying that he complies with camp rules. In his more than five years at Guantanamo, the once pimply faced boy has grown into a 21-year-old man with a short, bushy beard.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, did not indicate when he would rule on the request to drop the charges. The case is scheduled for trial in May, though Kuebler said it probably would be delayed.

The court released documents describing the battle in which Khadr was captured. U.S. forces entered the suspected al Qaeda compound after an aerial bombing and were fired upon with a rifle and with the grenade that killed Speer, it said.

An unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, said he found two wounded people still alive inside -- a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle, whom he shot in the head and killed, and Khadr, who was seated on the ground facing away.

The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."

Khadr was instead given medical treatment and sent to Guantanamo.