The NSA Isn't Foiling Terrorist Plots

http://www.alternet.org/nsa-isnt-foiling-terrorist-plots


The National Security Agency (NSA) is shown on May 31, 2006 in Fort Meade, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC.

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Who Stops Terrorism?

Contrary to what one would expect given the secretive nature of intelligence operations, we actually know quite a bit about how terrorist plots in the United States and Europe are foiled. Several attacks, for instance, were discovered after law enforcement agencies picked up on suspicious (non-digital) behaviors of the plotters. Samir Azzouz, the most prolific jihadist terrorist in the Netherlands, attracted the attention of the Dutch secret service when he tried to travel to Chechnya to join the jihad against the Russians.

Other plotters gave themselves away by associating with known terrorists. For instance, a 2009 plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange came to light after one of the perpetrators contacted a Yemeni extremist who was under FBI surveillance. The plans of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who was arrested just before he could execute his attack against a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, were detected in a similar manner. The FBI started following Mohamud after he e-mailed a known terrorist recruiter. Since the FBI does not have mass digital surveillance capabilities, the person Mohamud contacted was likely already under surveillance.

Najibullah Zazi’s plans for an attack against the New York subway were thwarted this way, too. British intelligence informed their U.S. counterparts that Zazi had had e-mail contact with a Pakistani radical who was being watched for involvement in a British terror plot. A fourth example involves Abdullah Ahmed Ali, the ringleader of the cell that prepared the liquid bomb attacks against transatlantic flights in 2006. He first came to the attention of MI5 after he was seen interacting with known radicals.

In other cases, the police uncovered terrorist activities after having arrested the perpetrators for unrelated crimes. A cell in London, for instance, attracted the attention of the police after its involvement in skirmishes with right-wing extremist youths. A more bizarre example concerns Ahmed Ferhani, who, apparently deeply enraged after an arrest for petty crime, told the police about his ambition to join the jihad. Several months later, he was arrested for planning an attack against a New York synagogue.