July 27, 2010 by Tim McDowell.

July 26, 2010: Israel and the United States have collected a lot of information on how Islamic terrorists operate. A lot of this data will remain secret for some time, but new tidbits are made public from time to time. The latest revelation is actually confirmation of many older bits of information. That is, the suicide bombers themselves are usually persuaded, not forced, to carry out their missions.Israel, for example, has captured at least fifteen suicide bombers who did not (could not or would not) carry out their mission. These terrorists were extensively questioned, as were family and friends. The Israelis also collected similar data on dead suicide bombers, including email or tapped phone calls and other material the bomber left behind. The Israelis, like the suicide bomb organizations, came to the same conclusion; that certain personality traits make someone very willing to carry out these attacks. And the chief characteristic is usually not fanaticism, but deference to authority and public opinion. This is one reason why the  Palestinian media campaign to glamorize suicide bombers is so dangerous. Over a decade of this propaganda provides a large supply of potential suicide bombers, and even assists them in contacting terrorist groups to sign up. For terrorists unable to find these impressionable volunteers (who are easy to train and control), there is another pool of recruits. These are the deranged and impulsive. This is why you will occasionally hear about dead suicide bombers who were mental patients, or widows of terrorists. The widows are told, quite accurately, that they faced a dim future and that becoming a martyr for the cause was a good move. In these cases, the cash paid (by terrorist organizations) to the families of suicide bombers helped with the recruiting.

Terrorists consider suicide bombing a very effective weapon. But to make it work they need volunteers who are reliable and able to learn the techniques of getting to the target undetected, and then actually setting off the bomb. You don’t hear much about it, but many (in some situations, over a third of) suicide bombers refuse to go through with it. Thus the many “handlers” that work closely with the suicide bomber, until the final moment. If a suicide bombing campaigns goes on for a while, only killing Moslem civilians, there will be a shortage of competent volunteers. All those dead Moslem civilians gives the attacks a bad reputation. That means fewer successful suicide bombing missions, and more captured (or surrendered) bombers, which results in more suicide bombing cells (and their hard to replace management and technical personnel) are destroyed.

Israeli police have long known how the terrorist groups recruit, equip and deliver bombers. This information was obtained from Palestinian publications, captured documents and interrogations of Palestinian militants. Eventually, the Israelis found several weaknesses in the suicide bomber system. The first one discovered was transportation. Most of the suicide bomber volunteers lived in the West Bank, and had to be transported to areas with a large Israeli population. As the Israelis discovered, most of the cost of each suicide bombing went to paying a driver or guide to get the suicide bomber close to a target area. Using a system of checkpoints and profiling, the Israelis began to catch most of the suicide bombers.

But some still got through. So the Israelis went back to a 1990s technique that, while it worked, was widely criticized as unfair and inhumane. Namely, the family home of the suicide bomber was destroyed. The bomber usually came from a family that housed several generations in one house (which was often the family’s major asset. Before resuming this practice, the family actually profited from the bombing, receiving up to $30,000 for their son (or daughter’s) sacrifice. Soon after the house destruction policy went into effect, there were reports of familys forcibly restraining adult children from joining the suicide bombing effort (or reporting the kid to the Israelis, who would then arrest the bomber volunteer.) While that dried up the source of the more competent bombers, it did not eliminate all the bombings. So Israel cut the West Bank off from Israel. Thus for the last five years, there have been hardly any attacks. Because the Palestinians continue their suicide bomber recruitment program (especially on children’s television shows), the Israelis don’t plan on reopening their borders to the Palestinians any time soon.

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July 27, 2010 by Tim McDowell.

Reporting from King Salmon, Alaska —

He was the local weatherman, sending up weather balloons twice a day above this remote community of 450 full-time residents near Bristol Bay and preparing short-term forecasts for pilots and fishermen.

She was a stay-at-home mom who drove their 4-year-old to preschool, sang in the town choir and picked berries with her girlfriends. She took part in the community play, in which she portrayed a fairy godmother who acted as a prosecutor in court, confronting the Big Bad Wolf for his crimes against Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs and the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

So beloved were Paul Rockwood Jr. and his wife, Nadia, that when they left King Salmon in May to move to England, where Nadia was born, more than 30 people — pretty much their entire circle of friends — showed up at the airport. The choir sang “Wherever You Go,” and “people were just bawling,” said Rebecca Hamon, a friend of the couple.

What none of them could have known was that FBI agents were meeting the small turboprop plane in Anchorage to question the Rockwoods on suspicion of domestic terrorism-related crimes.

This week, Paul and Nadia Rockwood pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Anchorage to one count of willfully making false statements to the FBI; in Paul Rockwood’s case, it was a statement about domestic terrorism.

The plea agreements state that Rockwood, 35, had become an adherent of extremist Islam who had prepared a list of assassination targets, including U.S. service members. And, though no plot to carry out the killings was revealed, he had researched methods of execution, including guns and explosives, the agreements say.

Federal charging papers said his wife, 36, who is five months pregnant with the couple’s second child, lied to investigators when she denied knowing that an envelope she took to Anchorage in April at her husband’s request contained a list of 15 intended targets. (None were in Alaska.) She told FBI agents that she thought the envelope contained a letter or a book. She gave it to an unidentified individual who her husband believed shared his radical beliefs, the FBI said.

Nadia knew exactly what was on the list and what it was for, federal authorities said.

“Obviously we take it very seriously when somebody starts talking about building bombs and component parts and killing citizens because of a hatred that is fueled by violent Internet sites,” said Karen L. Loeffler, U.S. attorney for Alaska.

Loeffler, who would not elaborate on how the FBI became aware of the Rockwoods, said the investigation does not involve any other terrorism suspects, and no additional charges are expected.

The plea agreements the couple signed said Paul Rockwood converted to Islam in late 2001 or early 2002 while living in Virginia and became a follower of radical U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar Awlaki, now believed to be living in Yemen.

“This included a personal conviction that it was his religious responsibility to exact revenge by death on anyone who desecrated Islam,” his agreement said.

Here in King Salmon, where the biggest thing is the annual red salmon run — it happens to be the biggest one in the world — this has the air of a poorly written movie.

“If all terrorists were this harmless, we’d all be living in a much less complicated world,” said Hamon, who lived in Camarillo before moving 12 years ago to King Salmon, on the Alaska Peninsula, 280 miles southwest of Anchorage.

“We’ve all been in shock,” said Mary Swain, who was friends with Nadia and baked the birthday cake for the Rockwoods’ son’s party last year. “I mean, kids would go over to her house all the time where she was teaching them ballet. She always went to library time, she went to story time…. Her mom would come over here from England and stay with her for a month at a time, and people got to be friends with her too.”

King Salmon is little more than a windy cluster of homes surrounding the airport, grocery, repair shops and a handful of bars and restaurants, with emphasis, like any fishing town, on the bars. Populated mainly by government employees year-round, it lies on limitless fields of grassy tundra and low stands of white spruce, not far from the fishing port of Naknek on Bristol Bay and world-famous Katmai National Park. Like most of Alaska, it is accessible only by air or small boat.

The National Weather Service paid for the couple’s move to King Salmon after hiring Paul in 2006 as a meteorological technician. They moved into a small tract of modern government housing populated by the many federal employees working for the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the weather service.

In the summertime, the populations of King Salmon and especially Naknek swell with thousands of itinerant fishermen and cannery workers. Nadia worked to become part of the close-knit permanent community, friends and neighbors said. Paul, because of his irregular work hours, often slept during the day and wasn’t as engaged in the community.

“He was a good employee. I never had any problems with him,” said Debra Elliott, his supervisor at the small, two-room building next to the airport, where the weather service shares an office with the Federal Aviation Administration. “He was very likable.”

The couple told neighbors they were Muslim but, other than avoiding pork, never made an issue of their religion. Paul had a beard, but the couple never prayed publicly. Nadia performed Christian and secular songs with the choir in performances at the local chapel; her husband attended with his video camera.

Loukas Barton, a National Park Service archeologist who lived next door, said the couple’s seeming reticence about discussing their religion may have been because they were, so far as anyone here can remember, the only Muslims who have ever lived in King Salmon.

“It’s not uncommon in a bar here to hear some moron say, ‘I hate Barack Obama because he’s … a terrorist and an Ay-rab.’ And people will swear up and down that he’s a Muslim. Which is really well-informed, right?” Barton said.

“So for families like them, you could imagine it’d be a little tough. Maybe that’s why Paul wasn’t all that social. I don’t think he’d be welcome down at Eddie’s, or any of the other bars in town. He certainly didn’t look Arab or Muslim, so those kind of comments would just fly freely.”

Hamon said Nadia was a fresh-faced, lively, fun-loving woman. She seemed determined to embrace rural life with enthusiasm.

“I met her and we just really hit it off. She became a really central part of our little group of girlfriends here,” Hamon said. “She did set-net fishing with us to catch salmon in summer. She learned to smoke and can salmon…. We learned to knit about the same time. We’d all get together and do crafts and stuff. We were all very welcome in each other’s homes.

“There was never a feeling with Nadia that there was anything funny or secretive going on. Paul was always very comfortable with us too,” she said.

The couple’s garage was a clearinghouse for fresh vegetables flown in from Washington state, and neighbors were free to let themselves in to pick up their allotments when no one was home.

The couple decided to leave because Paul had a disease of the inner ear that gave him frequent bouts of vertigo, friends said. Barton said Paul told him at the couple’s going-away yard sale that he also was growing tired of the annual clouds of mosquitoes and biting flies that descend each summer on King Salmon.

They were planning to move near Nadia’s mother in Kent, England, where Paul could get better medical treatment than at the small clinic in Naknek, neighbors said.

If U.S. District Judge Ralph R. Beistline accepts the plea agreements, Paul Rockwood Jr. will serve eight years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Nadia Rockwood, who is free and in seclusion in Anchorage, would be sentenced to five years’ probation and return to England. Sentencing is set for Aug. 23.

Some of the targets on Rockwood’s list listened in by telephone to Wednesday’s plea hearing in Anchorage federal court, though none of them was identified and none of them spoke. The couple said very little, beyond entering their guilty pleas.

“We’ve known them since Zaid was a tiny little tyke,” Hamon said, referring to the couple’s son. “Everybody was sad they had to leave. Then when this came out, we were all completely shocked. It’s just impossible for me to imagine the friend that I knew being involved in anything like this.”

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July 27, 2010 by Tim McDowell.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and sent them off in official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General’s Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

“According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director … to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards’ weapons for executions,” office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Similar ballistics tests linked the guns to earlier killings at two bars in Torreon, the capital of northern Coahuila state, he said. At least 16 people were killed in those attacks on Feb. 1 and May 15, local media reported.

Najera blamed the killings on disputes between rival drug cartels. “Unfortunately, the criminals also carried out cowardly killings of innocent civilians, only to return to their cells,” he said.

Coahuila and neighboring Durango are among several northern states that have seen a spike in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

Mexico has long had a problem with investigating crimes, catching criminals and convicting people. Reports estimate less than 2 percent of crimes in Mexico result in prison sentences. But Sunday’s revelation suggests that even putting cartel gunmen in prison may not prevent them from continuing to commit crimes.

Interior Secretary Francisco Blake said the revelation “can only be seen as a wake-up call for authorities to address, once again, the state of deterioration in many local law enforcement institutions … we cannot allow this kind of thing to happen again.”

Also Sunday, Mexican federal police announced the arrest of an alleged leading member of a drug gang blamed in recent killings and a car-bombing in the violence-ridden border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Police described Luis Vazquez Barragan, 39, as a top member of La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, saying he received orders directly from cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Vazquez Barragan allegedly organized payments, moved drugs and oversaw a system of safe houses in and around Ciudad Juarez.

Police said he held the same rank as fugitive gang leader Juan Pablo Ledezma, though Vazquez Barragan is not named on reward or most-wanted lists published by the Attorney General’s Office, as Ledezma is.

La Linea has been blamed for a car bomb that killed three people July 15 in Ciudad Juarez and for two separate shootings March 13 that killed a U.S. consular employee and two other people connected to the consulate.

Police did not say when they caught Vazquez Barragan, but he was allegedly in possession of about a half-kilogram (pound) of cocaine and two guns.

His arrest led to a raid on a safe house where authorities detained four suspects and freed a kidnap victim.

Also Sunday, the Attorney General’s Office said soldiers on patrol in Ciudad Madero in the border state of Tamaulipas seized an arsenal of about three dozen guns, 17 grenades and thousands of bullets in a house.

Elsewhere in Tamaulipas, police and prosecutors raided a lot full of truck-pulled tankers in the border city of Reynosa and seized two loaded with oil of a type sometimes stolen from the pipelines of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos. Nore than a dozen other tankers and freight containers were also seized.

Mexican drug cartels have allegedly become involved in increasingly sophisticated thefts of fuel and oil from Mexico’s pipelines.

In the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, authorities reported Sunday they had found the bullet-ridden bodies of six men dumped in various locations, including three in or around the resort of Acapulco. Two of the dead men were identified as people kidnapped earlier in the month.

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