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KSM, Muslim Brotherhood Kuwait and 9/11

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CTC: Nasir al-Wahayshi, AQAP’s Leader
Nasir al-Wahayshi is a tiny wisp of a man with a jutting beard and soft-spoken manner. Known by the kunya Abu Basir, he was born in 1976 in the region of Mukayras in what was then Abyan.[3] Redistricting in 1998 put Mukayras in al-Bayda and that same year al-Wahayshi left Yemen for Afghanistan.[4] He had just graduated from one of Yemen’s private religious institutes, which had been established in the 1970s and 1980s as a way to convince Yemeni tribesmen that a republican form of government was compatible with Islam. Staffed by Egyptian exiles and Saudi teachers, many of these institutes eventually gravitated toward the more radical works of Islamic theology.

Al-Wahayshi arrived in Afghanistan in the months after Usama bin Ladin’s 1998 fatwa, declaring war on the United States and Israel, and he soon joined al-Qa`ida. Bin Laden made the young Yemeni his personal secretary, and for the next four years the two were nearly inseparable.[5] Al-Wahayshi spent all of his time with Bin Ladin, watching as the older man built and ran an international organization. He sat in on councils and helped with correspondence.

After the 9/11 attacks and the confused aftermath of the Battle of Tora Bora in late 2001, al-Wahayshi was separated from the al-Qa`ida commander. Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan, while al-Wahayshi moved south toward Iran, where he was eventually arrested and held for nearly two years.[6] In late 2003, al-Wahayshi was extradited back to Yemen. Apparently unaware of his close connections to Bin Ladin, Yemeni intelligence held him in the general prison population at a maximum-security facility in Sana`a.

AQAP publishes insider’s account of 9/11 plot

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TLWJ: Sometime before his death in a US drone strike in June 2015, Nasir al Wuhayshi recorded an insider’s account of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As the aide-de-camp to Osama bin Laden prior to the hijackings, Wuhayshi was well-placed to know such details. And al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which Wuhayshi led until his demise, has now published a version of his “untold story.”

A transcript of Wuhayshi’s discussion of the 9/11 plot was included in two editions of AQAP’s Al Masra newsletter. The first part was posted online on Jan. 31 and the second on Feb. 9. The summary below is based on the first half of Wuhayshi’s account.

Wuhayshi began by explaining al Qaeda’s rationale for attacking America. Prior to 9/11, the jihadists’ cause was not supported by the Muslim people, because the mujahideen’s “goals” were not widely understood. The jihadists were divided into many groups and fought “tit-for-tat” conflicts “with the tyrants.” (The “tyrants” were the dictators who ruled over many Muslim-majority countries.)

While the mujahideen had some successes, according to Wuhayshi, they were “besieged” by the tyrants until they found some breathing room in Afghanistan. The “sheikhs” studied this situation in meetings held in Kabul and Kandahar, because they wanted to understand why the jihadists were not victorious. And bin Laden concluded they should fight “the more manifest infidel enemy rather than the crueler infidel enemy,” according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Wuhayshi explained that the former was the “Crusader-Zionist movement” and the latter were the “apostates” ruling over Muslims.

While waging war against the “apostate” rulers was not likely to engender widespread support, no “two people” would “disagree” with the necessity of fighting “the Jews and Christians.” If you fight the “apostate governments in your land,” Wuhayshi elaborated, then everyone – the Muslim people, Islamic movements, and even jihadists – would be against you because they all have their own “priorities.” Divisions within the jihadists’ ranks only exacerbated the crisis, as even the mujahideen in their home countries could refuse to fight.

Wuhayshi then cited Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a prominent pro-al Qaeda ideologue, who warned that the “capability” to wage “combat” in Muslim-majority countries did “not yet exist.” So, for instance, if al Qaeda launched a “jihad against the House of Saud,” then “many jihadist movements” would oppose this decision. Al Qaeda’s fellow travelers would protest that they were “incapable” of defeating the Saudi government. And these jihadists would complain they did not want to “wage the battle prematurely,” or become entangled “in a difficult situation.”

For these reasons and more, according to Wuhayshi, bin Laden decided to “battle the more manifest enemy,” because “the people” would agree that the US “is an enemy” and this approach would not sow “discord and suspicion among the people.” Bin Laden believed that the “Islamic movement” would stand with al Qaeda “against the infidels.”

Wuhayshi’s explanation of bin Laden’s reasoning confirms that attacking the US was not al Qaeda’s end goal. It was a tactic, or a step, that bin Laden believed could unite the jihadists behind a common purpose and garner more popular support from “the people.”

Not all jihadists agreed with bin Laden’s strategy. In February 1998, bin Laden launched a “Global Islamic Front for Waging Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders.” Wuhayshi claimed that a “majority of the groups agreed to” the initiative, but some, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), opposed it. (However, some senior LIFG members were folded into al Qaeda.)

Gamaa Islamiya (IG), an Egyptian group, initially agreed to join the venture, but ultimately rejected it. As did other groups in the Arab Magreb, according to Wuhayshi. (Some senior IG leaders remained close to al Qaeda and eventually joined the organization.)

Although Wuhayshi claimed that a “majority” of jihadist organizations agreed with bin Laden’s proposal, only three ideologues joined bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri in signing the front’s infamous first fatwa.

In August 1998, just months after the “Global Islamic Front” was established, al Qaeda struck the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to Wuhayshi, bin Laden held a series of meetings around this time, as he sought to convince as many people as possible that attacking America was the right course. Some jihadists objected, believing it would ensnare them in a trap. But bin Laden pressed forward, telling those who didn’t agree that they wanted to fight “lackeys” without confronting “the father of the lackeys.” Al Qaeda’s path “will lead to a welcome conclusion,” Wuhayshi quoted bin Laden as saying.

The “initiative against the Crusaders continued” after the US Embassy bombings, Wuhayshi said, and the number of people who supported it increased “dramatically.” During this period, the “Global Islamic Front” launched operations against the “Crusaders” on the ground and at sea, but the idea to strike “from the air with planes” had not yet been conceived.

The origins of the 9/11 plot

Wuhayshi traced the genesis of the 9/11 plot to both Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who would come to be known as the “mastermind” of the operation.

But he also credited Abdullah Azzam for popularizing the concept of martyrdom in the first place. Azzam was killed in 1989, but is still revered as the godfather of modern jihadism. After the mujahideen had defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan, they considered “hitting the Americans,” Wuhayshi claimed. Azzam “spoke harshly about the Western military camp.” Azzam also “introduced” the jihadists to a “new tactic.” Wuhayshi recommended that people listen to Azzam’s “final speech,” in which he reportedly said: “God gave me life in order to transform you into bombs.”

Years later, on Oct. 31, 1999, bin Laden watched as the co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed the jet into the Atlantic Ocean, killing more than 200 people on board. Bin Laden, according to Wuhayshi, wondered why the co-pilot didn’t fly the plane into buildings. After this, Wuhayshi claimed, the basic idea for 9/11 had been planted in bin Laden’s mind.

In reality, the EgyptAir crash came after the outline of the 9/11 plot had been already sketched. For instance, the 9/11 Commission found that KSM “presented a proposal for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States” as early as 1996. “This proposal eventually would become the 9/11 operation.” In March or April 1999, according to the Commission’s final report, bin Laden “summoned KSM to Kandahar…to tell him that al Qaeda would support his proposal,” which was referred to as the “planes operation.”

Indeed, Wuhayshi recounted how KSM and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, plotted to attack multiple airliners in the mid-1990s. In the so-called Bojinka plot, KSM and Yousef even conceived a plan to blow up as many as one dozen airliners. Wuhayshi recalled how Yousef placed a bomb on board one jet as part of a test run. Their plot failed and Yousef was later captured in Pakistan. Yousef has been incarcerated for two decades after being convicted by an American court for his role in Bojinka and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wuhayshi prayed for his release.

Wuhayshi told a story that, if true, means KSM had dreamed of attacking the US since his youth. When he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, KSM wrote a play in which a character “ponders how to down an American aircraft.” Wuhayshi claimed to have searched for this play online, but he and another “brother” failed to find it.

Still, Wuhayshi insisted that KSM wrote the play, showing he was already thinking of ways to strike America as a young man.

Clapper Breaks with Obama’s Threat Crisis Plank

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North Korea has restarted plutonium reactor: US

North Korea has restarted a plutonium reactor that could fuel a nuclear bomb and is seeking missile technology that could threaten the United States, Washington’s top spy said on Tuesday.

Intel Chief Breaks From Obama Narrative On Iran Deal

DailyCaller: The head of U.S. intelligence believes that Iran’s recent actions speak loudly to its intentions, particularly given the country’s recent provocations since the Iran nuclear deal came into effect.

Testifying to the Senate Committee on Armed Services Tuesday, director of national intelligence James Clapper gave a very somber description of what he sees as Iran’s intentions toward the U.S. now that last summer’s nuclear deal has commenced. In particular, his statements offered little assurance that Iran is acting as an honest actor with the U.S. and the other states involved in last year’s negotiations, or that the nuclear deal will stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“Iran probably views JCPOA [Iran deal] as a means to remove sanctions while preserving nuclear capabilities, as well as the option to eventually expand its nuclear infrastructure,” said Clapper, who also noted that, so far, he sees no evidence that Iran is violating the nuclear deal.

Clapper’s statements stand in stark contrast with those made by President Barack Obama, who lauded the nuclear accord last summer, claiming it would not only stop all of Iran’s possible pathways to a nuclear weapon, but that “under its terms, Iran is never allowed to build a nuclear weapon.” More here.

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Clapper went into all specifics on the threat matrix both at home and globally. He did not leave anything behind, from cyber wars, space wars, weapons systems, human trafficking, terror organizations, economic instability, migrants, disinformation and drug cartels.

 STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD WORLDWIDE THREAT ASSESSMENT of the US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
February 9, 2016
INTRODUCTION
Chairman McCain, Vice Chairman Reed, Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to offer
the United States Intelligence Community’s 2016 assessment of threats to US national security. My statement reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community’s extraordinary men and women, whom I am privileged and honored to lead. We in the Intelligence Community are committed every day to provide the nuanced, multidisciplinary intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world.
 The order of the topics presented in this statement does not necessarily indicate the relative importance or magnitude of the threat in the view of the Intelligence Community. Information available as of February 3, 2016 was used in the preparation of this assessment.
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
 
GLOBAL THREATS Cyber and Technology Terrorism Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation Space and Counterspace
 
Counterintelligence Transnational Organized Crime
 
Economics and Natural Resources Human Security
 
REGIONAL THREATS East Asia
China Southeast Asia North Korea
Russia and Eurasia
Russia Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova The Caucasus and Central Asia
Europe
 
Key Partners The Balkans Turkey Middle East and North Africa 
Iraq Syria Libya  Yemen Iran  Lebanon Egypt Tunisia
 
South Asia
Afghanistan Bangladesh Pakistan and India
Sub-Saharan Africa  Central Africa Somalia South Sudan Sudan Nigeria
 
Latin America and Caribbean
 
Central America Cuba Venezuela Brazil
 

 

 

 

 

Obama, don’t let secrecy be your legacy

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Imagine what Congress does NOT know and then imagine what we, don’t know. Terrifying right?

Mr. Obama, don’t let secrecy be your legacy: Republican chairmen

Shrouding government action on everything from the environment to veterans health in darkness is a big step backwards.

USAToday: When President Obama took office, he vowed to run “the most transparent administration in history.” As his presidency draws to an end, those words would be laughable if the issue were not so serious.

At nearly every turn, this administration has blocked public disclosure and ignored almost every law intended to ensure open and accountable government.

Hillary Clinton’s private email server is just the latest, most public example. Numerous other incidents involve the concealment of documents, providing only partial information, slow-walking congressional requests and using private email accounts and secret meetings to avoid official records-keeping laws. These sorts of tactics have become common practice for this administration.

The most brazen examples occasionally get media attention: Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson created a fictitious email address under the alias name “Richard Windsor,” hiding official actions from public scrutiny. But more typically, the pervasive stonewalling does not make headlines.

Congress isn’t alone on the Obama administration’s enemies list. According to an analysis of federal data by the Associated Press (AP), the Obama administration set new records two years in a row for denying the media access to government files. According to the AP, “The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files.”

Moreover, in an unprecedented letter to several congressional committees, 47 inspectors general, who are the official watchdogs of federal agencies, complained that the Justice Department, EPA and others consistently obstruct their work by blocking or delaying access to critical information. Worse yet, the White House and Secretary Clinton refused to install an Inspector General during her tenure at the State Department.

It is the job of Congress and our agency watchdogs to ensure the federal government is efficient, effective and accountable to the American people. But time and time again, this administration has dismissed Americans’ right to know.

When Department of Veterans Affairs bureaucrats place themselves ahead of the veterans they are charged with serving, it’s Congress’ job to get answers. But VA’s stonewall tactics are interfering with this vital task. It’s been more than 18 months since the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs revealed VA’s delays in care crisis to the nation, yet the department is sitting on more than 140 requests for information from the committee regarding everything from patient wait times to disciplinary actions for failed employees. VA’s disregard for congressional oversight was on full display Oct. 21, when committee Democrats and Republicans voted unanimously to subpoena five bureaucrats VA had refused to make available to explain their role in a scheme that resulted in the misuse of more than $400,000 in taxpayer money. Later, at a Nov. 2 follow-up hearing, two of the subpoenaed VA employees invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

When the Internal Revenue Service improperly targets conservative organizations, it’s Congress’ job to get answers. When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives runs a failed and flawed sting operation intentionally providing hundreds of firearms to Mexican cartels, it’s Congress’ job to get answers. When events surrounding terrorist attacks in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 are hidden from the public, it’s Congress’ job to get answers.

But Congress cannot do its job when an administration refuses to turn over information. That’s why Congress has increasingly resorted to the power of the pen and has issued numerous legally-binding subpoenas to various Obama Administration agencies, including the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Office of Management and Budget, among others.

Whether it is the necessity of holding agency heads in contempt of Congress or pursuing civil litigation to gain access to clearly relevant material or the improper invocation of executive privilege or a new “confidential communications” privilege this administration made up out of whole cloth, Congress has been forced to spend far too much time and resources gaining access to documents which it is clearly entitled to.

 

But perhaps the honor of the least transparent agency in the federal government belongs to the EPA.

Everyone wants clean air and water. But Americans want environmental regulations to be based on sound science, not science  fiction or radical political manifestos. When the EPA refused to release the data it uses to justify its proposed air regulations, the historically bipartisan House Science Committee was compelled to issue its first subpoena in 21 years to retrieve the information.

Last year, the House passed the Secret Science Reform Act of 2015 to require the EPA to base its regulations on publicly-available data, not secret science. This allows independent scientists the opportunity to evaluate EPA’s claims and check their work.  Who could argue against using open and transparent science to support regulation? Answer: the Obama administration.

It’s not surprising that the non-partisan Center for Effective Government gave the EPA a grade of “D” in its most recent report for poor performance in providing access to information.

This administration has created an unprecedented culture of secrecy that starts at the top and extends into almost every agency. While Congress is being thwarted in its efforts at oversight, it is really the American people who lose when those entrusted to enforce the law believe and act as if they are above it. It’s time to come clean, Mr. President. Don’t let a lack of transparency be your legacy.

Hillary Asks, ‘Will the Libya War Interrupt my Vacay’?

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It must be noted that daily, when Hillary was at home at White Haven, her private residence that she DOES not share with Bill, a State Department driver would show up daily to deliver a package. Inside contents were usually her copy of the Presidential Daily Briefing, call sheets and other diplomatic operational actions, all in printed form. Note…PRINTED FORM. That is NOT protected material, just ask General Petraeus.

There are clear violations in the law in these emails with regard to her shadow intelligence point person, Sidney Blumenthal, known as the Logan Act, however, no one ever seems to be prosecuted under this law. The email exchanges also demonstrate that Syria was actually aiding Libya, an agreement Qaddafi made decades ago with Bashir al Assad’s father. Hummm.

Is there a shredder somewhere in this mess? Heh…read on. Did files and records get buried with Tyler Drumheller? Oh, has anyone interviewed Samantha Power, the current UN Ambassador? Well she was part of the Libya mess too.

Hillary’s team was particularly interested in a documentary:

 “The Oath of Tobruk,” Bernard-Henri Levy details how a self-promoting leftist intellectual persuaded a conservative French president to back the Libyan revolt.

Hillary Clinton Forwarded Huma Abedin Classified Info. for Printing

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released nearly 70 pages of State Department records that show that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides, Deputy Chiefs of Staff Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, received and sent classified information on their non-state.gov email accounts.  The documents, also available on the State Department website, were obtained in response to a court order from a May 5, 2015, lawsuit filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to a March 18 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking:

  • All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-“state.gov” email address.

The new documents show that Hillary Clinton used the clintonemail.com system to ask Huma Abedin (also on a non-state.gov email account) to print two March 2011 emails, which were sent from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (using the moniker “aclb”) to Jake Sullivan on Sullivan’s non-state.gov email account.  The Obama State Department redacted the Blair emails under Exemption (b)(1) which allows the withholding of classified material.  The material is marked as being classified as “Foreign government information” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the US, including confidential sources.”

Another email shows that Clinton wanted to know how meetings in Washington, including a four-hour meeting concerning America’s war on Libya, would impact her Hampton vacation.  Responding to an email that details the sensitive meetings in DC, Clinton emails Abedin on August 26, 2011, “Ok. What time would I get back to Hamptons?”  Again, this email discussion takes place on non-state.gov email accounts.

The documents also include advice to Clinton on Libya from Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton Foundation employee who, according to a Judicial Watch investigative report, also had business interests in Libya.  Clinton wanted Blumenthal’s March 9, 2011, Libya memo to be printed “without any identifiers.”

The newly released Abedin emails include a lengthy exchange giving precise details of Clinton’s schedule using unsecured government emails. The email from Lona J. Valmoro, former Special Assistant to Secretary of State Clinton, to Abedin and Clinton reveals exact times (including driving times) and locations of all appointments throughout the day. Another itinerary email provides details about a meeting at the United Nations in New York at 3:00 on Tuesday, January 31, 2012, with the precise disclosure, “that would mean wheels up from Andrews at approximately 12:00pm/12:15pm.”

“These emails show that Hillary Clinton isn’t the only Obama official who should be worried about being prosecuted for mishandling classified information.  Her former top State aides (and current campaign advisers) Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan should be in the dock, as well,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The Obama State Department has now confirmed that Clinton, Abedin, and Sullivan used unsecured, non-government email accounts to communicate information that should now be withheld from the American people ‘in the interest of national defense or foreign policy, and properly classified.’ When can we expect the indictments?”

Hey Janet and Jeh, How do you Square This?

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May 2015, speech in part: DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, “The FBI continues to identify, investigate, interdict and help the Department of Justice prosecute attempted terrorist plots to the homeland. With the help of DHS, the FBI has also made a number of arrests of those who attempt to become foreign fighters, before they can get on an airplane and leave the country.

In reaction to terrorist groups’ public calls for attacks on government installations in the West, and following the attack last fall in Ottawa, I directed that our Federal Protective Service enhance its security and presence at federal office buildings around the country. This enhanced security remains in place.

In reaction to terrorists’ public calls for attacks on U.S. military installations and personnel, the Department of Defense has enhanced its security at bases in the U.S.

Given the new reality of the global terrorist threat — which involves the potential for small-scale homegrown attacks by those who could strike with little or no notice, we are working in closer collaboration with state and local law enforcement. Given the nature of the evolving threat, the local cop on the beat may actually be the first to detect a terrorist attack on the homeland.

So, as often as several times a week, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI share terrorist threat information and intelligence with Joint Terrorism Task Forces, state fusion centers, and local police chiefs and sheriffs.” Full speech here and note the some of the attendees.

Maybe we should be seeking a subpoena of Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson.

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Enter Philip Haney, again:

DHS Official: I Was Ordered to Purge Records of Islamic Terror Ties
A veteran official with the Department of Homeland Security claims he and other staff were ordered to destroy records on a federal database that showed links between possible jihadists and Islamic terrorist groups.

“After leaving my 15-year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack,” the former employee, Patrick Haney, wrote in an explosive column that was published late Friday on The Hill website.

Haney alleges that the Obama administration has been “engaged in a bureaucratic effort” to destroy the raw material and intelligence the Department of Homeland Security has been collecting for years, leaving the United States open to mass-casualty attacks.

His story starts in 2009, when during the holiday travel season, a 23-year-old Nigerian Muslim,  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253, with explosives packed in his underwear and the hopes of slaughtering 290 travelers flying on Christmas Day from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Passengers subdued the jihadist and he was arrested, thwarting the plot.

After the attempt, Haney writes, President Barack Obama “threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to ‘connect the dots,’ saying that it was not a failure to collect the intelligence that could have stopped the attack, but rather “‘a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.'”

But most Americans were not aware that the Department of Homeland Security’s employees suffered enormous damage to their morale from Obama’s words, Haney said.

Further, many were infuriated “because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material — the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.”

Just one month before the attempted attack, Haney said, his DHS supervisors ordered him to either delete or modify the records for several hundred people tied to Islamist terror organizations, including Hamas, from the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, the federal database.

Those records give DHS the ability to “connect dots,” explained Haney, and every day, the agency’s Custom and Border Protection officials use the database while watching people who are associated with known terrorist affiliations seeking patterns that could indicate a pending attack.

“Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that,” said Haney.

“Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database,” he wrote.

And even weeks after the attempted Christmas Day attack, Haney said, he was still being ordered to delete and scrub terrorists’ records, making it more difficult to connect dots in the future.

The number of attempted and successful Islamic terrorist attacks kept increasing, notes Haney, including the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, conducted by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev; Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez’ shooting of two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee last year; the attack conducted by Faisal Shahzad in May 2010; Detroit “honor” killer Rahim Alfatlawi in 2011; Amine El Khalifi, who plotted to blow up the U.S. Capitol in 2012; and Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen in 2014.

He believes it is “very plausible” that one or more of those homeland incidents could have been prevented, if DHS subject matter experts had been allowed to keep doing their jobs.

“It is demoralizing — and infuriating — that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009,” Haney concluded.